sugar sugar

As I've been tracking my food intake on myfitnesspal.com, I've noticed something.  Sugar is hidden in things you think are healthy...yes, I know this has been common knowledge for a long time and the evils of sugar have been rampant in the news lately but I didn't really get it until I saw it with my own eyes.  This is a major reason why I like myfitnesspal better than weight watchers online point tracking system.  Weight Watchers points system only figures in calories, fat and fiber when determining how many points various foods are.  It does not consider protein, sugars or other nutrients, which, in my opinion is a dangerous game to play.  Sugar, if not used in the body, turns into fat and can have other negative effects.  With weight watchers, Yoplait Fat Free yogurt is just one or maybe two points which leads one to believe that it is a good food choice.  But, while one serving of Yoplait light only has one hundred calories and no fat, it has fourteen grams of sugar!  "So what?" you might ask, "there's no fat and low calories so its all good!"  Ahhh but its NOT!  Based on my current weight and my weight loss goals, myfitnesspal calculated how many calories I should have in a day to reach my goal.  They also calculate the amount of protein, saturated fat, sugar, fiber, and poly fat.  (FYI you can also choose to have them calculate and track cholesterol, sodium, carbs, vitamin a, vitamin c, iron, potassium, and/or calcium...which is HUGELY useful to ensure you are getting what you need and really fueling your body.)  So, my daily goal of calories is 1950 and my sugar goal is 60 grams.  100 calories is only about 1/20th of my calories so no biggie, right?  Wrong!  It is 14 grams of sugar which is nearly 1/4 of my sugar intake for the day.  Chobani Greek is just as high, if not higher.  I don't know why yogurt is so high in sugar, but it is.  You are much better off just eating fruit directly or even eating meat or cheese.  Another big culprit of sugar is cereal!  I had some Kashi Go Lean Cinnamon cereal today thinking "its Kashi, its gotta be good for me!"  But again, ten grams of sugar per serving and we all know no one really sticks to just one serving of cereal!  I had two servings with soy milk (5grams of sugar) which means after breakfast, I have just 14 grams of sugar left for the day!  Grrrrrrrrr......

To put it into perspective, Bisquick pancakes prepared have NO sugar!  Yesterday I made some and tossed in a banana and blueberries for flavor.  One pancake (with the fruit figured in) has about 115 calories and 5 or so grams of sugar with 3 grams of protein!  Of course, pancakes become instruments of the devil in terms of sugar when you douse them in syrup.  By adding fruit to the batter, there is no need for syrup!  They are yummy just as they are!  You can also just mash up some fruit and use it as a topping instead of putting it into the pancake.  And when it all comes down to it, which is more filling a pancake or yogurt?  Pancakes always win!

What's my point?  You gotta look at more than just carbs, calories and fat to see how what you eat is affecting your weight and health.  By paying attention to what is in the food you eat and how those nutrients affect your body you can truly take control of your eating, health and weight.

Filler

In all the weight loss books I've read they always talk about examining why you overeat. What void are you trying to fill? Is a question often asked. It came up on the Oprah show will all the amazing weight loss stories and it makes sense. Any addiction or habit forms as some way to feel full or fulfilled or to escape reality of some sort. So the question I am pondering is...what is my void? Its a complex question that requires a great deal of introspection. What am I missing in my life? What do I long for? The first thing that pops into my head is a sense of community and a feeling of belonging. Years ago-eleven years ago to be exact-I embarked on an adventure known as Mission Year where I experienced for the first time in my life a true sense of community that filled that place of longing. I lived with five amazing, unique, hysterical, intelligent young adults who surprised me every day with experiences of deep unity and compassion. It was the most challenging year of my life and experiences I had forced me to face some of my deepest issues, among them a deep fear of being unworthy of love and of being alone which led me to spend the first 22 years of my life building up thick walls to protect myself and distance myself from people. Some of these walls were anger, sarcasm, wit, and some were fat. Its easy to hide from the world and hide from intimacy when you are hiding behind extra pounds. I used the rolls of fat to explain my loneliness...if I were just skinny or thin...then people would like me. The eating and lack of exercise formed a barrier that kept me safe from being hurt but also kept me from experience love and friendship. During mission year, I was able to break through those walls and fall in love with my teammates and the neighborhood we lived in, the church, the people I worked with, the kids we developed relationships with...everyone. I felt safe. I felt complete. I felt connected. During that time, I would get up at 6am and walk to the neighborhood park and go walking around the track with my mission year teammates supporting me....encouraging me. I also became a vegetarian and did not look to food for any level of fulfillment. I didn't think about food. I didn't crave food. I cooked meals for my team-I did the grocery shopping for our little household and I felt needed. I was a part of an unique, crazy, interesting, family that honestly was intensely mutually supportive so the void I felt, that longing for a place of intimacy and belonging, was filled. Since that time, I haven't found a place like that...a place of spiritual, emotional, psychological, and familial intimacy where those needs, those longings are met. So the question now becomes, how do I find that place again? How do I fill those needs? Getting involved in a church again seems the obvious answer...but...to be frank...i gots issues with church...meaning established church. They lack authenticity and community and I just don't seem to fit. I have tried a few over the years but none seem to be right. I know that I will not find the community that I had during mission year in a church or neighborhood or any where else. Mission year provided the opportunity, guidance, and God put Team Voltron together in an amazingly perfect way that can not be repeated...

