Is a thinner wallet making you fatter?

On the Today Show a couple days ago one of the on air nutritionist’s did a piece on the economy and how it has or will affect our waist lines and it got me thinking. I brought it up with co-workers the next day and one said “I guess everyone will get thinner because they have to buy less food.” That’s one theory, however I tend to agree more with the Today Show nutritionist who said that people are just going to buy cheaper food such as fast food, and food they can stretch which is mostly non-nutritious carbs. You can feed a lot more people for a lot less money if you give them Kraft Mac-n-Cheese instead of grilled chicken and veggies. In fact will most businesses reporting loss after loss, the fast food industry is seeing growth. In McDonald’s case it was reported they grew 11% last quarter. People are even more attracted than ever to that dollar menu. When you are worried about feeding your kids, I doubt you think too much about the nutritional facts.

Also, I thought about how stressed everyone is about the economy. Not only do they want cheaper food, but maybe comforting food. I for one know when I am down and out I have definitely turned to a bowl of ice cream or piece of pizza for comfort. Hey, if you don’t drink, grab a couple hamburgers to numb the pain.

I can honestly I am still spending a lot of food. I am buying mostly organic which has upped my bill. I am buying lots of fresh berries, veggies, eggs, cheese, raw milk, chicken, fish, and lean steak. I used to use rice, pasta, or bread as fillers in my meals to make them cheaper, but now I fill up on the most expensive ingredients organic lean protein and veggies. We have had to slash our budget because of the economy but high quality food could not be one of the line items slashed. Instead we choose to use less money on entertainment & eating out. My health is just too important to me now and I blessed to still be able to afford the food I should be eating.

What is happening in your household? Have your grocery shopping habits changed? Do you think you will have to change them in the near future if things don’t turn around?

Offical Weigh In

As of this morning I weight 325. I broke the plateau and have been slowly losing ever since, even some during thanksgiving which has never ever happened before. So, I have lost 37 pounds from my highest weight ever and 20 pounds in the last 6.5 weeks. The short term goal I am looking most forward to is getting under 300 pounds. I have been talking about it for the past 2 years on this blog but have never been close. I know this is the time I will achieve it. I would love to make it before my next check up with the endocrinologist which is Feb 17th. I will have to ramp up some speed if I want to make it.

Creating an Arsenal

If you have been reading this blog long, you know that I have had several failed weight loss attempts. Today I was trying to think of the biggest reasons why I failed and I found one that seemed to be most common. I started to lose control when I wasn’t prepared and didn’t plan ahead. Let’s face it, there are going to be days that I run into problems. Plans won’t always go how I would like, and things will slip through the cracks. Usually the thing that I have trouble with the most is packing lunches. It is my least favorite meal mostly because I can cook anything here at work, so I can barely even bring leftovers unless I want to eat it cold. Most mornings I through together a chicken salad or tuna and veggies, but other times I run out the door and forget to pack something. There are a couple restaurants near my work that have healthy choices and in one case even organic. However I am trying to avoid eating out, so I created an arsenal of healthy foods to keep at work that I can grab at a moments notice at work in case of forgot my lunch or am feeling tempted. I actually had to use one today when my co-worker was trying to push cookies in my face. I had some dried berries instead.

My Arsenal:

Organic Soup

Raw Almonds

Organic Dried Fruit

Organic Food Bars

Protein Powder Mix

Organic Cheese Sticks

What would you or do you keep in yours to keep you on track?

Surviving Thanksgiving Overload

Well, I did it. I ate 4 thanksgivings in over a weeks time and I did not gain weight, in fact I lost a little. (I will not post my weight until I officially weigh in on Thursday.) There were a bunch of ways I had to choose from to handle this not very diet friendly holiday. I chose the a couple of strategies to get me through...here they are:

1) I slept in on the days I had a thanksgiving. Why? Because sleeping in helped me have breakfast later in the day, which kept me satisfied until the 4'o clock dinners. That way I only ate two meals but wasn't hungry and had extra calories to spend on Thanksgiving food.
2) I did an hour on the elliptical each morning and pushed myself really hard to burn extra calories.
3) I filled my plate mostly with turkey and veggies. I did have a couple tablespoons of stuffing and sweet potato...but skipped the mashed potatoes, bread, and dessert.
4) I did a 30 min bike ride in the evening. It was fun and burned even more calories.

