The Right Words at the Right Time

Today started with a call from my sister on my way to work. I should preface this story to say that I've felt isolated in my attempts to take care of my health and isolation equals failure to eat well and exercise. So at 8:20 am my little sister mentioned that her friend commented on this blog, something about someone being helped with the right message at the right time. Before looking into the message, I received another little jolt of encouragement from my friend who is also my dentist. She is a beautiful woman (inside and out) who is determined to get the best of her health through exercise. I know she has adapted a routine of walking regularly and has been successful at weight loss (congratulations Dr. M!) Before I left her office today, she instructed me to walk for 30 minutes when I get home. I like a challenge so I halfheartedly mumbled "OK". Then when I was half out the door but still close enough to hear she said, "if you don't you have to do double tomorrow." And -- because I had no other choice -- I replied "deal!"

Here's the fun of that story. I did come home and walk two miles. Without her direction to do so, there was a zero percent chance that I would have exercised. I invited my husband to walk also, and he did. He commented that he has been wanting and needing to get back into the routine of exercising and this was just the push he had been hoping for. So some stranger in Indianapolis, who encouraged my friend Angela to remind me to keep going prompted a discussion with my dentist who challenged me to exercise which involved my husband who in turn prompted me to continue to walk the next day. What a great chain reaction. You never know who you might help or impact. Sometimes the right people are in the right place at the right time saying the right things.

Turning Prediabetes Around through Weight Loss

Last week, I met a young man named David who has recently been diagnosed with Prediabetes. This is a condition marked by glucose levels that are higher than normal, but not high enough to be considered Type 2 Diabetes. It can (not always) lead to Type 2 Diabetes but is often able to be treated before that progression occurs. If a person is over the age of 45, has high blood pressure and/or is African-American, Asian American or Mexican American he/she has a higher risk of developing Diabetes. The American Diabetes Association lists some symptoms that can be early signs of the disease: unusual thirst, frequent urination, blurred vision, extreme fatigue, frequent infections, cuts/bruises that are slow to heal, tingling/numbness in the hands/feet, and recurring skin, gum or bladder infections.

If you are diagnosed with Prediabetes, you may very well be able to return your blood glucose levels to a normal range by losing 7% of your body weight and adding moderate exercise for 30 minutes a day, five days a week. I have detailed more specific information on losing weight and curbing hunger in a blog titled “What to Do and How to Do it.”

1) WHAT TO DO: Basically don't consume more calories than you burn. For women, a general rule is about 1200 per day. For men, it's about 1600. Before watching my caloric intake, it wasn't uncommon for me to eat two to three times that amount. Exercise increases that number allowed by adding the number of calories you burn working out to the number of calories you are allowed. I have found www.myfitnesspal.com to be an invaluable tool for measuring these two things.

2) HOW TO DO IT: This is the part that will be a lifelong learning process, adjusted to fit your individual goals and lifestyle. It really means eating the kinds of foods that keep you full, provide the most nutrition and keep you from feeling deprived of the things you like to eat. Look back through other posts from this month to see what kinds of changes I've made and please be sure to leave a comment or email me if you have specific questions or challenges.

After losing about 15 pounds I’ve noticed that I feel much more energetic and am sleeping better. Here is the basic guide I am following:  Eliminate sugar, white flour, potatoes, white rice, pasta and alcohol. Don't panic! It's not forever, just until you get the ball rolling. Start your day with water, eggs, whole oats, Greek yogurt, fruit. I make a lot of omelets with one whole egg plus two egg whites, spinach and mushrooms. Keep fruits, veggies, yogurt, hummus, cheese and nuts close by for a morning snack and afternoon snack. (Cheese and nuts are high in calories but you don't need to eliminate them, just have smaller portions.) Lunch can be a salad loaded with veggies, or a turkey burger with lettuce and tomato. Honestly, I got really bored with salad after a couple of weeks so I have been using romaine leaves as bread in rolling up my favorite healthy filling -- grilled chicken with salsa, tuna, ground turkey. Black beans and white beans are taking the place of the ground beef I used to eat. You can make all kinds of tasty healthy soups with broth, beans and veggies. Also, colored bell peppers are a win-win -- high in flavor and vitamins, low in calories. Use spices like garlic, black pepper, cayenne pepper, cumin, chili, cinnamon, oregano to flavor your veggies. Check out  the blog “Focus on What You Can Eat”. One last thing, don't throw in the towel if it feels hard the first several days. Days one through three are the hardest, but after the first week you'll start to feel like it's a normal way to eat and after a few weeks you will really see your cravings for junk food change. Really!

Also read the blog on “Taming Hunger is Key.” You’ll find that what you eat – rather than how much you eat – can help you avoid those annoying hunger pains. As hard as it is, learn to be OK with being hungry after you’ve eaten dinner and go to bed hungry. It’s not pleasant sometimes but it is SO worth the sacrifice. You’ll see a much faster payoff for all of your healthy eating during the day.

Back on Track

Thank you for visiting the blog. As you can see, my lack of attention in the goal to be healthy is parallel to the missing blogs for the past few weeks. It's all one big picture, like a puzzle. You know I've talked a lot about accountability. What happens to the best of us, is that we slip out of sight figuratively. While I'm breaking my own rules and secretly reverting back to old "junk food on the couch" habits, I don't want anyone to know or see what's going on. That continues for a while until I finally snap out of it and start over again. So I have started over again this month. Here is the most important thing to remember -- it really FEELS GREAT! It's only been a few days since I got back into my wellness plan and I am feeling happier and sleeping better. It truly changes your overall mood. In my experience, the first three days are killer. So don't get discouraged if you feel like giving in the first few days. Commit to yourself that you will be perfectly disciplined for three days. After that short period, you will begin to feel less sluggish and hopefully experience better rest. Remember that eight hours of sleep is an important rule for weight loss. Check back for daily blogs throughout the summer and please provide feedback...thanks!

Taming Hunger is Key

If I could assign percentages to the difficulty of making significant changes to eating habits, I would give calorie counting a 10% compared to 90% for fighting the temptation of hunger and cravings. Maybe even 5% to 95%. I think it’s because the first part is the mental part where all you have to do is use your brain. I have a pretty analytical side and like things that are structured and regulated. Keeping lists and checking things off is part of who I am. In fact, sometimes I write things down that I’ve already done, just so I can check it off.

The really tough part is the mind over matter part, as I wrote about last week. Here’s the scenario: a protein packed breakfast, fruit for a morning snack, salad for lunch and a dinner of lean meat and veggies. Most calories are accounted for, dinner dishes are washed and then it’s time for me to watch my family continue to snack. I have to smell chicken tenders or look at a piping hot pepperoni pizza. Sometimes it’s brownies or Nestle Toll House cookies. And on a night when I don’t see and smell sugary, greasy food, I have to watch footage of it on TV commercials. A person can only take so much before caving in.

Ask someone who has conquered the weight battle what their secret magic trick is and you’ll learn that it is always some variation of “eat less, exercise more.” But if that’s so simple, why is eating well so hard? The answer is hunger.

In an article by Psych Central on hunger, the author states: “In order to identify hunger, you must first understand what it is. This is not as easy as it seems. Many of you may never have let yourself experience true hunger, only a feeling of discomfort. Not knowing exactly what it was, you may have been eating past hunger for such a long time you can no longer differentiate between hunger and the feeling of anxiety, stress, boredom, or any number of other emotional or circumstantial stimuli. You haven’t allowed yourself to go without eating for a long enough period of time to have felt true hunger; you may not have experienced it since childhood.”

