Eating Too Many Calories?

CALORIES, CALORIES, CALORIES!

So, this is the next section that I have read of Dr. Weaver’s “Accidentally Overweight”.  Most of us know that we can’t eat tons of calories in a day and stay thin or lose weight.  I love that Dr. Weaver acknowledges that for people like me, “it makes no difference at all and no matter whether they put in maximum effort or zero effort with food or exercise, their bodies remain overweight or in a state of constant expansion.”  She does say that “you cannot eat like a piglet and expect everything to fall into place”.  It gave me so much hope and enabled me to see a light when she writes that she has had numerous clients who have worked their butts off working out and who eat beautifully, but who can’t lose weight.  I am so grateful that she realized in her life’s journey with her clients that there was more to the old adage of weight loss simply being burning more calories in a day than you take in for the day.  Again, I feel like she is talking directly to me, directly about me!  She talks about food being designed to sustain and energize us and be fuel rather than something we do for pleasure.  She talks about overeating and the guilt that comes with overeating and that that guilt itself does more damage on our system than the actual binge we might overeat on!  It is amazing how already in this book it becomes clear how everything is connected!  There is so much to learn that I honestly keep reading it over and over!  I know I keep saying that, but honestly I do!

DID YOU KNOW?

“Only without emotion would our body shape and size be completely reliant on the calorie equation.”

“Guilt you feel and the harsh self-talk are far worse for you than any takeout or bottle of wine will ever be.  It is what you do every day that has an impact on your health, not what you do sometimes.”

MY TAKE-AWAYS!

– Eat my dinner on a smaller plate

– Eat two fist sizes of food (protein and carbs) plus a salad

– Chew each mouthful a minimum of 20 times

– Try to eat more regularly so I don’t get so hungry and binge on everything in the kitchen!

– Try to be okay with my splurging once in a while and no negative self-talk.  Tomorrow is a new day!  It is okay to feed the soul once in a while!

Exercising and Eating Right, But NOT Losing Weight?

WE ARE NOT ALONE!

I must say that I am excited to create this post today.  I made it successfully through Thanksgiving and now prepare for the quick-approaching Christmas.  I can only hope I am as successful this coming holiday, as I will be having family here with me and will be preparing the food.  Lord help me!  Haha.  My journey in the next several weeks will be interesting, and I will be posting as much here as I can so that I can help those of you who are looking for an accountability partner.  Don’t forget you can head over to my Facebook Page where we can hold each other accountable daily!!  www.facebook.com/healthfulchoices

However . . . . . I am here today to talk to you about the question that many of us are asking.  Why the heck am I eating so clean and exercising like a crazy person and STILL NOT losing any weight?  I know I am not alone in this journey to find out why it is so.  I am excited to share what I learn as I do as much research as possible to figure this out.  So many people assume when looking at me that I eat a bunch of crap or never work out.  Chances are that I eat ten times better than they and could give them a run for their money out on the trails.   As stated earlier, I am already trying to maintain a gluten-free, dairy-free way of eating while attempting to embrace the pescetarian guidelines.  I am currently taking some all-natural supplements to speed up my metabolism and to help adjust my sleep patterns to help with my adrenals.  I am also taking a green drink that helps alkalinize my system.   I use a superfood-packed vegan protein shake as a meal replacement more than several times a week.  I am a self-proclaimed juice ninja, haha, and I love blending as well!  I have been doing all this and probably a few other things I have missed for about ten-plus months and have had no change in the scale per se.  That scale loves to tease me by going down a couple pounds, but, about a week later, it is like my body regulates and the weight pops right back up where apparently it is more comfortable.  Grrr.

So, I am just so thrilled to have found the book, “Accidentally Overweight” by Dr. Libby Weaver.  I will be sharing what I learn in each chapter here with you all because I really feel that as society becomes more and more crazy busy, there will be a need for the words of wisdom of Dr. Libby and others like her!  There is hope for people like me who just can’t seem to lose that weight no matter what we do!