However, I think the biggest key to success was planning ahead and knowing that failure is not an option. Thank God I will only have two Christmas dinners to go to!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Just wanted to pop in really quick and wish you all a happy thanksgiving! More soon, once I have finished digesting all these turkey dinners.

Four Thanksgivings and a Funeral

Everyone knows this is the hardest time of the year to try and lose weight, yet I am trying it again this year. Halloween was easy to get through, sure we had extra treats at the office and my sister wanted to share her candy but I was able to pass it up rather easily. Now, I am looking in to the face of four thanksgiving meals in the next week and I am getting scared. It was been so hard for me to lose weight and I do not want to pedal backwards. I also don’t want to sit on the sidelines and not participate in one of my favorite times of the year. I love everything about it. I love the time with loved ones, the old family recipes, sharing what I am thankful for, setting a beautiful fall table, and of course: the food. Here is the scary T-Day schedule:

Saturday 11/22: My family Thanksgiving (My brother is going to his girlfriends house in NY for thanksgiving so we are having ours early)
Monday 11/24: The office Pot Luck Thanksgiving ( I work for a nutritional company and they are even bring in an organic turkey!)
Thursday 11/27: My Hubby’s Family Thanksgiving (The food is fabulous but there really are not ANY healthy options here!)
Saturday 11/29: Our Friends Thanksgiving (They both have to work Thanksgiving Day at the hospital and they don’t have any family near so they invited their friends.)

(Oh, and the funeral might be for me if I let myself gain weight this holiday season!)

I can see a few ways that I can handle this. I am not sure which way to go yet.

A) I can eat before all these events and skip the food.
B) I can bring my own food to the events and eat with my friends and family but not the food they offer.
C) I can eat just the turkey and veggies at these events.
D) I can eat a very small portion of whatever I want to eat so I feel a part of it.
E) I can eat whatever I want, it is thanksgiving after all!

How do I survive? What do you guys think?

I want the facts, and just the facts!

http://www.newsweek.com/id/169017

The link above is to an article I was reading discussing mandating calorie counts on menus at restaurants. The article talks about whether or not it would help fight obesity or people will just eat what they want anyway. I say: WHO CARES, we deserve to have the information and know the truth ether way. Some of us will continue to eat what we like no matter the consequences and some of us will use it as a valuable tool to take control of our healthy and weight when dining out.

I know that eating out is always very hard for me. Unless I get plain grilled chicken or fish with steamed veggies or a garden salad with light dressing it is hard to estimate how many calories a dish has in it. Even when something sounds like a healthier choice, sometimes it is not.

I will be elated if the government makes this a law. Please get us the information we need to make good choices if we want to.

Christmas came early this year!

I have been trying to get in as much exercise as possible. I have been using my beloved elliptical machine twice a day while watching TV. However, I really craved some outdoor time. I hate walking alone and running at my weight is out of the question. Last time I tried it my knees started getting pretty injured.

I was at my parents house a few weeks ago and my little sister was in the front yard riding on her bike. It clicked for me; I used to love riding a bike but hadn’t been on one since high school. My sister had gotten a new bike for her birthday in August and I asked if I could ride around with her on her old bike. She was delighted to have the company and I was delighted to get some exercise that was fun. The only sad part was her bike was too small for me, so it was a little uncomfortable to ride therefore we didn’t go very far. Even so, I rode around a bit every day with her for a couple of weeks.

When I got to my parents house on day after work to ride I went into the garage and saw a brand new bike with a ribbon on it! I turned and saw my mom smiling from ear to ear. “Merry Christmas!” my mom and sister yelled. My mom saw me loving the biking and felt bad the bike was too small so she convinced my dad it was a good idea to get me my own bike and give it to me early.

It is an awesome bike, so comfortable and very well built. At first I was feeling strange about being a 300+ girl on a bike riding through the neighborhood. I have gotten a few stares, but I don’t care. People can get over it. I am sure I do look funny.

I feel blessed my family is so freaking awesome! I have been going on a bike ride almost every evening since I got the bike 2 weeks ago. Hubby pushes me to do intervals on it so I can burn more calories. My parent’s neighborhood is perfect for biking, as it has great scenery and huge bike paths. I want to get up to 20 miles so I can go with my family next year to Shark Valley in the Everglades.

