One Month Recap

Today marks the end of my first month of the wellness challenge. My goal was/is to lose 10 pounds each month for January through May. I am happy to say that I reached the goal for this month, barely, but I made it. I've learned some things this month...eating really, really well has often resulted in a half-pound weight loss in a day. Slightly overeating for a day, can add a pound! It shouldn't, because technically it takes an extra 3500 calories to equal an extra pound of fat. But from my experience, I've found that it really doesn't take much to derail a lot of hard work. It reminds me of college. I had pretty good grades but failed one accounting class. That F did some serious damage to my overall GPA and I had to work very hard to make up for it. The other two things that have impacted my success or lack of success this month are drinking water and exercise. If I eat well, but skip those other two components of the plan, my weight stays stagnant. It takes all three -- the right foods/calories, exercise and water. And finally, I've learned that losing weight, getting healthy, is as much a mental challenge as a physical one. In fact, it's more mental than physical. A person's body would survive for more than a month on just water. But your body will lie to your brain. It will tell you that hunger means "better eat something, we're starving to death, hurry, eat, now!" Don't believe yourself, you can do this! Tomorrow is February 1st and my goal for the month is to go from 187-177. See you tomorrow.

Focus on What You CAN Eat

As promised, here is an expanded narrative on focusing on what you can eat, instead of what you can't. Let me start with an example of how one's day goes on a diet. Let's say there was a family gathering over the weekend and your neighbor's half-eaten chocolate cheesecake was leftover in your fridge. You go to work on Monday with your cooler of veggies and mid-morning you start saying to yourself "I won't eat that cheesecake, I won't eat that cheesecake, I won't eat that cheesecake." After a nice, lunch of spinach salad and berries you start to think of your evening plans and again recite your directive of "I won't eat that cheesecake...and on, and on. Guess what happens when you walk into your kitchen that night! You have practically brainwashed yourself on NEEDING to eat that cheesecake because it has been incessantly imprinted on your brain all day.

Right now, in order to gain better health, I have decided to not eat sugar, flour, potatoes, rice, pasta, fried food, fast food, high-fat food. That said, I cannot eat some of my favorite happy foods: Buffalo wings, pizza, egg rolls, baked Brie, loaded potato skins. (See where the need to change eating habits came from?)

Sounds like there's nothing left to eat if I take away all of my favorite comfort foods. But let's be honest. For the short list of what has to go away as I adjust to some better choices, here are some great things that I can eat: eggs, oatmeal, yogurt, pineapple, bananas, strawberries, oranges, kiwi, apples, blueberries, grapes, pomegranate, pecans, almonds, cashews, wheat tortillas, wheat pita, salsa, hot sauce, marinara sauce, spinach, avocado, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, eggplant, zucchini, cucumbers, tuna, turkey, chicken, salmon, ginger, tilapia, shrimp, lobster, filet Mignon.

True story: yesterday I had nothing planned for dinner and started thinking that maybe my kids would like a pizza because when Mama diets the whole family diets. That pizza notion turned into thinking maybe I would make a homemade flatbread pizza with turkey pepperoni. Then I thought maybe a turkey burger instead, no wait, a black bean burger on a bed of lettuce and tomato. By the time I pulled into the drive, I was actually craving a black bean burger and that's what I had for dinner. It was delicious! Lucky for my kids and husband they had all gone out for Mexican before I got home.

My Top 10 Dos and Dont's

As I mentioned yesterday, different things work for different people. Even if you look at the plans laid out by physicians and nutrition experts there are so many varied opinions. Find what works for YOU, and what doesn't. I've slightly surpassed my goal of losing 10 pounds in January and have found the following rules to be helpful for me:

1) Eat breakfast! This jump starts your metabolism like throwing wood into a fire. If you wait until lunch to eat, you've wasted four hours that your body could be burning calories at a higher rate. I know the excuse "if I eat breakfast I am more hungry by lunch than if I don't eat at all." That's because you are not eating the right breakfast. Choose protein, fruit, whole grain.

2) Women, limit your daily calories to 1200. The number should be about 1600 for men, just as a general rule. Do not consistently go over or you will gain weight, do not consistently go way under or you will retain weight.

3) Find the time to move your body. I've been walking 2 miles a day in 40 minutes or less, 5 days a week for the past 6 weeks. When I skip a few days, my weight plateaus. This extra 175 calories I've burned adds that number of calories to my daily allowance.

