Watch Yo' Mouth! Why I hate the word "diet."

Diet is a four-letter word.

In order to spell, "diet" you have to start with, "die".

The diet starts Monday!

What else do we say to show our dismay with being on a diet?  It might be one of the most loathed words in our language, and for good reason. It conjures up images of deprivation, sacrifice, punishment, and happy people all around us gleefully eating things we're not allowed to eat because we're on a &*^%$ing DIET. >:/

I used to get called out for using the word diet.  "You're not fat," people would accuse. I'd try to explain that my "diet" was just my nutritional plan, not necessarily a scheme to lose weight.  We all have a diet - it's the menu of food we have planned for the day. But that word carries so much negativity with it that eventually I just stopped using it.  Now, I refer to my "nutrition."

I like it much better! Not only does "nutrition" have a happier sound, it equates to balance in my mind.  "Diet" means the scales are being tipped out of my favor.  "Nutrition" puts the power to choose back into my hands, where I like it. 

Think about this:

What happens as soon as we go on a diet?  We want whatever isn't on the diet!  But what happens when we simply change our nutrition?  Instead of being shackled by the rules of our diet, we're making choices.  What a huge difference!

What happens as soon as we got off of a diet?  We gain the weight back.  What happens when we go off of nutrition?  We die. Honestly, do we ever go off of nutrition?  No! We do nutrition all day, every day. It's just what we choose to be part of it that makes us feel like we need that bad four-letter word.

Try this today - instead of vowing to go on another diet, promise yourself to just change your nutrition.  Walk around in that for a while and see which one you like better.  And if you need help changing your nutrition, let me know.  I'm all over that stuff.

Change your words, change your mind, change your life.  And get out there and get healthy!

Mom, Is This Healthy?

My little guy is fascinated, okay a little obsessed, with the healthfulness of his food. In a way I am thankful for this because I want him to be cognizant of the quality of what he eats. But I am also worried that his focus is so razor-sharp that he'll end up being all nutso about it like me later in life.  So I've started a little therapy fund just in case.

But in the meantime, he's been asking me on a daily, sometimes hourly basis, whether this is healthy or that is healthy.  Restaurants we pass, foods we eat (or don't eat), stuff he sees other people eat...everything and everyone is fair game (you haven't lived until you've heard your preschooler scold someone at a park for eating Wendy's). But while the foods he asks about keep changing, I've found my answers are pretty much the same: some of it is, some of it isn't.

There is a Subway next to the frozen yogurt place we frequent, and so he asks, "is Subway healthy?" And my answer: "some of it is...."  Yes, you can have something healthy at Subway, and it is better than some other places where you can grab a quick meal, but you can also get a huge meatball sub smothered in cheese and buy a cookie, a soda, and a bag of chips on the way out.  Not healthy.

And the froyo: "is frozen yogurt healthy?"  I reply: "some of it is..."  The yogurt place we go to has truly healthy yogurt and lots of fresh fruit for toppings.  But they also have a whole line full of candy you can dump in. Not so healthy.

We drive down the road and he asks about this and that, which is healthy and which is not, and I keep telling him that some of it is, some of it isn't, and most of the time we do a great job of taking something that started out good for us and loaded it up with sugar and fat and presto! Made it unhealthy.  It's as if making perfectly good food unhealthy is our nation's collective super power.

My son seems to be like most Americans: he's aware of the health value of his food, but it doesn't really stop him from wanting to eat too many sweets and skip the veggies. But I'm glad he is at least asking the questions, and hopefully getting the message that in a lot of cases, the health value of our food lies in our hands.

This week is about the choices we make in our health. Today, look at what you eat and ask yourself, did I unhealthify this? 

Then get out there and be healthy!

Guess what? You're not as fat as you think you are.

Women: have you told yourself how fat you are this week? Have you told someone else?  Chances are, there have been half a dozen instances of negative self-talk in your life this week.  I'm guilty, too! 

Now be honest again... are you actually fat?  I mean clinically, are you fat?  Is your body fat percentage over 30%?  Is your waist more than 35 inches around?  Is your BMI over 30?  If not, shut it.

It's a major pet peeve of mine: women who look perfectly fine going on and on about how fat they are when they aren't.  I used to do it all the time, and sometimes I still catch myself asking my husband if I look fat or complaining that I "feel fat".  But I am not actually fat. Intellectually I know this, but after years of being a woman in America who is conditioned to believe that the only path to beauty is through unattainable physical perfection, its hard to believe.

About a year ago I stopped reading fashion and gossip magazines. They just made me feel bad about myself.  I also made a promise to start being nicer to myself and stop expecting to be perfect all the time.  The more I practiced positive self-talk, the better I felt, and the better I started to look to myself.  Over time, I started noticing more and more how many women are still in automatic put-down mode. 

So if you're one of those women who is not actually fat but can't stop telling yourself you are, here's what helped me stop:

1. Focus on your body's strength, not it's size.  In the past two years I have completed the Ultimate Fitness Challenge, ran two half-marathons, and completed a triathlon.  An unfit person would not have been able to do those things.  Once I realized that, it became easier to focus on what my body could do, not what it could fit into. 

2. Do some research.  Get online and start learning about the actual benchmarks for obesity.  Get your body composition measured and start using actual data as a tool for determining your fatness, not your mirror.

3. Every day, celebrate something you love about your body.  Yes, I mean every day.  There is something about your physical self that you can appreciate.  It can be the same thing two days in a row!  The point is to get into the habit of appreciating the beauty you already have.

4. Stop getting second opinions.  Who cares if someone else thinks you're fat.  The only opinion of you that matters is yours.

Besides, talking about how fat you are when you're not actually fat makes the actually fat people around you feel even worse. 

I've gone through a period lately of feeling fat and hearing myself slip into those old habits of being all down on myself because some physical limitations have kept me from my usual high-intensity workouts.  So, I'm calling myself out on it and inviting you to join me back on the positive path.  Take time today to be nice to yourself.

Good day!

Lessons from a Binge

It's Monday, and I am willing to bet there are more than a few people kicking themselves thinking, "just water and lettuce today...I have to undo the weekend!" 

Binge eating is no joke, and can happen quickly when you're already on a slippery slope of restricted calories, over-training, and fatigue.  I know because I've been there.  I know how that Monday food hangover feels.  It feels like crap.

I used to be really really "good" all week, and then the weekend would come.  Wine!  Cheese!  Dessert!  More wine!  More dessert!  Repeat until Monday when I would dutifully don my workout clothes and march myself to the gym to undo the damage.

But I couldn't undo the damage, because while I might exercise away the calories and hydrate away the bloat, my behavior was what needed the real workout. 

Today's Daily Dose is "Fitness success doesn't require the will to win, it requires the will to prepare. Do you have it?"   The will to change your behavior isn't enough to stop binge eating.  You need the will to prepare what's necessary to make those changes.  Because - can I get an Amen - the "I need to stop" that sounds so loud on Monday morning is but a tiny whisper at the back of a long tunnel on Saturday night when you're facing the Chocolate Thunder from Down Under and two spoons.

Just so we're clear, the other spoon should be for someone else. :)

Anyway, here's what got me to finally change my weekend eating behavior: I stopped myself in my whiny little tracks and thought about how events transpired to create this perfect storm of loosened resolve, what role I played in facilitating those events, and what I could do to prevent them from happening again.

Usually, it came down to three things:

1. My nutrition was too severely limited, and I felt like I had been so "good" I "deserved" a break.
2. My workouts were so rigorous that I was fatigued mentally and physically, too weak to resist.
3. I was socializing and had a party mentality. 


Now, it wasn't easy to get to these conclusions.  I had to ask myself a lot of questions and have a lot of "ah-ha!" moments before I started noticing the patterns.  I put stickers on my calendar for days when I felt really good about my nutrition and workouts, and noticed that every three weeks I went about three days without stickers.  Here's why: every three weeks I had some kind of party or out of town trip.  Restaurant food.  Sugar.  Alcohol.  I was set up!
 
So here's what I did: I changed up my nutrition to something more substantial,  I added a rest day on Thursday so I wouldn't be so tired on the weekend, and I became very picky about the parties and restaurants I went to.  I also had some very tough-love talks with myself about what I wanted more: a healthy and vibrant body or a brownie that takes two minutes to eat. 
 
Sometimes the brownie made a really good argument. Hey, I'm just being honest.
 
But the other 97% of the time I remembered that nothing tastes as good as being healthy feels.
 
If you have a food hangover today, get out a pen and paper and think about what led you to that place.  People, events, places, mood, energy level..it all counts.  Then, think about what you can do to influence those things next time to Monday doesn't have to be manic.
 
You deserve a treat: the treat of being good to yourself. 
 
Good day!

That Darn Reality

*sigh*

Okay it's time for me to face reality: in three weeks I am going up north, where I will not be able to get away with wearing my usual uniform of baggy men's shorts and t-shirt, and will be required to actually fit into a pair of pants that I wore last winter.

