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.

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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!

LET’S TALK TURKEY!

Okay, so with Thanksgiving coming up here on Thursday, let’s talk TURKEY!  Heck, let’s talk turkey dinner for that matter!  This is the first Thanksgiving since beginning my journey to getting healthy.  I have been watching all the blogs that I follow and drooling over the healthful gluten-free, vegan menus and have started thinking about a menu of my own.  What? (Can ya hear Taylor Swift say it – haha)   Who the heck am I kidding??  With all good intentions, I am keepin’ it real right here!  There is no way, no how that I am going to be able to find the time to cook up a menu that is as beautiful and as perfect as the ones I have seen online.  I know that these blogs do such a great job, triggering drooling like a bulldog begging for a cookie and making us all wish that we had smell-a-vision, but I sometimes wonder how these supermoms do it?  How do they maintain a beautiful blog, get their kids to eat an all organic, gluten-free diet, and manage to shop, prepare, and cook such a perfect and healthful menu for their family – is their kitchen clean at the end of the day?  I just always wonder.  They are amazing!  I know it has to do with that thing they call “time management,” but I will openly admit that I utterly suck at that.  My hat goes off to those mommies because they are much better than I in that department.   I go absolutely gaga for the beautiful decor they have on their tables and the center pieces and tableware, but in all honesty, I am the mom who ultimately buys the holiday-themed square paper plates with possibly some matching napkins and feels like I have done a pretty darn good job.  LOL.

That aside, I still have to answer the question of how I am going to survive Thanksgiving!  I did run into Trader Joe’s yesterday and pick up their Turkey-less stuffed roast with gravy just as a trial run last night, and it actually received two thumbs up from both the teenager (self-proclaimed turkey hater) and the hubby (both avid carnivores).  You should have seen the evil eye I was getting while putting the box in the cart.  Haha.  Okay, you and I both know that there is no way they will forgive me if I try putting that in front of them on Thanksgiving Day!  In fact, I am pretty sure I would have a revolt on my hands!  Not to mention, when ya start consuming these processed foods, ya end up waking up in a lake of water retention the morning after!

Now, I have talked about baby steps in my previous post and not wanting to feel like I am imprisoned by my choices, so where does the balance come in?  How do I get through the day at the in-laws without totally and completely losing control?  I actually just read recently that the average American consumes 4500 calories on Thanksgiving Day!  Yep, that was NOT a typo, my friends!  Did ya sit up and say, “Wait, what?”  Holy crud, that is a lot of calories.  And does that include the mommies who are preparing such said dinner?  I know when I am the one preparing these holiday meals, I am not even hungry for the actual dinner from all the snacking, but I eat again anyway.  Lord help me. How many extra calories is that good for???? I have to say that after hearing this I was thankful that this first Thanksgiving I am actually spending with the in-laws and will not be in the kitchen where the temptation starts at 0500 in the morning!!

So, here is the plan . . .

– Upon waking in the a.m., drink at least 16-20 oz of water, followed by a protein shake with almond milk, banana, and some cinnamon and take an all-natural thermogenic.

– Since I don’t have to be at the in-laws’ until noon, try to squeeze in either a quick hike or, in the very least, a 30-minute torture session with Jillian Michaels via YouTube.

– Eat a small snack before leaving, to include some kind of protein like almond butter.

Paleo Cinnamon Bread by Elena’s Pantry! No flour, made with Almond butter. Yummy!

– Upon arriving, focus more on conversation with the family and NOT conversation around or with the chip and dip bowl!  My mother-in-law makes the best dang dip.  This will be a difficult one for me.

– Make sure I am drinking water during the whole stay.

– Reach for the veggies and not the chips.

– Allow myself to have the sides I want, making sure that most of my plate contains a fresh green salad (if it isn’t on the menu, bring one to share – surely you are expected to bring something anyway).

– Pass on the Turkey and ham. (I am still new to trying to stay plant strong, so meat still calls my name!)

– Allow myself to have one small dessert, NOT one slice of EACH dessert.

– Take an all-natural fat fighter that uses prickly pear fiber to soak up some of the fat and carbs I will be consuming.

This is my plan, and I hope you can take away some aha ideas here.  I know that not everybody reading this will be plant strong, so I would suggest all the above, but if I were eating meat right now, I would allow myself the meat and the salad and take it easy on the side dishes actually and only pick one that really screams Thanksgiving!  My sister-in-law says that the green bean casserole with the crunchy onions epitomizes Thanksgiving for her, so maybe something like that on the plate.

BEST LAID PLANS; RIGHT?

So, here is what will really happen . . . ya know, just so I am keepin’ it real and everything.  Haha

– I will wake up late and probably take a bite or two of the four-year-old’s waffles.

– I will not wake up in time to exercise and will be running around finding matching socks for the four-year-old whom I just had to redress three times because he prefers his boxers to clothing.

– I will forget to eat a snack before leaving and I will be starving when I arrive.

– I will head straight for the chip bowl because I am starving and I will eat way too many Ruffles and that dip that my mother-in-law seems to make so much better than I!

– I will totally and completely go off and leave the salad mix I buy on the kitchen counter at home!

– I will give in to my Diet Coke weakness and drink far too little water.

– I will eat way too much macaroni salad (again a mother-in-law secret).

– I will have a bite of ham that will make me sick to my stomach (pork just doesn’t agree with me), but I will rationalize some reason to take those bites.

– I will be so stuffed that I WILL only have one dessert, but by then that seems hardly an issue since I will have just fallen into the category of the typical American who consumes 4500 calories on Thanksgiving!!!

Ya know, the above might just happen or maybe a combination of my plan and projected reality, but I feel like it is really healthy for me to realize and accept the fact that I just might fall of the bandwagon and have the horse drag me around the kitchen the whole day!  You see, this is what I have come to realize in the past ten months.  The moment, the second, I beat myself up for having one day like the above, I fail and it takes me way too long to climb back on the wagon!  This is what is different this time.  Rather than feeling like I have failed and made all the wrong choices, I simply accept I have taken a detour off the highway to healthy and will simply merge right back on the next day and not ruminate over the fact that I made a few questionable choices during that time.  That is the only way I can explain it.  In my mind, I have switched that mindset to just believing that even though I have a few missteps, I am still on task and that I am just going to keep moving forward.  There is no looking back here.  I just keep taking this one day at a time, one step at a time.  That doesn’t mean I go hog-wild for two months and go back to bad habits though.

Maybe I won’t fall so far off the wagon this Thursday and then by Christmas I will be even more comfortable when faced with the challenges all over again (except we will talk Tamales and Enchiladas in that post – haha).  I have realized that I can’t make drastic changes all at once.  I didn’t go through the cupboards and throw out the goldfish and Ritz crackers or the graham crackers.  I mean, my husband just brought home four boxes of stuffing because they were “on sale”!  I just looked at him and shook my head and then put them on the highest shelf that I might not even look at for another year.  By then they will all be out of code and I can throw them out. Might just take them all down to the food drive.  I honestly don’t know. Old habits die hard for everybody in the house, and you don’t change over night.  Life in this house keeps going on and eventually we will get there.  For now, we/I am taking the steps I feel are acceptable and will get us there!  So, trudge on, my friends!  Have a happy Thanksgiving, and ya know maybe we will even make a few great choices this Thanksgiving, and that will be something we can be thankful for!

Food-A-Holic!

Hello.  My name is Gina, and I am a Food-A-Holic!  I am entering the world of blogging to share my highway to health as I navigate through a busy life trying to make as many healthful choices as I can  from day to day.  I am here to help you squeeze in as many healthful choices in your day as well!  I am here because, well, I have pity on my Facebook friends and family.  Haha.  In the past ten months, I have been on a journey to get healthy!  I started by going gluten-free and dairy-free, and at the time I started using Facebook as my accountability partner by posting and posting and posting . . . and well, you get the point.

I started this journey really for my daughter who had the “snarffles” from bad allergies.  I had read that by being gluten-free and dairy-free, allergies could be lessened.  Yeah, not so much in her case.  Apparently, she is allergic to the mold that runs rampant here.  So, we do the best we can with that.  However, I realized that gluten-free and dairy-free were not bad steps for me to take.  You see, I had woken up nearly 40 and was in shock when I took the time to really look at myself in the mirror, or in my case in the iPhone Pic Collage app.  Holy crap, when the heck did this happen?  I mean, really . . .

No, REALLY?  WHEN THE HECK DID THIS HAPPEN?

Time to get serious, folks!  Time to get off my arse and get moving!  I continued with the gluten-free and dairy-free way of life and added in a protein shake to replace a meal, as well as P90X and Zumba.  I had given up gluten and dairy, so I figured at this point I might as well take it even further and join in with my Paleo pals.  I was on FIRE!  Yahoo!  I was going on hikes with the family, heading down to the beach with the family for our own true Beach Body workouts.  It was awesome!  I figured if I just became as active as I could with the family, the melt would begin!

So, have you read on AOL news those inspiring stories of people who give up soda and processed crap and TADA they are 50, 100 pounds lighter?  Yeah, that wouldn’t be me.  I started at 186 and after about three-plus months . . . you guessed it, I was STILL 186.  I was a brick house with a little less jiggle, but still a damn brick house!  Come on!  I suppose I shouldn’t have thought it would be any other way really.  I have always had a tough time losing weight.  In college, I was on the swimming team and still had to search out Jenny Craig to get my rotund self down to 140.  Pulease!  After three kids, a busy lifestyle, and the big 40 several months out, did I really think that I would miraculously become a size 5 or something?  Well, yeah!!!  No, really, I thought for sure this time it would be different. “Frustrating much?” as my teenage daughter would say!

Ok, so time to take a step back and listen to friends telling me, “You’re getting healthy.  Don’t worry so much about the scale!”  Alrighty then, I will do that.  Hmmmm, so raise your hand and give me a shout out if you know what that scale sounds like as it calls your name.  You just HAVE to go stand on it and see if you have gone done even a smidge.  Am I right?  Then, of course, you want to chuck it across the room when the dang thing puts out a number that surely was in the memory bank and was accidentally thrown back out on the display screen!  I know you are laughing.  Am I right though? I know there are a few of you who have probably been there.

So, this is about the time that I would have given up in the past.  Sad to say, but true.  Something, I am not sure what, was different this time though.  Maybe it was all the fantastic support I had from my friends.  They were inspiring me to continue by working out with me, talking to me about my diet, encouraging me every step of the way!

I had several friends who were utilizing the Dr. Fuhrman’s Eat to Live Program, and I couldn’t believe how amazing their results were.  Again, I figured I didn’t have anything to lose except a few pounds (a few or fifty – same thing) and why not?  So, I said goodbye to Paleo and hello to the fat-free vegan lifestyle.  I was blending these awesome Glowing Green Goddess smoothies that I had heard about from one friend and following the Eat to Live program along with the other friends.  I had been bitten by the hiking bug, and I was hiking like somebody obsessed.  I was up to about 30-40 miles a week of hiking/trail running/beach power walking.  Do you know how good that feels?  It feels FABULOUS!  My friends were concerned that I still wasn’t dropping weight.  I was still – you guessed it – 186!  Really?  Yeah, really!  One of my good friends suggested I get my thyroid checked, and that got me thinking.  I had actually gotten my levels checked about a year previous and they were “fine”.  I am sure you have read about the doctors who only test the basic three tests and God forbid they test any further.  I knew that’s what was waiting for me at the doctor’s office, so I didn’t even bother.  But, I was still thinking about it.  A lot!

So, then came the end of summer and the built-in babysitters (teenagers in the house) had to go back to school.  What a bummer.  No more racking up the mileage on the trails for me.  So back I went to video workouts like Jillian Michaels.  She rocks!  How she manages to get that much sweat dripping from a person in 20 minutes is beyond me.  So, in the back of my mind, I am still thinking about this issue of the thyroid.  So, I sat in front of Google and went to town researching.  I read a bunch of Suzanne Sommers and realized that my adrenals were more than likely shot to hell.  What woman’s adrenal isn’t for that matter?  I am pretty sure we all live in constant fight or flight response, which just sucks the life right out of our adrenals!  I started reading about toxins and the toxic burden we are all living with from the processed foods, the pesticides on our fruits and veggies, as well as the environmental toxins!  Are we swimming in toxins or what!?  Jeesh!

Okay, so the next step was a no-brainer for me . . . DETOX!!!  So, now I am juicing veggies, staying as plant strong as I can, and taking a detoxing green powder that is working on that pH balance while detoxing.  In my reading, I realized how important our sleep patterns are, so I just recently started taking an all natural adaptogen to help with my sleep patterns and adrenal function.  My God, it is all connected!  Little by little I am making all these changes.  So now, I am detoxing, working on the sleep patterns, exercising when I can either at home or in the canyon, taking an all-natural thermogenic for my metabolism and taking an all-natural fat fighter for the days that I am less than perfect.  AND GUESS WHAT . . . I am finally feeling a melt.  I have seen a difference in the scale by about four pounds, seen a difference in my clothes, and my wedding ring keeps falling off.  I think I am finally headed in the right direction!

Am I perfect?  Hell, no.  My day is about healthful choices, not about perfection.  Perfection would be like living in prison and would set me up for failure in like 2.5 seconds.  I have found that by making little changes as I go and as I learn that I can stay on track 85% of the time.  Am I one of those parents who has her kids eating all organic and gluten-free?  Again, nope!  I have those options available to them and, again, small changes are made in hopes that we will eventually get to where we need to be.  Slow and steady wins the race around here!!

This is where I am now, and I am hopeful that you will enjoy my findings, my recipes, my workouts, and the products I have found that have worked for me.  Hopefully, you will come along for the ride and start feeling like you want to hop on this highway to healthy with me!  We can get there together, and I will be there cheering you on as you go and learning right along side of ya!

Are YOU ready to start making some healthful choices one day at a time?

Don’t miss my video recap at the YouTube link below.   Plus, you can see how different a healthy 182 looks instead of an unhealthy 186!  Haha.  Come back soon!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr4RwfK6UdI&feature=youtu.be