We always get the little bananas but this one takes the cake. Wish we could always get them this size.
Just add 10g of peanut butter for an 88 calorie post-run snack.
Jul 142010
Jul 132010
I get frequent emails from RealAge – you know, health news for people with no attention span, which suits me just fine most days. Usually I read and delete but yesterday I got fed up with the words “a new study” or “recent research” that they throw out there all the time.
One of yesterday’s tidbits interested/annoyed me enough to go looking for the original research.
According to the abstract, the researchers’ hypotheses were:
that dieting, or the restriction of caloric intake, is ineffective because it increases chronic psychological stress and cortisol production—two factors that are known to cause weight gain; and to examine the respective roles of the two main behaviors that comprise dieting—monitoring one’s caloric intake and restricting one’s caloric intake—on psychological and biological stress indicators.
Basically they wanted to prove that dieting fails because both reducing calories and tracking calories increase stress levels.
121 women were split into four groups:
- monitoring & restricting – ate 1200 calories/day and tracked their caloric intake
- monitoring only – tracked their calories but ate normally
- restricting only – were given 1200 calories per day in prepared food so not tracking was needed
- control – ate normally and did not track calories
The results?
Restricting calories increased the total output of cortisol, and monitoring calories increased perceived stress.
The RealAge advice based on this one study?
So while it’s good to think about what you’re putting in your mouth, don’t obsess about it. Watch portion sizes, choose healthy foods, be aware of how many times you visit the snack cupboard, but don’t make things too difficult.
I do get the point about stress and obsessing and fully accept that starvation is bad, but I think the overall advice is pretty poor. And I’m especially pissed off that they make it sound like “eating more” and “winging it” are going to help you reduce belly fat! BELLY FAT: every woman’s enemy. I can’t believe that an editor didn’t stand back from both the headline and the advice and think, “Oh no – that could do more harm than good to overweight people who are completely out of touch with how much food they really need. And using the belly fat thing is probably a little too emotive.” You’d think. You really would.
Pamela Peeke has come up with a much more reasoned response. And yes, I think it’s reasoned because I’ve had similar thoughts myself.
I hadn’t realised quite how angry that one little email made me. Maybe we should do some research into the effect of poorly thought out health advice on cortisol levels then we could follow it up with a really helpful headline and a “tip of the week”.
Flatten your belly with this reading habit.
If you want to lose belly fat, don’t read snippets of health advice on the internet.
Jul 122010
Le weekend is over again. How does that happen?
It went well: socially fun, foodly balanced, exercisedly active. And, even though I picked Holland from the beginning, the right team won the World Cup.
The foodly balanced social time was a huge bonus for me. I did that classic WW thing and looked at the menu online before I went, made my choices BEFORE the wine was poured, and stuck to them – alway crucial, that one.
The conversation was great, alcohol was limited in the best way, and there were jugs of water on the table (still not that usual in the UK). It was a truly lovely evening. Must learn to repeat that behaviour……….
Yesterday friends phoned to go for a quick walk. The husband’s spine is in a bad way so it had to be something fairly sedate. Luckily we live in the land of urban seaside walks so a dash (slow dash) around a marine lake did the trick – followed by half pint at the pub. One just about paid for the other but it was worth getting away from the work sitting on my dining room table. (Note – put office back into functional position this week.)
Exercise? I managed to run 2.1 miles without stopping. Well, except for a quick 20ft walk to catch breath at the top of a hill but I’ve decided to ignore that. I didn’t get any faster over the whole 3 miles than when I alternate running and walking, so I guess that jog was pretty slow, but it felt like I was finally getting somewhere with my lungs.
So that’s my question:
What is it that makes you (as in me) stop exercising at a given point? I’ve tried to work it out as I come to the place where I HAVE TO stop running.
- Is it the lungs?
- Is it the heart?
- Is it the legs?
The husband says it’s the brain. I have to say, ever since he said that, I’ve been pushing myself that little bit harder and getting further and further before I stop so maybe he’s right.
I’ve also been making plans for when I’m away for 6 weeks this summer. I can tell you from here that I probably won’t be a dedicated with the running. Is that self-defeating? Probably.
