I just wanna celebrate!

When we think about losing weight or taking steps to become healthier, we tend to think in terms of big goals.  Like me: just once I want to compete as a bodybuilder.  I not only want to be that fit, but also want to go through all the complete and total dedication it takes to get ready for a competition.  To appear on that stage after being a size 20 and weighing nearly 240 lbs, that would feel like my "booyah!' to the world.

But when we focus on only our gigantic goals, our progress diminishes in our minds because we can only see how far we have yet to go. That's especially true when we begin to fixate on what a seemingly fickle scale says.

Over the last two years, I've learned to celebrate the small things.  Here are the things that have mattered most to me about not only losing weight, but about getting healthy.

• Boots! No seriously, every fall I'd traipse through the shoe sections (all the shoe sections!) in hopes that I could finally find a pair that would fit over my calves.  This year, every pair I have tried on has fit! The only problem is that now I want to be able to buy all. the. boots.
• Being able to take swimming lessons: I learned to swim as a kid, but that was mostly just enough not to drown. I felt like (and probably looked like) a flailing walrus-- and was completely inefficient. For years, I've wanted to be able to swim for exercise and knew I needed to take swim lessons to do it. But it was the bathing suit thing.  I sure didn't want to not only make a fool of myself, but to do it in a bathing suit.  But today, I smiled when I was on the deck, finally learning to dive without holding my nose-- and my thoughts weren't on how my body looked.
• Shopping: For years, I could only shop in the plus size section or in Lane Bryant.  And even then, the thought was always "I don't think that would look good on me" or the (completely awful) "Fat people shouldn't wear patterns that attract attention." Yeah, the mind isn't always terribly helpful either. But it's pretty awesome to be able to walk into any store and try on whatever I like. 
• Being able to run: One of the consequences of being so heavy was that I had messed up a lot of body parts, most specifically my knees.  But I've always wanted to run.  When I started working with a trainer two years ago, he made me promise I wouldn't run until he said I could so that I could heal from the injuries and balance my body.  I still don't run a lot because I lift weights instead (a point in which I am a firm believer-- but I'll write on that another time!) but the fact is I can.  I ran four--admittedly slow-- miles the other day, but I felt spectacular. It was one of those glorious days when things just clicked and I felt right in my body and nothing hurt. I felt like all the blissful people I see in magazine.  

I haven't achieved this yet, but when I do it will be a celebration for me.  I've always wanted to be able to do a chin up, and have never ever been able to do even one.  But I'm working on it at every opportunity!

Those are the things I've loved that have kept me focused on my progress when the scale says things I don't want to hear.  I could tell you other things like I sleep better and my allergies and asthma are better.  I could tell you that my back and knees hurt a lot less and that I have fewer headaches than I did.  I know some people who have gone to the doctor and learned that their cholestorol has gone down 9 points, or that they didn't have to special order their clothes.

Whatever it is for you, celebrate the small things!

Winner, winner, CHILI Dinner

Now that the weather is getting cooler (55 degrees here today-- was beautiful!), we want cozy comfort food.  Bodybuilders are starting to enter their post summer bulking phase-- which is I think a nice way of saying they want to eat all the wonderful stuff they kept out of their diets to show of their six pack during the summer.  But cozy doesn't have to mean full of fat!

A friend sent me a message asking about the healthiness of chili.   Good question!  We're all thinking about it!

So here's the lowdown.  Chili has lots of nutrient dense ingredients like beans (unless you're like me--who is a little weirded out by the texture) and lean beef and tomatoes. For the record, tomatoes are a rockstar food that is high in lycopene, which is a powerful antioxidant compound that boasts many benefits, including promoting eye health and lowering the incidences of heart disease and cancer.  Chili is a great source of protein, and since spicy foods are thought to raise metabolism so Chili is a winner there too.

As you settle in to a fall feast, just beware that you don't you don't undo all your healthy hard work by piling on the cheese and sour cream (or Fritos!).  Also, Chili tends to be high in salt, so moderate your intake the rest of the day.

Really? Why does chili need to look so ugh?

Here's one of my favorite recipes that I adapted to make waist-line friendly.   Sorry not to be able to give credit where it's due, but this has been lurking in my recipe book for a while!

American Diets are often very high in sodium.  Dietary Guidelines recommend no more than 2300 milligrams of sodium per day. 1500 milligrams per day if you are over the age of 51, have kidney disease, diabetes, or high blood pressure. This recipe, unlike most, boasts a moderate 358 mg per serving, which is reasonable!

