I got to run outside today and did not have to wear a hat and gloves. What a treat!!
That's all I have to say for today. Other than that, everything is on track and going well. We're getting ready to go to Jack's sister's house in Excelsior Springs for her annual Easter egg hunt. Fun times!!
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Friday, March 29, 2013
3/29/2013: Free
This whole wheat free thing is so new to me that I can't help talking about it. I'm sure the people at work think I am a total freak, always talking about the last book I read about nutrition, exercise, or aging well. But a funny thing is happening, there are a few women that come around my office on a fairly regular basis, or stop me in the hallway, to tell me about progress they are making or to ask me for help on an issue they are having with their own Get Healthy initiatives. I am becoming known as the person in the office that will support and try to help anyone that is trying to make positive changes in their health, no matter where they are in the process. It's kind of nice to be able to help others with something that is so difficult to do all alone.
Lately I have been talking a lot about giving up wheat. I've been so excited about what I read in "Wheat Belly" and the impact that being wheat free has had on me so far, that even Jack has decided to give up wheat for a couple of weeks. So far, he is doing well. He stopped eating wheat on Monday and admits that he feels pretty good. He's not willing to attribute much to the lack of wheat yet, but when I suggested he extend his one week experiment to two weeks, he quickly agreed. That made me happy!! He said he has noticed that he doesn't get as hungry in the afternoons, but so far that is about the only change he has mentioned in the way he feels. He has been surprised to realize how much wheat he was eating. As he says, "Wheat is in everything!" For me, it wasn't that big of a change. Since I had already given up all Dead Food, which encompasses most of the things made of wheat anyway, like cookies, cake, donuts, bagels, breaded and fried foods, crackers, etc... I only had to stop eating the whole wheat toast I was having for breakfast (as much for convenience as anything else) and perhaps a sandwich or bread with my salad at lunch. Therefore, when I stopped eating wheat I didn't have to make a wholesale change in my diet. I added more veggies, like the pan full of vegetables I saute with my eggs in the morning or the veggies I eat with hummus for a snack in the afternoon or evening, but aside from that, my diet has not changed much.
In my opinion, then, given the fact that nothing else has changed (I've been exercising and "eating right" for over a year now), the only thing I can attribute to how different I feel today than I did two weeks ago is the fact that I stopped eating wheat. Jack wonders if it is the "placebo effect," as in I want it to make me feel better so I do feel better. I honestly don't think that's it. I felt like crap on Sunday and was in an equally bad mood on Monday. That is the same time frame that I was having a problem with painful cramps in my foot. I certainly didn't feel good on those days. It took me until the end of the day on Monday to connect the dots to going wheat free, but I think that is what it was. Sunday I was one week into life without wheat and I think my body was adjusting to its new chemical composition. By Tuesday the blues were gone and I was feeling fine. By Wednesday I was feeling incredible. As I mentioned in my blog post yesterday, I was feeling free. Yesterday was a repeat of Wednesday. I felt amazingly good all day long.
One of the most noticeable changes is the fact that I don't think about food very much anymore. Sort of like magic, the cassette tape in my brain that kept saying "eat...eat...eat...eat...eat..." and that I kept having to override with "not now...not now...not now...not now...OK, it's snack time...not now...not now...not now..." has been put on pause. When I am at work I don't sit at my desk, thinking about food and glancing at the clock waiting until it is legitimately "time to eat" again. Instead, I've been very focused on my work and when I look up I am surprised to see how much time has passed. I don't have food cravings at all. I am not having to use up any will power or energy in controlling my food. I'm just focused on work.
I didn't realize how much I've been wearing myself out controlling food. This has been going on my entire life, not just the last year, but my whole life. I've been fighting a war with food. On the one side, I've wanted to eat pretty much constantly. On the other side, I've known what I should eat to be healthy. The war has been a constant series of battles between what I craved and what I knew I should eat. Sometimes the cravings consistently won, and I got fat and felt like crap, sometimes my willpower won and I got thin and felt good, but the war never abated. It was constant.
During this last year I have been successful at arming my willpower's arsenal with more powerful weapons, so my willpower won more and more of the battles. I turned 50, I have so much left that I want to do in my life and many years left that I have to work, so I need to be as healthy and fit as I can possibly be. I read "Younger Next Year" and that book convinced my that I had to exercise for an hour a day six days a week. It gave me the ammunition I needed to stop making excuses to not exercise. Grow or decay each day. Easy choice. I tapped into all of my years of dieting and learning about nutrition to make decent food choices and to reprogram myself to think of food as fuel rather than a drug that makes me feel good. I pretty much stopped using food as a source of pleasure for myself or as a way to please others. I had to think of other ways to have fun, that did not involve eating. I hired a personal training to help me stay focused on well rounded strength training. I created my charts to plot my progress and keep it "in my face." I blogged and shared just about every step of my journey with the world, or at least the small portion of the world that found my blog and decided it was interesting enough to keep reading every day. My husband and sister have been amazingly supportive and I've leaned on them when I could tell I was losing the strength that I needed to get up and fight another day. As a result of having all of these tools, I have been winning way more battles than I have been losing, and I am a whole lot healthier and thinner and happier as a result. But it has still been a battle.
I have really noticed this battle over the last couple of months. After I reached goal weight, I stopped counting every calorie. I was still paying attention to what I ate, mentally adding it up, but I wasn't putting every calorie into my phone app any more. I also wasn't super strict about not eating anything sweet, so I had let butterscotch candies and tootsie pops creep into my afternoon snacking. I maintained my weight, around 153 pounds...not 150, but close enough I thought... without too much effort, but I was having terrible food cravings in the afternoon and evenings. I was still thinking about food too much. It was still taking a lot of energy to control my food. By the beginning of March I was starting to get a little discouraged and maybe a bit desperate. I did not want to fight this desire to snack all day for the rest of my life. This had to get easier somehow.
I read "Thinner This Year" first. That book convinced me to eliminate Dead Food from my day-to-day diet completely. No more, "just a little bit of crap is OK." I formulated my Food Plan for Life. No Dead Foods except on truly special celebratory occasions. I was still eating my toast in the mornings, though, and occasionally had bread for lunch. My Food Plan for Life, in spite of the fact that I was still eating wheat, made life easier, I will admit. It made it easier to walk by the candy bowl at the reception desk and just say no. I no longer had to decide if I was going to "let myself have" a piece of candy or not. I had already made that decision and I only needed to make that decision once, when I adopted my Food Plan for Life. I did not have to remake that decision every minute or every day, even. Decision made. No candy. Forget about it.
Problem is, I couldn't really forget about it. I knew I would say no to Dead Food when the cravings hit, but the cravings still hit. I was actually starting to consider drinking coffee in the afternoons. Maybe I just needed a jolt. I was almost ready to substitute caffeine for the sugar in spite of the fact that I thought it would affect my sleep. I was anxious about that, I need my sleep. In the past, if I drank coffee after noon I would have trouble sleeping. But that is how badly I wanted to get rid of these food cravings, I was getting ready to sacrifice sleep in order to stop wanting to eat. But I never took that step. Instead, I read "Wheat Belly."