HOLD IT! I was going to excuse myself from running on the grounds that running looks weird in the little rural village where I will spend the summer. Really? And how “weird” will it be to come back to the UK in September and not be able to run a mile? How much do I want what I say I want? Enough to risk looking a little strange to some locals who just happen to think that running when there’s no one chasing is a futile activity?
Sigh. Yes. And, of course, I’ve got the magic hat & sunglass disguise so they’ll never know who it is anyway. Seriously, I run past people I know all the time and they never notice. Walking, they tend to see me – I must be faster than I thought.
Well that little motivational self-talk wasn’t what I was expecting….now on with the week.
Jul 102010
It was my fourth weigh-in this morning and I appear to have lost a grand total of 2 pounds in 4 weeks. For the first time ever I want to call PLATEAU!
I always lose weight when I put my mind to it, so I have to ask myself, have I put my mind to it in a 1.5 pound per week kind of way? Or have I been giving it more like a half pound’s worth of my time and attention?
I think a red herring is that I have been exercising more than ever. Even when I’m not journalling, I’m still going out for a three to five mile run. That’s a lot for this old bod. The other distraction is that I’ve blown a day or two but haven’t gone on to ditch the whole week. I’ve been very quick to get back into a healthy routine. With all this positive stuff going on, even if the eating hasn’t been perfect, it just feels like I should be losing weight.
So the big question is: How many of the past 28 days have I actually worked as hard as I need to work to lose 1.5 pounds in seven days?
- Week 1 – 5/7 The other 2 days were spent working out of town.
- Week 2 – 5/7 The other 2 days were of the “lost weekend” variety.
- Week 3 – 7/7 Impressive. I should to see if I lied anywhere!
- Week 4 – 4/7 – but I blogged about that and actually didn’t get out of control on the non-journal days.
And the exercise?
- Week 1 – 10 miles of running, 1 mile of walking
- Week 2 – 10 miles of running, 3 miles of walking
- Week 3 – 12 miles of running, 7 miles of walking
- Week 4 – 14 miles of running, 4 miles of walking
And the weight loss?
- Week 1 – down 1.8
- Week 2 -0 – an in zero just in case that wasn’t clear
- Week 3 – down .6 for what, by all accounts was a perfect week
- Week 4 – up .4 – ok – well I did say I wasn’t going to lose this week.
So what’s the verdict? Is the plateau real or faux?
Eating: I did well with the eating for 21 out of 28 days, seriously over-ate on three days and ate moderately on the other four days.
Moving: The amount of exercise is amazing for me – but I never actually reached my target of burning an extra 1638 calories per week through exercise. Hmmm I guess as I get smaller and closer to what I want to weigh, I’m just going to have to move that much more.
I’m sorry to say that this is a FAUX PLATEAU and need to work even harder if I want to get this weight off in weeks rather than months.
I’m not discouraged. But I am determined. Let’s see if I can manage 4 pounds in the next 4 weeks.
Week 1 – 5/7 days The other 2 days were spent working out of town.
Week 2 -5/7 The other 2 days were of the “lost weekend” variety.
Week 3 – 7/7 (thank you!)
Week 4 – 4/7 – but I blogged about that and actually didn’t get out of control on the non-journal days
Jul 082010
As I was trotting along today, I had a bit of a wonder about which is the stronger influence in my life.
I am very greatful that I was brought up with the expectation that girls should be sporty. Because of that, I know what it feels like to be fit and I know how good it feels to stress your lungs and heart and legs.
But I was also a fat child. I know what it feels like to eat 3 peanut butter sandwiches watching tv after school out of stress and boredom and then still eat dinner when everyone else gets home.
From about the age of eight there was constant battle in my life between fatness and fitness.
And now I read that, because I’ve always got back to running in some way or another since I was a teenager, my muscles just remember what it’s like to run and keep running. My heart and lungs may be deconditioned and my legs may feel weak but there’s a “just rightness” about putting one foot in front of the other over a distance. So my muscle memory means that I’ll never feel like a complete novice at running even if my times and distances fall into that category.
But I also read that my fat cell population was decided in adolescence and will never change no matter how much weight I lose or how much exercise I do. So, basically, there IS a fat woman inside of me trying to get out. I can shrink my fat cells but I can’t decrease their numbers so the potential for obesity is always with me.
My conclusion? It’s more important to me than ever to get the head and heart part of this battle on the side of the muscle memory. That’s the only way to overcome that propensity for fat established during my daily peanut butter and Bonanza appointments.