I found Dr. Libby after being invited to listen to a webinar where she was discussing how stress affects our hormones and our weight.  She has this awesome accent and is so fabulous to listen to.  Added to that, she has this knack of making complex concepts seem so easy to understand.  It felt like she was talking directly to me as I listened to her speak!  What she had to say was extremely eye-opening and validated what I had already begun to research.  I came away from the webinar heading directly to the computer researching estrogen dominance,  looking for recipes for liver detox juices for my juicer, and heading to YouTube to try to figure out what the heck diaphragmatic breathing is!  I couldn’t wait to dig further into what she had to say and immediately bought her book for my iPad and started reading!

This book couldn’t have come at a better time in my life as I research how I can help my teenager with some awful cluster-type migraine headaches without pumping her full of a drug that will make her hair fall out, lose weight, and make her have a lack of concentration and dizziness – at the age of 14!  Yeah, that will be a last resort choice.  Even after the small amount I have heard from Dr. Libby and what I have read, I have come to realize that stress has so much to do with our physical and mental well-being.  The stress our children are under today is not allowing them to be children in my opinion, and we won’t know what the outcome of what I feel are adult stressors will have on our children for years.  Holy crap, by the time they are 40, our children will be morbidly obese and won’t be able to get it off and will be depressed and miserable AND they won’t understand what they are doing wrong.  It is unbelievable to me, and it makes me truly sad as I realize that my daughter exhibits at age 14 symptoms of hormone imbalance due to stress.  I am going to do whatever I need to do to help my daughter now, not later!  Well, that is a whole other post for the future!

Okay, so Dr. Libby believes there are nine “primary factors essential for your body to be able to access fat to burn it for energy,” and she discusses these in detail in her book, “Accidentally Overweight”.

–  Calories

–  Stress Hormones

–  Sex Hormones

–   The Liver

–  The Thyroid

–  Insulin

–  Gut Bacteria

–  Alkalinity

–  Emotions

LET’S TALK DIGESTION!

I have read chapter one several times, and I must say I couldn’t be happier to have learned so much and come away with some actions to apply to my personal journey right off the bat!  Dr. Libby jumps right in and gets down to the nitty gritty, and I love it!  I find myself wanting to read it again x 3!  Not because I didn’t understand it, but rather because there were so many aha moments that I need to read them over and over!  She jump starts her book by talking about digestion and what a key role it plays in our daily lives.  “Digestion is intricate and complex and yet relatively robust.  And it is intimately connected to how you feel and function every single day, from the energy you feel to the fat you burn, from the texture and appearance of your skin to whether you have a bloated tummy or not, right down to your mood.”  There is so much wonderful information in this chapter about digestion, but what I want to leave with you is what I will be adding to my journey from the first chapter.

My Take-Aways:

– Take longer to chew my food before swallowing.  My grandpa has actually challenged me in the past to try to chew my food 20 times before I swallow.  This sounds easy, but I swear I am ready to swallow by about the ninth time I chomp down!

–  Drink diluted apple cider vinegar between 5 and 20 minutes before my meal.  This will help my stomach acid to have the correct pH balance to digest my food and hopefully aid in getting rid of my indigestion, regurge, and gas/bloated stomach.

–  Drink some Aloe Vera in the morning to help with my gut health.

– Drink water in between meals, not at meals.  Water’s pH does not match your stomach’s pH, and it dilutes the stomach acid.

– Add Chamomile tea during my day to help soften and flush out old waste stuck in my bowel.

Join me as I read and share what I have learned from each chapter of “Accidentally Overweight,” as well as what I will be applying to my own journey as the information applies to me.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

UPDATE 12/06/12

After reading this blog post the morning after I published, I felt that it was lacking more information from the section that read.  So, after wrestling the iPad away from the four-year-old long enough to ask the teenager to teach me how to highlight excerpts on the Kindle App, I have come back here to add a “Did You Know” section to my blog review on the Digestion Section in Dr. Libby Weaver’s “Accidentally Overweight”.  I will make sure to add a section such as this with the review of each upcoming chapter as well, I promise!

