Motivation to ReCLAIM My Life

I found this motivational photo on Pinterest from a post by Skinny Bitch and it really struck right to the heart of my renewed initiative to lose the weight I lost last year and have since put back on…

I’ve printed it out and taped it to my bathroom mirror. I intend to read this every day and to keep the focus on my choices throughout the day.

I’m also going back on my juice fest because I felt great getting all those nutrients and it kicked all the cravings. Those damn cravings! I’m back in the thrall of them – burgers, pizza, pasta dishes, ice cream… everything chocolate!

The veggie garden is in full swing, so there’s a lot of variety very conveniently located. I have absolutely NO excuses not to do this.

Another area I’ve been slacking off in is my exercise. Last year I dedicated myself to doing the Beachbody Power 90. Well into that, with juicing, my energy levels soared and I added the C25K program. My weight loss started slowing down, but the inches were melting off, so who cares about pounds!

I started a walking group called the Foothills Mile Markers that meets every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday morning for two reasons. One, to help keep me motivated and accountable and two, to share what I’ve learned about nutrition and fitness to help others. Oh yeah, I forgot the third reason: TO HAVE FUN!

So, Tony Horton, once again, its you and me, bay-bee. Gonna be pushing PLAY when I get back from my walk to do the Sweat Circuit and Ab Ripper. I’ll do the Sculpt Circuit Tuesday, Thursday & Saturdays.

Please, God, I want to lose this extra weight, and I know how to do that, feels like You & I have done it a hundred times. But more than that, please help me to finally make the deep personal transformation to keep it off and make it a non-issue for the rest of my life. I pledge to help others every step of the way.

 

 

The #1 Weight Loss Secret – Drop your SSBs!

There is only one food that studies have consistently shown to be directly linked to obesity and to Type II Diabetes … sugar sweetened beverages.  Sugar sweetened beverages have become so bandied about in the global health world they are now known by the acronym SSB.

According to Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, “… sugary soft drinks are the number one source of calories in our diets. We get more calories from sodas and sugary drinks than any other individual food — cake, cookies, pizza, anything.”

Chicago area hospitals are phasing out all SSBs including so called energy drinks.

The dire effect of SSBs on our health has prompted New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to propose limiting the portion size of SSBs to 16 oz. Vendors violating the size restriction could be fined $200 per infraction.

Sugary drink consumption may just be a part of the U.S. obesity epidemic, but the products are the largest single source of sugar in the diet and have a major impact on health, Thomas Farley, New York City’s health commissioner, said.. Reducing obesity by just 10 percent in New York City would save about 500 lives a year, he added. “It’s ridiculous to say we shouldn’t try something that’s only going to solve a portion of the problem,” he said at an event sponsored by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a group that has long advocated against junk food.

Bloomberg’s proposal will be submitted June 12 to the New York City Board of Health, which will then vote on it after a three-month comment period. If approved by the board, the ban would take effect early next year.

Don’t think you are doing yourself any favors by choosing sweetened tea over soda. While I am a Southern lady through & through, real southern sweet tea is off my table. Even 100% pure fruit juices, while nutritious, can pack on the calories. Check out this excerpt from their Health Department fact sheet:

I don’t drink sugary beverages, only 100%juice.That’s healthy, right?
Fruit juice is more nutritious than sugar-sweetened fruit drinks, but it’s packed with calories from the natural sugars found in fruit. Limit your intake to no more than six ounces daily, the amount in an old-fashioned juice glass.Or dilute juice with water or seltzer to cut down on calories and sugar. As a rule, it’s better to eat your fruit than drink it.

Why should anyone decide what I can eat or drink?
You can eat and drink what you like—we just want you to have all the facts.The beverage industry spends billions of dollars marketing products to children and adults.Consumers deserve to know that these heavily-advertised beverages are the largest single driver of the obesity epidemic, and that there are healthy alternatives.

Isn’t lack of exercise the real cause of obesity?
Exercise is essential to good health, but calories are the main culprit in weight gain.And controlling your calories is easier than consuming too many and then trying to burn them off.A typical adult needs 27 minutes of brisk walking to burn off the calories in a single 12-ounce can of soda, 46 minutes to burn off a 20-ouncer. So skip the soda and take the same walk.Your body will thank you in more ways than one.