4) Make your own food. Fast food has to go away for a while. Preferably for good. Even if you look at what may seem to be the healthiest option at a FF restaurant, it's probably not that healthy. If you check out McDonald's Nutrition, oxymoric, you'll find an awful lot of hidden calories and saturated fat.

5) Eat your veggies. Just do it.

6) Don't clean your plate. Especially when you're eating out. Unless you're eating tapas, cut your portion in half and plan on a take out box. PLAN on taking half home and don't eat it just because it's there.

7) No soda or alcohol. At least for a while until you start to see some progress. Once you are on a good pace, I don't think adding wine back, if you drink, is as bad an option of adding soda -- regular or diet. Regular is loaded with sugar and has no nutritional value whatsoever and diet has artificial sweeteners which are said to be carcinogenic.

8) Don't drink your calories. In addition to point #7, watch out for fruit smoothies and fruit juice. Very high in calories (up to 900 per serving!) and much lower in health benefits than the actual fruit. You can make your own smoothies though, very healthy option.

9) Establish a list of food staples. For me, it's oats or eggs in the morning, hummus and wheat pita with veggies for lunch, Greek yogurt, apples and blueberries as snacks and lean protein and non-starch veggies for dinner. I also have small amounts of nuts, cut up fruits and veggies around for in between meal snacks.

10)  Focus on what you CAN eat. This is so huge it gets its own blog tomorrow.

Tell Me What Works

The idea behind this wellness challenge is to make it collaborative, interactive, and a mutually supportive network. Over the past few weeks I've spoken with friends and co-workers about my goal and many people have shared stories of the eating plans that have worked for them. One co-worker and her daughter have had some great success with Weight Watchers. A man I work with swears by eating based on your blood type. I really don't think there is a one-plan-fits-all diet. After all, it's really not a diet but a lifestyle change. We all lead very different lives, varied food tastes (I happen to love everything unfortunately), and have extremely different personalities. For me, tracking things and journaling is a great daily task. It would drive my husband nuts. I could pretty much live without sweets except on rare occasions. Other people would rather have dental surgery than bear the thought of a sugar-free life. Please post your comments on the tips and tricks that have worked best for you.

Green Drink

Eating at the restaurant my daughter works at after church was challenging. I chose to get a cheeseburger and eat only half of it. Calorie-wise, it wasn't a total cheat but the greasy food left me feeling kind of lethargic. I haven't been eating this type of food all month and my stomach isn't used to it. Dr. Oz announced a new Green Drink that I've been wanting to try so tonight's dinner seemed like a good time to start. The taste of the drink is not bad at all because it has fruit in it. At first, I didn't care for the texture because it was room temperature and pretty thick. I re-blended my drink with a few ice cubes and it was 100% better. It is loaded with vitamins and fiber and should help me feel great for another good week of healthy eating starting tomorrow. Check back later this week to read about the difference between drinking smoothies made with fruits and veggies versus juicing...very interesting!

UUUUGGGGHHH!

OK guys, I vowed to be truthful. This month has been full of success but I absolutely blew it tonight by falling into a trap. Here's what happened. I ate a nice bowl of oats. For lunch, some white chicken chili...all good. I started painting my daughters room which was actually a bit of a work out. By 6:00 pm I was ready for a break in painting so I jumped in the car to find a quick bite to eat. I drove through Taco Bell for a taco and some pinto beans. Not the end of the world, yet. I logged the junk food into my calorie counter and was still right on track. But a few hours later, after failing to eat regular solid food throughout the day, I went too long without eating -- a diet disaster struck and I have since spent the last four hours eating a small container of hummus, handsfull of Wheat Thins and a half a package of Thin Mints. Dang! I bit of sugar turned a lot of discipline into a mess of mindless snacking. So as I right this blog tonight, I know what tomorrow needs to be -- right back into the saddle. I'll keep you posted.

First Five Tips

I'm figuring this wellness thing out. The bottom line, simply put, is net calories. Calories in minus calories has to be below zero for weight loss. As simple as the equation sounds, making this happen daily can be tough. Here are my best tips on how to achieve this as painfully as possible:

1. take things one day at a time
2. if necessary, take things one hour at a time
3. all calories are not created equally, focus on fruits and veggies and avoid starches and refined food
4. don’t let your body trick your mind into thinking it is going to starve, hunger in the evening is a good thing
5. hunger is sometimes thirst, drink full glasses of water throughout the day

Most importantly – hang in there! The first three days are really hard because you are making big changes. The rest of the first week gets easier. By the second week you start to think differently about food. You’ll have some established “go to” foods that you incorporate every day. Mine are apples, blueberries, strawberries, almond milk, salmon, chicken, hummus, peppers, ground turkey, Greek yogurt. Then, by the third week, the new habit will start to set in and feel normal. I’m at the end of my third week now, 11 pounds lighter, more energetic, not craving chicken wings. You CAN do this!

Which One Matters...Calories, Carbs or Fat?

As you might expect, they all do. If you look at any one diet plan, you’ll see that there are a lot of conflicting strategies on how to lose weight and stay healthy. Any weight loss program that focuses strictly on low fat or high protein or no carbs doesn’t give you the whole picture. Here is an overview of why each of these matter:

Carbs - there are simple carbs and complex carbs. Complex carbs are found in fruits and veggies and are very good for you in providing energy. They digest slowly because your body has to work a bit to break them down. Simple carbs are foods that are very refined and processed. They take little effort to digest and spike your insulin level leading to higher fat storage. Also, these kinds of carbs tend to not satisfy hunger and leave you wanting more to eat. After removing them for a few days, your body will start to feel full on lean proteins and complex carbs...fewer cravings. You may have heard to avoid the white stuff. That's a group of simple carbs that we really need to live without: salt, white flour, white flour pasta, white rice, potatoes and sugar.

Fat - Fat is necessary, but there really are different types of fat. If you start to read food labels, be especially careful that the number of calories from fat are no more than 30%. More than that, and it means that you are eating an item that is likely to be nutritionally dense. When you start to focus on fruits, veggies and lean meat, you are naturally consuming low fat foods.

Calories -- Counting calories can really be complicated...or not. The difference is in the kinds of foods you're eating. For example, if you eat out a lot or eat your meals out of a cardboard box or can, you will have a really tough time getting everything logged correctly. Again, if you are eating plant-based foods and lean meats, it's pretty easy to track calories because you know exactly what you’re eating. After a few days you start to learn how many calories are in each component of your meal.

Watching these three categories will teach you to quickly identify which foods are most valuable. The goal is to comprise your diet primarily of foods that are nutritionally rich. Raw fruits and vegetables are high in fiber and nutrients but relatively low in calories.

Keep it simple! Stressing over counting anything -- carbs, fat or calories -- can be a sure way to grow weary fast. One easy way to assess a food’s nutritional value is to consider how close it is to it’s natural state. Raw foods contain the most nutrients and health benefits, frozen is the next best option, and canned is a last choice because food has been so highly processed that much of the value has been compromised.

Join Us!

Thank you for checking out this blog! It is the mutual encouragement, support and accountability of other people that has been the biggest cause of my success. Be sure to check back regularly or subscribe and post comments on daily messages. Feel free to email me with questions and comments too. All of your contact information will be kept confidential.

Breaking a Habit

When you are in the middle of a challenge, it's hard to imagine coming through the other side. If you are looking at getting healthy this year, you may remember all of the times you've failed. But take a moment and remember other major obstacles that you've encountered and conquered in life. When you are in the midst of the crisis it seems insurmountable. But you lived, the crisis is behind you and you probably learned that you are stronger than you thought you were.

Remembering those triumphant times will help you know that you have the strength to do this too. My downfall has always been at night. I can normally spend all day eating well, including a decent dinner. After dishes, some laundry and household chores, I tend to sit down for television with my family for an hour or so before bed. Sixty minutes can undo 14 hours of hard work.

To substitute this bad habit with a good one, I've come up with some ideas to keep from snacking on junk food at night.

• Skip TV if it's associated with food (plus commercials showing food make you want to eat)
• Pamper yourself and get to sleep earlier than normal for a well-rested night (sleep aids in weight loss plus you won't be around temptations)
• Brew hot decaffeinated tea and read a good book
• Light a candle and listen to favorite music

Why Am I Always Hungry?

The first time I saw this diagram was nearly a year ago and it has never left my memory. Over the past few months I have noticed how refined foods such as white bread and sugar have effected hunger throughout the day. This simple illustration shows how all highly processed foods, fats and oils look in the stomach. I'll be right back, gotta grab an apple.

OK, I'm back, less starving than I was a minute ago. If you look at all of the diets that have been successful and popular, most of them have fruits and veggies in common. Atkins, not so much because it's an all-protein diet. The challenge that I've found is getting veggies to taste good. Fruits are naturally delicious without anything added, but veggies are usually better when you make them bad...like broccoli with cheese sauce, fried green beans with butter, creamed peas, spinach au gratin. At this point, I'm finding it more challenging to make veggies fun. Well, fun is a strong word. I don't know if they've ever been fun. Here are some tricks I've learned:

1. Bake kale with a spritz of olive oil for crispy chips with a touch of sea salt
2. Hide spinach in smoothies, soups, baked eggs
3. Mash sweet potatoes with a touch of cinnamon, almond milk and agave nectar and bake for fake pumpkin pie
4. Use romaine or Boston lettuce leaves to wrap the healthy ingredients you would normally put on bread, like tuna salad, grilled chicken, lean steak
5. Soak dates -- use the water as a healthy natural sweetening liquid and puree the soaked dates with water to make a paste as a solid sweeter for recipes (paste with spaghetti squash and cinnamon is great)

Forks Over Knives

When I started this challenge to get healthier through a better diet and exercise, a friend of mine mentioned a few documentaries that were very powerful in hammering home the grave consequences of the Western Diet -- a diet rich in animal proteins, dairy, refined grains, sugars and processed foods. One of the documentaries, "Forks Over Knives", has some staggering statistics that demonstrate the global impact of nutrition over the centuries. For example, the average American is 23 pounds overweight with forty-percent falling into the obese category. I myself, at 5 ft. 7 in. and 190 pounds am on the overweight/obese borderline. This year, 460,000 women will die of heart disease and stroke and we are seeing dramatic increases in diabetes, hypertension, osteoporosis and prostate cancer. Diabetes and hypertension are becoming diagnosed in children as young as four with one in every four preschoolers reaching obesity. This generation may well be the first generation of children who are outlived by their parents.

The United States spends 2.2 trillion dollars each year in health care, five times the budget for national defense and half of the US population is taking some type of prescription drug. Every minute, a person dies of heart disease....you get the picture. This 90-minute documentary is well-worth your time to watch. It is available on DVD, Netflix online and Hulu Plus.

"Let food by thy medicine." -- Hippocrates

"The doctor of the future will no longer treat the human frame with drugs, but rather will cure and prevent disease with nutrition." -- Thomas Edison

Restaurant Impossible

Identifying what's in your food when it's packaged is sometimes difficult. Identifying what's in your food when it's on a restaurant menu is impossible...almost. Restaurant menus only provide a general food description, rarely portion sizes and never exact ingredients. Still, after you get used to measuring food at home, you'll start to be able to gauge restaurant food fairly accurately. For example, a 3-4 ounce portion of meat is about the size of your palm. If the menu item you order is twice that size, cut it in half and save half to take home with you for another meal. Yesterday I successfully survived not one but two restaurant meals. For lunch, I chose a grilled fish panini on chiabatta. By removing half the bun and eating the fish open-faced along side a mixed green salad with citrus vinaigrette the meal stayed under 350 calories. For dinner, I ordered a flatbread chicken pizza which was really just a whole wheat tortilla with hot sauce, a touch of cheese and grilled chicken. After eating half of it I felt full so the rest got boxed up for a late night snack for my kids. Again, I have to tell you that the longer I go in making these choices, the easier it gets. My normal M.O. is to order whatever is covered in cheese, bacon and sour cream...rolled up and fried. Fried food still sounds kind of good, but not so good that I feel the need to abandon a lot of great effort.

Don't Eat Your Feelings

My food choices for today were healthy for breakfast and lunch. So far, so good. But then I received a phone call from my daughter who was smelling smoke coming from her engine. Stress is starting to set in. The other daughter needed emergency gas money and found out that she submitted all of her work for last semester's history class to an incorrect email address. Pretty stressed by now.

Zipped home to figure out to make for dinner but before I could get to the family I had to get back in the car to run out for cat food since she hadn't eaten all day. Exercise was supposed to be on the agenda after work but by the time I cleared dirty dishes to get to the stove I was in no mood to do any more than I had to. My husband had grilled some chicken, as he often does on his backyard smoker. I ate while cleaning and catching up laundry, simultaneously helping everyone get the WI-fi restarted so homework could print. On the bright side I was burning calories because I ate dinner standing up.

Some days are easier, some harder. But I do know that food for me has always been an emotional thing. I love food. In fact, I'm fairly certain that if I never eat cheese again I'll cease to exist. Be prepared and instead of wondering IF you're going to be surprised by extra stresses in your life, plan on them. Not only will you have pushes and pulls that tell your brain to find the nearest Taco Bell, you will also find the wrong foods everywhere you turn. Know that they will be there, and have a plan for how to react to them. One thing that usually works for me is to tell myself that I can eat it tomorrow if I'm still craving it. I've never found that I have the same craving two days in a row so that does the trick. Cravings are usually for a food that I didn't know I wanted until I saw it.

All About Color

Here are two simple tricks to determining whether or not the foods you are putting in your body are good for you. 1) how close to it's original state is the food? 2) what color is it? In fruits and vegetables, their original state of raw is the state in which you capture all of the nutrients the produce has to offer. Steam it, and you retain a lot of the benefit. If you over-boil it or cook it out of a can...not so much. And pay attention to color. A general rule is that the more colorful the food, the healthier it is (usually). For example, dark lettuce varieties are healthier than light green iceberg. Many eating plans talk about avoiding the white stuff (sugar, white bread, salt, white rice, white pasta). Switching to other alternatives is definitely a plus. We will talk about this later when we discuss food absorption, but here are your better options:  whole grain bread, brown rice, whole grain pasta and as little sugar as possible.

External Forces

I knew when I started my weight loss challenge that I would have to eventually discuss the difficulty of confronting outside forces. I didn't know it would be on Day 10. While walking to microwave my fake lasagna with fat-free ricotta and zucchini instead of noodles, I walked by a table of desserts in our break room. My veggie dish didn't taste nearly as good as the almond danish would have but I ate it anyway. A wonderful co-worker then stopped by with a batch of chocolate-peanut butter cookies. To remove the temptation I quickly re-gifted my cookie to my boss.

Since I started eating better this month, I've had some trouble avoiding some of my favorite foods when they are all around. One bit of encouragement I can give you is that your tastes will change. My favorite not-so-healthy foods are salty/crunchy things. For the first few days of the diet, I would have paid $50 for plate of loaded potato skins with sour cream. But a funny thing happened last weekend as I was loading my van with a huge amount of groceries. I dug through the bags to find the apples, washed one, and ate it on the drive home. I actually craved a piece of fruit. When I looked at the pastries, I could actually imagine how I would feel after I ate one. The first bite or two would have tasted great, but after that the food really doesn't do much for me. So skipping it and moving on to what I needed to eat really wasn't that hard.

Just realize that unhealthy choices are going to be everywhere, always. Expect them, be prepared with a "hurricane preparedness kit." Pack your own snacks to have around, eat something healthy before you go somewhere where you'll be tempted to indulge in junk food. You're in a battle with the food the outside world has conveniently placed in your path -- suit up in your armor every day!

A Journey of a Thousand Miles

Remember having overwhelming school assignments? The insurmountable science fair project or year end book report. There are times when I have much less time than tasks and times when I feel overwhelmed that I'll never accomplish a goal (like losing 50 pounds). One thing that I know to be true is that starting is the hardest part. For some crazy reason, our minds play games with us. We agonize incessantly over the chore, task, assignment, project -- defeating ourselves before we've started. So tonight I managed to get another two miles in. For athletes, walking two miles sounds trivial but to me, it's a great start at a new lifestyle. First half mile I was short of breath. Next mile felt pretty good...not easy but not hard. For the last half mile, I wished my car was closer. During this last part of the walk I decided the topic for this blog. I remembered something that all of my failed diet attempts have had in common -- the beginning of the diet is the hardest part. My mind actually tricks me into thinking that 1) if I don't eat cheese I'll die, 2) hunger pains are so uncomfortable and I don't like discomfort 3) I'll start at the first of the month, or on a Sunday, or on a Wednesday... 4) if I had different workout clothes I could exercise but I don't so I can't. So remember to just do SOMETHING! Anything. Just start. "A journey of a thousand miles, begins with a single step." Lao-tzu, Chinese Philsopher 604 BC-531 BC