DID YOU KNOW?

According to Dr. Weaver:

“80 percent of the body’s total serotonin is in the gut?  And with serotonin being our primary happy, calm, content hormone, gut dysfunction can enormously affect our mood.”

When eating carbs nerves of our stomach are  “fired off when they reach a certain stretching point and send a message to the brain to let you know you have eaten.”  With “fat and protein however, once we have chewed these foods, messages are already being sent from the mouth to the satiety centre of the brain to let us know we are eating.”

“The aroma of food, as well as the chewing action itself, stimulates stomach acid production.”

“The optimal pH stomach acid is 1.9.”

“Adults with reflux or indigestion tend to assume that the burning sensation they experience with heartburn means they are producing too much acid when the reality is usually the opposite.  They are usually not making enough stomach acid and/or the pH of it is too high.”

“When the pH is higher than ideal, digestion problems are likely further along the tract.  These may be symptoms of the small or large intestine, such as bloating, pain, or excessive wind.”

“Poor digestion can also be due to stress or, more precisely, adrenaline.  Adrenaline diverts the blood supply away from your digestive processes and concentrates the blood in your periphery, your arms and legs.  . . it keeps you focused on escaping the danger.”

“Some of the fragments of food that can escape out of a leaky gut into the bloodstream can also have an opioid structure. . . it is possible that the opioid effect some foods have the potential to create when a leaky gut is occurring, is one of the factors behind food addictions and, hence, for some, overeating or eating and not feeling like you can stop.”

My favorite Dr. Weaver quote of this section is a concept that is new to me and one that I am really trying to implement.  She says that “all you do when you weigh yourself is weigh your self-esteem.”  Amen to that!!

There is so much information about the gut in these first pages that I honestly keep reading it just to remind myself of what I just read.  It is amazing how much digestion plays such a key role in how we feel and function.  Since I last wrote the first portion of this post, I have been diligent in taking diluted ACV and am up to 4tsp before each meal.  I have noticed a difference in the bloating in my stomach.  I have been very careful to chew my food more than four times each time I take a bite.  It took me longer to finish my salad the other night than it took my hubby to get four plates of all-you-can-eat pizza, and he was actually done and waiting for me to finish so we could leave.  I have also made sure I do NOT drink water with my meals, but rather between meals.  And I have also tried to be more mindful of adding in protein with each meal, whether it is peanut butter or beans or fish, etc.   I have been trying chamomile tea, and I have added Aloe Vera to my shopping list for my next health food store run.

It is all so interesting to me how all these steps can help with digestion.  I look forward to implementing more changes in the upcoming chapters!

Paleo, Vegan, Gluten-Free, Dukan or Pescetarian?

CHOICES, CHOICES, CHOICES!

Did I miss any?  Wow, so we have so many choices when it comes to a way of eating.  Now, I know that I am probably jumping into a proverbial boxing ring here, but I really just want to talk about the different choices out there for us all to choose from.  I saw a post the other day of a person asking such a very simple question.  And it was this.  “How do I start eating healthy?”  The answer just isn’t so simple.  There are so many ways to go about it.  So, while I posted a couple healthful options for the meals throughout the day in my last blog, I got to thinking that I really only represented the pescetarian way of eating.  Truth be told, I can honestly say I have tried and followed all the above plus a few not listed, to include but not limited to Sommersizing, Jenny Craig, Atkins, and Weight Watchers.  I feel like I have tried it all.

Ya know, I don’t think there is any one answer!  Surprise.  Did ya think I would say that?  This is what I think.  I think that every person is different.  What works for one person won’t necessarily work for the next person.  What works one time in a person’s life might not even work later in the same person’s life.  You hear people who are devout in how they believe everybody should eat, but in the same token you hear of raw vegans who are no longer so because it just doesn’t work any longer at that point in their lives.  Right now, the pescetarian way of eating may make me feel the best now, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t do well on Jenny Craig, Dukan, Weight Watchers, Raw Vegan, or Sommersizing.  I don’t even know that Pescetarian is where I will stay.  One might even call me out right here and say that in their definition of what “working” is that Pescetarian isn’t working for me.  One might argue that not losing weight in 10 months isn’t “working”.  LOL.  However, I judge what is working by how I feel, and right now I feel fabulous.  I know that I haven’t lost any weight on that square thing that I really believe we should all throw away, but I know I am on the right track, and I know I am closing in on the answer with hormones and adrenal fatigue and sleep patterns and metabolism.  It is all connected, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to finally be finding some answers.

That all aside, this is what I want to say.  This was my thought that led me to post here tonight.   . . . If we were to fill a picnic table with food from each type of program or way of eating, I think we would all be pleasantly surprised how much of each food that all the different programs would actually enjoy of each.  So, while everybody is arguing for one way or another, in all actuality they could get along quite well and actually share quite a few recipes if they would just give each other a chance.  Case in point, fish prepared paleo would be enjoyed by a person Sommersizing, on Weight Watchers, on Jenny Craig, or by a pescetarian.  A side dish prepared by someone vegan full of veggies would be enjoyed by everybody else.  A dessert prepared by somebody Paleo would more than likely be allowed by all as well.  I have found so many recipes from a Paleo site that work for Vegan or Pescetarian and visa versa.  What a fun challenge it would be to prepare such said picnic!

WOULD YOU JOIN ME AT MY PICNIC TABLE??

Menu: Baked salmon with asparagus, salad, fruit, paleo banana bread, raw vegan dessert, vegan mexican pumpkin soup, organic chicken breasts sliced for either salad or the soup, curry soup, vegan stuffed Portobello mushrooms, Southwestern quinoa, juiced pink lemonade, avocado sandwich on gluten-free bread.  Do you think you could fill your plate?

BOTTOM LINE

So, running through all of these programs are fruits and veggies!  So, in answer to that question to the one person who asked the question of “How do I start to eat healthy?”, I go back to my philosophy of the previous blog post by suggesting to them to crowd in the fruits and veggies!  Whether it is fresh fruit in a bowl or a blended green smoothie, add that fruit.  And, hit the web and take your pick of all the wonderful recipes that include veggies.  You can snack on raw veggies, you can steam your veggies, you can blend your veggies, or you can bake your veggies.  Crowd them both in and you will have less room for the things that are less healthful, like say . . . umm anything out of a box.  I guess my answer is that it doesn’t matter whether you decide to eat a whole chicken with your veggies or your veggies alone or if you decide to make your veggies with olive oil or with veggie stock.  Just get them in and then you can work on what comes next.  Because here comes something I heard from Dr. Libby on an awesome call (which I will discuss at another post).  She said that most people have a real problem with accepting that they need to eat less of something or give up something, but they have no problem eating MORE of something!  So, eat more fruits and veggies.  :o)

I realize that this post sounded a lot like the one before.  I am so new to this, so hope you can walk this road with me.  Thanks so much for being here with me!

Crowd in the Healthful Choices!

WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT THE HECK HAVE YOU DONE WITH ME?

So this is the question I ask myself as I travel down this highway to healthy or this highway to finding me, if you will.  I need to find ME again.  What am I going to keep doing so that I don’t give up?  How am I going to start to share that here with you?  I couldn’t decide where to start, so this is where I will.

Crowding!  This is my philosophy.  I try to crowd in the healthful choices throughout my day.  I am not suggesting you take anything out or stop eating something or drinking something.  What I am sharing is that crowding is a beautiful thing.  I have found that if I am adding in a bunch of healthful choices in my day, I slowly but surely start to realize that the bad choices I make in a day become less and less.

Let’s talk “healthful choices” then.  Let’s talk about the kind of choices I make in a day that help me down that highway to healthy? Let’s talk Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and Snacks.

