Time to Play Catch Up!

Not good . . . not good at all . . . I didn’t post about day 4 Thursday night like I was supposed to, then I didn't post Friday or Saturday, and now I’m working even harder to catch up!  My apologies - this is going to be a LLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOONNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGG post!

Day 3

First, day 3 was all about eating a fat loss breakfast within 60 minutes of waking up.  Yes!  Nailed it!  

As for the rest of the day, I so didn’t nail it.  I was supposed to have lunch with my mom and Dave, and I had everything planned out.  Mom and I were going to split a mushroom and Swiss burger, and I was going to have a side salad.  The burger would have been my protein, the bun my fast carb, and the salad my slow carbs.  When I arrived at work and looked at my calendar, I realized I had Bureau of Worker’s Compensation training in Pickerington.  That meant lunch was canceled, and I had to figure out something fast.

On my way to Pickerington, I drove down Broad Street searching for something to grab and eat as I went.  I figured I would die if I had another grilled chicken sandwich at Wendy’s.  I wanted McDonald’s double cheeseburger and fries but listened to reason, and I ended up at KFC.  Their 10 piece chicken bites are really tasty and only 330 calories.  Where I went wrong was I got potato wedges instead of green beans.  By the time I got to Pickerington (where I hit up Sonic for a Sprite Zero and a water to drink during training), I was still hungry.  I continued in my stupidity by getting a Chicago hotdog.

After training, I knew it would be late before I could get dinner; so I swung through Wendy’s where I got a double stack with cheese plain . . . stupid, stupid, stupid.  Not wanting to make a good decision for the day, I didn’t get my normal salad for dinner but had a nice meaty and cheesy fajita quesadilla.  (sigh)

Here’s what my journal looked like.  I decided to start circling the bad decisions in red – poor food choices, going 5 hours without eating, not exercising . . . some days I think I may never learn . . .

Day 4

Enough of Amy’s naughty Wednesday, let’s look at day 4!

You have to love this heading – “Day 4:  Eat More Healthy Breads and Sweets”!  More breads and sweets?!  Yes please!!!  Well, don’t get too excited; and don’t overlook a key word – “Healthy”.

What makes a bread or sweet healthy?  We’re looking for items where the first 3 ingredients on the nutrition label are not some type of refined sugar, AND we’re looking for items with at least 3 grams of fiber.

Think back to day 2 – what type of carbs are breads and sweets?  They’re fast carbs because they raise your blood sugar levels FASTER.  Being a fast carb does not automatically make a carb bad, and they definitely won’t make your car breakdown (shout out Momma!)  Here, let me have the Food Lovers peeps explain it:


“When you pull an ear of corn off a stalk or a bunch of wheat from the field, it is loaded with fiber and other nutrients which slow the rate that the corn or wheat is converted into sugar in your body.  But when that corn gets processed into corn syrup and used to sweeten your soda pop, or when that wheat gets ground and bleached into white flour, all the fiber and other nutrients get stripped away.  We are left with a fast carb in, essentially, its purest form – with nothing to slow down its conversion to sugar in your blood stream.  As a general rule, the more ‘processed’ and ‘refined’ a carbohydrate is the greater its potential for ‘spiking’ your insulin level and throwing your body into ‘Fat Storing Mode’."

Think about it . . . the faster sugar is transported into our blood stream; the easier it is to turn into fat.  When we eat these refined items, there’s nothing for our body to do to convert the food into sugar – not much work for it to do.  That means the sugar will get there faster, spike our insulin, and make us fatter.  Not cool.

How do we keep this from happening while still enjoying breads and sweets?  Memorize the following list.  If any of these ingredients are within the first 3 ingredients of a product, pass on it.  These are refined sugars:

1. Sugar
2. High Fructose Corn Syrup
3. Brown Sugar
4. Dextrose 
5. Maltose 
6. Corn Syrup 
7. Malt Syrup 
8. Maple Syrup

The same goes for breads.  You want to avoid breads with refined sugars in the first 3 ingredients as well as breads that are labeled with bleached, enriched, or white flour.  You will also want to choose breads with at least 3 grams of fiber per serving.

Eating foods higher in fiber will make you feel fuller, give you more energy, and aid in weight loss!

All that being said, Amy did pretty well on day 4!  I choose healthy breads – polenta, whole grain Flatout Bread; and I ate a fat loss plate for every meal!  What I didn’t do well – I didn’t exercise and I didn’t have a healthy sweet. 