My exercise routine as of now is as follows:

AM Mon-Sat: 30-60 mins on the elliptical.
PM Mon-Thu plus Sat& Sun: Biking 30-60 mins
Tuesday, Thursday, & Saturday: Weight Training

Hamster on a Wheel

The other day I was sitting watching my little sister’s hamster. Being that they are nocturnal she sleeps all day and gets up around 8pm. The first thing she does when she wakes up is get in her little wheel and run her little heart out for a while. She will take a break to eat and drink but then it is back to the wheel. She is running about half the time she is awake. I thought it is amazing that she just knows she needs to run, she just has to be active.

You see this with children as well. I see many frazzled parents taking there kids to the playground to get all the excess energy out. It seems they never stop moving and are doing it happily so. If we were born with this drive to move, this drive to be active, where did I lose it? Why do I have to make myself exercise? Why to I have to trick myself into being more active. Shouldn’t I be craving the movement and activity like that child or little hamster. No one has to tell them to get up off the couch and go for a walk.

Where did I lose this drive? Did I drown it in junk food and chemicals? Is it physiological? Is it the desk job I have had for 6 years now? Is it because I would just rather be entertained? After all, we now live in a world of so much technology and toys to distract us. I am sure it is probably a combination of all of them.

As I force myself to exercise every morning and evening, I hope that maybe as I lose weight and continue to eat right maybe, just maybe that drive to be active will return. Then I can say “I get to exercise yay!”

New Course of Action

So, a lot of time has past since I have spoken of what I am doing lately. This is because for a while there I was doing about as well as a dog chasing its own tail.

I got down to 338, painfully slowly. Even though I was doing all the “right” things, such as eating only lower glycemic things, exercising 30 mins every morning, staying under 1600 calories a day, and taking my new meds. According to the numbers I should have easily been losing 2 pounds a week, but aside from the first couple weeks, I lost about .25 or .5 pounds a week. It was very frustrating. When we got back from vacation, despite trying eat as healthy as possible and walking a ton, I gained 3 pounds and was back to 341. DEPRESSING!

I got into a bad mind set and felt like I would never win the weight loss game, so I screwed up and started eating what I wanted for a few weeks. That got me back up to 345. My mom insisted on taking me to a holistic endocrinologist who had studied PCOS. Begrudgingly, I went at the end of October. I didn’t know what else to do. He shared with me that he thinks along with PCOS, many people suffer from Metabolic Resistance. He also said although I am doing the all the right things, I needed to be even stricter with myself because it was going to be tough to reverse some of the issues keeping me fat. He did say weight loss will come but the first couple of months were going to be rough.

It left me wishing for plain old vanilla obesity and not this extra fun version tied to my hormones with a dollop of metabolic resistance on top. A lot of what he told me makes sense, and what have I got to lose? Nothing else was working so I am giving his suggestions a go. Here are the specifics:


1) Eat Organic as much as possible. ($$)
2) Avoid all artificial sweeteners, preservatives, and chemicals. (No more diet soda! Crap!)
3) Avoid Sugar at all costs!! (Do you know how much secret sugar is in everything?!?!?)
4) The only fruit I can eat is berries. (Yum, thank God for this!)
5) I can eat all the vegetables I want, expect starchy ones. (I like veggies, this is cool.)
6) Use organic chicken, organic beef, and wild caught fish as main protein source. (Yum.)
7) Eat Organic Cheese and Diary 2-3 times a week, make sure it is full fat version. (He said full fat diary is more of a whole food.)
8) Increase healthy oils, organic butter, olive oil, coconut oil, avocados, ect. (I already use these, not I must buy the organic versions)
9) Eat 1800- 2000 calories a day. (Done, no problem.)
10) Absolutely no bread, rice, pasta, potatoes, or corn. (I am trying to adapt recipes to make things interesting without having these yummy things.)
11) Exercise 60 – 90 minutes a day. (WOW, this has really changed my schedule. I am going to 60 mins now, 30 in the morning and 30 at night.)

So yes, this has been HARD! I started on Monday October 20th. I lost 7 pounds the first week, and I was back down to 338. I was thrilled. The second week I lost 8 pounds and was in complete heaven. Here is where all the trouble happens. On the Monday of the third week I weighed 330. Today, 10 days later and half way through the 4th week I still weigh 330. I talked to the Doctor about it and he said to keep pushing on through, so that is what I am doing.