1 lbs. 93% lean ground beef, browned and drained
4 oz can green chilis
10.5 oz can french onion soup
1 T. chili powder
2 cups cooked kidney beans (yes, the kind you have to soak-- saves crazy amounts of sodium versus using canned beans)
2 t. ground cumin
6 oz. can tomato paste
3/4 c. water
1/2 t. pepper
1/8 t (or 1/4 if you're really rowdy) hot pepper sauce

Serving Size 1/8 recipe
Nutrition: Calories: 289, Carbs: 38g, Protein: 24 g, Fat: 5 g, Sodium: 358 mg

Pop those rockstar ingredients into the crockpot for 6-8 hours on low.  Serves 8.  Nutritional info as pictured. FYI: Myfitnesspal has a great tool that allows you to put your recipe in and it will figure everything out for you.  Also handy to be able to add it right to your food diary, which of course you are using consistently.  Right?  Thought so!

Happy Feasting

Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance

Ok, ok-- I sorta stole the heading from one of my trainer's favorite lectures.  Only I cleaned it up a little bit. (There was another "P" descriptor. Uhem.)

I had this under control, once upon a time.  Kinda like my life.  But all my proverbial ducks are anything but in a nice neat row.  It's been a crazy week, and I'm wiped out. My house was a mess until today when I gave it at least a cursory straightening.  There were mountains of spandex waiting to be washed from a week of training me and other people.  And I'll be really honest: I've been fudging meals a bit.  It's not that I'm eating badly, because after two years, it's sort of on auto-pilot. But I'm not nailing it either.  I'm too tired to come home and think about what I should be eating for dinner. I'm eating out at lunch more than I should.  And breakfast is something I'm grabbing as I run out the door.   Truth:  I feel pretty blah, and I'm at least partly responsible.  I may not be going over my calories, but I'm probably not getting all the nutrients I need either.

I'm having to dig back into my brain and remind myself what I once knew to be vitally important to weight-loss success: a meal plan.  Remember how when you were in school and every week the school let you know what would be served each day?  Yeah, that's a meal plan.  Only I'm not so much talking about a sheet full of greasy pizza and "Salisbury Steak" (aka "mystery meat", IMHO).  A meal plan is simply taking the time to think through each meal that you will eat in the course of a week.  If you're really serious about being healthy, it's figuring out the meals you will eat AND their nutrional content, to make sure you stay within your calorie goal and meet your ideal Carbohydrate, Fat, and Protein goals.  (If you'd like a basic idea of how many calories you need for your goal, this site is fairly helpful.) When I do my meal plans, I create an excel spreadsheet, and then get my nutritional information from either myfitnesspal.com or calorieking.com  This seems daunting at first, but after a few weeks, you'll discover that you're eating basically the same foods over and over with only a small rotation.  People are creatures of habit!

Something that has been really helpful to me is doing either a one-a-week or two-a-week cooking session.  I've typically done this on Sunday and I've shopped, chopped, and done the basic work like grilling chicken breasts or other meats.  Come Monday morning when I'm ready for my steak and mushrooms and onions, I'll just throw the steak in the microwave for a few and then quickly sauté some the already chopped veggies. Crazy easy on a day when anything else rarely is!

Refrigerator decor: meal plan and fitness inspirations

If you're just starting out and are overwhelmed, E-mealz.com might be a good starting place for you.  It's a paid service, but the cost is nominal. They have lots of plans to choose from, and even some that are store specific.  The idea is that they (whomever "they" is) find out what is going to be on sale that week and create recipes for those items.  They give you the recipes and even a shopping list. I think on some of the plans that are related to specific health goals they even list the nutrition info-- but it's been a while for me! Definitely worth checking out!

If you're feeling frazzled and haven't done any planning or preparation, you're likely to head straight for McDonalds.  And let's be real.  That burger and fries and soda is gonna head straight to your behind or belly.   Do your health a HUGE favor and take the time to do a little work! Your waist will thank you!

P.S. If you are crafty, I love this idea that I saw on Pinterest.  On each of your cards, I'd go ahead and write the recipe along with all the nutrition information. You can plug in your exact recipe to the myfitnesspal site and it will calculate all of it for you.  That way you'll have it ready each time.  A little work on the front end saves some bulge on your back end! Check out the idea here.

Fall in a Glass!

I've kept it at bay as long as I could, but now that the weather is (finally!) starting to cool down, I have a bad case of pumpkin-itis.  Normally by now I would've made pumpkin soup and pumpkin bread and maybe even pumpkin-sage ravioli.  You know.  Pumpkin: All. the. things  And it's a good thing that there is no St. Arbucks nearby or it would be a pumpkin spice latte way too often.

But as I've made changes to the way I eat, getting my fall fix has been a challenge. So I did what any pumpkin-craving, sorta techy person would do.  I turned to the wisdom of Pinterest. I was pretty delighed that one of the first recipes was for a pumpkin protein smoothie made with whey protein.  Whey protein is a great way to sneak in some extra protein without tons of calories, carbs, or sodium.  It also has a pretty complete amino acid profile, which is why bodybuilders swear by it.  (Amino acids are necessary for building muscle.)  But don't worry-- even if you aren't a body builder, whey protein can make a great addition to your diet.  Fact: most people eat too little protein for their body's requirements, but that's a post for another day. That being said, protein powder day in and day out is about as exciting as it sounds.

