No Failing

Some of my clients are facing new weight loss challenges and the dreaded plateau, but you can actually be on a successful weight loss track, and because you don’t KNOW what a successful track looks like, it may feel like you are failing.

Once you believe that you have screwed up, it is easy to say “screw it” and really screw up. I am good at that! If only you knew how well you were doing! While success does depend on your specific goals, starting point, body type and exercise routine, there are a few things that are consistent across the board. Here are some things to consider:

1. Weight loss does NOT come in the form of losing two pounds every week until you reach your goal, no matter how well you’ve stuck to your food and exercise plan.

When you gain weight, you don’t gain two pounds every single week in a measured fashion. You’re not going to lose it in a measured fashion no matter how well you stick to your plan. You might lose two pounds one week. You might even lose three pounds in a week. Then, you might lose one pound the next week.

Some weeks you might lose zero, and there are weeks you even gain. These weeks are the most frustrating, and we all have these kinds of weeks where we feel like we’re doing everything right and the scale doesn’t give us what we want.

Keep track of the weekly weigh-ins but take a look at the month and see the overall trend. You might have gained a 1/2 pound one of the weeks but take note if you lost 4 pounds overall for the month. If the month is trending downwards, you are in the right place.

2. Nobody is perfect 100% of the time.

Just because you went out drinking and ate all the bread, stuffed yourself with fried food and had two desserts, and then woke up and had eggs Benedict the next day does not mean you have failed.

Everyone does this.

We all make a commitment and we all slip up. I ate an entire chocolate cake the other day. You fell. So what? Learn what will work for you to get back on track. You can fall and still be on a successful weight loss track by simply making the decision to get back there.

Real life weight loss is like a marathon, some miles are effortless, some are excruciating and the only way you really fail is if you quit.

Something New

Hi.  I am trying a different blog format, so for now I have put this blog on hold.  Please check out my new format at musclemommy.net

Kids Can’t Eat What is Not There

The last few months I have noticed a down hill spiral of eating habits in our house. Breakfasts and snacks became a free for all of low nutrient, high fat, high calorie foods. (Lunches were packed healthy, and dinners became the only really healthy meal that the kids would eat at home) I was guilty of buying too many snacky foods, which became the kids first choice. This of course led to lots of battles.

I decided to throw out every snack food that was unhealthy and replace everything with healthy choices. Not a single unhealthy snack left in our house. But, I did tell the kids that they can have one day a week where they can choose a treat.

It is going on three weeks now, and the kids have not complained once about their snacks and food options. I am kind of surprised, as I thought for sure I would hear a lot of whining about nothing “good to eat”. The best part is that the kids are chowing on all the healthy stuff and loving it.

Kids, especially younger ones, will eat mostly what’s available at home. That’s why it’s important to control the supply lines — the foods that you serve for meals and have on hand for snacks. Kids can’t eat what is not there. A side bonus is that you will not be tempted by your kids snacks.

Here are some basic tips that are great for kids but also for parents:

1. Work fruits and vegetables into the daily routine, aiming for the goal of at least five servings a day. Be sure you serve fruit or vegetables at every meal.

2. Make it easy for kids to choose healthy snacks by keeping fruits and vegetables on hand and ready to eat. Other good snacks that my kids love include low-fat yogurt blended with some low fat milk to make a shake/smoothie, peanut butter and capples or celery, or whole-grain crackers and cheese.

3. Serve lean meats and other good sources of protein, such as fish, eggs, beans, and nuts.
Choose whole-grain breads and cereals so kids get more fiber. Don’t be fooled by kids’ cereal marketing. Read the ingredients.

4. Limit fat intake by avoiding deep-fried foods and choosing healthier cooking methods, such as broiling, grilling, roasting, and steaming. Choose low-fat or nonfat dairy products.

5. Limit fast food and low-nutrient snacks, such as chips and candy. But don’t completely ban their favorite snacks. Instead, make them a special treat, so kids don’t feel deprived.

6. Limit sugary drinks, such as soda, juice, and fruit-flavored drinks. Serve water and low-fat milk instead

The Realistic Victory

You’ve been cutting carbs, lifting weights, and doing cardio till you are soaked. You’ve actually dropped two sizes. You feel fabulous. You look fit. Now if only you could lose those last five pounds…

Sound familiar? Welcome to the infamous Diet Plateau. After making a mountainous effort to exercise and eat right, you find your weight loss results have come to a halt. Diet plateaus are very real, usually occurring four weeks to two months into a diet.

I have a friend who I see about every six months.  For the last three years, every time I see her she is complaining about losing that last five pounds.  Talk about a diet plateau.  We all know it doesn’t take three years to lose five pounds. She seems to be doing the right things, but just can’t seem to get those last few pounds off.

To lean down for my bodybuilding competition I lost around 20 pounds.  This was not a sustainable weight, and it was purely for the competition.  However, I did want to equalize at around a 10 pound net loss after the competition.  I was able to keep my weight there for about five months, but then it started to creep up. 

I have never been a fan of scales, and I even recommend that people put their scales away and just go by the fit of their clothes, and how they look and feel.  When I was training, though, it was important to keep track of my weight loss and fat loss, so I started weighing myself every few days. This continued after my competition was over, and that is how I noticed this creep.  I really couldn’t understand it. I was eating about the same as I had been eating the past five months, yet my weight was five pounds higher, and I couldn’t seem to get it off.  I even bought a scale (for the first time in 30 years) because I thought that there MUST be something wrong with the scale at the gym.  I know… a little obsessive.

(Below are some tips to help with a plateau.)  However, I have been considering some other things.  As I really look at how much exercise I am doing, I realize that I have not decreased the amount of time or intensity.  I also know in my heart of hearts that it is not realistic to do more exercise than I am already doing.  I also took a look at my diet.  I am averaging 1400 calories a day.  That is sustainable for me.  I do not feel deprived or hungry, but if I start to cut a few hundred calories, it is not realistic.  I have decided that I have reached my ideal weight. My sustainable weight.  Yes, I would like to be five pounds lighter, but it is not realistic, so I am okay with it.  I think my friend has also reached her ideal weight, and she just needs to be okay with it.

Anyway, on to the tips…

A diet plateau can result from several factors. It may be a question of what, exactly, you’re losing. Seventy percent of the weight you lose in the first two to three weeks of a diet is water.  By the end of the third week, water loss will account for only about twenty percent of weight loss. Once you begin burning body fat rather than merely shedding water, you have to work harder.  Most people can lose a pound of water weight a week by cutting their daily intake by 200 to 300 calories. Losing a pound of fat a week requires cutting about 500 calories a day.

Beware though… consuming too few calories also can waylay weight loss. You need a certain amount of calories for everyday functioning. If you try to lose weight too quickly by radically reducing calories, your body will slow your metabolism to compensate, creating a weight-loss plateau.

Other ways that diets are unintentionally sabotaged include underestimating portions—essentially overeating without realizing it—and consuming hidden sources of calories, such as excess fat used in meal preparation. You also may not be working out at the right exercise intensity, thereby overestimating the calories you’re burning at the gym.

Consume the Correct Number of Calories
Eat enough to maintain weight loss at a pace of one to two pounds per week.  If you’re losing more than two pounds of body fat a week, some of that weight loss is coming from muscle. When you lose muscle mass, you slow down your metabolism. Check out the links to the right. The Calorie Need Calculator link and Activity Calorie Calculator link can help you to figure out the perfect number for you.

 Exercise
Add some exercise. Do some form of extra aerobic exercise three to five days a week and strength training two to three times a week. Strength training maintains and/or increases muscle mass, helping boost your metabolism.

Start a Food Journal
Recording what you eat make you aware of extra calories. The numbers don’t lie and they can add up fast. That handful of Doritos will affect your body, even if it came from a bag on someone else’s desk.

 Be Patient
Sometimes we need to allow the body a period of time to adjust, and then weight loss will resume.