I have people in my life who accept me and love me and support me but they are scattered all over the country which make the day to day intimacy I crave impossible to maintain...or does it? Community has many facets and definitions. It looks differently for different people and different situations. If the void I use food to fill is a sense of community and belonging, I need to explore ways to fill that need. One major way would be to get the heck out of the house. I have become a hermit of sorts as of late. I also do need to explore spiritual community, to figure out what that needs to look like in my life and how to create it. As I add exercise into my daily life, I am also seeking to fill those needs-community and belonging.

Getting in Shape...again

I have a love hate relationship with Oprah and rarely watch her show. Today was one of those rare days where I caught it and kept it on. It was a "best of" episode where she had on people who had lost hundreds of pounds of weight without surgery or pills but with their own choices, motivation and hard work. I had heard of this episode before and had even caught glimpses of it but today I actually sat for a few minutes and watched-and listened-to part of it. The stories that were shared were truly amazing and powerfully motivating. One woman lost over 500 pounds. FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS. Other people lost upwards of 300 pounds. These people did not go on The Biggest Loser, they did not get gastric bypass, they did not hire million dollar personal chefs or anything like that. They simply made the choice to make the changes in their lives they wanted to make for themselves and by themselves. I found the stories inspiring and realized I need to take care of myself better. Yes, I have said this for years. I know...and it is always a struggle...to make the choice to exercise and to eat well...but this is something I CAN do. Right now several aspects of my life feel completely out of my control. I've been unemployed for over a year and continue to search for, apply for, interview for and get rejected for jobs. I have no control over when or if I will get a job. I can only do my best, put myself out there, tweak my resume, pound the pavement and pray. But I can control what I eat and how I spend the time I have each day with my boy. Caleb is also a HUGE motivation for getting into shape. I want to be active with him. I want to play with him, run with him, chase him around, tickle him, challenge him, wrestle with him...I don't want him to be ashamed of his fat mom or afraid that I am not healthy. I don't want to tell him "i can't do that with you because i am too big or too out of shape or too tired." I also want to model healthy choices and behaviors for him. He needs me to be healthy for him and with him. I don't want to miss any time with my son and I want to do everything I can to be the best mom I can be for him. I also want to be around and active for as long as humanly possible..to be with my grandkids. Last week I walked with Caleb and Kieran to my mom and dad's place a mile from my house...it was a tough walk and a reality check. A mile should not be a tough walk for me. I wasn't running, I wasn't even walking fast....but I was breathing heavily and sweating and exhausted....I want to enjoy being active and outside and energized. I don't want to get tired walking half a mile ..I want to be confident in myself and I want to be able to buy bras at Victoria's Secret or a regular store. As it stands now, I have to order bras online. I want to feel comfortable in my clothes and have cute, fun, clothing that I actually like.

So here we go...the journey begins again. Today I weigh 305 pounds. I am down from my highest point which was around 350 but I have also gained weight since giving birth. Currently I am not active. I spend most of my day on the couch or doing random housework. I can't afford to join a gym right now-I loved going to the gym and working a personal trainer when I had the money to do so. But now, just not possible. I do however have space and time and tools at home.

Here's what I have:

-yoga mat
-arm rings
-3, 5, 10 pound weights
-balance ball
-resistance bands
-that shaker arm thingy
-dvd player
-tv
-comfy shoes
-great stroller for caleb
-TIME

Today I started with the arm circle thingies and it was amusing...I felt the pain and enjoyed it as well. My arms are a huge bone of contention for me. As my former middle school students have pointed out, I don't have elbows because they are hidden behind upper arm fat. yuck. The focus for now is going to be my arms. The funny thing about the rings is that you spin them on your arms while doing arm circles with your hands pointed in various positions. Your hands are down, then straight out, then facing up. I desperately need to work on my coordination because my rings were flying across the room rather than saying on my wrists. My right arm does fairly well, but the left...woah...the things go flying. Its only about a ten minute workout and its no impact but gets my heart rate up, my sweat going and my arms hurting-in a good way. I also learned to do some stretches which felt really good.

