Tag Archives | health

Something to Chew on…Healthy Living is more than a diet and an exercise plan

By on January 5, 2011 in Betsy, emotional stuff, guest post, health

Without further ado, please enjoy today’s guest post from our friend Betsy!

It’s official. It is January 5th and ten days ago I reached Resolution Overload. Now that’s a pretty easy place for me to reach because I loathe Best of lists and Best of TV shows and Year in Review articles and news stories and Top 50 lists. I also quite despise New Year’s Resolutions and I go out of my way to NOT contemplate my life or my past actions at this time of year. But I tend to be contrary so this should not come as a shock to anyone.

But just because I don’t spend this time of the year assessing what I did or didn’t do during the previous 12 months and thinking what will be in the coming ones, doesn’t mean that I’m not striving to live a healthy life, or that I don’t have New Year’s rituals. I am and I do. While most people are drafting their list of resolutions, I’m preparing my home and mind for the New Year by purging the junk and unused stuff from the drawers, cupboards, closets and cubbies of my home all the while repeating this: “I’m cleaning out the closets of my mind.”

Yeah. That’s right. I clean out my closets, cupboards and drawers annually. But it gets worse: some years I’ve been known to do this every six months. I’m a bit of a neat freak and down on clutter, so when the drawers of my home are stuffed full and the cupboards are unorganized my mind gets muddled and I find it challenging to get stuff done and focus my energies outward.

You can always tell when I’m stressed out or not processing my emotions because I physically manifest that stuff by letting the house get messy. And that only serves to bring me further down and seek further hiding from my feelings by taking shelter amidst the piles of magazines, mail, receipts, laundry, and cluttered drawers.

So purging the house of clutter, and repeating my mantra, is my healthy living New Year’s ritual for tossing out the old and making way for the new, both physically and emotionally. I find comfort in sorting through the utensil drawer and getting the numerous spatulas, eggbeaters and cheese graters neatly reordered. And I know for a fact that I breathe more easily once I’ve purged the only-worn-once-in-the-past-year clothes from my drawers and closets. If I haven’t worn it, into the donation pile it goes.

This annual purge leads to discoveries. Like just the other day as I was stuffing clean towels into the linen closet and they were toppling out onto my head, I discovered that we have 17 sets of bath towels. That’s 17 body towels, hand towels and washcloths for two people. Huh. That struck me as a bit excessive so I selected a few sets to donate, stacked up the older ones to move to the garage for car washing, and the really old, ratty car wash towels were relegated to the status of “rag.”

This excess of towels got me thinking about how many duplicates I have tucked away in my emotional self-sabotage toolkit. How many ways of talking myself down do I have at my disposal? How many thoughts of my not being worthy are lurking in my mind ready to leap to the forefront of my consciousness the moment I’m feeling good about myself? How many ways to stop myself from trying something new are stashed away in my devious mind ready to unleash them when I say yes to FitHub’s camping invitation?

Yeah, there are way too many of them to count and that depressed me and since I don’t like being depressed I turned that around and asked myself, “How many duplicates do I have tucked away in my emotional self-care toolkit?” An extended silence followed but as I continued sitting there amongst the piles of towels I began to hear a quiet, tentative voice repeating, “I am worth the effort! Go me! I am a strong, beautiful woman! I am healthy and happy!” And the more I paid attention to this small voice, the louder it grew and the stronger and more assured of myself I felt.

Naturally, this led me to another thought: I am what I focus on. Hardly a revelation but it is one I repeatedly forget. I get back what I put out. If I dwell on the fat, lazy me I will remain fat and lazy. If I focus on the chocolate, I will eat the chocolate. Whereas if I focus on the strong, determined me – I will be strong and determined. If I focus on the carrots – I will crave the carrots. (Who am I kidding? I’ll still crave the chocolate but I’ll eat the carrots instead.)

So you see all of this cleaning and organizing of stuff, also serves to clean and organize my mind and spirit. And without this cleaning and organizing of stuff and mind and spirit I would find it more difficult to focus on my other healthy living habits like eating balanced meals, exercising, choosing activities that make me move my body, and making time for myself. So for me healthy living is more than an exercise plan and diet, and this annual purging serves to maintain a level of sanity in my home so the remainder of the year I can focus on my body and mind. Now it’s time for me to put away the towels and tackle the kitchen cupboards. I wonder what I will discover?

How about you? Is your self-sabotage toolkit better stocked than your self-care toolkit? If so, what will you do to turn that around? Do you think healthy living is just about exercise and diet, or does it extend into all aspects of your life?

Comments { 3 }

Something to Chew on…How to Survive Living with a Fit Spouse While You’re Still a Fatty

By on November 8, 2010 in Betsy, body, eating, emotional stuff, family, food, guest post, spouse

Without further ado, please to enjoy today’s guest post from our friend Betsy!

Like I’ve said, I’m married to a smart, funny, loving man known here as FitHub. He also happens to be one of those freaks of nature that can consume an entire bag of Smartfood in one sitting plus a heaping bowl of natural vanilla ice cream with nuts and chocolate sauce while sipping on IPA’s only hours after eating one of my scrumptious, homemade meals and Not. Gain. A. Pound. And I hate that about him.

Yes, I do begrudge him his metabolism. I mean it’s nifty-keen that his is obviously powered by several nuclear power plants, but why can’t he share the metabo love?

FitHub finds eating a nuisance. (God, I know, right? Who is this guy?) He doesn’t cook. But he does grill (and he is a talented grill master delighting us with grilled BBQ pizzas and beef brisket and jalapeno lime chicken). Actually, I prep and he grills. Anyhow, eating disrupts his day and he resents it.

So here I am: an overweight, forty-something with my eye on the fit-and-slender prize, and the love of my life, my slim, healthy, active hubby is snacking and eating and drinking. So how do we partners come to grips with living with a fit person who can eat and eat when we’re still determinedly fighting our way to the healthy-body-weight-promised land?

Well, I have years of experience with this one and thought maybe I could help some of you out by sharing how I cope.

Lesson #1: Do not try and keep up. He will eat you into a Size 28.
As I mentioned, this man can eat and since I like to eat we’re a foodie-match-made-in-heaven. Except when he eats he actually burns off the calories and when I eat you can actually see my double chin getting fatter. But for years I allowed FitHub’s voracious appetite to serve as my permission slip for shoveling unhealthy quantities of my faves into my mouth with wild, blissful abandon. He stayed thin. I got fat. Bummer. So whether you’re noshing on pizzas and ice cream or homemade, healthy food be mindful of your portions and keep ‘em reasonable despite what your partner with the killer-metabo is eating.

Lesson #2: He can eat ice cream every night. You can’t.
I can hear y’all now screaming, “Yes, you can have your cake and eat your ice cream too!” Yeah, I know we can all eat our ice cream but seriously when your goal is to LOSE weight it’s best to skip it 6 out of 7 nights. Funny enough, I spent years telling FitHub that I had accounted for the ice cream calories in my daily food plan/log (which is completely true) and therefore I can have the ice cream. Everyday. He would counter with a loving, “You don’t lose weight by eating sugar and fat.” And after 20 years of living with this man do you know what I finally learned? He was right. It’s not just about the number of calories I consume each day. It’s also about the quality of those calories. So skip the ice cream and go for a walk.

Lesson #3: He doesn’t have to exercise everyday. But you do.
If your partner with the high-functioning metabolism is like mine, they don’t need to exercise everyday to maintain their weight and health. Take FitHub for example. During the summer months he rides his bike in the mountains one to three times a week. During the winter he slaps on skis and skins and goes backcountry skiing one day a week and he curls one day a week. He is lean, strong, fit and healthy. He is nearing Lance Armstrong-lean if you know what I’m sayin’. He doesn’t go to the gym. He doesn’t lift weights or do crunches. He does move. A lot. All day long he is moving. He parks far from his building and rides his bike. His office is on the third floor and he always takes the stairs. He tinkers in the garage in the evenings, does yard work, washes cars…you get the idea. But FitHub is a rare breed (and secretly his parents, sibling, friends, and me are all waiting for his metabolism to slow down a wee bit and add a few pounds to his body) so he maintains his fitness with intense workouts done only once or a few times each week. The rest of us must be a tad more diligent if we hope to become and/or maintain our fitness and health. So get moving. Daily.