I'd be lying if I said that didn't terrify me just a tad.  Yeah....its been a long summer and I have landed at the end of it with five or six extra pounds around my middle that need to make like a tree and get outta here.  Yeah yeah, poor me, six pounds, wah wah.  But you know six pounds can make a big difference on a shorty like me!  So I'm sucking it up and facing the reality of what I need to do to make everything right again:

Stop eating so dang much.

Even healthy food has calories, friends!  When I sat down to evaluate my current nutrition, there wasn't much I felt needed to change. I have a pretty darn awesome diet!  It's just a little closer to the maintenance end of my calorie range too many days out of the week for my brown corduroy pants to be a viable option for fall.  I've become one of those people who eat at a deficit all week long, and then make up the difference on the weekend, coming out at maintenance.  And most of that time that's fine. 

Until I try on my winter pants. 

Then it is not fine.  Then it is soooooo not fine.

So!  Six pounds! Bye-bye! And.....we're off!


Good day!

Clean Eating, and what it is NOT (this got long)

Thanks to my friend Tiffany at The Gracious Pantry (@GraciousPantry on Twitter), a recipe website chock-full of great clean-eating ideas, for sending me the link to this article. At least....I think thanks are in order.  The article pissed me off so much that I honestly needed to walk away from my computer and do a little internal screaming.  But it was an interesting perspective to read and one that I definitely feel needs a rebuttal.

The writer contends that clean eating, the practice of avoiding processed foods and eating clean and natural foods from the Earth, is a scam and should be abandoned because it is too rigorous and leads to disordered eating patterns.  And as he tells his story, I can see why.  Anything taken to an extreme - which it appears that he did - can be destructive.  I've been there too; I've been burned by my own extreme behavior and have learned from those mistakes.

But just because you went on a crash diet that someone sold you as "clean eating" does not mean that an entire philosophy, one that is not about weight loss or sports nutrition or strategic body manipulation, is flawed. 

In the article he maintains that people who engage in clean eating are purists who would not, for example, eat pizza...but would eat the individual ingredients in pizza.  Clean eaters, he says, would not eat fried rice, but would eat rice, egg whites, vegetables, and other components of the food they shun.  He eschews the lack of socialization that clean eaters have in recreational eating events, such as traveling or going out to dinner with friends.  His personal experience with clean eating was bad, that much is clear.  But please remember these important lessons from his experience:

1. Clean eating is a personal journey.  I know clean eaters who eat things I don't, and I eat some things that other clean eaters won't eat.  I see recipes in Clean Eating that I would never make because they include artificial sweeteners, which I do not consider to be "clean."  It's about setting personal boundaries for what you want to use as fuel for your body.  The only real qualifier in my mind is that the food be un-fooled-around with, simple in its ingredients, and actually healthy. A quick look at the list of ingredients on a food should clear that up right away (hint: it should be short and composed of actual foods).

2. Clean does not automatically equal healthy, and clean does not mean you can eat unlimited quantities of food.  Even healthy food has calories, and they add up.  Even clean food can have unhealthy attiributes (beef, for example, can be perfectly "clean" but still has a lot of saturated fat).  Just because something is natural does not mean it is good for you.  Use your noggin, people!

3. Anything taken to an extreme is going to bite back.  He complains that he was eating clean and working out...and that when his "best body competition" was over and he went to Denny's and binged on an enormous meal of processed meats, pastries, and other food he was dismayed that he had seemingly undone his hard work.  Clean eating did not do that to him.  His binge did that to him, and people can binge after any extreme behavior, not just clean eating.

In short, I can tell that this guy feels cheated and angry because the diet he went on betrayed him in the end.  I have to believe, however, that clean eating is about more than dieting yourself down to win a bodybuilding contest (which he does admit, he placed second in thanks to his clean eating).  As you've heard time and time again, being healthy is a lifestyle, not just something you do on the weekends.  Eating clean is a mindset, a commitment to yourself, and a plain and simple way to fuel yourself every day, not just when you're wanting to shed a few pounds.

If you want to eat clean to lose weight, go ahead, but if you treat clean eating like a diet, it will act like one.  Instead, eat clean because it is a smart way to eat. 

And by the way, this clean eater eats pizza

at least twice a week.  So there! :)

If you have clean eating questions, let me know and I would be glad to discuss with you.  And if you want to see how some real clean eaters cook and eat real food, visit the Gracious Pantry for oodles of recipes!

Good day!



From the Archives: The Cheat Day

Today, something from the archives. Way back in December I wrote this about surviving the holidays...but it works just as well as regular old weekend advice.  Enjoy!

Last night I was reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar to my son (and thanking the Lord in heaven that I was not reading Wheels for the millionth time) and found myself wondering once again whether author Eric Carle wrote the book after coming off of another crazy diet. If you're not familiar with the book, it follows the story of a very hungry caterpillar who spends his week trying to satiate his hunger by eating through pieces of fruit only to find himself on Saturday doing what most people who have lived on fruit for a week do: pigging out.

After a week of eating one apple on Monday, two pears on Tuesday, three blueberries on Wednesday, four strawberries on Thursday, and five oranges on Friday, he then arrives at Saturday and eats, "one piece of chocolate cake, one ice-cream cone, one pickle, one slice of Swiss cheese, one slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, one cupcake, and one slice of watermelon." As you can imagine, "that night he had a stomachache!"

And I think, "been there, done that!"

The caterpillar's diet sounds like one or two ill-fated schemes about to inundate the post-holiday airwaves with promises that America's overweight can eat whatever they want and still lose weight. And I guess that is true in a way, if everything you want to eat is clean, natural, healthy food in reasonable portions eaten in several small meals throughout the day. But I'm guessing it's more along the lines of cheeseburgers and pizza, according to the commercials.

I used to spend my Saturdays like our stuffed and woozy little caterpillar, because I thought that after a week of "being good" and eating well, I deserved a cheat day. I read in fitness magazines about diets that encourage people to have one day when they can eat whatever they want without guilt. I hear about celebrity trainers who give their clients a cheat day to go off of their diet. I even read message boards filled with advice from one fitness guru to another about carb-cycling, re-feeds, and splurge meals all designed to trick your body into revving up its metabolism and get out of a plateau. And it might work, I don't know, I'm not a dietician. All I know is that when I spent six days taking care of myself by eating well and one day abusing and sabotaging myself by having a "treat," I spent a lot of time being frustrated at how bad I felt and how little progress I was making in my quest to become a fitter person. It took me a long time to realize that a cheat day only cheats me.

Your cheat day only cheats you.

I can't say it enough! As you go through the holidays and attend parties, bake goodies, receive tempting calorie-laden gifts, and browse the grocery shelves, please remember that we live in a country where food - healthy or not - is abundant. Food is not a limited-time offer. People are. This holiday, focus on the people, not the food. You can bake yourself whatever Christmas cookies you want any ole time of year. If you really feel like you deserve a treat after being so "good" on your nutrition all week, go get a pedicure after a day of shopping for gifts! But don't let yourself be lured into thinking that you are treating yourself by eating something you know will sabotage all of that hard work.

Oh, and that caterpillar? On Sunday he ate through one nice, green leaf. And after that he felt much better.

You know, just sayin'. :)

Eating for Two? Not so fast.

Hell hath no fury like a pregnant woman who has just been denied chocolate.

Have you seen a one lately?  They're everywhere, and if you're smart you'll steer clear because their emotional state is usually somewhere between slightly annoyed and ready for battle. I've been pregnant, and I have to admit it I was pretty bad at acting happy about it.  Don't get me wrong - the end result is definitely worth it and I hope to do it again.  But as an ultra-competitve wellness overachiever, having restrictions placed on the who/what/when/where/why of my body had me spewing fire in about two seconds.

Plus, I gained 75 lbs.  Yes, s-e-v-e-n-t-y  f-i-v-e. Much to my dismay, my baby was not 75 pounds.  It was seven.

It didn't help that I didn't exercise for most of it, and during the time I spent not exercising I was eating mayonaisse, sour cream, ice cream, and anything that used to moo.  I'm still monitoring my son for mayo fetishes because seriously, I ate a lot of it.  I have the stretch marks to prove it.

Well, now I have bambinos on the brain again.  And, that weight gain.  I do not want to do that again.  I'm hoping that I will be able to maintain a running regime throughout any impending pregnancy (I am not pregnant now so just put down the phone, mom) and also steer clear of the dairy section of the grocery store. 

So I was interested to read this article about a study that is analyzing the results of obese women (between 50 and 100 lbs overweight) intentionally diet during their pregnancy with the intent of gaining far less than the conventionally  recommended 11-20 pounds (25-35 lbs for women who are not obese).  The theory is that these women already have the energy storage required to supply their babies with needed nutrients, so additional weight gain is not necessary.  Now, naturally there is some weight gain that is unavoidable, but you know what they mean.  They mean my 75 lbs.

The program is still accepting participants, so if you're interested, check it out.