THE SKINNY RULES - BOB HARPER

These are the rules that I will be attempting to live by at least for the near future if not for life. I cannot take credit for them. They are Bob Harper from his latest book.

The Skinny Rules

1.       Drink a large glass of water BEFORE EVERY MEAL – NO EXCUSES!!

2.       Don’t drink your calories.

3.       Eat protein at every meal – or STAY HUNGRY and GROUCHY

4.       Slash your intake of refined flours and grains.

5.       Eat 30 to 50 grams of fiber a day.

6.       Eat Apples and Berries every single day. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

7.       No Carbs after lunch.

8.       Learn to read food labels so you know what you are eating.

9.       Stop guessing about portion size and get it right – FOR GOOD.

10.   No more added sweeteners, including artificial ones.

11.   Get rid of those white potatoes.

12.   Make one day a week meatless.

13.   Get rid of fast foods and fried foods.

14.   Eat a real breakfast.

15.   Make your own food and eat at least ten meals a week at home.

16.   Banish HIGH-SALT foods.

17.   Eat your vegetables – JUST DO IT!!!

18.   Go to bed hungry.

19.   Sleep right.

20.   Plan one splurge meal a week.

Portion Control Is The Name Of The Game

As those of you who have followed my blog know that I am working, even though slowly, on changing me.

I will be strictly watching my portion control. Tonight when I was putting together my breakfast and lunch I got out the measuring cups and spoons to make sure that I was just getting a portion of each item. Not a me portion but a regular portion.

The only thing that I was pretty lenient on were the strawberries and the watermelon. First off because the strawberries are about to go bad and secondly they are both so good.

My plan is to get used to eating regular portions. Which I have really never done. I remember from when I was young that I was told to eat until I was full. When I moved out on my own I ate until I got stuffed to the point that I thought I was going to be sick. Now I hate to feel that way. I eat until I am full but since my stomach is so much bigger than a normal persons that can still be a lot of food.

So this all starts tomorrow. I know there are going to be times that I am going to be so hungry. This is were vegetables will save my life. Oh and water. Lots and lots of water.

Tomorrows meals look like this -

Breakfast -
1 cup cooked rolled oats
1/4 cup ricotta cheese
1/4 grade a natural maple syrup (yeah who would have ever thought a severing was a 1/4 cup not me)
cinnimon

Snack -
watermelon

Lunch -
1 1/2 cups chicken salad from Whole Foods
1/2 cup roasted beets (oh how I love beets)

Snack -
Strawberries (these might go with breakfast depending how hungry I am)

Dinner -
1 can tuna
olive oil mayo
dill
1 Red Pepper
1 Yellow Pepper

I think I am starting out pretty well.

Once my body gets used to (ie. I do not want to rip someones head off) the portions then I will start back in the gym.

Post to Post

I know that is has been a long time since I have posted anything at all on the musings of my journey.

The journey is slow and tedious. I have to work on addiction issues. The great thing about having these issues to work on is that I have decided to work on other things that I need to work on as well. Kind of a catch 22 if I do say so myself.

I have officially given up all that is GLUTEN. Today I cleaned out the cupboards and threw away anything that had gluten or possibly had gluten in it. And lets just be honest any thing else that had an ingredient that I would need to look up on the internet to figure out what it is.

I have subscribed to a menu board through a groupon that provides gluten free recipes, shopping lists, and menu planning. I think it was a pretty good investment if I do say so myself.

I picked through the menus to find one that was pretty close to what I would normally LOVE to eat and I am going with that.

So for those of you keeping track.

No fast food since the beginning of the year.

No soda for at least the past couple of months. But I do give in to a diet sprite every now and then.

Now I am gluten free. 

This was a slow process and let me just tell you I feel so much better because of it. My aches are not as achey any more. My feet do not swell up into ham. And I have actually stopped eating processed foods all together. 

The next goal that we will stick to is cooking and menu planning. 

I know you are thinking "well if you have given up gluten there has to be some serious cooking and menu planning going." Yeah no. I started with just eating organic lunch meats and yogurt for a meal. There are also two places in town that offer gluten free pasta and pizza. Now those meals have expanded to steel cut oats with banana. And now we start to cook.

So looking forward to it.

I have to give myself props to sticking to my new eating habits when friends go "hey lets go get some pizza" my response is "sorry I do not eat pizza unless we order from this place or that because they have gluten free pizza."

Tackling the A word

I live with the word Addiction on a daily basis.

