Diet....Not in the sense of Die with a "T"

Wowser, so I had this plan to go vegan. In many ways it was a good thing. I have this incredible blood profile I will post, I have very low cholesterol, however, I just entered some of the foods I've been eating into a tracker and I'm just eating way too many calories in a day. There is a lot of theory that you can't overeat on a vegan diet, and I call hooey on that one. The number of calories we take in still matters, and the scales show it. So, I'm about to reign in my diet yet again.
This time, my very first priority is tracking. I'm finding that vegan is not the right fit for me, although I do like to stick to a primarily vegetarian diet, so I think I'm going to choose to go flexitarian. For those who think I'm making this up, it is a real thing. "Flexitarian is a marriage of two words: flexible and vegetarian...you don't have to eliminate meat completely to reap the health benefits associated with vegetarianism – you can be a vegetarian most of the time, but still chow down on a burger or steak when the urge hits." This approach feels less restrictive to me, and more like the way my natural eating tendencies are.
I'm a week into the big weight loss challenge, and so far I don't think I've lost anything, and after last night's out of control dinner, I doubt I will lose much this week. Reigning it all in is necessity. I want to win this second challenge. I will post the pic for the last two weigh ins of the previous challenge, but I pretty much stayed where I was, and looking at the numbers after I entered my food, I know why. 
Now, to address the title of this blog, the one thing that is tough about working on losing weight is people's perceptions of diets. I know, a million people have said this before, but this isn't about a diet but a lifestyle change, and that is totally true. That being said, rather than feeling restricted I like to feel like I can eat whatever I want, but to do that, I must understand the price. There is a price you know? How much is that cheesecake worth to me? Sure, it may taste great, but if it prevents me from victory in reaching my goal is it worth it? Taking that further, is there a way to indulge the craving without going over the top? I think the easy answer to that one is yes. Find things that will satisfy the craving at a cost you are willing to pay. I have two Trader Joe's faves that fall into this category. The first is their cold brew popsicles, they are only 45 calories each, the second is their soy milk mini ice cream sandwiches that come in at about 90 calories apiece I believe. There are options. What are your go-to small sweet treats? 

Lifestyle Decisions

Lifestyle, it has to support any pursuit of health. Dictionary.com defines lifestyle as "the habits, attitudes, tastes, moral standards, economic level, etc.,that together constitute the mode of living of an individual or group." You must change each of those things if you want to successfully change from a pursuit of dis-ease, to a pursuit of health.

Let me break this down. Habits and attitudes often walk hand in hand. I have a very dear friend who has a habit of dis-ease. He doesn't see it as that, but it is none the less. He likes to go to convenience stores. He has done it for so long that I don't think he can imagine not going to them. My family on the other hand, very rarely goes to one. In this habit, he buys a diet soda. Would he buy that diet soda if he went to a regular grocery? Perhaps, but his trips to the convenience store often cause him to buy 2 for 1, or a bigger size because of the "special". This is not a condemnation of convenience stores, sometimes they are necessary, road trips for example. However this friend doesn't even have a car, so why go there? The decision to walk in the door in the first place comes from a attitude of thinking that convenience stores are, as the name implies, inherently more convenient. When you don't have a car, are they really? If you do have a car, the only time they are really "convenient" is when you have to stop to fuel up. This has become a habit for my friend, and as such it partly defines his lifestyle. Again, this is not a condemnation of convenience stores, but besides a very few items like water, nuts, or fruit, there isn't very much in them that supports a pursuit of health.

For this discussion, I believe I am going to skip over moral standards for today. Morals do play into a pursuit of health, but I do not think they are as key a factor as economic level. I may get some flack for this, because there are many who do not think they can pursue health if they are low income. I myself have at times been a victim of this kind of thinking. Let me tell you though, we are by all standards low income, yet my needs are always met. My family has spent many years on food stamps, and with thoughtful budgeting there is no reason that food stamps are not sufficient to pursue healthy eating goals. There are of course some challenges, but nothing determination and planning cannot overcome. 

Exploring that thought further, for years I told myself I couldn't support going to the gym. It is challenging, even now, but there are many things I can go without so that I can go to the gym. The bottom line is priorities. Are you willing to prioritize your health? Or do you really need the big screen tv? Many times over the years my husband and I have made choices that sacrifice something else so we can pursue our health. When you have your health, you have time to figure out those other things. As for me, I choose to chase after my health with everything I have, while I still have time.