Jack and I saw the book at Barnes and Noble when we stopped in to use the restroom during our stroll on the Plaza after his birthday dinner. Ruth and my friend, Lisa Claro, had both said I needed to read the book; and there it was, out on display. I picked it up and we bought it. I was skeptical about this book, I really was. Come on, wheat has been part of our diet for eons. Everyone says whole wheat is good for us, and that is all I eat, I'm fine. I don't need this book. Those were the thoughts I was having. But more and more I was hearing people, even my dad, mention this book. So, skeptic or not, I decided to read it and once I started, I couldn't put it down. What Dr. Davis has to say about wheat is fascinating. It opened my eyes to the possibility that wheat may have been the culprit in my diet, all along.
The first thing Dr. Davis tells us is that the wheat of today is not the wheat of our forefathers. Through a series of cross breedings, wheat is genetically a very different plant than it was even 50 years ago. It is shorter and hardier, it is draught tolerant and has a higher yield per acre, and because of the this new wheat we are now able to feed a lot more people in the world. On the other hand, this new wheat has never been tested to see if it is safe for human consumption.
Dr. Davis then tells us that wheat has two unique properties that make it different from every other food out there. First, it has a very high glycemic index. Two pieces of whole wheat toast convert to glucose in the bloodstream faster than 2 tablespoons of table sugar. Second, when wheat is digested it is degraded into a mix of polypeptides that have the, "Peculiar ability to penetrate the blood-brain barrier that separates the bloodstream from the brain. This barrier is there for a reason: The brain is highly sensitive to the wide variety of substances that gain entry to the blood, some of which can provoke undesirable effects should they cross into your amygdala, hippocampus, cerebral cortex, or other brain structure. Once having gained entry into the brain, wheat polypeptides bind to the brain's morphine receptor, the very same receptor to which opiate drugs bind." The scientist that discovered this, Dr. Christine Zioudrou, called these polypeptides "'exorphins,' short for exogenous morphine-like compounds, distinguishing them for endorphines, the endogenous (internally sourced) morphine-like compounds that occur, for instance, during a 'runner's high.'"
There is a lot more discussion of this phenomena in the book, but the conclusion that Dr. Davis draws, and the evidence is pretty compelling, is that digesting wheat generates morphine-like compounds that bind to the brain's opiate receptors. Therefore eating wheat "induces a form of reward, a mild euphoria. When the effect is blocked, either with opiate blocking drugs or when no wheat is consumed, some people experience a distinctly unpleasant withdrawal."
Wow! Basically, Dr. Davis claims that wheat, not sugar, is the drug that has been keeping me addicted to carbs my entire life. He sites numerous studies, experiments, and anecdotal evidence to support his theory. Again, it is compelling. After I read the book I had heard enough to stop eating wheat.
It's been almost two weeks. At first, the only thing I noticed was a lessening of my food cravings in the afternoon. That was good enough for me! That was the problem I was trying to solve, after all. If that was all I got out of not eating wheat, I was done eating wheat for good. Then I had my crummy weekend, when I was moody, had foot cramps, etc... I thought, "Wow, I am having withdrawals." Then on Wednesday, then Thursday, and now today, I felt amazing. All of a sudden I have so much more energy. All of a sudden I can stay focused on my tasks at hand. All of a sudden I feel like I am not battling the food demons any more.
My brain is quiet. I don't hear, "eat...eat...eat...eat...eat...eat..." constantly, anymore. I am eating less often. I stop eating when I'm not hungry. Last night was a perfect example. My food day was thrown off for a couple of reasons. First, I ate breakfast early because I needed to get to work a couple hours early. Second, I had a lunch planned with someone (I had forgotten about it, so I ate my snack around 11 anyway) so I ate lunch early. Third, I forgot to pack my nuts for a snack, so I had fewer fats that I normally do. The result was I was hungrier than normal when I got home from work. In the good old days, as in a few weeks ago, I would have responded to this by eating a piece of toast with peanut butter, or cheese and crackers (usually wheat thins), or something like that. That snack would then morph into eating more carbs, and then I would just keep eating until I couldn't eat anymore. Coming home hungry was always a recipe for disaster. I avoided it whenever I could. Last night, I came home hungry. I opened the fridge and saw the hummus staring me in the face. I picked it up, grabbed a carrot, and started eating it. Then I got my nuts out, mixed a small bowl of walnuts, macadamia nuts, and almonds. I ate some of those. I was halfway through my carrot and my nuts when I realized I wasn't hungry any more. I was startled by that. I put my snacks away, and started making our dinner, a salad. I had a small salad with a boiled egg and avocado for dinner. It was perfect. What would have been a binge a few weeks ago just didn't happen. Not because I will-powered my way through it, but because when I satisfied my hunger I didn't want to eat anymore. I was just simply done with my snack. Wow. Yes, this really does feel like a miracle.
The most striking change for me is how this is changing the way I feel about every aspect of my life. All of a sudden, I have more energy. I don't feel drained at the end of the day. Because I am not fighting the cravings vs. willpower battle all day long, I have reserves left for other things. I feel more confident about everything in my life. This is as big of a change in my life as I felt when I had my throat surgery and my sleep apnea was cured. I feel like a brand new person. I feel like shackles have been removed from my feet and I can walk freely through life for the first time. It's an amazing feeling. I am convinced this is all because I stopped eating wheat. I'm done with it, forever. Unless, somehow, I accidentally consume wheat because it is in something I don't know it's in, I will not eat wheat again. I have no need for it. I can't tell you how good this feels.
I feel free. It's as simple as that!
Lately I have been talking a lot about giving up wheat. I've been so excited about what I read in "Wheat Belly" and the impact that being wheat free has had on me so far, that even Jack has decided to give up wheat for a couple of weeks. So far, he is doing well. He stopped eating wheat on Monday and admits that he feels pretty good. He's not willing to attribute much to the lack of wheat yet, but when I suggested he extend his one week experiment to two weeks, he quickly agreed. That made me happy!! He said he has noticed that he doesn't get as hungry in the afternoons, but so far that is about the only change he has mentioned in the way he feels. He has been surprised to realize how much wheat he was eating. As he says, "Wheat is in everything!" For me, it wasn't that big of a change. Since I had already given up all Dead Food, which encompasses most of the things made of wheat anyway, like cookies, cake, donuts, bagels, breaded and fried foods, crackers, etc... I only had to stop eating the whole wheat toast I was having for breakfast (as much for convenience as anything else) and perhaps a sandwich or bread with my salad at lunch. Therefore, when I stopped eating wheat I didn't have to make a wholesale change in my diet. I added more veggies, like the pan full of vegetables I saute with my eggs in the morning or the veggies I eat with hummus for a snack in the afternoon or evening, but aside from that, my diet has not changed much.
In my opinion, then, given the fact that nothing else has changed (I've been exercising and "eating right" for over a year now), the only thing I can attribute to how different I feel today than I did two weeks ago is the fact that I stopped eating wheat. Jack wonders if it is the "placebo effect," as in I want it to make me feel better so I do feel better. I honestly don't think that's it. I felt like crap on Sunday and was in an equally bad mood on Monday. That is the same time frame that I was having a problem with painful cramps in my foot. I certainly didn't feel good on those days. It took me until the end of the day on Monday to connect the dots to going wheat free, but I think that is what it was. Sunday I was one week into life without wheat and I think my body was adjusting to its new chemical composition. By Tuesday the blues were gone and I was feeling fine. By Wednesday I was feeling incredible. As I mentioned in my blog post yesterday, I was feeling free. Yesterday was a repeat of Wednesday. I felt amazingly good all day long.
One of the most noticeable changes is the fact that I don't think about food very much anymore. Sort of like magic, the cassette tape in my brain that kept saying "eat...eat...eat...eat...eat..." and that I kept having to override with "not now...not now...not now...not now...OK, it's snack time...not now...not now...not now..." has been put on pause. When I am at work I don't sit at my desk, thinking about food and glancing at the clock waiting until it is legitimately "time to eat" again. Instead, I've been very focused on my work and when I look up I am surprised to see how much time has passed. I don't have food cravings at all. I am not having to use up any will power or energy in controlling my food. I'm just focused on work.
I didn't realize how much I've been wearing myself out controlling food. This has been going on my entire life, not just the last year, but my whole life. I've been fighting a war with food. On the one side, I've wanted to eat pretty much constantly. On the other side, I've known what I should eat to be healthy. The war has been a constant series of battles between what I craved and what I knew I should eat. Sometimes the cravings consistently won, and I got fat and felt like crap, sometimes my willpower won and I got thin and felt good, but the war never abated. It was constant.
During this last year I have been successful at arming my willpower's arsenal with more powerful weapons, so my willpower won more and more of the battles. I turned 50, I have so much left that I want to do in my life and many years left that I have to work, so I need to be as healthy and fit as I can possibly be. I read "Younger Next Year" and that book convinced my that I had to exercise for an hour a day six days a week. It gave me the ammunition I needed to stop making excuses to not exercise. Grow or decay each day. Easy choice. I tapped into all of my years of dieting and learning about nutrition to make decent food choices and to reprogram myself to think of food as fuel rather than a drug that makes me feel good. I pretty much stopped using food as a source of pleasure for myself or as a way to please others. I had to think of other ways to have fun, that did not involve eating. I hired a personal training to help me stay focused on well rounded strength training. I created my charts to plot my progress and keep it "in my face." I blogged and shared just about every step of my journey with the world, or at least the small portion of the world that found my blog and decided it was interesting enough to keep reading every day. My husband and sister have been amazingly supportive and I've leaned on them when I could tell I was losing the strength that I needed to get up and fight another day. As a result of having all of these tools, I have been winning way more battles than I have been losing, and I am a whole lot healthier and thinner and happier as a result. But it has still been a battle.
I have really noticed this battle over the last couple of months. After I reached goal weight, I stopped counting every calorie. I was still paying attention to what I ate, mentally adding it up, but I wasn't putting every calorie into my phone app any more. I also wasn't super strict about not eating anything sweet, so I had let butterscotch candies and tootsie pops creep into my afternoon snacking. I maintained my weight, around 153 pounds...not 150, but close enough I thought... without too much effort, but I was having terrible food cravings in the afternoon and evenings. I was still thinking about food too much. It was still taking a lot of energy to control my food. By the beginning of March I was starting to get a little discouraged and maybe a bit desperate. I did not want to fight this desire to snack all day for the rest of my life. This had to get easier somehow.
I read "Thinner This Year" first. That book convinced me to eliminate Dead Food from my day-to-day diet completely. No more, "just a little bit of crap is OK." I formulated my Food Plan for Life. No Dead Foods except on truly special celebratory occasions. I was still eating my toast in the mornings, though, and occasionally had bread for lunch. My Food Plan for Life, in spite of the fact that I was still eating wheat, made life easier, I will admit. It made it easier to walk by the candy bowl at the reception desk and just say no. I no longer had to decide if I was going to "let myself have" a piece of candy or not. I had already made that decision and I only needed to make that decision once, when I adopted my Food Plan for Life. I did not have to remake that decision every minute or every day, even. Decision made. No candy. Forget about it.
Problem is, I couldn't really forget about it. I knew I would say no to Dead Food when the cravings hit, but the cravings still hit. I was actually starting to consider drinking coffee in the afternoons. Maybe I just needed a jolt. I was almost ready to substitute caffeine for the sugar in spite of the fact that I thought it would affect my sleep. I was anxious about that, I need my sleep. In the past, if I drank coffee after noon I would have trouble sleeping. But that is how badly I wanted to get rid of these food cravings, I was getting ready to sacrifice sleep in order to stop wanting to eat. But I never took that step. Instead, I read "Wheat Belly."
Jack and I saw the book at Barnes and Noble when we stopped in to use the restroom during our stroll on the Plaza after his birthday dinner. Ruth and my friend, Lisa Claro, had both said I needed to read the book; and there it was, out on display. I picked it up and we bought it. I was skeptical about this book, I really was. Come on, wheat has been part of our diet for eons. Everyone says whole wheat is good for us, and that is all I eat, I'm fine. I don't need this book. Those were the thoughts I was having. But more and more I was hearing people, even my dad, mention this book. So, skeptic or not, I decided to read it and once I started, I couldn't put it down. What Dr. Davis has to say about wheat is fascinating. It opened my eyes to the possibility that wheat may have been the culprit in my diet, all along.
The first thing Dr. Davis tells us is that the wheat of today is not the wheat of our forefathers. Through a series of cross breedings, wheat is genetically a very different plant than it was even 50 years ago. It is shorter and hardier, it is draught tolerant and has a higher yield per acre, and because of the this new wheat we are now able to feed a lot more people in the world. On the other hand, this new wheat has never been tested to see if it is safe for human consumption.
Dr. Davis then tells us that wheat has two unique properties that make it different from every other food out there. First, it has a very high glycemic index. Two pieces of whole wheat toast convert to glucose in the bloodstream faster than 2 tablespoons of table sugar. Second, when wheat is digested it is degraded into a mix of polypeptides that have the, "Peculiar ability to penetrate the blood-brain barrier that separates the bloodstream from the brain. This barrier is there for a reason: The brain is highly sensitive to the wide variety of substances that gain entry to the blood, some of which can provoke undesirable effects should they cross into your amygdala, hippocampus, cerebral cortex, or other brain structure. Once having gained entry into the brain, wheat polypeptides bind to the brain's morphine receptor, the very same receptor to which opiate drugs bind." The scientist that discovered this, Dr. Christine Zioudrou, called these polypeptides "'exorphins,' short for exogenous morphine-like compounds, distinguishing them for endorphines, the endogenous (internally sourced) morphine-like compounds that occur, for instance, during a 'runner's high.'"
There is a lot more discussion of this phenomena in the book, but the conclusion that Dr. Davis draws, and the evidence is pretty compelling, is that digesting wheat generates morphine-like compounds that bind to the brain's opiate receptors. Therefore eating wheat "induces a form of reward, a mild euphoria. When the effect is blocked, either with opiate blocking drugs or when no wheat is consumed, some people experience a distinctly unpleasant withdrawal."
Wow! Basically, Dr. Davis claims that wheat, not sugar, is the drug that has been keeping me addicted to carbs my entire life. He sites numerous studies, experiments, and anecdotal evidence to support his theory. Again, it is compelling. After I read the book I had heard enough to stop eating wheat.
It's been almost two weeks. At first, the only thing I noticed was a lessening of my food cravings in the afternoon. That was good enough for me! That was the problem I was trying to solve, after all. If that was all I got out of not eating wheat, I was done eating wheat for good. Then I had my crummy weekend, when I was moody, had foot cramps, etc... I thought, "Wow, I am having withdrawals." Then on Wednesday, then Thursday, and now today, I felt amazing. All of a sudden I have so much more energy. All of a sudden I can stay focused on my tasks at hand. All of a sudden I feel like I am not battling the food demons any more.
My brain is quiet. I don't hear, "eat...eat...eat...eat...eat...eat..." constantly, anymore. I am eating less often. I stop eating when I'm not hungry. Last night was a perfect example. My food day was thrown off for a couple of reasons. First, I ate breakfast early because I needed to get to work a couple hours early. Second, I had a lunch planned with someone (I had forgotten about it, so I ate my snack around 11 anyway) so I ate lunch early. Third, I forgot to pack my nuts for a snack, so I had fewer fats that I normally do. The result was I was hungrier than normal when I got home from work. In the good old days, as in a few weeks ago, I would have responded to this by eating a piece of toast with peanut butter, or cheese and crackers (usually wheat thins), or something like that. That snack would then morph into eating more carbs, and then I would just keep eating until I couldn't eat anymore. Coming home hungry was always a recipe for disaster. I avoided it whenever I could. Last night, I came home hungry. I opened the fridge and saw the hummus staring me in the face. I picked it up, grabbed a carrot, and started eating it. Then I got my nuts out, mixed a small bowl of walnuts, macadamia nuts, and almonds. I ate some of those. I was halfway through my carrot and my nuts when I realized I wasn't hungry any more. I was startled by that. I put my snacks away, and started making our dinner, a salad. I had a small salad with a boiled egg and avocado for dinner. It was perfect. What would have been a binge a few weeks ago just didn't happen. Not because I will-powered my way through it, but because when I satisfied my hunger I didn't want to eat anymore. I was just simply done with my snack. Wow. Yes, this really does feel like a miracle.
The most striking change for me is how this is changing the way I feel about every aspect of my life. All of a sudden, I have more energy. I don't feel drained at the end of the day. Because I am not fighting the cravings vs. willpower battle all day long, I have reserves left for other things. I feel more confident about everything in my life. This is as big of a change in my life as I felt when I had my throat surgery and my sleep apnea was cured. I feel like a brand new person. I feel like shackles have been removed from my feet and I can walk freely through life for the first time. It's an amazing feeling. I am convinced this is all because I stopped eating wheat. I'm done with it, forever. Unless, somehow, I accidentally consume wheat because it is in something I don't know it's in, I will not eat wheat again. I have no need for it. I can't tell you how good this feels.
I feel free. It's as simple as that!
Thursday, March 28, 2013
3/28/2013: All is Well
Yes, I've been crazy busy at work lately, so I've been getting in early. I am there already, actually, and have been for about half an hour. I don't like not checking in, though, so here is the quick check-in. All is well.
Wheat - It's what's not for dinner.
I am so much happier now that I don't eat wheat. Try it, you'll like it!
Biggest difference? I am in total control of my food for the first time in my life. No...that's not it exactly, it's more like I don't have to control my food anymore. I don't even think about it. There is no longer the constant will power vs. temptation battle that I have been waging my entire life. I pack my food for the day. I eat it. Done. End of story.
More about this tomorrow when I have a day off. But it struck me yesterday that I feel more confident about everything else in my life now that I am no longer battling food cravings all day long. I feel free, I guess, for the first time in my life, from the shackles of food cravings.
Miracle? That word comes to mind.
If you have food cravings, if you have trouble not thinking about food all day every day, read "Wheat Belly" by Dr. Davis. Maybe it can change your life, too.
Wheat - It's what's not for dinner.
I am so much happier now that I don't eat wheat. Try it, you'll like it!
Biggest difference? I am in total control of my food for the first time in my life. No...that's not it exactly, it's more like I don't have to control my food anymore. I don't even think about it. There is no longer the constant will power vs. temptation battle that I have been waging my entire life. I pack my food for the day. I eat it. Done. End of story.
More about this tomorrow when I have a day off. But it struck me yesterday that I feel more confident about everything else in my life now that I am no longer battling food cravings all day long. I feel free, I guess, for the first time in my life, from the shackles of food cravings.
Miracle? That word comes to mind.
If you have food cravings, if you have trouble not thinking about food all day every day, read "Wheat Belly" by Dr. Davis. Maybe it can change your life, too.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
3/27/2013: Quick Check-In
I don't have much to talk about today or much time to write. I need to head to work and get some stuff done; so I just wanted to take a minute to say all is well on the home front.
I took the day off from exercise today and tomorrow is my normal day off. I am relieved to have two days off in a row. As soon as I decided to do that yesterday, I knew I made the right decision. I need the rest. I'm looking forward to being refreshed and recharged on Friday.
Have a great day!! See you tomorrow.
I took the day off from exercise today and tomorrow is my normal day off. I am relieved to have two days off in a row. As soon as I decided to do that yesterday, I knew I made the right decision. I need the rest. I'm looking forward to being refreshed and recharged on Friday.
Have a great day!! See you tomorrow.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
3/26/2013: Feeling a Little Burnt Out
My sister said there would be days like this! Yep, I'm feeling a little burnt out right now. I have been forcing myself to go to the gym for about a week now, hoping that this feeling will go away; but it has been persistent and I have now decided it is time to take a two day break.
I had a good work out this morning, in spite of the fact that I could barely drag my butt out of bed. I do strength training with Joshua on Tuesday mornings, so it was very helpful knowing there was someone at the gym waiting to meet me at 5:00am this morning. The work out was tough, but I got it done. It felt good to work hard this morning. Now I have decided to take tomorrow off and Thursday is my normal day off, so that will be two days off in a row. Friday is a holiday at work, for Good Friday - what a shock, I had no idea it was a holiday until people began talking about it at work yesterday, so I will get to sleep in a little on Friday, too. It may actually be warm enough to get outside for a bit. I wonder if this snow will melt between now and then...I kind out doubt it. It was 21 degrees this morning, it's pretty frozen out there. Maybe by Saturday the snow will be gone and the sidewalks will be passable again.
I think it will do me good to have a couple days off from exercise. I'm ready for a break.
I rescheduled my trip to Colorado for Monday and Tuesday next week. Monday morning I will meet with a vendor, so that will be a work day, but I will have 5 days away from the office, so that will be nice. I'll spend Monday evening and Tuesday morning with Carla and Christian and head home Tuesday evening. No skiing, but that's OK. Jack and I are going to plan on a ski vacation next year. That will be fun!! I am already looking forward to it.
I weighed 150.0 pounds this morning. That felt good. 150.0 is now going to be my baseline, rather than 153. It was kind of interesting this morning to get on the scale and weigh 150.0 pounds and not feel a need to celebrate. I just sort of nodded and said to myself, "That's good." The first time I got to 150.0 it was such a stretch goal that I had to celebrate, immediately. Of course that meant food and that meant gaining a couple of pounds, and that meant establishing a baseline closer to 153 than 150. It took me two months to settle back down and get serious enough about my diet to lose those 3 pounds again. Oh, the mind games we play with ourselves.
The key to getting back on track with my food was reading "Thinner This Year" and "Wheat Belly." Those books provided me with the reasons I needed to stop eating crap food, including wheat. About 3 weeks ago I eliminated snacking on anything that was not a nutritionally sound food. About 1.5 weeks ago I stopped eating wheat. I replaced those crappy snacks with veggies, hummus, nuts, plain Greek yogurt & mixed berries, and fruit. I go to work with all of my food for the day packed in a grocery sack and I don't get hungry and I am not having cravings for sweets. Since them, those extra few pounds have gradually slipped off, without counting calories or adding any additional exercise. It's made a big difference. If you are having trouble making good food choices, I recommend reading both of those books. The more informed I am the better choices I make. It might work for you, too!
I had a good work out this morning, in spite of the fact that I could barely drag my butt out of bed. I do strength training with Joshua on Tuesday mornings, so it was very helpful knowing there was someone at the gym waiting to meet me at 5:00am this morning. The work out was tough, but I got it done. It felt good to work hard this morning. Now I have decided to take tomorrow off and Thursday is my normal day off, so that will be two days off in a row. Friday is a holiday at work, for Good Friday - what a shock, I had no idea it was a holiday until people began talking about it at work yesterday, so I will get to sleep in a little on Friday, too. It may actually be warm enough to get outside for a bit. I wonder if this snow will melt between now and then...I kind out doubt it. It was 21 degrees this morning, it's pretty frozen out there. Maybe by Saturday the snow will be gone and the sidewalks will be passable again.
I think it will do me good to have a couple days off from exercise. I'm ready for a break.
I rescheduled my trip to Colorado for Monday and Tuesday next week. Monday morning I will meet with a vendor, so that will be a work day, but I will have 5 days away from the office, so that will be nice. I'll spend Monday evening and Tuesday morning with Carla and Christian and head home Tuesday evening. No skiing, but that's OK. Jack and I are going to plan on a ski vacation next year. That will be fun!! I am already looking forward to it.
I weighed 150.0 pounds this morning. That felt good. 150.0 is now going to be my baseline, rather than 153. It was kind of interesting this morning to get on the scale and weigh 150.0 pounds and not feel a need to celebrate. I just sort of nodded and said to myself, "That's good." The first time I got to 150.0 it was such a stretch goal that I had to celebrate, immediately. Of course that meant food and that meant gaining a couple of pounds, and that meant establishing a baseline closer to 153 than 150. It took me two months to settle back down and get serious enough about my diet to lose those 3 pounds again. Oh, the mind games we play with ourselves.
The key to getting back on track with my food was reading "Thinner This Year" and "Wheat Belly." Those books provided me with the reasons I needed to stop eating crap food, including wheat. About 3 weeks ago I eliminated snacking on anything that was not a nutritionally sound food. About 1.5 weeks ago I stopped eating wheat. I replaced those crappy snacks with veggies, hummus, nuts, plain Greek yogurt & mixed berries, and fruit. I go to work with all of my food for the day packed in a grocery sack and I don't get hungry and I am not having cravings for sweets. Since them, those extra few pounds have gradually slipped off, without counting calories or adding any additional exercise. It's made a big difference. If you are having trouble making good food choices, I recommend reading both of those books. The more informed I am the better choices I make. It might work for you, too!
Monday, March 25, 2013
3/25/2013: I Need Spring!
I know I'm not the only one out there complaining about the weather, but man, I'm done with this snow and frigid weather. I desperately want to run and bike outdoors. I am sick of the treadmill and the stationary bike. I'm over it already. I feel my enthusiasm for exercise waning with each day that it is too icy, cold, and miserable to be outdoors. My sister up in Michigan is probably thinking, "Quit your whining, already," as she is probably looking at another month of winter up there; but last year at this time I was planting my tomatoes. This year all I can plant in my yard is a snowman!! I know it well end soon and I just need to strong-arm my way through another week or two of cardio workouts indoors, but I am so ready for this snow to be gone for good!!
I weighed 150.2 pounds this morning when I woke up. Just for fun, I weighed myself after my swim and I weighed 149.8 pounds!! That's the first time I have seen a number on a scale start with 14something in decades. It's not quite official, I don't mark my chart with my after exercise weight, but it was still fun to see the number flash up on the scale. Tomorrow, maybe? Perhaps I will be able to put an official mark on my chart below my 150 pound line. I am looking forward to 150 being my new average weight that I fluctuate around, rather than 153. That feels better to me.
I read an amazing article about a couple that collectively lost 500 pounds over 2 years. She started out at a size 28 and is now a size 0! All diet and exercise. He had been studying for awhile about what it took to lose weight and on their first anniversary he told her that he was tired of being big. So together, they went for it. He designed the exercise routines, she cooked the meals. They started out only being able to walk for 30 minutes a day on the treadmill, but they did that 6 days a week. She just finished her first half marathon. How inspiring!! They look like completely different people. They are so young, too. It makes me happy to see people, even complete strangers, makes such drastic changes in their lives. The rest of their lives will be so much better because they figured out how to lose the weight and start exercising every day while they were young. I hope they inspire others as well. Here is the link to their article:
Couple loses 500 pounds in 2 years
I was in a bad mood most of the day yesterday, mostly because my trip to Colorado was busted by the snow. I was looking forward to spending time with Carla and meeting Christian, but I was also looking forward to skiing for a day. I have not been skiing for 30 years, not since I was in college, and I was really looking forward to it. I was very curious about whether or not I would remember how to ski. If Carla is in Vail next winter, I am definitely going to make sure I go out and ski while she is there. This winter was rough, with my job being new and having so many things to do, but next year should be much more doable. I didn't realize how much I really wanted to ski again until I thought I was going to get to do it, and then it got nabbed away from me at the last minute. Next winter, I'm going skiing!!
In spite of my less than stellar mood, Jack and I had a decent day, yesterday. We shoveled the driveway, we went bowling, and I got our meals cooked for the week. On the not so good side, though, I got a cramp in my foot, between the pad of my toes and the arch. It hurt!! It finally went away after massage, stretching and heat. I hope that doesn't happen often. Ruth mentioned she got foot cramps about a week after she gave up wheat, too. Is the cramp related to the change in my diet? Perhaps. I imagine my blood chemistry is changing as my body adjusts to a wheat-free diet. I am hoping that cramp was an isolated incident or, at the very least, that foot cramps are a short lived thing as my body transitions to its wheat-free status.
KU won!! The first half of that game was torture, but Self and his team always seem to know how to adjust at half time. I was glad they were only down by 9 at the half, because I knew they had potential to recover from that. Williams was a good coach, but he was never good at adjusting to what was happening on the court. He built strong teams with a deep bench, a lot of speed, and a lot of endurance. But his teams played a certain kind of game. Self seems much more adaptable. He seems to be able to read an opponent in the first half and come back in the second half with their number down. It doesn't always work. Sometimes the hole is too deep, hence the three losses this season, but it worked yesterday. Against North Carolina. That brightened my mood a bit!!
It'll be a busy week at work, so I better run. Have a great day.
I weighed 150.2 pounds this morning when I woke up. Just for fun, I weighed myself after my swim and I weighed 149.8 pounds!! That's the first time I have seen a number on a scale start with 14something in decades. It's not quite official, I don't mark my chart with my after exercise weight, but it was still fun to see the number flash up on the scale. Tomorrow, maybe? Perhaps I will be able to put an official mark on my chart below my 150 pound line. I am looking forward to 150 being my new average weight that I fluctuate around, rather than 153. That feels better to me.
I read an amazing article about a couple that collectively lost 500 pounds over 2 years. She started out at a size 28 and is now a size 0! All diet and exercise. He had been studying for awhile about what it took to lose weight and on their first anniversary he told her that he was tired of being big. So together, they went for it. He designed the exercise routines, she cooked the meals. They started out only being able to walk for 30 minutes a day on the treadmill, but they did that 6 days a week. She just finished her first half marathon. How inspiring!! They look like completely different people. They are so young, too. It makes me happy to see people, even complete strangers, makes such drastic changes in their lives. The rest of their lives will be so much better because they figured out how to lose the weight and start exercising every day while they were young. I hope they inspire others as well. Here is the link to their article:
Couple loses 500 pounds in 2 years
I was in a bad mood most of the day yesterday, mostly because my trip to Colorado was busted by the snow. I was looking forward to spending time with Carla and meeting Christian, but I was also looking forward to skiing for a day. I have not been skiing for 30 years, not since I was in college, and I was really looking forward to it. I was very curious about whether or not I would remember how to ski. If Carla is in Vail next winter, I am definitely going to make sure I go out and ski while she is there. This winter was rough, with my job being new and having so many things to do, but next year should be much more doable. I didn't realize how much I really wanted to ski again until I thought I was going to get to do it, and then it got nabbed away from me at the last minute. Next winter, I'm going skiing!!
In spite of my less than stellar mood, Jack and I had a decent day, yesterday. We shoveled the driveway, we went bowling, and I got our meals cooked for the week. On the not so good side, though, I got a cramp in my foot, between the pad of my toes and the arch. It hurt!! It finally went away after massage, stretching and heat. I hope that doesn't happen often. Ruth mentioned she got foot cramps about a week after she gave up wheat, too. Is the cramp related to the change in my diet? Perhaps. I imagine my blood chemistry is changing as my body adjusts to a wheat-free diet. I am hoping that cramp was an isolated incident or, at the very least, that foot cramps are a short lived thing as my body transitions to its wheat-free status.
KU won!! The first half of that game was torture, but Self and his team always seem to know how to adjust at half time. I was glad they were only down by 9 at the half, because I knew they had potential to recover from that. Williams was a good coach, but he was never good at adjusting to what was happening on the court. He built strong teams with a deep bench, a lot of speed, and a lot of endurance. But his teams played a certain kind of game. Self seems much more adaptable. He seems to be able to read an opponent in the first half and come back in the second half with their number down. It doesn't always work. Sometimes the hole is too deep, hence the three losses this season, but it worked yesterday. Against North Carolina. That brightened my mood a bit!!
It'll be a busy week at work, so I better run. Have a great day.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
3/24/2013: Change of Plans
The snow changed my plans. Denver got hit hard yesterday and we are getting hit hard now. Because of the snow, my 11:45am flight to Denver was canceled. There was a chance to get out on a flight that was scheduled for 5:00pm but was already delayed to 7:45pm with no guarantees it would make it out of Kansas City and to Denver. Considering the fact that this was a one and a half day visit, there were no promises I was going to make it to Denver even if I did spend the entire day in the airport, and that I had a two hour drive to get to Vail, after dark, on snow covered highways after I got to Denver, I opted for changing my plans. I thought maybe I would get to go to Vail next weekend to see Carla, but that may not work out for her and Christian. So I am not sure when I will go. It turns out the evening flight left here are 8:45pm. I'm glad I chose to come home. Spending all day at the airport waiting to see if our flight was actually going to take off would have driven me nuts. In addition to that, Jack and I saw a crazy wreck on the news, just outside of Denver, last night. The roads looked terrible. I would have been a mess trying to drive to Vail on those roads. I am very disappointed that I don't get to spend the day with Carla and Christian skiing today, I was really looking forward to that. But I think I made the right decision to come home. I hope they are having a good day. I hope I get to see them soon.
It's March 24th and there is a crazy amount of snow out there. I haven't measured the snow in our front yard yet, but I am guessing 8 inches, maybe. Wow. I guess Jack and I will be shoveling snow again today.
Yesterday was a weird food day. I didn't break any of my Food Plan for Life rules, exactly, but it wasn't a great day. I had a big, wonderful breakfast with plenty of veggies and three eggs, knowing it would be a while before I had lunch. On the way to the airport I received a text message saying my flight had been delayed until 1:50. OK...first change of plans. We decided to do a little shopping. We stopped at Walmart, the only store we can find that sells the intermediate light bulbs we need for the ceiling fans in our family room. Then we stopped at Coldwater Creek and I found a couple more spring tops and another pair of spring pants, for 30% off. From there we were going to grab some lunch, but then I got another text message saying the flight was moved up to 1:10. OK, no time for lunch, we headed straight for the airport. Jack dropped me off, I checked the monitor and it still said scheduled departure for 1:10. It was about noon. I made it through security and headed to the gate, to make sure everything was still going according to plan, and then I was going to grab a light lunch at the Pork and Fork (or whatever that restaurant at KCI is called). By the time I got to the gate the flight was canceled. After waiting in line forever, getting my flights changed to next weekend, and waiting for Jack to come back to the airport to pick me up, it was about 1:00. Larry and Luz had invited us over for the afternoon, which Jack was going to do on his own, since I was scheduled to be in Denver. We debated whether or not we should stop somewhere for lunch first, but decided to head straight to Larry's.
Larry and Luz were making dinner for us, so we hung out and visited while they did their thing. I snacked on almonds, cherry tomatoes, a cutie, and an apple. All within the range of normal for my Food Plan, but no protein to speak of. We ate at about 3:45 or 4:00. Luz had made ceviche, with shrimp in it, but mostly it was veggies in a light broth with a little bit of shrimp. To give it a little substance I put dried plantain chips in it. My choices were dried plantain, popcorn, white rice, or corn nuts. The plantain chips seemed like the best option. Dinner then consisted rice, sausage, and quinoa patties. The quinoa patties were made with bread crumbs, so they were out. I don't eat pork or beef, so the sausage was out. So I ate a few more plantain chips. Then it started to snow and Jack and I headed home. We needed to go grocery shopping for the weekend and a lot of snow was predicted so we decided to stop at the store before settling in for the evening. The snow was coming down hard, so we stopped at the store and switched cars. I took advantage of that opportunity and grabbed the last cooked chicken breast out of the fridge for a little quick protein, then we headed to the store.
When we got home I ate some hummus and carrots. Then things took a turn for the worse. The one sweet thing I still allow myself is my 85% cocoa dark chocolate. Both Jen from "Thinner This Year," and Dr. Davis from "Wheat Belly" say the 85% cocoa dark chocolate is a good thing. One bar is 2.5 servings. I am usually pretty good at having a serving or less per day. Last night, at the end of a very strange food day that was more or less beyond my control and being severely disappointed about not getting to go to Vail and see Carla, I managed to work my way through an entire chocolate bar. That was probably not the best thing I could do for myself. Ah well, it does sort of prove my point about my Food Plan for Life, though. My Food Plan is pretty cut and dry. No Dead Foods (including, and perhaps most importantly, no wheat) except for special occasions. I think the special occasions will still be Wheat Free, by the way. Prior to implementing my Food Plan about a week ago, I would justify little diversions into junk food because I counted the calories. The result was intense food cravings from about 2:00 - 6:00 in the afternoon that were just driving me nuts. All I would think about for four hours was finding something sweet to eat. "Thinner This Year" convinced me to give up the Dead Foods. "Wheat Belly" led me to believe that wheat may be the worst Dead Food of them all. So instead of slicing and dicing calories and rationalizing my dalliances into junk food, I drew a line in the sand and said, "None." Unless there is a celebratory special occasion. Then I can eat or drink whatever I want.
This has helped me so much. First of all, the food cravings are GONE. I no longer start looking for sweet treats at 2:00 in the afternoon. Second of all, I just walk on by the donuts on the counter at work. I actually experienced a revulsion when I walked by the snack machine at work the other day, very similar to the revulsion I feel when I see a pack of cigarettes. A sort of, "Ew, that stuff is poison," moment, without even taking the time to process what I was thinking. The more I read about what happens inside my body when I eat crap, the easier it is for me to see it for what it is, addictive junk food that ravages the cells of my body when I eat it. This isn't harmless stuff that may just cause me to weigh a little more. It is poison that causes an incredible chain reaction of negative events to occur within my body. It's not an inane substance that causes me to gain a little neutral fat, it's a negative agent that causes insulin spikes, inflammatory agents to get released, damage to my cells and arteries, and to gain fat which is an active organ in my body that continues to release inflammatory signals long after the food I ate is gone from my body. This is how I see Dead Foods, now. It helps a lot of to have a cut and dry rule, no Dead Food.
Ah, but that brings me back to my dark chocolate. The Docs all say dark chocolate is good for you, go ahead and enjoy it. 85% cocoa dark chocolate, to be specific. It has just enough sugar in it to be palatable. Below are some excerpts from an article on Web MD explaining some of the health benefits of dark chocolate. Here is the link to the full article:
http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20030827/dark-chocolate-is-healthy-chocolate?page=2
"But that's no license to go on a chocolate binge. Eating more dark chocolate can help lower blood pressure -- if you've reached a certain age and have mild high blood pressure, say the researchers. But you have to balance the extra calories by eating less of other things. And if health is your excuse for eating chocolate, remember the word "moderate" as you nibble."
That word, moderation, is difficult. It's so much easier to look at a food and say, "Yes," or "No." It is much more difficult to look at a food and say, "Just a little bit." Particularly when that food is your one and only, "Treat," and when you've had a bad day, and when your food for the day has been so messed up already. I consider what I did yesterday, eating that entire chocolate bar, a binge. It makes me wonder if I should just eliminate dark chocolate completely, just like the Dead Foods and the wheat. I'm not quite ready to do that, however. For now my plan will allow a serving or less of dark chocolate a day, but I will be careful to measure it. On the other hand, If I can't consistently limit it to one serving a day (by consistent, I mean always), then I will eliminate dark chocolate from my diet. We'll see how it goes.
I'm glad yesterday is over. It was a rough day, full of disappointment and frustration and with a lack of control over my food. Today should be more or less normal, in spite of the 8 or so inches of snow on the ground on March 24th.
By the way, I weighed 151.0 this morning, for those of you interested in that sort of thing.
It's March 24th and there is a crazy amount of snow out there. I haven't measured the snow in our front yard yet, but I am guessing 8 inches, maybe. Wow. I guess Jack and I will be shoveling snow again today.
Yesterday was a weird food day. I didn't break any of my Food Plan for Life rules, exactly, but it wasn't a great day. I had a big, wonderful breakfast with plenty of veggies and three eggs, knowing it would be a while before I had lunch. On the way to the airport I received a text message saying my flight had been delayed until 1:50. OK...first change of plans. We decided to do a little shopping. We stopped at Walmart, the only store we can find that sells the intermediate light bulbs we need for the ceiling fans in our family room. Then we stopped at Coldwater Creek and I found a couple more spring tops and another pair of spring pants, for 30% off. From there we were going to grab some lunch, but then I got another text message saying the flight was moved up to 1:10. OK, no time for lunch, we headed straight for the airport. Jack dropped me off, I checked the monitor and it still said scheduled departure for 1:10. It was about noon. I made it through security and headed to the gate, to make sure everything was still going according to plan, and then I was going to grab a light lunch at the Pork and Fork (or whatever that restaurant at KCI is called). By the time I got to the gate the flight was canceled. After waiting in line forever, getting my flights changed to next weekend, and waiting for Jack to come back to the airport to pick me up, it was about 1:00. Larry and Luz had invited us over for the afternoon, which Jack was going to do on his own, since I was scheduled to be in Denver. We debated whether or not we should stop somewhere for lunch first, but decided to head straight to Larry's.