 The Bottom Line: Take time to congratulate yourself on having come this far. Then adjust your routine to carry you to weight-loss victory. But make sure that your victory is realistic and sustainable.

Something Nice for Yourself

 

 Recently, I wrote an article about other ways to get calcium.  Many of the options I offered were leafy greens.  When I posted the link on Face Book, my dad commented on my post by saying this – “Who wants to eat collard greens or kelp for breakfast?”

I didn’t really mean to eat leafy greens for breakfast, but he has a very valid point. Most people will never, ever eat collard greens, kelp, or kale for any meal, let alone for breakfast .  I ate kale once. ONCE.  My brother swears that kale tastes delicious steamed or boiled, but I am not going to chance it.  I have never eaten cooked collard greens, but I have juiced them… many times.

I wanted to offer an alternative to “eating” leafy greens.  Juicing is a fantastic way to “ingest” all sorts of fruits and veggies that we would most likely never go near.  There are so many benefits to drinking fresh juice, you really feel like you have done something nice for yourself.

The thing about juicing is that it takes some commitment.  Investing in a juicer is like buying a gym membership or piece of exercise equipment.  You have to decide to use it, make time to juice, and be consistent.  It is not difficult, and it does not take very much time.  Just like any other habit, once you have it, it is easy to follow through with buying extra fruits and veggies and prepping them each week.  You can also get really creative with juicing by adding all sorts of new fruits and veggies.  It is cool how you can juice an entire bundle of spinach or collard greens added to any variety of juiced berries, peaches, pineapples, etc, and you wouldn’t even know the leafy greens were in the mix.

Plus, since juicing removes the indigestible fiber, these nutrients are available to the body in much larger quantities than if the piece of fruit or vegetable was eaten whole. For example, because many of the nutrients are trapped in the fiber, when you eat a raw carrot, you are only able to assimilate about 1% of the available beta carotene. When a carrot is juiced, removing the fiber, nearly 100% of the beta carotene can be assimilated.

Or, for another example, consider fresh juice’s ability to deliver another important group of nutrients, know as enzymes. Enzymes are your body’s work force. Acting as catalysts in hundreds of thousands of chemical reactions that take place throughout the body, enzymes are essential for digestion and absorption of food, for conversion of food stuffs into body tissue, and for the production of energy at the cellular level. In fact, enzymes are critical for most of the metabolic activities taking place in your body every second of every day.

Fresh juices are a tremendous source of enzymes. In fact, the “freshness” of juice is one of their key features, because enzymes are destroyed by heat. When you eat cooked foods, whether its meal, grains, fruits, or vegetables, if the food is cooked at temperatures above 114 degrees, the enzymes have been destroyed by the heat. Since fruits and vegetables are juiced raw, the enzymes are still viable when you drink the juice.

Finally, fruits and vegetables provide one more substance that is absolutely essential for good health – water. More than 65% of most of the cells in the human body are made of water, and in some tissues, for example the brain, the cells can be made up of as much as 80% water. Water is absolutely essential for good health, yet most people don’t consume enough water each day. Plus, many of the fluids we do drink, coffee, tea, soft drinks, alcoholic beverages and artificially flavored drinks each contain substances that require extra water for your body to eliminate. Fruit and vegetable juices are free of these unneeded substances and are full of pure, clean water.

There are all sorts of juicers on the market with a variety of functions, colors, and gadgets.  They have become so popular, you can find some great deals out there.  Here is a web site to find the best one for your needs.

http://www.best-juicer-reviews.com

Bone Savings Account

A friend of mine loves chocolate milk.  Don’t we all, really?  She drinks a container every morning. (This friend is about 30 pounds overweight) I was looking at the nutrition label and made a comment to her that there were over 300 calories in one serving, and the second ingredient was sugar.  Her response surprised me. She said “well, I have to drink this to get my daily calcium”.  I tried to hide my shock and horror and compose myself so I could offer her some better alternatives.

At first I wasn’t sure if this was just an excuse so she felt justified in drinking chocolate milk every morning, or if she really did believe that this was the best way for her to get her calcium.  I think if was a combination of the two.

Calcium is critical to good health. The human body requires more calcium than any other mineral. The adult human body contains about 1000 to 1200 g of calcium. At least 99% of the calcium is found in the bones and teeth, giving them strength and rigidity.

An easy way to think of calcium and bone health is to imagine the bones as a savings account at a bank. Until the ages of 30-35 the body stores calcium in the bones. However, after this time calcium is no longer stored in bones. As a result, its only source of calcium is ingested calcium. If you’re not eating enough calcium, the body has nothing to use and bone density decreases. The calcium you consume early in life is deposited into your “bone” savings account. If little calcium is saved, then there will be little to spend when retirement comes.  A great reason to make sure our kids get enough calcium.

Back to my friend… Getting calcium is important, but choosing a low fat low calorie option may be even more important. She is not necessarily interested in losing weight, and she is fine with her body and her current weight, but that doesn’t mean that she shouldn’t alter her choices to improve her overall health.  Since she loves chocolate milk, I certainly don’t want her to give it up, but to drink such a large amount every day along with some of her other food choices, will lead to poor health in the future.

Dairy products (milk) are definitely one way to get calcium, but you should always go for the low fat option.  Leave the chocolate milk for a treat once and a while.  There are so many better options to get your calcium than milk.  The milk producers of the world just have a really huge advertising budget, so it is the most visible.

The recommendation for adults is 1000 mg of calcium per day. One cup of milk has 296 mg, but there are plenty of reasons you might not to drink milk, from personal preference to medical reasons.

Here are 15 foods high in calcium that don’t come from a cow:

Sesame Seeds
A quarter cup of sesame seeds has 351 mg calcium.

Spinach
A cup of boiled spinach has 245 mg.

Collard Greens
A cup of boiled collard greens has 266 mg.

Blackstrap Molasses
One tablespoon has about 137 mg.

Tahini
Two tablespoons of raw tahini (sesame seed butter) have 126 mg.

Broccoli
Two cups of boiled broccoli have 124 mg.

Swiss Chard
One cup of boiled chard has 102 mg.

Kale
One cup of boiled kale has 94 mg.

Brazil Nuts
Two ounces of Brazil nuts (12 nuts) have 90 mg.

Celery
Two cups of raw celery have 81 mg.

Almonds
One ounce of almonds (23 nuts) has 75 mg.

Papaya
One medium papaya has 73 mg.

Flax Seeds
Two tablespoons of flax seeds have 52 mg.

Oranges
One medium orange has 52 mg.

Staying Firm

Staying firm is an expression women use to describe how they would like to look and feel about their body. As we get older, staying firm takes on a whole new meaning.  FIRM in our 20’s is way different than FIRM in our 40’s. Most women are happy with just staying firm as opposed to building muscles, but the two go hand in hand.

To stay firm you do need to keep your muscles healthy and conditioned. Even if you don’t want to train to gain more muscle size, you still need to train to keep the muscle from shrinking away. At the same time you also need to keep the body fat percentage low by doing cardio exercise regularly.

For many people staying firm and toned requires less effort and exercise then building a lot of muscle mass or size, but regardless of what your fitness goal is there is no way to achieve your dream body without the discipline and consistency of an exercise routine.

One of my favorite descriptions of fat is “Layer upon layer of dormant muscle.” Since firm is the opposite of soft, you get a picture of what you want to achieve. You want to burn off the fat on top of the muscle so the soft layer of subcutaneous fat goes away and your body feels tighter all around.

Taking aerobics and sculpting classes is a good way of getting firm muscles at the same time as you are burning unwanted body fat. Circuit training programs are also good for combining the right level of resistance training to get that firm and toned body.

Drinking a lot of fluid in the form of water is key to keeping your skin nice and tight. Your body needs a certain amount of fluids every day to be able to flush out the waste products from your system. Carrying a lot of waste products in your body can also give you a feeling of being soft and puffy.

The best measurement when trying to get a firm and tone body is to not look at the weight or the pounds on the scale, but to look at the inches in your hip area, abdomen, thighs and upper arms.

This is a better tracking system then stepping on the scale three times a week. The important part is how you feel that your clothes fit. If your pants feel loser you have successfully lost inches even though the overall weight might be the same or only slightly lower or slightly higher than before.

Looking in the mirror is a good way of keeping your results in check for yourself. You need to be in tune with your body, but you should be able to tell just by looking in the mirror if you are tighter.

Keeping healthy circulation to the skin will also help in keeping a nice and tight skin from losing its elasticity. You can scrub your body with a loofah sponge every time you take a shower to promote healthy skin and a good circulation of your whole body. This will also remove dead skin cells and promote the replacement of old ones keeping a healthy skin surface that will show off your new firm body.

5 People = 6 Answers

Ask five different experts, get six different answers.   I read a lot of articles, blogs, and web sites about nutrition and fitness, in addition to talking to fitness trainers and instructors.  Honestly, it makes my head spin.  There are so many schools of thought and strategies for eating healthy and exercising most effectively, sometimes I am not sure if I am doing the right thing.  Often times I will read something that says the exact opposite of what I have been doing and believing to offer the max benefit. Crap! Have I been wasting my time? Have I been doing it wrong? What to believe?

Recently a friend of mine decided to substitute agave nectar for refined sugar in an effort to eat healthier, only to read an article saying that agave nectar is not much better for you than sugar. What to believe? Salmon is good for you, salmon is bad for you. What to believe? Google search SOY, and within seconds you will have no idea whether soy is good or bad for you.  By the way, we used to only drink soy milk and used it for our kids when they were babies.  That has since changed after researching it more thoroughly, but who knows what to believe.

Exercise strategies are the same.  Some experts say the only way to get the max benefit from cardio is to do it before weight training.  Other experts say the exact opposite.  Some fitness pros say to always do a push pull routine by exercising chest and back together.  Others say to never work the big muscle groups like chest and back in the same session.  My trainer said not to work legs with any upper body muscles, because then your blood is flowing in opposite directions, and you can’t get the max blood flow to the muscles for the best growth.  Most exercise splits pair legs with shoulders in the same session. The most recent article I read stated that cross trainers (like and elliptical machine) are completely worthless for burning fat… a complete waste of time.  I do the elliptical at least four days per week.. Crap!

I wish I could say believe this and don’t believe that, but I can’t say with 100% certainty.  I know what makes sense to me, but who am I to say.  However, the one thing that almost everyone agrees on, as far as exercise, is to change your workout (mix things up) every few weeks.  So, here is my strategy – As long as it is not a ridiculous sounding workout, I will try it.  Every 4-10 weeks I change my workout.  Some weeks I will do cardio first, some weeks I will do it after weights. Some weeks I will work chest back, some weeks I will work chest biceps (or triceps or shoulders) etc. Some weeks I will do the elliptical, and some weeks I will row or run or bike.  I figure I will definitely stack the odds in my favor of getting some of it right.

As far as eating healthier, part of the equation is eating foods that are not AS BAD.  I told my agave friend that agave may not be a completely healthy choice, but is a better choice than refined sugar… and that is a good thing.  Marketing can be truly misleading by making us believe something is healthy, when in fact it is not.  However, if it is not AS BAD as the alternative, and it allows you to eat the foods you enjoy without feeling deprived, that is okay.  Just don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are eating “healthy” if you are eating anything that is processed.  Low fat, low cal, no Trans fats, high fiber packaged foods are usually better alternatives, but they are not healthy.  Whole is healthy.

Learn what you can, question most of what you read, and make choices that make sense to you.  Make choices that you can stick to and integrate into a healthier way of living. And, try not to beat yourself up if you find out that something you thought was a health benefit is actually not a benefit at all.  As long as you try to do the right things.

A temporary fix… at best

It is so common to hear people saying that they want to lose weight and get back in shape again. Some people look for instant ways of losing weight, and as a result even get tempted to go in for crash dieting. We have all done it. A crash diet does give instant results, quick results.  If you need to drop a few pounds quickly for a vacation or a class reunion, it can be a good temporary fix.   A temporary fix to drop a few pounds, not a diet to stay on for more than a few days in an attempt to drop ten or more pounds.

Most people have the misconception that if they decrease the amount of food that they consume daily, they will reduce weight. It is important to understand the fact that too few calories can lead to severe internal weakness which can lead to all sorts of health problems and unintended consequences.

Crash dieting makes you an irritable person, and you face severe mood swings because of the imbalance of certain elements in the body. Most of the main organs of the body – such as the heart, lungs, kidney, liver etc. – need a lot of energy to function effectively, and the absence of food in the body affects their proper functioning. The organs become weak, and you may start to face problems such as kidney failure.

When you are crash dieting, your body does not get even the most basic of nutrients, which means that all internal systems start to become weak and fragile, and it may seem as if your body may collapse any moment. Weakness, loss of all energy, and fatigue will set in.

The worst effect of crash dieting is that you may gain more weight instead of losing. This is because once you have lost some of the pounds you desired (with the help of crash dieting), the effect will disappear once you resume with your normal diets. So, you will face weight gain instead of weight loss.  Crash diets – a temporary fix at best.

The Gift of Breakfast

We’ve all heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and we would never let our kids go off to school without eating a good breakfast.  So why do we as adults think it is okay to skip breakfast? Some people lack motivation and/or the desire to eat breakfast due to time constraints or lack of a morning appetite. Neither is a good excuse. 

                                                                                            
The morning hours are the most ideal time of the day for refueling your glucose levels, and providing your brain and body with the energy they need to function optimally throughout the day. Also, by eating breakfast, you are increasing your chances of maintaining and even losing weight.

Studies show that by starting the day off on a healthy foot, you are more likely to continue making good food choices for the remainder of the day, and that those who eat a healthy breakfast are less likely to play “catch-up” later in the day.  I have a friend who will often tell me that she has been so busy she hasn’t had time to eat anything all day. By the time she eats, she is famished and eats way more than she needs.  If you eat 2000 calories for dinner, chances are you will not be hungry for breakfast.  This same friend has also gained over 50 pounds in the last year.  Sumo wrestlers use the same strategy for eating.

                                                                                 
Give yourself the gift of breakfast. With a little planning, many breakfast meals can be prepared the night before to make for a quick morning meal or something easy to take with you to the office.  In our house we have a gallon pitcher of pre-mixed protein shake and a carton full of hard boiled eggs.  Add in a piece of fruit and /or a low fat yogurt, and you are good to go.  My husband does this every day.  I prefer quick cook oatmeal with flaxseed and cinnamon or Kashi cereal with low fat milk.

So what’s the best thing to eat for your first meal? The first thing I would recommend when choosing what to eat is to try to think outside of the typical “healthy” breakfast, especially if you have time constraints or don’t feel hungry in the morning.

Fruit is an excellent choice. It can be a fast option and something you can even eat in the car on the way to work.  If you have more time, a morning smoothie can be the perfect mix of protein and carbs.  If you’re willing to forfeit the normal breakfast routine, even a bit of steamed vegetables or soup can provide an optimal source of energy. Anytime I have a pot of left over sweet potato squash soup, that becomes my favorite breakfast. Many people do well eating their dinner leftovers the next morning which saves time and prevents food waste.

Regardless of what you ultimately decide to eat, the most important thing to remember is that each of us requires different foods and quantities based on our own biochemical, genetic and metabolic differences. The secret to breakfast is to choose something healthy, easy, and that you enjoy and can look forward to eating each morning.

A great way to determine what is right for you is to experiment. Try out seven different breakfasts over the course of a week and really pay attention to how you feel afterwards, and then again two and four hours later. Include in that experiment foods that you typically eat or desire the most at breakfast, regardless of their nutritional value, just to further understand the impact those foods versus other foods have on your body.

At the end of the week, I guarantee that you’ll have a clear understanding of the best energy sources for your body and know what to eat for this key mealtime.