Merriam-Websters defines addiction as - compulsive need for and use of a habit-forming substance (as heroin, nicotine, or alcohol) characterized by tolerance and by well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawal; broadly : persistent compulsive use of a substance known by the user to be harmful.

Compulsive Overeating (or Food Addiction)

Definition

Compulsive overeating is characterized by uncontrollable eating and consequent weight gain. Compulsive overeaters use food as a way to cope with stress, emotional conflicts and daily problems. The food can block out feelings and emotions. Compulsive overeaters usually feel out of control and are aware their eating patterns are abnormal. Like bulimics, compulsive overeaters do recognize they have a problem.

Compulsive overeating usually starts in early childhood when eating patterns are formed. Most people who become compulsive eaters are people who never learned the proper way to deal with stressful situations and used food instead as a way of coping. Fat can also serve as a protective function for them, especially in people that have been victims of sexual abuse. They sometimes feel that being overweight will keep others at a distance and make them less attractive. Unlike anorexia and bulimia, there is a high proportion of male overeaters. 

The more weight that is gained, the harder they try to diet and dieting is usually what leads to the next binge, which can be followed by feelings of powerlessness, guilt, shame and failure. Dieting and bingeing can go on forever if the emotional reasons for the bingeing is not dealt with.

In today's society, compulsive overeating is not yet taken seriously enough. Instead of being treated for the serious problem they have, they are instead directed to diet centers and health spas. Like anorexia and bulimia, compulsive overeating is a serious problem and can result in death. With the proper treatment, which should include therapy, medical and nutritional counseling, it can be overcome.

Signs and Symptoms

• Binge eating
• Fear of not being able to stop eating voluntarily
• Depression
• Self-deprecating thoughts following binges
• Withdrawing from activities because of embarrassment about weight
• Going on many different diets
• Eating little in public, while maintaining a high weight
• Believing they will be a better person when thin
• Feelings about self based on weight
• Social and professional failures attributed to weight
• Feeling tormented by eating habits
• Weight is focus of life

 I bring this up at this time because I have been monitoring my feelings and dependency on food. My food choices have become healthier. Which is a good thing. I only keep healthy foods in the house.


Now here is the bad thing. There are times that even with healthy food in the house I find myself just eating and eating. I know I am not hungry. But THERE IS STILL FOOD LEFT IN THE HOUSE AND I MUST EAT IT NOW!!!! This is the reason that I do not buy all my groceries for the week at one time. I would just eat it all in the next day or two or possibly three and then I am right back at the grocery store buying more food.


I had a night a week or so ago that I tried to go to sleep but I kept on waking up going "there are leftovers from dinner in the refrigerator I should eat them" but I tried to rationalize to myself that 1) I did not need to eat that right then and there and 2) I could always eat it in the morning. But after tossing and turning for a couple of hours I had to get up and eat it. No I really did not have to get up and eat it but I knew if I did not I was not getting any sleep. 

Now if this food was not in the house and I was just hungry. I could have slept through the night and then just run to the grocery store in the morning and grabbed some fruit. 

Sigh. Someday I will get a grip on this. Hopefully sooner than later. I keep on telling myself that it is a plus that I know these things about myself. But at what time does knowing this about yourself and still not getting better still count as a crutch?

The Gym and Buyers Remorse..

So I have been working out off and on for the past month(ish).

Right now I am starting to have buyers remorse about my gym. It is cheap, but the equipment is very limited (ie 4 treadmills, 3 bikes, 4 ellipticals, and 1 stair master). A very limited weight selection. At the time I figured that I could "work" with the limited equipment but that is frustrating me a little bit as well.

You might be wondering why.

Where the gym is small enough and fits my needs. It also gets extremely crowded when there is more than 10 people there. It fits into the times that I want/need to go to the gym. But, I am starting to wonder if I made a poor choice in gyms.

Working Out and the Personal Trainer Myth.....

Last night was my first "real" workout back in the gym.

I did about 20 minutes of cardio and spent another 30 minutes lifting weights. I was shaky when I was done but I felt good. I did the one thing though when I got home that I should not have done. I sat down in front of the computer for an hour or two. I should have just gone to bed as I was tired, but I did not. So when I decided to stand up, oy was I in pain. 

I must make a mental note in the future to take some advil when I get home and if I want to watch tv to lay down instead of sitting with my knees all bent up underneath me.

Now on to my other thought Personal Trainers.

I would have loved to have one last night. I felt kind of lost in the gym and wondered what I should do next. Which then started me thinking about my past personal trainers. Do not get me wrong. I loved every single one of them. They held me accountable to my workouts. I made appointments with them to work out and this forced me to keep those appointments. If you flake on a friend they do not still charge you $50.00 an hour.

This started me to think. Where are my personal trainers now? You know the ones that promised to be there for me through my journey? What they failed to say was that promise was conditional and only was in affect for as long as I paid them.

See I have huge trust issues. If we were to categorize trust as a mountain range mine would be the Himalayas. 

I do not trust easily and I have a hard time letting people in close to who I actually am. 

And then there were my personal trainers. Let me stress this trainers. All in all I think I had a total six personal trainers. At one point I had two. One for Pilates and the other for straight cardio and weight training. 

These last two were the ones that promised to be part of my support group. They would be there for me. At least that is what I thought, I mean that is what they were saying. Surely they would not lie to me? I mean they wanted me to get healthy right? 

Nope. 

As soon as I was unable to pay them they no longer were part of my support group. I have not had them as a trainer for years and to this day neither one of them has contacted me to see how I am doing. Wait that is not true. I had one contact me about a year after I had stopped using them to see if I was ready to sign up for training again. I told them at that time I still could not afford a personal trainer and that was the last I heard from them. 

And I actually signed back up with the other (the one that taught Pilates) but that did not work out. See at the time I decided to hire her again I was working the over night shift at work. So I would work from between 10 and Midnight to around 7 or 9 am in the morning. I would then get off work. Go home and take a nap until 1ish get up, get ready to go work out, head to the gym, work out, and then come back and fall back to sleep at around 4ish and then get back up around 8 to get ready for work. 

This is how the schedule would have gone if it was actually ideal. 

But usually I would come home and sleep for a bit, get up and start getting ready to work out and then get a text message telling me that she needed to cancel for this or that. The best is having your training session cancelled so your trainer can go get their hair cut. She knew when we went through the motions of me becoming her client again that I would not be getting that much sleep. 

I understand that things come up and things needed to be changed around. But it was getting to the point that she was cancelling almost every other work out with me either due to this or that. Maybe it was her way of telling me that she did not want to be my trainer. I will never know because she did not come out and just say it. But I did come straight out and tell her that she was slowly killing me by cancelling on me at the last minute. Again keep in mind I was sleeping in about two different 3 to 4 hour blocks instead of having straight solid sleep. Her and I have not spoken to this day.

I guess basically what I am saying in this post is you do not need a personal trainer. They are nice and they can bust your ass in the gym. They will say they are there for you and that they are your support team. But as soon as you are unable to pay them to be that they will not be there for you.

So build up a support team that is there for YOU and not your money.

Doctors are deaf to the overweight....

So yesterday I went and had my yearly physcial. I thought that it would be a good idea before I headed back into the gym. The goal of working out is to loose weight and to keep my heart from exploding. It would be counter productive if my heart exploded while trying to loose weight.

Everything is fine with me. I am healthy and strong except for the excess weight I am carrying and a few minor ailments. But I am in my forties I think that can be expected.

The best news that I had though was the fact that I am continually loosing weight. A total of twenty pounds since September.

I lost a grand amount in September (13 lbs) in one week. Went back to Weight Watchers dutifilly cataloging everything that I ate and had no weight loss the next week. I went on a couple of weeks of screw this. And kind of had a pitty party for myself. So I am sure I gained some back. 

Once the pitty party was over I got back on the horse so to speak and have been going strong. I have dutifilly changed my diet. I no longer have the cravings for the things that I do not eat anymore.

Now here is were my doctor stopped listening to me yesterday. I have lost twenty pounds being inactive and changing my diet. My soul purpose for going to the doctor was to make sure that my body was medically sound to go back to working out. 

I told the doctor that I have lost twenty pounds in the past four months doing this, this, and this. Most doctors would go "keep up the good work you are doing what your body needs right now to loose weight". Instead this doctor looks at me and says "Before you leave let me give you a hand out for a diet that will work for you." Um okay. I am always open to new suggestions. Took the photocopied pages and left.


Last night while I was going through my things for the day I pulled out those pages and started reading them. Yeah she gave me a hand out for the Atkins diet. Sigh. Really. After I told you that I have stopped eating fast food, anything with white flour, and soda. That my morning breakfast consists of a greek yogurt and turkey slices. That during the day I make decisions to help with weight loss and if I cannot make up my mind I will duplicate the same meal for lunch or dinner. 

She evidently felt that my diet was in question. 


Yep because what I could currently be doing could not be what my body needs to loose weight? Which evidently it is because wait, it is actually loosing weight.


So in all honesty I will keep on doing what I have been doing and getting success.