(Don't) Finish What You Start

One of the painful realizations I made about myself during my quest to not look like the Michelin Man's girlfriend was that I was addicted to food.  When I started working with my trainer, one of the first things he said was "If something is a trigger food, don't eat it.  Don't even keep it in your house." He told me that a trigger food was anything that you couldn't control the amount you ate, or anything that made you want to eat other food.

What he couldn't tell me was that anything sweet was a trigger food for me.  It didn't much matter what it was.  Once I tasted sugar, that's all I wanted.  Sometimes I felt like if my entire town was made into a gingerbread house, I could eat all of it.  I think I tried a few times.

But since stating what I now call "My Life: 2.0", I've started paying attention to why I eat (which as a trainer, is really why people eat). I've realized that most of us have at least a small addiction to food, and with good reason.  If you want to know more about how the food industry spends bajillions (technical term for a helluva lot) on making you powerless to say no to certain foods, read The End of Overeating, by David Kessler. But that aside, our addiction to food isn't always about the food itself.  Sometimes it's about the way food makes us feel (hello, eating our emotions!) or the way it invokes memories of happy times.  Some of us, like my father (who is actually trim, so I can say this), were raised to be members of the clean plate club-- and taught that you don't let perfectly good food go to waste. Turns out, though, perfectly good food usually goes to waist.  

But given the fact that 100 extra calories per day over what your body needs can cause you to be 10!!! pounds heavier at the end of a year... I'll pause while that sinks in and you get really mad and assume I'm making that up...  this is more problematic than we realize. It's not just a harmless habit, especially when modern portion sizes are really designed for a small army.

So how does anyone start to get the upper hand on this? I learned something by watching my trainer/best friend eat.  No matter how good something is, he never finishes it.  I've never once seen him completely clean his plate. This annoyed me at first, especially since he is 60 and still looks like he could be a competition body builder without much work. Don't misunderstand.  The man likes cheat meals!  But I finally realized this was a coping skill he had taught himself.  If he leaves food on his plate, he is in control, not the food.  It's a small act of daily willpower that when done repeatedly teaches his brain how to handle being around really great food. Even when he has a cheat meal, leaving a few bites uneaten on his plate signals to him that while he had a "food vacation", he's had enough.

Try it. Yes, there are starving people in China (and here!)  But you cleaning your plate isn't helping them... or probably you!  Go against the grain.  Don't finish what you start.

Sesame Street, Heroes, and Getting There

 

It's a magic carpet ride

Every door will open wide

To happy people like you--

Happy people like

What a beautiful

Sunny Day

Sweepin' the clouds away

On my way to where the air is sweet

Can you tell me how to get,

How to get to Sesame Street?

One of the worst things about being a fat girl (you know, aside from the constant exhaustion of carrying around the weight equivalent to an extra person, and aside from the screaming knees and asthma and back problems) was feeling like everyone knew a secret I didn’t know.  I’d see all these skinny, smiling spandex-clad girls on treadmills, and wish with everything I had to be one of them.   I’d cry because I wasn’t.

It’s like the Sesame Street song was my life’s soundtrack.  I knew where I wanted to go, but I couldn’t figure out how to get there.  Nobody could tell me how to get to the place where I was one of the smiling people for whom doors opened wide.

Once I started working with a trainer, and learned how to eat, and quit doing things that I thought were healthy, but were actually hurting my body and sabotaging my success, my life is different. 100 pounds later, I’m on the other side of the fence.  I don’t have the perfect body yet, but as a personal trainer, I’m helping people learn how to change their own story.

Sometimes people see the gigantic picture of gigantic me that’s up at the gym, and after they say “That’s you?!?”, there’s a heavy pause.  Then I know what’s coming.  “I could never do that.”

I heard an interview on NPR with singer/songwriter David LaMotte last week.  LaMotte is based in the mountains of North Carolina, and there’s a largeness to his songs that I love.  Lately he’s spent a lot of time doing what I call “Justice Work”, and has started offering seminars called “Change Your World.” One of the things he said in the interview was that people have a “hero complex”, where they think a hero is someone who does these huge, amazing things.  It’s nice, but of course, not many people believe themselves to be heroes.  Which mean that no one believes themselves capable of changing the world.  He made the point that the world is really changed by ordinary people doing lots of small things.

This notion has been nagging at me all week, because maybe that’s how it is with losing weight too.  Maybe most of us watch shows like The Biggest Loser and think “that’s great for you, but I can’t give up my whole life to lose weight.” Or you think, secretly, that you’re not disciplined enough or determined enough or whatever else enough.  Or that  you’re too busy, or too old, or too broke, or too whatever else.  But what happens is that, at least secretly, you don’t actually believe you can change enough to lose the weight.  As much as you’d like to get to “Sesame Street”, you don’t think anyone can actually tell you how to get there.

But maybe the notion of having to be “hero”, who does big, amazing things is stopping you from being healthy and happy. Looking back, I did make some big changes.  But through the process, it never felt that way.  It felt more like one small step here, and one small step there.  It was my trainer telling me to give him just one more rep, and weakly saying, “I can do that.” It was filling my body with good things to the point I didn’t miss what I wasn’t eating.  It was all the small things. 

If I could give people one piece of encouragement, I’d say “You can do this.  Start where you are.  Get someone who knows what they are doing to help you. (Seriously, there’s nothing worse than floundering around in the gym, wasting your time, and not seeing results.)  And then put your head down, give it your best effort.  Choose food your body needs instead of just what tastes good.

Then do it again tomorrow.”

Turns out, there’s no secret road to “Sesame Street.” It’s just a lot of small steps.

Lessons Learned: How bad do you want this?

One day, I will get back to being a real. live. blogger... but until then, this one's from the archives. (Really, I am working on some new material-- this is something I want to do!)  This is from my previous blog, The Pudgy Parson.  I kept that one while I was both a pastor and losing weight.  This post is from 2 years ago, after I had been on my journey nearly two years ago.  But since this is a version of something I regularly ask my clients, I thought it was time to bring it back.   I'm getting ready to start a weight loss challenge with them, so I'm asking them to dig deep and get out of their comfort zones.

I've been there.

"How bad do you want this?"

One of the benefits to being an "advanced" trainee is that I usually just come in and do my workouts on my own.  My workout partner and I are trusted enough to just handle it.  If I happen to be in the gym with He-who-trains, he is usually either training someone else or doing his own workout--which means that aside from some small form corrections, he leaves me be. But last night, I had the poor timing to come in as he was just finishing up.  And even though I had a lovely "first leg day in weeks"   workout planned due to the fact that I'm still babying a grouchy back, he decided that it was a nice day to make me cry  in just a few short minutes. Well, I didn't actually cry but that was only because all of my energy was going into not dying. He had designed a BRUTAL, but very back friendly, workout for me, and he wanted to see how I did with it.

It was baaaad. It got to the point where I could no longer lift any weight, and then to the point where my own body weight was too much. But there was a point where I was doing ATG (Butt to Ground) squats on legs that felt like cooked spaghetti noodles, and quite certain that I was not physically capable of standing back up. Either he or the angry voice in my head asked a question.  "How bad to you want this?" (Come to think of it... it must've been him.  My voice would've asked how badly I wanted this. Dying is no excuse for poor grammar.) I wish I could say that the question gave me a new burst of energy and that I finished strong.  I did not.  I had to sit down because my legs could no longer support me.  I was lightheaded. I did, however, finish knowing that I held back nothing.

 I've thought about the question a lot. Do you want this enough to give it your everything? Do you want it enough to overcome your whiny voice that gives you a thousand reasons not to?  Do you want it enough to not only do it again (and again and again), but every single time to challenge yourself to be better than the last time?

Maybe that's really a life question, not just a gym question.

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.

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: