Week Three: Disturbance in the force

Week three of my diet turned out not to be as much of a challenge as I thought. The reason I say this is because this is the traditional week of failure for dieters. It’s the week we often stall in weight loss. In the first week we’ll drop from 5 to 6 pounds easily, it slows the second week and by week 3, it’s a struggle. All of this happens while sticking to the diet and exercise. It’s the nature of the beast of our bodies. The first weight most likely is water, the second week the body is figuring out what you’re trying to do, and will burn fat, the third week the body maybe having a little protest over what you want it to do. It takes it up to a month for your body to get into the rhythm of weight loss and exercise and to cooperate with fat burning. The key is patience with ourselves and adjust exercise and diet. 

While watching the Biggest Loser, the first week the contestants are happy and excited with massive weight loss. Some will lose up to 40lbs, but the next week not a single pound. That can get them eliminated from the show. Then the weight loss slows to 5 or 6lbs. It’s no different in the real world of diet and exercise.

This is where we give up. 1lb a week is healthy weight loss. It’s not fast, but easy to keep off. It’s not as noticeable as 5 or 6lbs in our mind's eye. Remember, losing 5 to 6 pounds a week can be gained back really quickly, and with extra weight. We’ve all heard the stories of those who lost weight very quickly looked great, and then gained it all back or doubled the weight gain. Be happy with 1lb a week. It’s a good thing.

This week was both difficult and easy for me. I lost 3lbs, but I was sick with the stomach flu. I spent three days literally running from the couch to the toilet. I’m slowly recovering. I can keep light food down. To keep at least 1lb of the weight loss, I’ll have to count calories and be careful with anything high in sugar. I was very dehydrated. I was losing everything as soon as it went in. I’m sure this is part of my weight loss. Today I’m eating very light, sipping water and chewing ice to rehydrate my body.

Next week will tell ,the true tale when I can exercise again and can hold food down.   

Week one of a Diet. Prepaing to diet for 2013

If there is one thing I really hate doing is dieting. I’ve given out a lot of advice on dieting, healthy foods, etc, for one simple reason, to keep ‘ME’ on track. And I’m about to do it again.

 Today is January 1. What do most people do on January 1? They start that all important yearly diet, that they started last year on the same date. Only this time you’re going to make it. It’s your resolution. I never make resolutions, it's one things that is made to be broken. 

If you look at the national average, over 70% of dieters who start a diet on the first, fail.

Why?

Because, they start on the first and overnight. There is no preparation for a diet.

What I’ve discovered is that you have to prepare yourself to diet for February in January. You’re saying, February, that’s a month away! What happened to January? 

What I found for myself, to give up absolutely everything at once, plus adding exercise, can be very stressful. There is a lot going on. The fear of failure is very stressful, especially if you think everyone is watching you. Most likely they’re not watching, because they’re too involved in their own mental meltdown over a failed diet. They only pay attention when you’ve noticeably lost weight, then they want your secret.

The secret to dieting successfully is easy. Take it one week at a time.

This is how:

• Week 1: Give up one bad thing for you. For me it’s wine. I love wine. Red wine is good for you, but the sugars in wine aren’t. It’s my biggest guilty pleasure. I LOVE WINE!This is the hardest for me and probably puts the most weight on me.
• Week 2: Give up something fatty and unhealthy, like red meat and/or pork. I love my pork chops! But they’ve got to go.
• Week 3:Bring down your carb intake. Look at it this way, anything white is bad for you. Go to more complex carbohydrates like whole grains.
• Week 4: Dairy products. Go to almond milks, and give up cheese. There is low fat cheese, but I’m a purist, if it isn’t the real deal, I don’t want it at all.  

Now it’s February and you’ve gotten into dieting mode. During this time, keep a food journal. Write down everything that goes into your mouth. Studies have shown dieter who maintain a journal, lose more weight and keep it off. Read labels. Low fat food, often is low in fat, but high in sugar. Make your own, then you know what's in it.

 

We all fall off the diet wagon at least a few times. The key to success is getting back on it again. Fall, bounce a little, and climb back up and if you have too, start all over again. I know because I've fallen and haven't gotten back up, more times then I can tell you.