Larry and Luz were making dinner for us, so we hung out and visited while they did their thing. I snacked on almonds, cherry tomatoes, a cutie, and an apple. All within the range of normal for my Food Plan, but no protein to speak of. We ate at about 3:45 or 4:00. Luz had made ceviche, with shrimp in it, but mostly it was veggies in a light broth with a little bit of shrimp. To give it a little substance I put dried plantain chips in it. My choices were dried plantain, popcorn, white rice, or corn nuts. The plantain chips seemed like the best option. Dinner then consisted rice, sausage, and quinoa patties. The quinoa patties were made with bread crumbs, so they were out. I don't eat pork or beef, so the sausage was out. So I ate a few more plantain chips. Then it started to snow and Jack and I headed home. We needed to go grocery shopping for the weekend and a lot of snow was predicted so we decided to stop at the store before settling in for the evening. The snow was coming down hard, so we stopped at the store and switched cars. I took advantage of that opportunity and grabbed the last cooked chicken breast out of the fridge for a little quick protein, then we headed to the store.
When we got home I ate some hummus and carrots. Then things took a turn for the worse. The one sweet thing I still allow myself is my 85% cocoa dark chocolate. Both Jen from "Thinner This Year," and Dr. Davis from "Wheat Belly" say the 85% cocoa dark chocolate is a good thing. One bar is 2.5 servings. I am usually pretty good at having a serving or less per day. Last night, at the end of a very strange food day that was more or less beyond my control and being severely disappointed about not getting to go to Vail and see Carla, I managed to work my way through an entire chocolate bar. That was probably not the best thing I could do for myself. Ah well, it does sort of prove my point about my Food Plan for Life, though. My Food Plan is pretty cut and dry. No Dead Foods (including, and perhaps most importantly, no wheat) except for special occasions. I think the special occasions will still be Wheat Free, by the way. Prior to implementing my Food Plan about a week ago, I would justify little diversions into junk food because I counted the calories. The result was intense food cravings from about 2:00 - 6:00 in the afternoon that were just driving me nuts. All I would think about for four hours was finding something sweet to eat. "Thinner This Year" convinced me to give up the Dead Foods. "Wheat Belly" led me to believe that wheat may be the worst Dead Food of them all. So instead of slicing and dicing calories and rationalizing my dalliances into junk food, I drew a line in the sand and said, "None." Unless there is a celebratory special occasion. Then I can eat or drink whatever I want.
This has helped me so much. First of all, the food cravings are GONE. I no longer start looking for sweet treats at 2:00 in the afternoon. Second of all, I just walk on by the donuts on the counter at work. I actually experienced a revulsion when I walked by the snack machine at work the other day, very similar to the revulsion I feel when I see a pack of cigarettes. A sort of, "Ew, that stuff is poison," moment, without even taking the time to process what I was thinking. The more I read about what happens inside my body when I eat crap, the easier it is for me to see it for what it is, addictive junk food that ravages the cells of my body when I eat it. This isn't harmless stuff that may just cause me to weigh a little more. It is poison that causes an incredible chain reaction of negative events to occur within my body. It's not an inane substance that causes me to gain a little neutral fat, it's a negative agent that causes insulin spikes, inflammatory agents to get released, damage to my cells and arteries, and to gain fat which is an active organ in my body that continues to release inflammatory signals long after the food I ate is gone from my body. This is how I see Dead Foods, now. It helps a lot of to have a cut and dry rule, no Dead Food.
Ah, but that brings me back to my dark chocolate. The Docs all say dark chocolate is good for you, go ahead and enjoy it. 85% cocoa dark chocolate, to be specific. It has just enough sugar in it to be palatable. Below are some excerpts from an article on Web MD explaining some of the health benefits of dark chocolate. Here is the link to the full article:
http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20030827/dark-chocolate-is-healthy-chocolate?page=2
Dark Chocolate Lowers Blood Pressure
Dark
chocolate -- not white chocolate -- lowers high blood pressure, say Dirk
Taubert, MD, PhD, and colleagues...
Antioxidants in Dark Chocolate
Dark
chocolate -- but not milk chocolate or dark chocolate eaten with milk
-- is a potent antioxidant, report Mauro Serafini, PhD, of Italy's
National Institute for Food and Nutrition Research in Rome, and colleagues. Antioxidants gobble up free radicals, destructive molecules that are implicated in heart disease and other ailments.
The Studies
Taubert's
team signed up six men and seven women aged 55-64. All had just been
diagnosed with mild high blood pressure -- on average, systolic blood
pressure (the top number) of 153 and diastolic blood pressure (the
bottom number) of 84.
Every day for two weeks, they
ate a 100-gram candy bar and were asked to balance its 480 calories by
not eating other foods similar in nutrients and calories. Half the
patients got dark chocolate and half got white chocolate.
Those
who ate dark chocolate had a significant drop in blood pressure (by an
average of 5 points for systolic and an average of 2 points for
diastolic blood pressure). Those who ate white chocolate did not.
In
the second study, Serafini's team signed up seven healthy women and
five healthy men aged 25-35. On different days they each ate 100 grams
of dark chocolate by itself, 100 grams of dark chocolate with a small
glass of whole milk, or 200 grams of milk chocolate.
An
hour later, those who ate dark chocolate alone had the most total
antioxidants in their blood. And they had higher levels of epicatechin, a
particularly healthy compound found in chocolate. The milk chocolate
eaters had the lowest epicatechin levels of all.
Chocolate for Blood Pressure: Darker Is Better
What
is it about dark chocolate? The answer is plant phenols -- cocoa
phenols, to be exact. These compounds are known to lower blood pressure.
Chocolates
made in Europe are generally richer in cocoa phenols than those made in
the U.S. So if you're going to try this at home, remember: Darker is
better.
But the doctors due caution you not to overdo it. They say:
"But that's no license to go on a chocolate binge. Eating more dark chocolate can help lower blood pressure -- if you've reached a certain age and have mild high blood pressure, say the researchers. But you have to balance the extra calories by eating less of other things. And if health is your excuse for eating chocolate, remember the word "moderate" as you nibble."
That word, moderation, is difficult. It's so much easier to look at a food and say, "Yes," or "No." It is much more difficult to look at a food and say, "Just a little bit." Particularly when that food is your one and only, "Treat," and when you've had a bad day, and when your food for the day has been so messed up already. I consider what I did yesterday, eating that entire chocolate bar, a binge. It makes me wonder if I should just eliminate dark chocolate completely, just like the Dead Foods and the wheat. I'm not quite ready to do that, however. For now my plan will allow a serving or less of dark chocolate a day, but I will be careful to measure it. On the other hand, If I can't consistently limit it to one serving a day (by consistent, I mean always), then I will eliminate dark chocolate from my diet. We'll see how it goes.
I'm glad yesterday is over. It was a rough day, full of disappointment and frustration and with a lack of control over my food. Today should be more or less normal, in spite of the 8 or so inches of snow on the ground on March 24th.
By the way, I weighed 151.0 this morning, for those of you interested in that sort of thing.
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