Now the reason it’s a challenge becomes more clear. Our body has a powerful ability to tell our brain that we NEED to eat. Logically, you know at the end of the day that you will not starve to death if you’ve consumed 1200 calories of healthy, nutritious food but your brain will use every trick in the book to convince you that you must eat more between dinner and bedtime. Once you learn that it is beneficial to go to bed “hungry” (remember, this isn’t really feeling hunger as much as unsatisfied) you will truly start to conquer your battle in letting food get the best of you. Visit my blog at www.wellnesschallege2013.com to learn about how eating the right foods can help you feel full all day long.

This week’s challenge: after dinner, stop eating for the night and learn to let yourself move past the feeling of wanting to continue to eat. As with all changes, it will get easier over time and you’ll get a great satisfaction for winning at this.

Muscle Memory

There was a health fair at my work today and one of the wellness experts told me something interesting I didn't know. I mentioned that losing weight seems to take so much concentrated effort. To lose two pounds, takes about five days of strict discipline but I can gain two pounds just by overeating for an hour. He said this is due to muscle memory and that your body gets to a place that it wants to naturally gravitate back to. That makes a lot of sense. For a long time my weight was stuck at about 197, then I had a week of proper food and exercise where I couldn't get past 191 and then 187 and then 181. I'm still at 181 today even though I had reached my February goal of 177 earlier this month. He told me the key is to just keep on going and not let the "ups" bother me. That's the plan. I'll keep going and pay attention to muscle memory.

Make a Fist

 Make a fist and let me know when you're done. All set? I'll explain. Your fist is about the size of your stomach. And I know I've been talking about hunger a lot lately but that's just because I'm always hungry. Just kidding. It's because hunger is no fun and you don't have to be hungry to be healthy.

If filling your stomach is the goal to not feeling hungry, then this visual aid will help you see why the right foods do the trick.

The first photo is 4 tablespoons of blue cheese salad dressing. The total number of calories in this little green bowl is 300. But 4 tablespoons which is 1/4 cup would do very little to fill your belly (30 grams of fat).

Photo number two is 2 ounces of Pepper-Jack cheese with 8 Wheat Thin crackers. Wheat in this case is hardly better than other crackers because this snack still has 20 grams of fat, 300 calories just like the example above.

Plate three was the choice I made for dinner tonight. As you can see, the size of the portion is (was) larger than my fist. This is 3 ounces of grilled asparagus with sea salt and pepper and 5 ounces of Atlantic Salmon with lemon and rosemary. I used an olive oil spritzer to put just a touch of oil on the asparagus to make it crispy. This colorful dinner weighs in at -- you guessed it -- 300 calories. And 10 grams of fat just for the record, but it's Omega 3 fat and it's actually very good for you. It also has a full day's supply of vitamin D. 

If you're reading this thinking "good for you, but foods like that are boring and I'd much rather dip that piece of Jack into the blue cheese with a cracker chaser -- trust me! I used to eat blue cheese dressing by the spoonful and have been known to bring home seven different cheeses in one grocery trip. But I'm gradually changing my tastes for what I like to eat. This week I've been crazily addicted to turkey burgers and asparagus.

The Harder You Work, the Luckier You Get

As you can tell by now, I love cliches and analogies. This is one of my favorites. I've worked pretty hard to be healthier this year. From January 1st until today, I've lost 18 pounds. One day last week I actually hit a 20 pound goal but then gained a few pounds back. On the days when I am more strict, I have better results for the morning weigh in. Some people disagree on weighing yourself everyday, but for me it works. For me, weighing myself every morning helps me see immediately what kind of impact the previous day's food choices have had. With few exceptions, I can see that eating 1200 means slight weight decrease, 1300 means no change and more than 1300 equals weight gain. I have also learned that not getting enough water or exercise slows the progress down.

I remember a few years ago feeling jealous of women in my neighborhood. Most of my neighbors are women about my age, with kids and jobs, and a size 2 wardrobe. Then, I started to uncover another interesting thing they all had in common -- they all exercise and eat right. Dang! I had been feeling sorry for myself for not getting the genetic favor these ladies had. It turned out that they were working hard to get so lucky!