Clean Leaning

Category Archives: Weight Loss

Weigh in on this one for Healthy Living!

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It’s a very common scenario. You journal your food and you don’t lose. Pretty soon you start to lose heart because you feel like you’re doing everything right, and yet it’s just not happening!
This is the time to really evaluate your habits, and the habit we’re going to address this week is the use of weights and measurements.
Some people are hyper-crazy when it comes to weighing and measuring. They weigh EVERYTHING and never put anything into their mouth without weighing or measuring. Others refuse to weigh or measure at all, preferring to eyeball amounts.

Let’s find a happy medium there. There are some things that you should always measure, and there are ways to make it easier. there are other things that maybe aren’t such a big deal. Does it really matter if you underestimate how many cups of lettuce you’re eating? Probably not, at 7 calories a cup. A sneeze burns those calories! The more calorie dense and item, the more important it is to be accurate in its accounting.

Eyeballing might work for awhile, especially at first when you’re limiting calories much more than you did before you started being more aware of your nutrition. After all, if you used to eat 2 large bowls of cereal for breakfast every morning, and now you eat only one large bowl, that’s a 50% savings. But if you’re counting calories for that large bowl as a “typical serving” and you’re not seeing a difference, weigh or measure the cereal. Most people overestimate cereal by over 100%. So if you’re eating 2 cups of cereal, but only counting one cup every day. Over the week that can add up to 800-900 extra calories for that cereal alone!
Get yourself a good set of measuring cups, measuring spoons, and a food scale. Put them somewhere you will see them and use them. And let’s weigh and measure this week.
Tory

Changing Your Relationship with Food

on by in Weight Loss ⋅ Leave a comment
Changing my relationship with food was secondary to changing my relationship with myself. However, it was still a very important and obvious part of my weight loss program. Prior to starting my weight loss for the last time, I had a really unhealthy relationship with food. I would eat certain foods when I was on a diet. I would eat other foods when I wasn’t. Even though there were some “diet” foods I really enjoyed, I only would buy them during “dieting” and wouldn’t make them part of my regular eating.

When I would overeat I would either completely ignore it, or I would beat myself up over it as if I’d committed a heinous crime. Food either had the power to make me feel really GOOD or really BAD. I would sometimes punish myself by withholding food, even when I was hungry, in an effort to lose weight. At other times, I would eat just to make myself happy and unfortunately I had a partner in that crime. Roy and I (I am almost embarrassed to admit) would go to the store and buy a ton of junk food and have a “junk night” where we’d eat just garbage and watch movies. I don’t even want to think about the calories we’d take in, or the damage that was doing to our bodies.

Building a new relationship with food was paramount to success and the way I did it was by making small, sustainable changes that I could live with. I lost the idea of “good” and “bad” foods. Nothing was off limits. I have a HUGE sweet tooth so rather than try to deny that, I learned to find things that I enjoy that are healthy and sweet. For example, I have homemade yogurt with berries for dessert almost every night. I make it with full fat milk so it’s very satisfying. I use honey to sweeten it, so it hits my sweet tooth. It’s super healthy, no additives, and lots of vitamins and probiotics.
However, when I first started, I would have a brownie sundae for dessert almost every night. I would just save calories for it. I would make a “No Pudge” brownie and put 1/2 cup of ice cream (light or no/low-fat) on it. The brownie alone was kind of “okay if you didn’t think about it too hard” but with the ice cream melted into it, it was delicious. I transitioned into the yogurt at one point because I love Greek yogurt, not because I thought “I ‘should’ be eating yogurt”. It was one of those small changes I made that I could live with.

Finding a way to make your food work FOR you is the best way to keep working the program. Trying to force your lifestyle into a program that is counter to what you enjoy, doesn’t work for most people. That’s why you will hear people often say “I’m on the ____ program, again.” Think about it. If the program works, why would you need to go on it AGAIN? Shouldn’t a reasonable program be something you go on, adapt to YOUR lifestyle, and stay on for good?

Don’t get me wrong. I am not judging other programs. I get the purpose behind programs like Whole 30 or Atkins, but most people struggle to maintain a lifestyle on them because they are usually a dramatic departure from their normal way of living. I find I eat very similar to Whole 30 NOW, but if someone had told me in 2002 (when I started my weight loss) that I had to eat that way then, I would have failed because that would not have worked for me. It does for some, but not for many. If it did, weight loss wouldn’t be a multi-billion dollar industry.
This week think about what small, sustainable changes you can make that will give you a better relationship with your food and help you introduce new foods into your diet.

The Weight Struggle is Real

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The weight struggle has been really real for me lately. I am up 10 pounds and I Do Not Like It! For some reason I have had a hard time eating clean since February. Normally I can have candy as a part of my diet and I don’t have to go “Oh, there is some candy. I will eat all of the candy. Now I want more candy.” But for some reason up until this last week, that’s been my struggle. Even as I’ve fought to get it under control it has been a true and real fight. Food that is good for me has not tasted good so it’s been rough to make me eat it, so sometimes I’d just not eat at all.

The fight is real!

The fight is real!

No, weight loss is never “over”. It’s always there, in the background, waiting to jump back at you.

I chalked this up to a bout of depression I’ve been dealing with related to my pain and the ten pounds from that as well as from the fact that with the pain I haven’t run as much. I want to run, but when my head is really hurting it’s hard to get out because sometimes running makes it worse. Most of the time it makes it better, but that’s generally mornings. After working a full day I am exhausted so it’s hard to focus on getting out to do my thing!

Finally, though, the fight is calming down and I think I’m back in my mode. It wasn’t the depression, menopause, or lack of running although I’m sure none of those things have made it easier. It was a medication I had increased back in, ta da, February. My Gabapentin was increased from 600 mg per day to 900 and that’s when it started. At the time I didn’t think much about it because it was Valentines and then Easter and my Birthday. I went back to see the neurology ARNP a week and a half ago and she lowered the dose back to 600 and said I could even go lower, so I titrated back to 300 per day and suddenly I am no longer looking for dusty M&Ms in the couch cushions. My nutrition is back on track and healthy choices are coming easier again.

Whew! That doesn’t mean I’m eating like a saint, but I’m doing better and I’m so glad.

As for clean cooking, right now I am in search of the perfect sourdough rye bread. I made a brick of a loaf that tastes awesome the other night. The only problem is, I had to register it as a deadly weapon with the FBI. It’s still great tasting. The mistake was mine. Roy was asking me questions while I was measuring the flour and I think I miscounted, so when the dough was dry I added a little more sourdough starter and a little (okay so maybe a more than a little) more water. Then it was too goopy so I added a little more flour. It was still too goopy but I was worried about adding more flour. It did rise but I think it was too wet to stay risen very high, plus I think it was over-handled. I also managed not to auto-lyse my whole wheat bread long enough last time I made it because I wanted some of its warm bready goodness before bed. Well it’s also a shorty loaf.

Bread making is hard unless you do it right and pay attention. Tory got cocky, now Tory has bread you could cold-cock someone with.

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