Lesson #4: He will never understand your food struggle so save your breath.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t attempt to share your feelings toward food with your partner because I think open communication is key to a long-lasting relationship (FitHub and I are going on 22 years). But know that no matter how eloquently you drone on about the comfort you gain from food, or how it makes you feel safe, or how it’s been your friend when you had no others: he is not going to get it. It won’t be for a lack of wanting to understand. It’s just that his brain never linked food to emotions and he just eats to fuel his body. Sure he gleans pleasure from food when he shares a meal with folks but he doesn’t reach for it to soothe his ills, so it’s hard for him to relate to the pain and struggle of letting go of food as comfort. And here’s the real shocker. He doesn’t lay awake in bed at night thinking about the Ben & Jerry’s in the freezer or the leftover pizza in the fridge. No really. It’s true!

Lesson #5: He will be your greatest champion. If you let him.
So while he can out eat you and not gain an ounce. And while he can get by with working out only a few times each week, and remain fit. And while he doesn’t obsess about food, or plan and log each bite he puts in his mouth, he will be your greatest champion. But you have to let him. Now this gets a bit tricky because if you’re as messed up about food as I am, when someone tells you that you shouldn’t eat something, you want to eat it to spite them. (Yes, I do understand that eating the food really won’t hurt them, just me.) So getting my brain to find peace in the moment when he questions what I’m eating, when I’m eating it, and how much I’m eating is taking loads of patience. And when he tells me that maybe I’m not pushing myself hard enough during my workouts (despite the heart rate monitor telling me that I’m working at 80-85% of maximum) I get a little cheesed off. So after I have eaten to spite him and bailed on a workout (because what’s the point if he doesn’t think it’s doing any good?), I remind myself that he’s on my side even if his choice of words and methods sting. He wants me to succeed because he wants me to be happy; and I know this because I’ve asked him and he’s told me. So just like your fit partner won’t ever really understand why food has such an emotional hold on you, you too won’t really understand why he thinks telling you that you’re not working hard enough is going to motivate you to work harder. But I’ve learned that FitHub is here for me. He doesn’t complain that dinner isn’t ready until 8:00 p.m. because I’ve been at Zumba class. He thinks I can do things that I know I am clearly not strong enough for yet (like mountain biking at 6,000 feet above sea level and pedaling, uphill to 8,000 feet). He praises me for going to fitness classes. And he tells me he is proud of me. He can see the me I want to become. So I forgive him his metabolism and less-than-inspiring-motivational-speak because he is my champion. When I let him.

Does your partner have a killer metabolism? If so, how do you cope? Who, beside yourself, is your champion? Have you ever tried to communicate your relationship with food to someone who never used food for comfort? While your laying in bed (or on the sofa) does food call out to you from the fridge?

Comments { 20 }

Things that Make it Hard

By on February 16, 2010 in Uncategorized

I was thinking yesterday about the many things that make this process, this lifestyle, hard.  Or harder, anyways, than it might be otherwise.

My list of things that make it hard to make healthy choices throughout the day include:

  • Not getting enough sleep;
  • Negative self-talk;
  • Viewing these choices as things I must do rather than things I want to do;
  • Not planning my day in advance;
  • Feeling like I don’t have enough time.

There are lots more, I’m sure – we could all add to that list.  What are the circumstances or feelings that make it harder for you to make good choices?

I am realizing that this process is as much about the big picture as it is about the little things.  We always hear talk about how it’s the weight of all the little choices you make throughout the day that add up into a healthy lifestyle.  While that’s true, it’s also true that taking a step back and looking at your big picture can help you identify things that are getting in your way.

For me, the main thing I can identify lately that I am allowing to act as an obstacle is lack of sleep.  Here’s the cycle:

Not enough sleep —-> Me tired —-> Me hungry —-> Me not working out —-> Me sleeping like crap —–> Not enough sleep, rinse, repeat.

All of the other stuff is important too, and I’m sure there will be times in the future when I identify something else as the big thing I need to do to stay on track.  But right now, sleeping enough is my one big thing.  I’ve been allowing myself to get sucked in to watching Olympic coverage at night.  Or I get home late and feel like I don’t get any “me time” if I go to bed at a decent hour, so I stay up late reading.  Then I snooze the alarm 4 times and wake up groggier than I would’ve been if I had just gotten up the first time it went off.  Then my whole day feels off-kilter, my workouts suffer, and I do the whole thing over again that day, despite vowing to go to bed earlier because I’m so stinking tired all day long.

So that’s my big obstacle right now.  What’s yours?  What’s the hurdle standing between you and making this lifestyle, these choices, feel a little bit easier?

More importantly, how are you going to overcome that obstacle in your life?

My plan is as follows:

  1. Force myself to get an awesome workout in today, whether I feel like it or not. This helps me be tired at night, which makes it easier to go to bed early.
  2. Eat my super healthy planned food for the day, quit eating at 8:30 tonight.
  3. Kick my brother and almost-sister-in-law out at 10pm tonight (they’re coming over for dinner).
  4. Leave the dishes in the sink, brush my teeth, and get in bed right after they leave.
  5. Lights out at 10:30 p.m., alarm set for 6:30 a.m.

What’s your plan?

Comments { 8 }

The Complete Beck Diet for Life: Success Skills 4-6

By on January 24, 2010 in Uncategorized

Earlier this week, I posted a summary of Success Skills 1-3 from The Complete Beck Diet for Life.

I know a lot of bloggers are talking about this book right now, mostly because this hotass got the ball rolling on a virtual book club discussion about this book.  I hope y’all aren’t getting sick of all the talk, because (a) this post is more about the book and (b) the reason everyone’s talking about it is that the techniques in the book really work for some people.

The premise behind the book is that those who struggle to lose weight and keep it off struggle for a reason.  They haven’t been given the mental, emotional tools to continue making good healthy choices for a lifetime.  Beck’s theory is that if you teach yourself those tools, using cognitive behavioral techniques, you can learn to be a successful, lifetime dieter/maintainer.

Success Skills 1-3 are (1) Motivate yourself daily; (2) Weigh yourself daily; and (3) Eat slowly, while sitting down and enjoying every bit.  For the last two weeks, I’ve worked to make these practices habit.  I have weighed myself daily, read my advantages cards and response cards multiple times per day, and have followed Skill #3 about 85% of the time.  Once I caught myself mindlessly eating pineapple while I was cutting it up!  The other times I don’t count as “success” on Skill #3 have been when I’ve chosen to eat in a rushed way rather than not eating at all.

Have any of you tried to implement these practices in your lives?  How are they working for you?  Are you finding these challenging or easy?  I’d love to hear your stories on how this is going.

Here are the next three skills:

Success Skill 4: Give Yourself Credit

Beck points out that giving yourself credit for the many good choices you make in a day will reinforce those choices for you over time.  Giving yourself credit builds your confidence to make good choices in the future.  She also points out that people who struggle with food choices typically make mountains out of molehills when it comes to our mistakes.  (i.e., I just overate at dinner, I might as well blow the rest of the day and start again tomorrow since my day is ruined anyways.)  She likens this tendency to saying, “oh well, I just blew out a tire, I might as well slash the other three since the day is blown anyways.”

Giving yourself credit for your good choices will, over time, put your  mistakes into perspective and allow you to treat them as just that – mistakes.  Not moral failings or even sins.

Success Skill 5: Get Moving!

As we all know, exercise is extremely important in a healthy lifestyle.  Beck cites several studies that prove that regular exercise is essential for permanent weight loss.  I don’t know about you folks, but I don’t want to lose this weight only to find myself losing it again in 2 or 5 years.  Exercise is key in keeping off weight and has other healthy benefits such as increased strength, better sleep, less body pain, minimizing bone loss as we age, and revving your basal metabolic rate up to burn more calories all the time.  Are you sold yet?

Success Skill 6: Overcome Hunger, Cravings, and Emotional Eating

Many people who struggle with weight problems, myself included, have a hard time distinguishing between hunger, cravings, and emotional eating.  Throw in the fact that fatigue creates more desire to eat and the fact that thirst is sometimes confused with hunger, and it’s no wonder we have a difficult time figuring this one out!  Beck provides several experiments and tools through which we can teach ourselves to know the difference.   And she provides the directive to only eat when hungry.

Another thing you will learn through these experiments is that desire to eat, whether out of hunger or craving, is NOT AN EMERGENCY.  Let me say that again, because I think it bears repeating.  HUNGER IS NOT AN EMERGENCY.  If you don’t eat when you get hungry, you will not die.  For me, this is a really important lesson, since my binge episodes (thankfully fewer and much farther between these last months) are usually preceded by a shaky, panicky feeling that I MUST EAT RIGHT NOW.  And the truth is, I don’t HAVE to eat right now.  I will be okay if I don’t.

Finally, Beck suggests that we learn to distract ourselves from a craving and also learn to cope differently with those feelings.  For me, using distraction has been super helpful.  The mindfulness that I’ve cultivated has also allowed me to step back when I’m feeling an irrational desire to eat and realize that eating will not fix the problem I’m dealing with in that moment; it will only multiply it.

Summary

As I’m sure you can tell, I am so far 100% behind the techniques and practices Beck outlines in her book.  Don’t worry – when we get to Phase 2, there is a LOT more that I disagree with!  But overall, I think these skills will stand me in good stead for a lifetime.  So I’m going to spend the next week really drilling down and making Skills 1-3 habits in my life, and then I will move on to officially include the skills I went over in this post today.

Please share your thoughts, questions, and/or experiences with the Beck books with me!

Comments { 5 }

Spreading the Blog Love

By on January 21, 2010 in Uncategorized

Y’all remember that Sue recently awarded me the Beautiful Blogger Award.  It’s my first blogging award ever, so I wanted to “do it right!”  I posted here to tell you seven things about me you don’t already know.

My other task was to identify seven blogs I love and recommend to you all.   So, here’s goes* nothing:

  1. Prior Fat Girl.   Jen has not only lost an extraordinary amount of weight, she has gone through one of the most earth-shattering experiences one can have this past year.  She’s come out on the other end of it stronger and every day she blogs honestly, openly, and with great humor about this journey to healthy living.
  2. A Deliberate Life.  Chris has a great sense of humor and is 100% dedicated to continuing her amazing journey to a healthy weight.  She’s lost over 80 pounds in less than a year, and she has names for her favorite cardio machines at the gym.  Funny, honest, and sometimes in-your-face, she tells it like it is.  ‘Nuf said.
  3. The Daily Diary of a Winning Loser.  No list of favorites, to my mind, would be complete without listing Sean.  Sean has lost nearly 300 pounds in the last 494 days.  He takes the complexity out of the process, using a simple approach that is so simple, it confuses most people who’ve been brainwashed by the diet industry for years.  Eat 1,500 calories/day (1,800 now) and exercise.  That’s it.  Check out Sean’s story and read it from Day 1 – it’ll be worth every minute.
  4. Christy in Seattle.  I recently discovered Christy’s blog and in that short time I can tell you this about her – she’s smart, compassionate, funny, free-spirited, passionate, committed, and she is GOING to find her sweet spot on this journey to healthy weight and healthy living.  It’s fun to “know” a fellow Seattle blogger virtually and I look forward to meeting Christy IRL (in real life) someday soon.
  5. Jack Sh*t Getting Fit.  If you want to wet your pants with laughter and cry within the same hour, read about a dozen or so of Jack’s posts.  He’s had tremendous success in losing weight and he can speak from the heart and parody your favorite song equally well.  Always entertaining, mostly funny, and never boring, his blog is a treat to read.
  6. A Cake for a Wife.  Andrea’s not just on this list because she’s my Beck diet buddy.  She’s not just here because she has a super awesome post about fighting like hell to achieve your dreams.  And she’s not just here because she just fit into a pair of size 12 Lulu Lemon yoga pants!  Okay, well, maybe that IS why she’s here.  Gotta problem with that?
  7. Did I Just Eat That Out Loud?  Yes, I know that this hotass is the one who awarded me the blog award.  So sue me – it’s my blog!  I have never laughed so hard as I do while reading Sue’s blog.  And yet, I’ve never been more touched than when I witnessed the magic that took place when she provided her blog as a place for readers to share their fears.  You go read her blog and then tell me I can’t put her on this list.

To all of these bloggers and the many more great bloggers out there, thank you!  YOU all are part of the reason I am in this fight, day after day.  You encourage me, you make me laugh, you make me cry, and some of you make me pee a little.  Keep doing what you do!

Who are your favorite bloggers?  I’d love to know more about the best in blogland, and who better to ask than you, dear readers?  Dish, please.  :)

Edited for daily weigh-in: Down .8 from yesterday to 251.6.  Saturday’s dinner was good, but not good enough to still be fighting the weight gain/bloat/whatever!  Note to self…

*As per usual, I am only choosing the seven blogs I love that spring to mind first. They are in no particular order, and you KNOW there are bazillions of awesomazing blogs out there that I read and love!

Comments { 8 }