Easter, Spring, and Diet Re-tooling

Sandra Ahten talks about a concept that I believe bears repeating, how much energy do you want to spend on dieting? How much time do you want to spend thinking about eating, what you are going to eat, what you aren't going to eat, what is important to you, what isn't.

Of late, I have had gluten, specifically bread, cravings. I had been off of wheat for about two years. I find that with having given in to my desires for sourdough, that now the thoughts seem to consume me, rather than me being the eater, I am the eaten. I do believe that this kind of issue is what boundaries are made for. I'm not wildly out of control, but I'm not as adherent to my diet goals as I had been. My carb intake has crept up. I find myself making justifications for a little bite. Those little bites add up, and one bite might be 5 carb grams, but over a day, that had 3-4 separate little bites, thats another 15 grams of carbohydrate that I didn't burn off.

I know that one of the most effective techniques for losing weight is maintaining a food journal. If you aren't honest, it doesn't work. It helps you to know what you have eaten and if you have fallen short of the mark in some way.

In the interest of honesty, today has been a good day.

Breakfast? It was a beef patty, green salad with mustard dressing and 1/2 a fiber brownie. I also had 2 slices of sprouted cinnamon raisin bread.

Lunch: I had a lot of green beans, a little round of sour dough, and 1/2 a fiber brownie. I also had 1 little Dove dark chocolate heart.

I intend to skip dinner. I don't always eat dinner as a way to cycle my calories.

I've been drinking Spearmint tea all morning. Its a lovely flavor and supposed to help with PCO hirsuitism symptoms.

The truth is, I must watch my carb intake. I'm thinking I should only have wheat once/week. This boundary takes it off mind, puts it back on the back burner. I am enjoying my fruit smoothies with coconut oil. The coconut oil does give me a boost with my thyroid, my body temperature stays up. I do count the calories. Some people don't count them, but I do. Even if you are burning it, that was still energy available to you, so it makes sense to me to count the calories.

The kinds of foods that occupy my mind are always sweets. I know that crazy Matt Stone over at 180degree health, is on a tare about adding carbohydrate, but I don't think that tooth pain and decay are good things. We really need to be reasonable about these things, if eating something is making you sick, maybe you need to lay off it for a while.

The more I live and learn, the more I learn that eating copius quantities of vegetables and good oils (coconut, olive) seems to be the key. The idea of eat less move more is only half right, I think eat more, move more, rest more, relax more and occasionally a skipped dinner might work. Don't eat the same thing every day. Sandra Ahten has mentioned that eating a different breakfast every day can induce weight loss. Nobody really knows why, it just seems to work.

So, my idea is what if you had a different breakfast, snack, lunch and dinner all week? Would that work too? I don't know if that would be too much work, but right now, I do have the time, so I think I'm going to put in the effort.

Do you have any zany weight loss tips? if so feel free to post them or a link to your blog.

The El Dorado Hills Dieter

Giving up on myself

Sandra Ahten's blog post this past week was all about not giving up on yourself. I have been listening to the podcast post (free on iTunes in Reasonable Diet podcast.) over and over again on my hike/walk/jogs. I don't want to give up. I am so ready to be back in the game. I'm doing the AM cardio, I even started weighing in again. For some reason, that particular part of the accountability is critical for me. I'm not ready to give up. I think I might have given up a little bit inside this year. I wasn't seeing the loss I had expected. But you know what? I wasn't doing every little thing I could possibly think of, I was doing my workouts and I was calorie cycling. I wasn't getting 60 min. in my THR 6 days/week. I wasn't weighing/measuring my eats. I was allowing more sweets. Maybe, at my age (a birthday looms large in the coming week.) it takes everything not just most of it. I don't want to give up. I want to make progress or at the very least, point in the right direction.

Release

Sometimes the ticket, the short way, the easy way to weight loss is to release something that has been eating at you for a while. There may be something that bugs you and raises your stress level. Stress is a true cause of weight gain, not the only one, but certainly one of the causes. Cortisol and testosterone and insulin (among others.) are released into the body when you experience stress, either perceived in your current environment or some thing on your mind. I like to use yoga and jogging for my stress relievers. They help me to release whatever might be bugging me, even if only for the time being. Its a good idea to hit that interrupt switch. With a fresh perspective, whatever is eating you might stop being such a big deal after all.