I am blessed. God protected me for so long, until I got the wake up call last year. All these changes I make, they are lifestyle decisions. My husband said that when I joined Orange Theory Fitness he knew that it was just going to become part of our lives. Part of the new norm. What attitudes do you need to rework? What habits need changed? How do you know? Stop, and ask yourself does this support my long term health? If they answer is no, just stop. It is empowering to know that you can stop. If you can't stop, think that through, and decide how you can align it to your long term goals. Now go, run your race!

Accepting My Curves

I'm having a problem with the accepting my curves movement. I think it is fabulous to be good with where your body is at, but I think many are using the "Loving my Curves" movement to embrace unhealthiness. I have been overweight all my life. It has always been a struggle. I am not trying to be a skinny model type, I know I never will be. I am striving to be fit and the best I can be. For many years I was okay with being bigger, and it became a sort of excuse. A reason I couldn't do things, that eventually became an omnipresent reality. I had so many things on hold for when I lost weight, but I honestly wasn't putting any effort in.

The rub for me, and probably others, since I don't think my journey is that unique, was that being okay with where I was meant I didn't have to try to do better. My husband used to work at a place that had a sign that read "Good Enough is the enemy of Excellence." I was living a "good enough" life for years, but God promised excellence. Did that mean he would hand it to me on a silver platter? No, it meant I needed to go out and run the race that was laid before me, and in that race I would discover a deeper, more excellent relationship with Him. That doesn't make it easy.

Everyday I am walking in a new healing. My thought patterns are changing. The excuses are getting eliminated. This week I'm doing something I would have thought I couldn't do in the past. More importantly, because I was living in "good enough" I didn't really want to do it. So, what is it I am doing? Well, a few weeks ago I talked about Orange Theory Fitness, and I have joined them now. Twice a year they do what they call a challenge week, and this is that week. I had originally planned to do only Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this week, but every day is a different challenge, so I am going Monday-Friday.

Does it intimidate me? Heck yeah. Am I wondering how I'm going to do it? Definitely. However, this will give me all sorts of bench marks so I can check my progress in six months. I don't think it is chance that this is basically the first week I'm there. I believe God will give me the strength to see it through. I believe out of it He will create excellence. I'm excited to see how the week ends, and I feel like this is only the beginning of the fitness side of my journey.

Freedom in Movement!

Life is constantly changing. It has been almost a year ago that I went into the hospital with sepsis, and stayed for 9 days. The life changes that have happened since then are amazing. Just after closing the shop, my health was so poor. I don't know how many times I caught colds. I was having a hard time just walking around the store, many times resorting to the wheelchair cart. My knee was in pain pretty much constantly, and it was severely limiting my movement.

This week I'm really feeling changes in that area. It has been happening for about a month, but this week is when I really noticed how limited I had been. Now I'm parking further from the store on purpose, and it is freeing to not have to drive around and around to get a better spot. This is something I didn't really even think of, much less consider a kind of bondage.

I feel better, stronger, and healthier everyday. Just yesterday I tried Orange Theory Fitness, something I'm sure I would have disliked and dreaded in the past, but not yesterday. It is like I'm craving the challenge now. I cannot even fathom the changes that God is working in my spirit and body. Yesterday was exhilarating, and I'm hoping to be able to go again soon.

Finally, I'm going to finish this off by saying, I'm starting to take the stairs. Going down is still challenging to my knee, but I'm confident I will be able to reverse that. This morning I took my fasting blood sugar, and most of the time that is about 135-140, today it was 105, so I'm confident I'm reversing the diabetes. Most importantly, I'm sure that God is transforming me into a more abundant life, and I praise Him for the transformations.

Pursuing Health Continued from Sparkpeople Blog 4/29/17

So, picking up where I left off, my husband and I are eating buddies, as is my best friend, and I passed my unhealthy habits on to my children. More on that later. About eight years ago we discovered a life changing book called "Food Additives A Shoppers Guide to What's Safe and What's Not!" I cleaned out our entire pantry, and we started to eat organic much more often. It is around this time when we discovered, and purchased Saladmaster. It was a missing link for us. 

So, I have been cooking on my Saladmaster for about 7 years. I think I hoped that I would naturally lose weight, and I did lose some using it. However, my old nemesis, self-control, or rather the lack of it, kept rearing it's ugly head. The food cooked on my new Saladmaster pans just tasted sooooooo goodl. It took the simplest of meals and elevated them, but did I mention that I was already a good cook, so the meals I can make on that are phenomenal. 

Here I was, with this incredible cooking system, and all sorts of knowledge about food, but no self control, or plan. I opened a small shop about two years ago, and with being so busy, my food got completely out of control. We were constantly eating out. Something we had phased almost completely out back when we cleaned out our cupboards. We even started going to fast food again, because it was affordable and we were hungry. Of course, we weren't eating for life, we were eating for death, so we had no energy. 

I'm not sure how long we could have continued on that road. I ended up in the hospital last 4th of July, with a case of sepsis that it took me months to completely recover from. My leg is scarred from it, and I came away with a diagnosis of diabetes, and hypertension. You would think this would be enough, and when I first got out of the hospital we did do better for a time. Then slowly, as we were busy, we went right back to our old habits. 

Then, going back to the beginning of this story, I closed my shop at the end of December. I'm a bit of an introvert, so at first I just needed some time of not going out or doing anything. I started cooking at home, but even that was a bit challenging at first, we had become kind of addicted to eating out. Plus, if my kitchen isn't clean, I don't feel like cooking. Then in March I started Take Shape for Life. 

I thought I would love the convenience of pre-packaged foods. Plus, TSL had made a new line of products called Optavia, which had no artificial sweeteners, or artificial flavors. However, somewhere along the line even when we were eating fast food we had checked out of the standard American diet (SAD). We had been cutting the sweetener, for ages. We had always eaten a fair amount of fresh produce. In fact, my favorite part of TSL was the lean and green meal. I love green vegetables. Well, all color vegetables really. 

I was four days into TSL when I realized I hated eating packaged food. We do not microwave, and the foods that needed to be microwaved were difficult to make.any other way The shakes with stevia were too sweet, tasted icky to me, and left a bad stevia after taste in my mouth. I felt like I was eating sweets all day, with one lean and green meal where I always wanted to eat more vegetables. So much of the food was just not to my taste. I decided it was not a good fit for me. 

That being said, TSL taught me some things that I have successfully implemented in my weight loss journey. First, eat smaller amounts more frequently. Six smaller meals a day, 2-3 hours apart. I try to have a protein at each of those meals, veggies, and a couple of meals a day I have a higher carb/fiber option. (Like a sweet potato, or beans.) Second, Dr. A's habits of health is a great book, that addresses all the issues an obese person will face during a weight loss journey. It is invaluable. Third, if I don't have a perfect day eating, I can just pick myself up and do it right the next day. 

This journey is interesting. I believe God has put me on it for a reason. I think at least part of the reason is the story of my journey. We all come from different walks of life, but no matter where we come from the pursuit of health is a something we need to be dedicated to, and it is individual. This is just the start of my story. 

Pursuing Health Part 1 from Sparkpeople Blog 4/28/17

So, I was rather late on starting the New Year's Resolution thing. I closed a shop at the end of December, and to be honest was ready for a bit of break. I took it easy for a few months, but started cooking at home. At the end of February I decided I would try Take Shape for Life (Medifast, Optavia) because I knew some people who had been successful with it, and I personally knew a health coach with TSL. So, I got my first shipment, unpacked it, and set a start date. The start date was March 15th. It only took me four days to decide it was not right for me. Let me explain a bit more about my background to explain why it wasn't right for me. 

I am a whole food person, and have been most of my adult life to varying degrees. When I was 18 I decided, for ethical reasons, to be a vegetarian. I did have neighbors that were vegetarian and they lived a longer and healthier life, so I knew it to be a healthy choice. However, there are things I didn't change about my diet. At 19, and for 4 years I ended up working at McDonald's. My love of fries didn't end there, although I wish it had. I was eating vegetarian, but not really overly concerned with what I ate. 

Then I moved to Colorado. I had started eating small amounts of meat before moving, but moving to Colorado changed everything. The great produce I had grown up with in Northern California became only a memory. Things may have changed, but when I lived in Colorado there were only a couple of really great local produce items because of the short growing season. I started eating meat more regularly, it was just easier, but I ate reverse of most people, I cooked vegetarian food and added meat. (I had learned to cook as a vegetarian.) 

Next, I met my husband. He was an adamant meat eater. The first meal I ever made for him was a vegetarian chili he still fantasizes about, but that at the time he claimed needed meat. It was a constant source of anguish for me. He felt like I was trying to make him a vegetarian, I felt like the food I made never made him happy. We were always eating buddies though. We ended up eating out a lot. We had busy schedules, and when eating out we could get what we wanted. This was not a healthy pursuit. 

I feel as if this blog entry will go too long if I continue this story today. I am going to leave it here for today, and complete the story tomorrow.