Along with health and government officials looking at ways of limiting SSB consumption, others are looking to tax it, much like tobacco. Municipal leaders in Richmond, Calif.,  where more than 58 percent of Richmond’s residents are obese or overweight, announced a November ballot initiative for a one-cent-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages.

The EpiAnalysis blog has a very informative article about taxing sugar-sweetened beverages.

So here is the bottom line, ReThink your Drink. Drink water – lots of water.  Jazz up your water by infusing it with fruits like citrus and herbs like ginger and mint. Dilute your fruit juices with club soda or selzer. Rather than store-bought tea drinks, drink herbal teas. They’re tasty and not caffeinated. Herbs, especially mint, are so easy to grow no matter where you live, in either containers or soil, inside or out.

7 Ways to Beat the Food Addictions

Throughout the course of my generation, the US food industry has been as insidious in addicting us to food as the tobacco industry was in the prior generation.

Commercial farming is focused on producing commodities, largely three crops: corn, soy and wheat. All other fruits and vegetable are considered “specialty” crops.

Seed for the greatest percentage of the big three is patented and controlled by Monsanto. They are patented because the seed is genetically modified (GMO) to make the plant almost invulnerable to herbicides  by introducing herbicides into their very DNA. The resulting plant produced is infused with herbicide and then we are paying top dollar to eat it.

Around the globe man existed for thousands of years on wheat and soy – now they are the top allergens in children and adults. The number afflicted with allergies to “staple” foods has  doubled almost yearly since GMO foods were introduced, as has the rise in autism, yet our government agencies see no correlation…

This post by Mike Geary, The CORN, SOY, and WHEAT Monopoly is an excellent read, but I’m focusing on the following (excerpted from his blog):

By “derivatives” of corn, soy, and wheat, this means the food additives such as:

• high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)
• corn oil
• soybean oil (hydrogenated or plain refined)
• soy protein
• refined wheat flour
• hundreds of other food additives such as maltodextrin, corn or wheat starch, soy lecithin, mono and diglycerides, etc, etc

It is these derivatives that are literally killing us. Not only are we constantly eating because our bodies are desperate for nutrition, HFCS and refined flours are literally addictive, as addictive as tobacco or cocaine.

Beating any addiction is hard and these 7 tips I’m going to share have been helpful to me in combating my food addiction.

1. Stop eating at junk food places

There is nothing healthy there, no matter what the commercials are telling you. Even if something is low calorie, it has no substantive nutrition. Salads are contaminated with preservatives, salad dressings are contaminated with the above derivatives. Stop. Don’t taper off, just stop.

2. Stop shopping in the center aisles of the grocery store

Most of the offerings in the center aisles are processed foods, even the canned vegetables and many packaged vegetarian foods. Be a label reader. Avoid any products with more than 7-ingredients and avoid every thing with HFCS, soy or hydrogenated anything. Avoid any product with more than 200 mgs Sodium. Take the time to read a label, it’s much quicker than sitting in the doctor’s office reading a lame out of date magazine or waiting for your prescription at the pharmacy…

3. Be accountable to someone

Find a friend or loved one to go on the journey to beat the addiction of food with you. Everything is more fun with a friend and you’ll be less likely to succumb to the call of the pasta if you are not alone.

4. Exercise

Any exercise is better than no exercise. Endorphins are released when we exercise, and endorphins makes us feel better. When we feel better we are less likely to munch. Again, get a buddy to exercise with – its more fun! My exercise buddy is my dog. If you don’t have a dog, maybe you could offer to walk a neighbor’s pet or better yet, go to your local animal shelter and help walk and socialize their dogs. A socialized and calm dog is much easier adopted!

5. Get a Bag of Tricks

Keep some distractions handy – crossword puzzle, sudoku, drawing or painting supplies, cards with words of inspiration, pictures of fashions you’d like to wear or places you’d like to go. Get you mind off the craving and engaged in something else.

6. Drink a glass of water

Aw, you knew this one was coming! When we are addicted to food, much of that food is high in sodium and dehydrates the body. Drinking a glass of water helps to nip the craving in the bud with the added benefit of helping to flush and hydrate our cells. Think water is boring? Try these recipes for water (yes, recipes…)

7. Become an Expert

The more you understand the what , how and whys of food addiction and the food industry’s involvement, the more ammunition you have to win mastery over the addiction. Read books, watch movies like Forks over Knives, Weight of the Nation, Food Matters. Once you understand the nature (or rather the lack of nature) of what you are eating and craving you just might decide to make a different choice.

One Picture = 1,000 Words

You choose.

It is indeed a choice.

Listen to your heart and soul.

 

Obesity and your Brain

This just in from the Society for Neuroscience. For many years, throughout my yo-yoing (one friend calls herself Queen of the Weight Lost & Found Dept.) I joked that I was a food-a-holic. Now science is indicating I may not have been wrong!

Yet, I believe that just as any addict can beat their addiction with proper realizations and treatment, anyone can beat their bad food cravings and habits. My 60-day juice fest was my “rehab” and when I was done I had zero desire for refined carbs & sugars.

Check out what the science is saying:

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Health Implications
Stemming an obesity epidemic

Fat cells produce a hormone called leptin, which travels through the body’s blood stream and acts on a brain region called the hypothalamus. Leptin helps to regulate appetite and metabolism. A lack of leptin, or its receptor in the brain, can lead to uncontrolled food intake and obesity. Credit: ©1997 Society for Neuroscience, Illustration by Lydia Kibiuk

Thanks to decades of systematic research, scientists now better understand how the brain tightly regulates body weight. Why, then, do obesity rates continue to climb? New research is investigating how complex environments — including the increased availability of highly palatable but nutritionally poor foods in developed countries — affect brain chemistry. The findings indicate the importance of healthy choices in maintaining weight and suggest new avenues of treatment.

Food as an Addiction

Neuroscientists have recently learned that fatty food taps the pleasure centers of the brain, the same areas that are associated with heroin and cocaine habits. For addicted individuals, eating becomes compulsive, regardless of negative health or societal consequences.

Research shows that after extended periods of excessive eating, brain connections are permanently altered on a molecular level. In rats fed a high-fat, high-calorie diet, the brain pleasure centers become less responsive over time, just as they do following drug use. Moreover, when the rats were offered healthy food after weeks of junk food, they were less likely to eat it than rats fed healthy food only. These findings suggest the difficulty in changing established eating habits and highlight the importance of obesity prevention.

 

CBS 60 Minutes – Sugar, The Toxic Truth

TurboJam day 5 of 28

Just yesterday I was writing about the food industry and the correlation of GMO foods to sicknesses and I also touched on sugar toxicity and then last night 60 Minutes did a segment on it. The segment talked not only about how bad sugar is to the body but also about how difficult it is to break the sugar connection because of its addictive qualities. No wonder beating the cravings to overeat are so hard.

More and more people are starting to wake up to the fact that we all need to THINK about what we are eating and what’s in it.

Some experts are saying sugar should be regulated as a controlled substance as are tobacco and alcohol.

On the one hand I believe people have the free will to make their own choices, good or bad. But they have to be informed. We all know a fatty cheeseburger will make you fat. Yet it is not so well known that fat free processed foods are often loaded with sugar and empty calories.

We do not think about sugar being in bread, pasta sauces, canned soups and even canned vegetables, but it often is, in surprising amounts. This is why reading labels is soooo important. It is beyond obvious that the US food industry does not concern itself with our health, nor does the FDA, so we have to do it ourselves.

Now, that’s adults – what about kids? Obesity is considered epidemic by the CDC but there are no laws making adults (parents, schools, stores, restaurants, etc.) accountable for what they make available to the children. Adults can smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol, but everyone knows if you buy/sell alcohol or cigarettes to minors there are serious legal consequences – business can lose licenses or even be closed down.

If we as adults do not “police” ourselves and the minors we are responsible for, the government must step in – so let’s do the right thing. Vote with our pocketbooks to hurt their pocketbooks – let the food industry know we’re not buying the genetically/chemically altered meat, seafood and produce they’re selling us. Demand healthy, organic nutrient dense food and that’s what they’ll produce, but its got to start with us, the consumers.

Reboot 30 – Day 6

Made it through the Super Bowl Party relatively unscathed – I knew chocolate covered cherry jello shooters are probably not in the Top Ten Healthiest Foods category, but hey, this is a juice fest not a fast and daaaay-um they were tasty! And I’m not gonna consider it a real cheat because I didn’t chew, but I did inhale 😉

I used to eat a lot of Jello back in the 80s – it was considered a diet food. Then I became completely intolerant of artificial sweetners and quit eating it. The lady that made the jello shots last night assured me hers were not from sugar free jello and she was right because I get terrible migraines within 20 minutes of ingesting artificial sweetners especially NutriSweet.

Being curious because I’ve not had Jello in so long, I looked up the label. Wow, what the heck is all that stuff? Apart from my current juice fest, I avoid processed foods in general and I can tell you that no matter how tasty those jello shots were, I’m not having any more jello!

My honey started this juice fest with me (wow – I love him!) But he started going through the normal detox symptoms and he caved.

If you are thinking of doing a juice fest and are concerned about encoutering the same kinds of detox symptoms (headaches, body aches, lethargy, depression, cravings) the detox process is normal. The severity of the symptoms is equal to the level of toxicity in your body and its dependence on sugar or starchy carbohydrates (which is really the same thing.)

Sugar, an addiction the food industry is pushing hard.

Just as a side note, the body metabolizes both sugar and starchy foods causing the same insulin release and physiological opiod dependence in the brain as heroin. That’s why some people crave sweets and others crave breads & pasta – same addiction. Me? My drug of choice was bread & pasta.

The worst sympotoms of sugar detox are, I think, somewhat ameliorated in a juice fest because you’re getting so many good healthy nutrients and no processed sugars or starches. Also, I use and suggest making juices in a rainbow with mostly greens – basically 80% vegetables & 20% fruits, so while you are still getting fructose it is balanced with the nourishment of the carrots, apples, pears, etc. 

From various chats and social media conversations, the concensus of folks going through the change from their old eating habits to juicing exclusively for 30 to more days is after the first 3 to 5 days, the detox type symptoms subside. After that you start to really feel the energy and positive mood that is the gift of healthy living.

My honey is still juicing off and on each day, and he knows what it has done for my health and attitudes, so maybe he’ll come around in his time at his pace – we all do, or not.

3rd 60 – Eating Well – What does that mean?

In a nutshell, eating well means giving your body the nutrients it needs so you do not experience cravings. If you are experiencing cravings, your body is reacting to a lack.

Pizzaria meatball sub - a typical anytime meal

Before juicing I used to get terrible cravings.  I jokingly called it being peckish, but it was not a joke – I needed food, preferably carb-based – a sandwich, pizza, pasta or a combination of any of those.  I had to eat something every 2 to 3 hours or I’d get head achy and irritable.

No wonder I was head achy and irritable, my body was getting waaaay more calories than it needed, but not the nutrition it needed. Refined flours, cheese, breaded ground meat and a little tomato sauce. And that was a very typical meal for me and I could eat the whole thing in one meal, too. Yikes, no wonder I was fat and miserable.

One of my standard juice recipes: Kale, spinach, peppers, cucumber, celery, carrots, apple, lemon and ginger.

Juicing broke that viscous cycle because my body was addicted to the sugar burst digesting carbs provided. Juicing gave my body the real nutrients it needed and helped me break the carb cravings. After only a few days of my body getting the nutrients it really needed all the cravings were gone. Period. Wow.

Eating well even and especially if you are only juicing, is having a variety of mostly plant based foods like vegetables, fruits and mushrooms. When I say mostly, I mean veggies make up 75% to 95% of your plate every meal. When I say variety, I mean lots of different kinds of veggies – green is sooooo important and green is so much more than only broccoli or green beans. Spinach, cucumbers, asparagus, cabbage, brussel sprouts, kale, celery, peas, lettuce, avocado – and so many others!!

Rainbow Salad - good for you on so many levels including being pretty enough for a princess!

 

And other colors, too. Colorful carrots, onions, beets, eggplant, swiss chard, beans, tomatoes, peppers, radishes, turnips, corn. You might like to make an adventure of it and each week, pick something from the produce aisles you’ve never had before. Talk to your grocer or go online and google recipes with the new veggie treasure – you might be in for a wonderful surprise!

I will have bread or cheese or meat or pasta, but these things make up the small percent of my food rather than the larger.

 

With a salad like this or a soup like that you’ll have the energy and positive outlook that will make you and your life its best!

Super Soup: Kale, carrots, turnips, lentils, onion, garlic, cinnamon & turmeric