Summation of day one-had a good breakfast: granola bar, yogurt, skim latte. Crappy lunch-left over pizza....crappy snack/dinner....ice cream. Attempted to do the arm routine, pretty much completed it but need more practice. Gotta do every day. Tomorrow I want to add in doing sit ups with the balance ball. Goal for the next seven days-do the arms five days and sit ups at least three times.

Ambitious Goals

Yesterday I sat down and figured out this grandiose exercise and weight loss plan. It boils down to math...you have to take in less calories than you burn off. To be exact, to lose one pound of fat, you need to burn 3500 calories more than you usually do. One can do this either by changing what you take in or eat or you can change what you burn or exercise.

There is a handy dandy website http://www.bmi-calculator.net/ that has all sorts of tools about calculating what you need to do based on your own numbers. Its really a fascinating tool to literally put things into a clear perspective. I figured out that my basal metabolic rate is 2116.15. That is the number of calories I burn just by living. Then, I took that number and figured out what my daily calorie needs are-on the website they give you a formula to use based on your activity level. My current daily calorie needs are 2539.38 calories to MAINTAIN my current weight. So, logically I can use that information to plan out my week.

If my goal is to lose 2 pounds in a week, that means I have to kill 7500 calories in a week.

So, my ambitious plan i figured out last night was this:

Lose one pound from exercise. So, I take 3500 calories (whats needed to kill once pound of fat) and divide it by 6 (how many days a week I can work out, I need a day off :) ) and I get: 585 calories a session. If I kick ass on the treadmill for 45 minutes and then do some weights, its not hard to get to 585 calories. I can also add in pilates and crunches at home, I got a yoga ball and mat to do just that and I have done pilates before. They are hard ass work but really feel good...they tone and stretch your muscles without the high impact deal of running, etc.

Ambitious, yes. Can I do it? Yes. It has to be a choice. How have I done so far this week? Well....today I spent half an hour at the gym. Yesterday I didn't make it...

Second part is the food intake. Since my daily calorie needs are 2540, I figure the easiest way to do this is to cut it down to an even 2000 calories. This is actually pretty easy because all the nutrition info on food labels is based on a 2000 calorie diet. So, if I cut down to 2000 calories, I'm at my second pound: 3780 calories=540 calories x 7 days.

The sucky part of the nutrition thing is the keeping track. Weight Watchers has great tools online for doing this, but it costs money and you have to log in and enter the data. Its relatively cheap-I think like $14 a month if I recall. The tracking software is really good. You can record what you eat each day and what you do for exercise, there are also great advice boards and recipes, etc. The thing is, I don't want to spend the money on this or have to track it for the rest of my ever livin life. I want to learn to control myself and make the choices I need to make to keep myself healthy.

I've done weight watchers before, and it works! I lost weight and kept track of what I ate but the hard thing is, you kinda become controlled by THE POINTS. They start to rule your life and you start to rely on THE POINTS rather than your own self control and choices so it is still about the food not about you. I want to be free of the demons not just control them with points.

For now, I am going to focus on getting the exercise pattern down and reduce what I eat on my own. I've been working on this for a very long time because from the time I was very young I have turned to food for comfort. Slowly but surely I am getting better and I am making better choices. For example, today at lunch with my sisters at Green Mill, rather than getting greasy, fatty, bad for me food that I didn't need, I got a bowl of soup. Did I eat too much bread and butter with the soup? Probably. Baby steps.

Today this is what I consumed:
No breakfast, I didn't get up til noon. One of the perks of unemployment.

Lunch
Chicken Wild Rice Soup
Bread with garlic butter
2 glasses o water

Iced Coffee and cream

Dinner
1 piece of BBQ chicken (tried to peel off the skin as much as I could)
Black beans and rice
1 biscuit
broccoli and carrots

So, I did good today. I might have some toast or something before I go to bed because I'm kinda hungry and it will help me sleep. I might not tho...perhaps some water or tea would do the trick. CHOICES CHOICES CHOICES!

Evening workout

Being unemployed certainly has its advantages. Today, I had a job interview, took a nap, then visited my mom, had a nice long chat with an old friend, went to my neices soccer game, then went to my nephews t ball game and THEN i went to the gym. It would have been very very easy to just go home and eat something then watch Alias and go to bed. But, I made the choice to head to the gym by myself. My sister and I try to go to together, but her life is much more complicated than mine. She has four kiddos with all different schedules and she works part time so, she doesn't have the flexibility I currently have.