I'll be weighing myself tomorrow, then not for another week will I go near the scale. 1pound a week is considered healthy and manageable. If your eliminating unhealthy foods week by week, you should start to lose a little weight, especially if you've added exercise. Exercise for healthy weight loss is 30 minutes a day, 6 days a week. I'm right there with you. Remember you're not a lone. 

Dieting during the Holidays

This is the most wonderful time of the year, in some ways, but in others its a flipping disaster, especially when it comes to dieting.

What to do?

Don't diet.

I don't mean throw in the towel and abandoned what has been so hard won over recent months. I'm just saying don't diet on Thanksgiving, during the holiday parties, on Christmas and New Years, oh and the Super Bowl.

The way to get around everything. Beef up your exercise program a bit. Add a extra couple of hours a week to burn off all the festivities that were indulged in. Enjoy parties. Try not to snack in between meals on all the sweet stuff sitting in the office break room. Nipple, don't over indulge. Head for the veggie platters first and fill up.

On the big days, throw the diet out and enjoy. If you've lost weight in the past few months, you're not going to gain it all back in one meal. The weight you do gain over night, is water. The body isn't use to all the sweets, alcohol, and rich heavy foods. It reacts with water weight gain. As it fights to regain it's footing with all the different foods, it will take a lot of extra energy, so it slows down, leaving you feeling sluggish.
 
Drink tons of water. It helps to flush the system out.

On the days you're not partying, go right back to your diet and add a little extra cardio to the routine.

Don't stress and obsess over the scale. Stay away from it for now. You're going to gain a little weight. It's impossible not too.

Don't fast during the holidays. Wait until January, when you won't waste your fasting efforts.

Above all enjoy the holidays, family and eat grandma's pumpkin cheese cake. Not the whole thing, but at least a slice.

Have a wonderful holiday and eat that turkey!

Argo, a movie review

In 1979 when the Iranian hostage crisis hit, I was a young mother, with three small children. As a history major, I had a good sense of Iran’s past, but knew little about where it was in those turbulent days. What was in the news was the Shaw of Iran, Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavī, escape by the skin of his teeth to the U.S. Who it was rumored had solid gold toilets, while his people suffered in horrible poverty. Situations like that are breeding grounds for anarchy, think the French revolution. This is all I cared to know about Iran back in the 70’s. To be interested in it any further than that was too time consuming, after all I was knee deep in two sets of diapers. I didn’t give the Islamic cleric, who took over the country a second thought. Of course years later, it is a big concern for all of us.

When I went to see Argo it was a step back in time. The memories of news clips jarred me back into a time when I was so much younger and very naïve. I couldn’t imagine anything happening to us like 911.

Ben Afleck did a remarkable job, bringing the times back to life. His portrayal of Tony Mendez, a down on his luck CIA agent was remarkable. I feel the character on the brink of falling apart like his personal life. The crisis he found himself in the middle of, gave him true purpose. He wasn’t the hero type, but knew his job and what it meant if he was caught trying to help six Americans hiding in the Canadian embassy. To create a movie script and company to bring those six out, was nothing short of genius, and destine to fail.

Every moment the hostages were on the screen it was filled with tension. They dripped with terror. The consequences of what could happen to them if found out, was beyond imagination. As Mendez said, “If caught they’ll die horribly.” Public executions were common place during the time period. They lived in that horror day after day, and it only escalated with the appearance of Mendez, playing the role of a movie producer. To convince the hostage what he was about to do only instilled more fear. They had to become actors and learn their lines and roles overnight.

Right to the end I was on the edge of my seat. I knew the outcome or thought I did. Like the rest of the world, I gave the Canadians a round of applause for getting the American’s out, back in 1979. No one until 1997 knew the true story and how they really escaped to safety. The movie was so well done I questioned my memory up to end, trying to recall if indeed they did make it out.

This is a must see. If you remember the crisis it was a cool to have memories ignited by the film footage. Afleck I think will be an Oscar contender. Walking out of the theater with my hubs, we talked on and off for days about those times, and how if there were cell phones and fast computers Mendez would have never been able to pull it off. Thank goodness for the lack of technology.

Struggling to blog about anything. Okay, my grandkids make me fat

I’ve been struggling to find subject matter to blog about. I can put up recipes. I can talk dieting when I hate to diet. I can talk about bike riding, which I love and am addicted too. I can complain I haven’t lost much weight, and seem to be all over the scale, which drives me to drink wine, which causes me to gain weight. I can talk all that, but it just doesn’t seem very interesting. I heard a well-known blogger say, “Don’t blog about writing. Everybody does it and it’s boring.” That’s true it’s a bit boring and there is only so much I can say about my writing, and writing habits, and along with the wine, it makes me fat.

What else makes me fat is my grandkids. I’ve gotten better about eating out with them. If we go to MacDonald’s, I’ll get a salad without meat. They charge you less, and it deletes more than half the calories from the meal. A Southwest salad with grilled meat is about 320 calories, without meat, 140 calories.You eliminate 180 calories. Besides, I don’t want to know where their meat comes from. I swear wherever it is, it never actually lived.

Regardless, I do have a weakness for the fish fillet sandwich. I’m still not sure it actually hit the water. I’m pretty sure it never swam in the sea, ocean or outside a tank of some sort. Now I feel sorry for the fish. I’ll never eat another one! Okay, I’ll occasionally have a mental meltdown over all this dieting and have one so I can go through a period of self-loathing. Did you know they actually have more calories than a regular hamburger? Ya, know the little one, that I’m sure the meat was never a living creature hamburger. They are about 400 calories just for the sandwich. I think it’s the sauce. If you have the whole crazy meal thing, forget, you’ll really hate yourself. I like the chicken nugget things or use too. I had a trainer tell me once that chickens don’t have nuggets. A real chicken had legs, thighs, wings and breasts. He put emphasis on the breasts. Okay, I was convinced, like a sinner in church to praise the lord, I had been saved, but not exactly on the fish sandwich issue.

The other bad habit, I finally have broken is not to pick at my grandkids left overs. I use to do that with my kids, but then I weighed about 40lbs less and had a metabolism that actually did its job. The other day I made the grandkids mac & cheese (theirs and mines favorite) but didn’t eat any. I was doing the Snoopy happy dance at my sudden ability to say no to myself. I didn’t pick at their left overs, because there wasn’t any. I did have to take a taste test though, just a little one, because after all I was making it. If I had eaten any, like three bowl fulls, I would have thrown in the towel, celebrated my new self-indulgence with a  bottle of wine to really bring on the moment of ‘why bother’.

This weekend I’m going to spend on the coast with friends. It will be fun and so very relaxing. The great thing about it, we’ll be cooking all our own meals, with eating out maybe once at a local seafood restaurant. I’ll bring all my healthy stuff, and pretend I’m really working at dieting, or try to convince myself I can do this and watch the waves crash on the rocky shoreline. The beauty of living in Northern California, bathing suits aren't the main attire on the beaches. If you see someone sunbathing, you know they're on drugs, because it's fucking cold all year round. You can freeze your ass off in no time, as the fog frizzes your hair. We're a lot more into being warm then looking good in a tan. Thank God for that, I would not want to scare off all the tourist with this body.

I'm still struggling with a sprained ankle and torn tendon. It’s a real pain not just in my ankle, but in the ass. I’m hating it right about now. So hiking is out of the question. I plan on riding my bike like a maniac the days prior to going to try to make up for it, because we love our wine. 

On my boring writing life, this retreat will give me the opportunity to finish my latest WIP. I have opportunities all the time to work on it, I'm at the point of avoiding it. A whole other subject matter, I'm pretty sure is boring to blog about, other then my grandkids make me fat. It's nice to have someone to blame for over indulgences in life. I think we all need that, for just a second or two, until reality hits you upside the idiot head.  

The Writer’s guide to cycling

My favorite baby. I ride like the wind.

I’ve gained back some of the weight I worked so hard to lose before I went to RWA. I also gained it back after giving out so much great advice I usually follow, but decided to fall off the wagon. Now I’m back on the diet wagon and back on my bike.

Cycling is a great form of exercise without putting any stress on the body. And it really burns the calories. When I ride for a 1 ½ I’ll burn up to 1,000 calories. I own two bikes a road bike and mountain bike. I’ve been cycling for a long time. It’s my favorite form of exercise.

Right now I’m nursing a sprained ankle from running sprints on my treadmill. My doctor told me no running for at least 12 weeks and to find something else to do. I had my bikes and I’ve been making up for my over indulgent detour by riding my bikes like a manic all over my small rural community. I’m fortunate to live here, because traffic isn’t too bad. After the kids are in school, that’s when I ride. The Mommies have either gone home or to the gym. Sometimes she’s running with friends in my bike lane which is really annoying. If you’re a runner don’t run in the bike lane, it’s dangerous for you and the cyclist. You can get hit by a stray car or cyclist and the cyclist gets forced into traffic. Bad for both, besides it’s illegal. Yes, illegal. Bike lanes are for cyclist. Sidewalks and treadmills are for runners.

Jalapeno fields in my rural community.

There are a lot of different forms of cycling these days. There is spinning in the gyms. A great form of burning calories without killing yourself, although it might feel like it after your done. There is something that is appearing in big cities like New York, San Francisco and L.A, called Soul Cycling, probably one of the toughest workouts on the planet right now. As you cycle in near darkness the instructor will give out a little advice on karma and soul searching. Hence, the name. If you decide to do this, be ready to sweat like a pig in a hot crowded dark room. See if you can’t get a free hour before buying into it. You want to like what you’re doing.

Here's some advice on buying an bike and cycling:

The Diablo range covered in the marine layer

• If you’re considering cycling and haven’t in a while, borrow a bike. See if you like dodging, dogs, cats, joggers, squirrels and the occasional PMS influenced female driver who hates you for the colors you’re wearing or just because she’s in a hating mood that day.  
• If you decide you want to ride like the wind, don’t go for the Lance Armstrong bike, get something cheaper and ride that baby into the ground. Once you do that and can see you’re riding regularly, then get one like Lance’s. Starting out, honestly you won’t be riding like the wind or Lance. If you haven’t ridden or done aerobic exercise heavily in a while, it’s going to be work. Don’t let those pedals fool you.
• Make sure the bike fits you. Sit on it at the story or shop. Adjust the seat so your leg is extended, and the knee only slightly bent. You should be able to push off on the pedal comfortably on the ball of your foot. Look at the cyclist in all the fancy equipment and cycling shoes, and the position the foot is in. There is a reason for that, comfort and speed.
• Wear a helmet. Always! Even a short fall can result in serious brain injury.
• Bright colors so you can be seen if you’re going on city streets.
• I wear bike gloves because my rings dig into my hands on the handle bars. It helps with blisters.
• Serious cyclists have all kinds of equipment and brightly colored shirts and padded pants. If you’re just starting out, wait to get all that, just wear a bright shirt and get a pad for your seat. All that cool looking stuff that makes you look like the real deal can be very costly. Remember to wear sunscreen, cyclist can buy stock in those companies we go through so much of it. It is our best friend besides the bike pump.  
• Research your vehicle code. You can’t run red lights or stop signs. The vehicle code applies to cyclist too.
• Don’t wear ear buds and listen to your music! You’ve got to be constantly aware of your surroundings, because you’re on city streets or on paths shared with joggers, the mommy exercise group and with people whose dogs hate you. You have to rely on your hearing to know what is coming up behind you, unless you’re blessed with eyes in the back of your head. I know your kids swear you do, but really you don’t. No blasting music in your head while riding!!! And that also goes for runners, for the same reason and you can't hear me coming.
• Get a little tool kit for the bike. You just never know. Shit happens. If you fall in love with cycling and find you have a lot of flats, get Teflon lining for your tires. Tire shops will put them in, because it’s a pain. The initial cost is expensive but over the long run it saves on tires and time.  
• Always be polite to the walkers, runners and dog walkers on shared paths. Call out, "coming from behind." Or "On your left" or whatever it might be. Than thank them for getting out of the way so you don't have to stop. Just be friendly. It helps with the image. 
• Lastly, just be safe. Be careful, and have fun. 

Since I've returned to the bike and have started to count calories, I've lost 2lbs in a one week. I was surprised. I love getting outside and riding, feeling the wind on my face and the occasional bug in my teeth. Fortunately, I live in California and can ride all year around. I just bundle up and go when there is ice on the creeks, as long as there is no ice on the path or streets I'm good. Besides you get to see some awesome scenery. The pictures are from the country roads I ride.