So this is perfect! Makes good use of whey, tastes like fall, and bonus: ice cream! Yes, ice cream!  Contrary to belief, ice cream is great when eaten at the right time of day-- either first thing in the morning or right before a workout. (Um... seriously on the 1/2 cup though--ALWAYS MEASURE!) That way your body can make good use of the carbs.  And because ice cream also has fat and protein, the absorbtion of the carbs is slowed, so it's a good source of longer lasting energy.  (Eat nothing but carbs at a meal and see how quickly you get hungry!)

But wait! As if all that wasn't enough-- there is so much more.  Pumpkin is a powerhouse of great nutrients, including magnesium and potassium (which can be a challenge to consume in correct amounts). Magnesium plays a role in carbohydrate and fat metabolism, supports protein synthesis, and aids in wound healing, as well as playing a vital role in muscle contractions.  Potassium in canned pumpkin maintains healthy heart function and plays an important role in nerve transmission.  But the benefits don't stop there, because canned pumpkin is also high in both vitamins A and K.  Vitamin A plays a major role in eye health (a deficiency can contribute to "night blindness"), immune function and wound healing, and the production of red blood cells.  Vitamin K assists in blood clotting and amino acid metabolism.

Here's my adapted version of Fall in a Glass (aka "Heaven").  Please note, right now I am drinking whole milk, but that may not be appropriate for you. This was made in a way that meets my pre-workout needs.  Definitely make this work for you, and calculate the calories based on your preferences.   Nutrition info is given based on this recipe:

1/2 c Eddy's Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream
8 oz Vitamin D Milk
1/4 c canned pumpkin
1 Scoop Optimum Nutrition Gold Standard Whey, Vanilla
1/8 t ground cloves
1/8 t ground cinnamon
1/8 t pumpkin pie spice

Nutrition:
Calories: 409,  Carbs: 37g, Fat: 13g, Protein 34g, Sodium: 264 mg

Throw it in a blender, and throw it back! Happy Fall, y'all!

Ask the Trainer: Why won't the (bleep, bleep) scale move?

A friend of mine asked a great question.  Ok, ok, she called it a pity party-- but we've all been there, so it's completely legit.  She has been following a meal plan (and since her trainer is the guy who helped me lose all this weight, I know it is spot on-- he doesn't play!) and killing it in the gym. She's been pretty excited about all of her progress... until...

Until she stepped on the scale today and it showed her UP two pounds.  That's enough to make anyone say impolite things, especially when you are working so hard.

So what gives?

Well a couple of things, possibly.

1) It's water weight.  This could be from several things including higher than normal salt or carbohydrate intake.  Yeah, we know that salt often makes our bodies hold water, but I bet you didn't know that for every gram of carbohydrate that your body stores, it also stores 3 grams of water! Have a carb heavy meal and poof! A grouchy scale.  But if you happen to be of the (o, so...so... lucky) female type, you know that hormones can be pretty horrendous. Yup.  You know what I'm talking about!   The good news is that no matter the cause of the water weight, it will usually come of pretty quickly. It's water, not fat, so don't go into freak out mode just yet!

2) You're gaining muscle.  Yup, you've heard that one too.  But if you're busting it in the gym, it's possible! (Depending on your caloric intake-- it's very rare to be able to build muscle in a calorie reduced state.) I'd been whining to my trainer about a five month plateau.  The scale didn't look like it was budging (ok, I lost seven pounds...but that didn't feel sufficient given all the seriously hard effort I was putting in.)  But when we did a skin-fold analysis, we discovered that I had actually put on 4 pounds of muscle.  Everybody and their dog has heard that muscle weighs more than fat!

3) The body is pretty excited by what I now call "horrible homeostasis". Basically the body gets comfortable at a certain place, and panics when things start to change.  It's kind of a control freak that way.  So in its panic, it does everything it can to maintain the balance it likes so much.  Two year olds have nothin on the body when it decides it wants to throw a temper tantrum.  This is what's happening when we hit those nasty plateaus. Sorry.  I don't have anything useful to say about plateaus.  They are terrible, horrible, no good, and very bad!  But they are a completely normal part of the process.

So what's an eating-right, busting-it person to do?

Best answer:  Don't watch the scale.  When I first started with my trainer, he made me swear that I wouldn't weigh more than once a month-- for exactly this reason.  Some days, I think I probably need to go back to that plan.  But the tendency is to focus on the number on the scale instead of on how much progress you are making, how much healthier you feel, how much better you look in your clothes.  (Or uhem.  Sans clothes.  Whatever floats your boat.)

Trust pictures and trust friends when they tell you how good you look.  Friends might lie, though not usually about things like this.  Pictures can't lie.  Take pictures when you start and once a month thereafter.  Be really gutsy, move Jr.'s artwork, and hang them on the fridge.  You won't believe your eyes!

But most of all, hang in there. And well, this: