To Count or Not To Count...

As promised, today I'm going to share something that just doesn't work for me. In one of my very first articles, I mentioned using a food journal to help me stay under my "calorie-limit" for each day and gave links to how you could find what your limit should be. This method works well for a lot of people - you may even be one of them - but not for me. I have tried food journals and counting calories several times and it's never once worked. This time I made it a little more than 3 weeks  before it fizzled out. 

The most common thing I hear people say in reference to food journaling is, "it's really helped me see what I'm actually eating and to see where I need to cut back." Honestly, my first reaction to this statement is really?? You don't know what you're eating each day unless you write it down and look at it later? That seems like a pretty big problem. The first thing we need to do is be aware of what we're putting in our mouth, as we're putting it in our mouth! That should not be the reason we are keeping track of what we eat. 

However, there are some good things that can come from keeping a journal of our food intake. It can help you make sure you've taken in everything that you need to - have I had all the fruits and veggies I need today? have I had 6 or 7 glasses of water so far today? Do I need more protein today? Also, if you record how you feel as well, it can help you link what you eat to how you feel. I have seen how sugar gives me stomachaches, how not enough water gives me a headache, how too many tomato-based sauces give me heartburn, etc. What we eat has everything to do with how our body functions and journaling can help you see the correlation. For these reasons, I will continue to give journaling a try because I think it's important to see how your diet effects your health. But I certainly don't need to write it down to know that I had too much junk one day.

The other aspect that fails horribly for me is counting calories. Being so concerned by keeping track of how many calories I've had and how many I have to go actually makes me hungry. It keeps my focus on food and eating all day long which naturally makes me hungry. I kept count for about 3 weeks and noticed that my calorie intake progressively increased with each day that I kept track. This is how it always happens for me so I don't think I will try to count calories again. For me, it just doesn't work. It wasn't all a loss though, counting calories did help me to get a better grasp on portions and meal times. The first week, when I was doing well staying under my limit, I ate at regular meal times (breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner) and used smaller plates and servings. Therefore, as long as I make sure to eat only at regular intervals and not all day long, and to watch my portions when I do eat, I can be fairly confident that I'm staying within a healthy calorie range without actually going through the hassle of counting each and every one. If you really like the idea of counting though, there are some great apps out there to help you - the Livestrong app, the Spark People app, and My Fitness Pal are all great apps to help you keep track of not only your calories, but also your fat, sugar, carb, protein, fiber, etc. intake. And they happen to be a journal as well... win/win. 

For those of you who have tried calorie counting and food journaling, do they work for you? Why or why not?

Corn, Pepper & Black Bean Base

This quick and easy veggie base is great to have on hand. I use it all the time in a lot of different ways.

Ingredients

1 bag of organic frozen sweet corn

1 can organic black beans

1 red pepper

1 green pepper

Dice the peppers, drain and rinse the beans, and mix all ingredients together. Doesn't get much easier than that, right? I divide it into smaller portions and pop them in the freezer. 

Favorite Uses

• Hashbrown Scrambled Eggs: Toss 3/4 cup of hash browns in a saute pan with a little bit of olive oil (or organic canola oil Pam) until crisp. Add veggie base until warmed through. Push to side and scramble 3 egg whites on the other side of the pan. Mix all ingredients together. Top with Mexican cheese, plain, organic Greek yogurt (substituted for sour cream), and salsa of choice. Delish!
• Crockpot Salsa Chicken: Place 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts in crockpot. Top with veggie base and peach & mango salsa. Cook on low 8 hours. Once cooked, there are several ways you can eat it, with tortillas or taco shells, with rice and beans, etc.
• Mix with shredded chicken for tacos.
• Serve over greens in a taco salad.
• Be creative!

Venting Some Frustrations...

I've not been sure of what to write lately. This week I became paralyzed by the overwhelming amounts of information that's out there and from trying to decipher what is true and what is to make a profit. The desire to keep trying to wade my way through the masses and get to the bottom of the health mystery and the desire to throw my hands in the air and give up duked it out, and unfortunately, this week the desire to get healthy was on the losing side. Because of my knee injury, I haven't been able to do a lot of exercising the past few weeks, and that led to a backward slide in my nutrition as well. My sweets intake skyrocketed this week and I had an insatiable craving for "snacks" all week long. And, as expected, I didn't feel well for much of the week - sluggish, weak, headaches, bloated, stomachaches, etc.

In the Introduction to his book, Food Rules, Michael Pollan voices nicely what I find so frustrating. In talking about the Western diet, and the Diet and Nutrition Industry's desire to pinpoint the exact problem in the Western diet (carbs? sugar? salt? calories? etc.) while ignoring the entire diet as a whole, he says: "There's a lot of money in the Western diet. The more you process any food, the more profitable it becomes. The healthcare industry makes more money treating chronic diseases than preventing them. So we ignore the elephant in the room and focus instead on the good and evil nutrients, the identities of which seem to change with every new study. But for the Nutritional Industrial Complex, this uncertainty is not necessarily a problem, because confusion is a good business." (Emphasis mine.) He goes on to say that every time the industry discovers the "real problem," the food manufacturers can go back and tweak their products to reflect these findings, and then everyone across the board can make another round of profit without caring if they actually improve anyone's health - in fact, they may even aim NOT to improve health so that they can continue to "fix" the problem. This perfectly articulates the problem which I find so MADDENING when I try to do any research - why it all contradicts itself, why there is no clear answer, why you can try a lot of different things and still not lose weight or improve health conditions.

One obvious point that jumps out after changing how I think about food: what we eat isn't actually food. Pollan uses the term edible foodlike substances. Every time they tweak something to fit the new fad, it becomes less food and more product. There are a lot of things I loved about his book and I'm sure to reference it again, but in the meanwhile, I highly recommend you buy a copy for yourself. It's very short and consists of straightforward, common sense rules.

So I guess the point of this article was just to vent some frustrations... I'm ready to dive back into the mire and will continue to use my common sense approach to try and decipher what is actually helpful and what is not. Stay tuned... (hopefully) exciting stuff to come...

Mini Workouts Make Great Fillers

These short, quick, and relatively easy workouts make great fillers in between other more intense workouts (see Mix and Match Cardio and Circuit Workouts), or they can be repeated several times for a full workout on their own.

Mix and Match Cardio and Circuit Workouts

These are my absolute favorite! All of these are on my Healthy is as Healthy does Pinboard so I usually open these in separate tabs on my internet browser and go through as many of them as I can... sometimes I mix straight strength workouts in between. (See On the Road to Lean Legs and Arms and On the Road to Fab Abs for mini strength workouts.











And then when you get really good, you can try this killer workout:

On the Road to Lean Legs and Arms

Love this one:


Push-ups and dips are some of my least favorites so I don't love this one as much:

On the Road to Fab Abs

Love this workout for abs... I mix it in with both cardio and other strength workouts.


This is a great workout that can be built upon, but I should point out that to do this workout properly, your butt needs to be a little lower than hers is in the picture so that your body forms a straight line (or, plank.) To be fair though, the first time I did this workout, my booty was right up there too! It's tough at first!


Here's another great one... either mix it in to another workout, or repeat it for a great workout.

There's Always More Where That Came From

I have this awful tendency to stuff my face full of food, well past the point when I'm full, because I love food. This is probably my primary hindrance keeping me from a healthy weight. I've increased my workout activity by quite a bit and decreased my inactive "couch potato" time as much as possible; I've made drastic changes in what I eat, and have even done well reducing my portion size - I often use one of my daughter's toddler plates. The problem is I go back for seconds. (To be fair, I have to have made some improvement here as I used to go back for seconds with my normal overly large adult dinner plates and now I go back for seconds with Emerson's itty bitty toddler plate, but it's still seconds. The initial serving is actually an accurate serving - I don't need more.)

As I mentioned, part of the problem is that I just love food. I could never be anorexic because I love the taste of food way too much. I really thought about how this impacted my eating habits and I realized this causes me to eat for the wrong reason. I usually eat because I want to taste something and not because I'm hungry. And all that causes me to do is want to taste it again... and again... and again. For me, satisfying my desire to taste something doesn't satiate the desire, but augments it instead. I have to have more.

This leads me to the next part of the problem. Did you know that the American culture is one of the only cultures that uses an external cue to indicate when we should stop eating? When our plate is cleaned, when the tv show is over, when the lunch break ends, etc. Almost all other cultures use an internal cue to alert them when it's time to stop eating - when they feel about 80% full. The reason they stop at 80% is because it takes about 20 minutes for the effects of fullness to be manifested. Do we as Americans have any idea how to even tell when we're about 80% full? Would we stop eating then even if we did?

For me, historically these answers have been 'no.' I am not in tune with my body so I have no idea how full I am until I'm about to pop and have to unbutton the top button on my pants just to be comfortable. (Just in case you're wondering, that is a really bad thing!) And given the fact that I often keep eating even after I feel completely full because I liked the taste of what I was eating, I'd have to say I probably wouldn't stop eating at 80% either. (Again, that's a really bad thing!)

Lately I've been trying to remind myself of one large American (or any first world) blessing: There is always more where that came from. I am beyond blessed to live in a place where there really is more where that came from. I don't have to try and eat it all at once in case there isn't any more later. Sometimes this reminder works, sometimes it doesn't. Hopefully over time it will work more and more. For now, I'm trying to serve myself only one serving for whatever I'm eating and then wait 20 minutes before deciding if I want more or not. Generally, giving myself a 20 minute hiatus is enough to break the need for just one more bite (just one more!). After that pause, I can honestly judge whether I'm full or not.

And the added benefit of allowing myself to have leftovers is that there actually will be more the next day! And it saves money!!

My Favorite WarmUp Workout

I've started using this workout as a warm up and it's become one of my favorites! Do it once for a warmup or 3 times for a full cardio workout.

Let's Think About What We Know About Processed Foods

I apologize for my brief disappearance. After a crazy week, which included me taking a 4ft. x 1ft. mirror 2 inches into my knee (and the resulting ER trip, stitches, knee brace and crutches), I am finally back on blogger! Last time, I talked about using common sense to think about things we know to be true about produce. Today I want to do the same for processed foods.

Another reason for the delay is that this next topic is pretty involved, with the capacity to include a large variety of food and beverage products. To be exact, food processing is anything that is done to food before it is made available for us to eat. This could be anything from freezing a food, to prepackaged meals found on the shelf. Obviously that's a wide range of products, so it's not possible to give an opinion one way or the other on the group 'processed foods.' For the purpose of this article, I want to zero in on packaged foods with preservatives added to extend their shelf life.

Let's go back to what we know about the human body. Our body is an organism made up of several systems working in congruence to keep us healthy and alive. One of these systems is the digestive system. The definition of digest is to break down food in the stomach and intestines. In essence, digest is the exact opposite of preserve. So why would we want to put foods designed not to break down into our bodies which are made to break things down? That doesn't make any sense. The obvious result of this idiotic setup is that these kinds of foods hang out in our bodies (my body's hangout spots are my hips and thighs) while our bodies work overtime to try and break them down (possibly at the expense of other important functions?). This is where I can see the advantage to doing some kind of detox - to give the body time to catch up and digest all the preservatives I've loaded into it over time. If I just keep adding more and more preservatives, my body will always be behind. But if I do a detox, I'll give my body an opportunity to get back on track. This concept has been festering in my mind for a while now, but I am still researching. There are several different kinds of detox programs and I don't feel I know enough to start one in particular yet. So stay tuned, more on detoxes to come.

In the meanwhile, cutting out preservatives will be a big help. This is much easier said than done though. The list of different preservatives is quite long and can be as innocuous as salt or as dangerous as TBHQ. Very likely, any ingredients on the side of the package that you can't pronounce are preservatives. I found this fantastic list which has the vast majority of preservatives you're likely to find, and also indicates whether they're linked to hyperactivity, cancer or asthma. An easy guideline to go by though is the longer the shelf life, the worse it is. If something does not go bad, it should not be eaten.

This burger from McDonald's has been sitting out for 6 months:
It looks about the same as it did on day one. I've seen other pictures, though I can't find any at the moment, of fast food burgers that have been sitting out for more than a year or two with no change! Is that REALLY what you want to put in your body??? Do your body a favor and only give it foods and beverages that will make it easy to do its job. Your health and your waistline will thank you for it!!!