This is the El Dorado Hills Dieter,

Over and out.

AM Exercise

on an empty stomach used to be something I did all the time. I did it because it was convenient and fit easily into my day. I did it because then my exercise, the hardest part about my day was finished before I even began. I got out of this habit last fall when temperatures fell in the AM to below freezing. I wanted to run when it was warmer. My weight at that time plateaued even though I was eating the right amount of calories (my bmr) and getting a deficit through my cardio workouts. My weight didn't budge a pound. I was really frustrated. In January of this year I started cycling my calories again. I saw a small loss in January of 2 pounds. In February, I put that back on and have recently starting losing again. What was I doing differently? I started exercising first thing in the morning and I added back in one of Cathe Friedrich's Stretch Max workouts after my runs.

According to Dr. Jonny Bowden, the AM exercise on an empty stomach might have been the thing that did it. Here is a link to an article that he has written on the subject. I learned about this from Jimmy Moore of the Livin' La Vida Low Carb show. Jimmy is seeing a significant amount of progress from yoga, strength training, low carb intermittent fasting and exercising on an empty stomach. I'm inspired!

Fiber Brownies

I make an easy, gluten free, fiber brownie with ingredients from Trader Joe's. I use their GF brownie mix. I add an additional egg. I use Spectrum brand coconut oil. I add 1/2 c. of Psyllium, 1/2 c. of chocolate chips and a 1/4 c. of additional unsweetened coco. I bake as instructed. I cut them into half portions. Each comes to about 16 carbohydrates. It is an excellent post workout snack and is a great chocolate and fiber delivery system. I do melt the coconut oil before using. It must be cool to the touch because otherwise it will curdle the egg.

Do be aware, the brownie mix has sea salt in it, so if someone is allergic to fish, seafood or shellfish they should probably avoid this mix.

Have a wonderful, GF, fiber-ful day!

The El Dorado Dieter

Don't be Stupid

I love to jog. I love to go outside. I even love the rain. When the forecast is lightening don't go for a run. That would not be smart. Its ok to do some cross training indoors. Really, it is ok. Some times we get so enamored of our training schedule or goals that we lose sight of whats important, living. Its really important because if you aren't alive you won't be able to run a single step so don't be stupid. Run when the lightening is over ok?

Thanks,

The El Dorado Hills Dieter

Soy Free Eggs

Have you heard about these eggs? Apparently they are soy free. I did not know there was soy in eggs! I work really hard to avoid soy because its full of body-plumping estrogens! I read about this on Jimmy Moore's menu blog. I can't afford the specialty eggs and anything that has fish/shell fish is out for this house, we have a family member who is deathly allergic to anything oceanic. According to the cocofeed website, their chickens are feed a oceanic diet and I don't want to run the risk of someone getting ill in my home from fish. We don't even use sea salt here. It can be a problem.

I wonder if I need to go back to a vegetarian/vegan diet? One without soy? I can see doing a high healthy fat diet without meat. I already avoid dairy, it gives me shiners. I like olive oil and coconut oil. I like vegetables and fruits. Getting calories really isn't a problem. Keeping it low carb is not a problem (providing I'm behaving myself!) The only thing is I do have egg, meat and chicken cravings sometimes. There are mornings where I wake up wanting a pork chop. I wonder if they feed pigs soy? Is there a bunch of estrogens in them too?

What would a low carb, vegetarian diet look like? I do allow myself 45-60 g. of carb per day. Somedays I get more carb because I'm not paying attention. Those few moments in the morning when I first wake up are my weak point. I'm most likely to engage in sleepy eating at that time. But, I am getting off topic here, back to what I was exploring.

A low carb, vegetarian diet? My favorite vegetables are: spinach, green beans, broccolini, asian cabbage, bak choi, celery. I love those bags of lettuce mixes you can buy at the grocery store, pre washed. I like to get my carbs from GF steel cut oatmeal (1/2 c. serving cooked.) or fruit. Lately, I've been eating some Coconut bliss, the dark chocolate flavor. I love it and I eat a 1/2 serving 11.5 carbs.

Should I just switch to grass fed beef? I don't know. I hear a lot of good things about it but man its not cheap. I could eat vegetarian throughout the week and then have 1 beef meal per week. I would not be a vegetarian but it would reduce my soy exposure (if what they say is true, that the animals are being fed soy.)