My Healthful Breakfast Choices:

My healthful choices for breakfast may include on any given day a protein shake with almond milk, banana, cinnamon, and some ice; or a strawberry bowl with berries and banana with a whipped coconut cream; or my favorite juice of cucumber, celery, romaine lettuce, and pears; or a plate of fruit; or a bowl of black beans with salsa topped by some organic hash browns; or a blended green smoothie.  I truly need my breakfasts to be pretty quick and easy and enough to fill me up for about three hours without crashing down with the shakes.   These are just a few of my ideas that you can choose from, and I hope that you find them helpful.  I am always looking for new ideas, but ultimately, I go for the quick and simple for my mornings.  Truth be told, I hate dishes and the bigger the breakfast, the bigger the mess.  Haha!

My Healthful Lunch Choices:

So, I have to admit that I loooove lunch.  I also have to admit that I seemingly always end up eating lunch much later than I probably should.  It also tends to be one of most nutritious meals of the day.  On any given day, my lunch might include a huge salad with romaine, tomatoes, green onions, cilantro, beans, nuts and either a homemade dressing like a date and Dijon dressing or a miso dressing; or a quick saute of veggies with some chickpeas and curry; or an avocado sandwich with sprouts on gluten-free bread; or maybe even one of my favorites – Southwestern quinoa; or my personal ultimate quick and filling – leftovers from dinner the night before!

My Healthful Dinner Choices:

Who doesn’t love dinner?  I guess I should just keep it real right here and say that dinner is my red zone meal.  I always seem to overindulge.  I keep reminding myself that too much of a good thing is still too much.  This is something I am still working on.  However, in the very least, I am making sure that I am putting forth the effort to make a dinner that falls into my clean way of eating.  Dinner is where I try out those fun recipes that I find online that look so beautiful in the pictures.  For example, I might make a Mexican pumpkin soup with potatoes and cilantro (developes a bit more of a kick the second day;) or maybe some sweet potato/black bean tacos; or some curry soup (I must shout out here that I am smitten with curry); or some lentil pasta shells; or some broccoli with cashew cheese over the top; or some salmon with sautéed veggies and brown rice; or my husband’s favorite – my one-pot wonders as I call them, which include anything and everything I can find in the fridge that is a veggie and saute it together with some beans and seasonings!  The sky is the limit for us here in the house for dinner.  I don’t cook much in the way of meat during a week, and there has definitely been some grumbling since that change.  So, I really try to make what I do cook for dinner as exciting as possible by searching out recipes online.  I will, of course, start sharing those here as we go along!

Healthful Snacking:

So snacking is sometimes a person’s downfall.  I have to keep reminding myself no BLT’s all day.  I have a four-year-old and in all honesty, it is really difficult to reign in my bites, licks, and tastes in a day.  I swear these can add an extra 500 calories in a day if I am not careful.  This is why I don’t bake much anymore either.  Snacking on cookies defeats the purpose of eating clean the rest of the day.  Haha.  Some of my snacks between breakfast and lunch or between lunch and dinner might include an apple quartered with some almond butter or peanut butter; or maybe even a juice of fresh veggies; or my mainstay of humus and carrots or celery; or a gluten-free tortilla with some almond butter and then some strawberries and banana cut up with a dash of raw honey; or some paleo bread and an apple.

I truly hope that all of these ideas for healthful choices in your day might work for you.  Whether it is blended smoothie for breakfast, or a salad galore for lunch, or black bean tacos for dinner, you are making progress.  Just start adding a couple healthful options and before you know it your day is filled with them and you are on your way to healthy!  That is the ideal end result, is it not?  To be healthy?  Healthy comes in all shapes and sizes, but one thing is for sure.  Healthy feels fantastic and once you get there, you won’t want to go back.  Which healthful idea are you going to add to your day?

Don’t forget to join my fan page at www.facebook.com/healthfulchoices to follow me as I share my daily choices on a regular basis!