Did I WANT to go to the gym at 8:30pm? Nope. I most certainly did not. But I did go. Spent 50 minutes on the treadmill. Walked 2 miles. Burned 400 calories. Got my heart pumpin and my body covered in sweat to prove I was working hard. Had I chosen not to go to the gym, how would I have spent that hour of my life? Probably watching TV and eating something like grilled cheese. The choice to go to the gym was a much better use of my time. If I get myself into the habit of going six days a week, and just do the treadmill for an hour (eventually i want to work my way up to the eliptical machines because they burn calories so much faster but damn those things kick my ass so I am just not ready for them yet) that is 2400 calories burned in one week. To lose one pound of fat, you need to lose 3500 calories. So, killing the fat really becomes a matter of math or economics.

Diet is an issue too for me. I haven't gained back any weight I lost so at least I have been maintaining, but I need to lose another 1100 calories in a week to lose one pound. I also want to tone up my body-especially my bat wing arms. I HATE MY ARMS! Perhaps, I can rack up some calories by adding sit ups and arm excercises as well as changing my eating habits. I have started eating less, and its helping. The main thing is, I need to cook at home and stop doing the fast food thing.

bein fat is gettin old

I have struggled with body image and weight and health issues pretty much all of my life. I started out pretty normal size, even skinny! It all went downhill when I was diagnosed with asthma and severe allergies when I was 2. I remember the allergy testing that happened when I was five. The all day process was not fun, but I endured with just a simple tear now and again. No fits from me or screams while they gave me 15 shots in each of my little legs or spent hours doing scratch tests on my back. From that point forward, I struggled to breathe. Exercise became a non event for me because being allergic to anything that grows outside, I was kept inside. My parents became overly protective of their little girl who couldn't breathe and slowly but surely the weight crept up. The early medications for asthma were also steroid based which caused the weight to creep on as well. I don't know that I was officially overweight until high school, it may have started in middle school, I don't exactly remember. From the time I was young, emotional eating became an important part of my life as well. I used to hide Little Debbie cakes and just eat whatever I could. Food and my cat were my friends and coping mechanisms for dealing with life. No one really noticed, or if they did they never said anything, so the habits became ingrained.

Since high school, I have gained over 100 pounds. The crazy thing is, in high school, I was a size 14 (at my smallest) to maybe an 18 (at my biggest) and I thought I was the biggest thing on the planet then. Currently, I am a size 26 and weigh 297 pounds.

Since adulthood, I have fought the good fight of weight loss. I did Weight Watchers (more than once), read Bob Greene's Best Life Diet, listened to Dr. Phil's The Ultimate Weight Loss book on CD, did the spiritual weight loss program "The Weigh Down Workshop", followed Oprah's many many plans to lose weight, read books, etc. All of the listed systems to lose weight work, if you stick with them. The programs give you the rules you need to lose weight and keep it off, if you stick to the rules. The thing is, I am not a rules person. I do not like being told what to do or what to eat and I do not like keeping track of the details of what I eat. Ive tried. Many many times. I have purchased several notebooks and journals with the intention of religiously keeping track of what I eat and all that stuff. No matter how hard I try, it just doesn't stick.

Last summer, my sister and I joined Golds Gym and signed up for a personal trainer. Holy crap was that a good idea! From August to November, I lost 40 pounds and have kept all of that weight off. Since November, my gym attendance faltered for various reasons. First, I had this odd twisted chunk of fat that came off inside my body on my side and caused lots and lots of searing pain. I discovered this 'alien baby' at a CAT scan. It took a couple of weeks for it to work its way out of my system and for the excruciating pain to stop. Then, I did something to jack up my knee. Dunno what, but that took a few weeks to heal. Finally, my sinus issues wreaked havoc on my life with constant sinus infections from November thru March and I finally had sinus surgery in April. So, now I am back on the wagon with working out.

The only way to lose weight and get in shape is to do the work to make it happen. There are no fast track ways. There are no short cuts. Shows like The Biggest Loser actually piss me off because they are not reality. Anyone can lose weight if they are taken from their natural environment where they face daily struggles and old habits and are forced to work out all friggen day with professional trainers and state of the art equipment. That is not reality for me nor is it reality for the average American tryin to get healthy and in shape. Its about choices. Choosing to go to the gym regardless of how I feel and choosing to eat the food I know is good for me rather than hitting the drive thru again. No one, not even Dr Phil or Oprah, can make me do it or even inspire me to do it. The choices are mine and mine alone and the effects of those choices are mine and mine alone.

So, a new category of my blog is going to be "Killing the Fat." In this section, I will be writing about my journey to change my lifestyle and get healthy. I chose "Killing the Fat" because losing weight sounds too passive. I am not losing anything-I am working to get rid of it. Losing implies a haphazard, random act. What I am attempting to do is neither random or haphazard. It is intentional. It is hard. It is minute by minute choices on how to live my life to destroy the fat in my body and restore my health.