I’ll keep talking as long as I need to.
Jul 062010
I think I need to chill out and declare this a maintenance week.
I’m not giving up. I’m not caving in. I’m not bingeing.
I am acknowledging that I’m stressed to the gills and keeping tight reins on the calories is just asking for a volcanic eruption of rebellion and frustration. So, and this is an interesting so for me, I’m going to eat a bit more every day.
That’s more than I need to eat to lose weight – but not more than I need to live.
This is the first time I’ve attempted this as a means of stress management. Usually I just say, “What the hell”, and eat until the week starts again or the stress lets up or until I gain the weight back and have to do it all again.
So I’m eating to manage stress this week which means not letting myself get too hungry and not worrying if I eat an extra piece of bread or 10 extra grams of peanut butter. It doesn’t mean eating a tub of ice-cream.
It also doesn’t mean becoming a slug. I hate to admit that anyone is right (besides me) but I have to acknowledge that I feel so much better when I get out and stress my legs and lungs and heart. I’m up to 11 miles this week and will try to do another 5 before Saturday.
I’ve got 3 deadlines to meet this week as well as a training I haven’t yet planned, a birthday dinner and a hospital appointment and it’s all making me not sleep very well. So I will care for my body, spend time with people I love, work hard and RUN.
I won’t be thinking of 139 this week – but I also won’t weigh more than 148 when it’s all over. And I will get it all done and wake up on Saturday feeling 100 pounds lighter, even if I haven’t actually lost any weight.
Promise. I refuse to go backwards because of stress.
Jul 052010
I have found the “tare button” on my weight loss week and though I know there is a crate-load of calories already in my journal, I have “zeroed” it for my sanity.
Last week I came to the conclusion that the only way to avoid sugar was to avoid sugar. (Deep, I know).
So how did I end up with the leftovers of a baked cheesecake in my fridge for 24 looooooong hours?
I was being nice, and sensible and rational, honest. But while I can be all those things when other people are around, I find it hard to find reason when I just want to cram cheesecake down my gullet. It’s not nice or sensible but it’s reality.
Fact: I love baked cheesecake but I don’t think about it.
Fact: I have not once in the past, oh, twenty years craved cheesecake, made cheesecake or bought cheesecake.
Fact: Proximity makes a mockery of avoidance.
I’m not sure that last sentence makes sense but I like the sound of it. The FACT is that having a cheesecake in my fridge over-rides the fact that I don’t have any particular desire to ever eat cheesecake.
I believe this alone points to a diagnosis of disordered eating. And no matter how “ordered” I have managed to get my eating over the past 2 years, I can fall into a vat of cheesecake with the most disordered of disordered eaters.
Have I said cheesecake enough?
I think it’s out of my system now so I won’t say it anymore.
And I’m going to take a break from weekday wine for a bit too. It’s time to get more nutrition for my calories. But more of that tomorrow.
Jul 052010
I’ve made hundreds of “plans” before to get my eating and my spending under control. Why didn’t they work? Because they were plans, not commitments. A plan isn’t worth much if there’s nothing behind it! So that’s what I need to do–have a plan, and COMMIT to it. Sounds simple, but is it? I think not. It does need to be done though. The plan needs to be more specific than usual, to cover the loopholes I usually find to get out of them. And it needs to have me fully on board. Today seems like a fitting day to begin facing this, so Day 1, here we come.
Jul 032010
Half way through the 42 days of hard work and it looks like I’m going to be settling for around a pound per week. Considering the number of days away and the anniversary celebrations, I’m going to accept that with positive fortitude and look forward to weighing 3 pounds less in 3 week’s time.
But it will still take some hard work to get what I want – which is to weigh under 10 stone (140lbs) even if just for a bit.
I just made myself chuckle reading a bit of an old post:
Now – if my house had had any junk food at all, the outcome would have been different. But I suppose that’s another measure of how far we’ve come in our family eating habits. There was a time when, after dinner, we’d get that wicked co-dependent glint in our eyes and someone would be on a junk food run before you could say “how many points in a giant Cadbury Fruit and Nut bar?” But it didn’t even cross our minds yesterday as we snuggled down on the sofa for the evening.
Oh dear – that’s kind of depressing. It reminds of my first ever Weight Watchers leaders. And I sort of hated them. But that’s another story.
My first ever WW leaders were a couple. She led the meetings and he did all the booking in etc. We met in a tiny room at the local legion and they were two of the least inspiring people I’d ever met in my admittedly short 18 years on earth. I know it must have been hard being a liver pusher but there was just no sympathy whatsoever. “WE” eat liver so you can too. (Well, no, really I can’t – not even an little bit.)
I remember them as very thin and very pale.
To be fair (sorry for that cliché but it’s heart felt). To be fair, they had lost vast amounts of weight between them and kept if off for 20 years.
But the detail that sticks out most in my mind was the fact that every single night for 20 years they had put skimmed milk and raspberries in a blender, whizzed them up and drunk them together in front of the tv. Every night for 20 years!
It made me pity and hate them in equal measures.
It was so regimented and awful and I always came away thinking, “I’ll never be that boring so I might as well quit now.” And I did.
I was thinking about that a little as I wrote yesterday’s post. Whenever I talk about improvements in my diet or changes in taste, it’s never something that has just been a decision and happened over night. It’s all been a gradual shift from one way of eating and to another. That’s the blessing of accidentally falling into Slow Dieting; it gives you time to turn the aircraft carrier that is a lifetime of eating in a way that makes you fat.
Am I frustrated with a pound a week? Yep. I’d love to lose 2 per week and just get this over with.
Do I know that I’m exercising tons and losing inches and that I should shut up about the pounds lost and look at the big picture? Yep – that too.
Am I still heading for 139 as opposed to some fitness goal? Yep – I never said I was sane.
Am I going to eat liver and whizz up skimmed milk in the blender? Not this week but you never know……desperate measures and all that.
Jul 022010
The anniversary dinner was wonderful. I did have the butternut squash and goat cheese lasagne which was served with a perfect salad with a few olives for a little salty in all that creamy. I just shouldn’t have had the dessert – not because I regret the calories, but because anything that rich now makes me feel quite sick. Must remember to SHARE or just have a decaf cappucino and be done with it.
Live and learn – again and again and again.
Yesterday someone asked how I managed to avoid sugar.
My thought was, “I don’t know”. I mean, I still look longingly at giant bars of Green&Black’s butterscotch chocolate and know that I could eat a whole one in the car on my way home from the grocery store. (It’s been done.) I ate a HUGE piece of Billy Miner Pie at my birthday dinner and could probably still eat ice cream for breakfast without too much encouragement. I definitely make and eat “medicine” (our name for chocolate/oat/peanut butter treats) when I’m hormonal.
That said, I guess I don’t really crave sugar very often but it wasn’t a cold turkey type of thing. Instead, I think we’ve made small changes over a long time. Here are all the things that may be making a difference:
- We haven’t eaten dessert for years and don’t miss it at all. It just doesn’t figure in our food planning.
- I talked myself out of all but fairly traded chocolate when the issue of child slaves came to light. That means I have to go and find it in the chocolate aisle so there’s none of that last second picking up chocolate at the till.
- I talked myself out of hydrogenated oils so out went almost any packaged baked goods. That means cookies have to be baked rather than pulled out of the package.
- I figured out I was reacting to artificial sweeteners so stopped all diet drinks. No more rashes and cystic spots on my chin.
- I realised that apparently healthy cereals like Bran Flakes and Special K are sweet enough that I need to treat tham like cookies. In fact, I just avoid them alltogether in favour of porridge in the morning.
- White breads and pastas, though not sweet, are rare things now too – not banned per se but considered treats.
- Finally, I stopped eating almost anything that was low fat.
That makes me wonder about the diet industry in general. I’m more and more convinced that it’s a myth that you can lose weight and keep it off if you eat a lot of low fat products and sugar substitutes. Better to learn to love strong and interesting flavours than to just eat “diet versions” of the same old foods.
I think that to get sugar out of your life, you actually have to lose your taste for it. For me, that means no more junk in the house – even “lite” versions of sugary treats.
It means rooting out hidden sugar and relegating “real” sugar back to treat status where it belongs.
And reclaiming the idea of a “treat” as something that happens only once in a while.
Now- I’m wondering if anyone will ever ask me how I mange to avoid wine. 