 

Lesson learned – even though the Skinny Cow sweets are low in calories and fat, they do not meet the healthy sweet test.  If you look at the first 3 ingredients, you will see milk chocolate, peanuts, and corn syrup.  Corn syrup is #6 on the list.  Now, milk chocolate when broken down into its individual ingredients you will find sugar; AND sugar is also the 4^th ingredient.  

 Tsk, tsk, tsk.  Lesson learned!

Day 5

Oh water, water, water, you’re so mysterious; and yet, you’re just the greatest stuff I know when it comes to getting something wet!

There’s a few of you that will get that reference!  I believe the year was 1998!  And yes, day 5 is all about drinking water!  

Here are some fascinating things you may or may not know about water:

• Adding just one 8 ounce glass to your day will speed up your metabolism.
• You can release 5 pounds of fat in a month simply by drinking more water. 
• You can maximize your fat metabolism by drinking twelve 8 ounce glasses per day. 
• It naturally suppresses appetite. 
• It prevents water retention and bloating. 
• It helps your muscle tissue to work more efficiently to burn more calories all day long. 
• It rids the body of toxins. 
• It prevents and relieves constipation. 
• It increases the efficiency of your metabolism and helps your body burn fat.

Let me refer to the Food Lovers Diet experts to explain how water really affects your body:

“It starts with the kidneys.  They need adequate water to work well.  If they don’t get it, they dump some of their workload on the liver.  That’s where the trouble begins because the liver is one of the key organs involved in metabolizing stored fat into energy.  When the kidneys aren’t working to capacity, the liver has to pick up the slack.  And when the liver is doing the work the kidneys should be doing, it can’t be doing its job of getting rid of stored fat and turning it into energy.”

Here are some tips on how to get more water into your day:

• While at work, drink an 8 ounce glass every hour. 
• When you have a craving, drink a glass of water before you do anything else.  (We kinda talked about this in a previous post.  Sometimes dehydration presents as hunger.) 
• Drink through a straw – you’ll tend to take larger sips and drink more. 
• If you are having fruit juice, do 50/50 – 50% juice and 50% water. 
• After each trip to the toilet, drink a glass to replenish your system. 
• If you drink diet soda, have 2 glasses of water to each 12 ounce soda. 
• Drink at least 2 glasses with each meal and 1 with each snack. 
• Drink at least 8 ounces of water for every 20 minutes of exercise.

How about some scary statistics?

• If you have just 1 can of regular soda a day, you could end up gaining 15 pounds in a year just from the soda. 
• A venti-sized Java Chip Frappuccino Blended Coffee from Starbucks has more calories than a Big Mac and almost as much fat. 
• Drinking regular soda, energy drinks, and even fruit juice is guaranteed to almost immediately raise your insulin levels.  (If you have been paying attention, you’ll know that raised insulin means you are in FAT STORING MODE!) 
• Your liver can detoxify about 1 ounce of alcohol (one mixed drink, one 12oz beer, or one 5oz glass of wine) in an hour while maintaining its normal processes (i.e. metabolizing fat.)  When you drink a lot or drink really fast, you’re liver has to work extra hard to remove the alcohol from your system which means it stops metabolizing fat.

Thankfully, I’ve got this water thing under control!  You know, the week I quit drinking Diet Coke (that would be January 9, 2013 – the day that will live in infamy!), I dropped 10 pounds!  No joke!  Part was the water washing away fat, part was my body better metabolizing fat, part was my body reducing the amount of water it was holding.  It wasn’t a fun time, but I’m glad I did it!

Well, here’s my journal for day 5 – not too pretty.  One thing I’m noticing is when I don’t eat a fat loss meal I end up getting really hungry and doing something stupid.  Exhibit A – Wednesday had chicken bites and potato wedges (no slow carbs) then ate a Chicago style hot dog.  Exhibit B – Today had a baked potato, the veggies off my Wendy’s grilled chicken, and 2 bites of the grilled chicken then had a Burger King double cheese burger.

Day 6

With this, we will be up to date!!!  And I WILL be posting Day 7 (Sunday) tonight!

Day 6 is all about eating more healthy fat.  Poor fat, just like its brother the carb, has gotten a bad rap.  The fact is our bodies need fat to function properly.  The key is to eat the good kinds of fats - mono and poly unsaturated fats (i.e. fish, nuts, healthy oils, etc).  What we want to limit is saturated fats (i.e. pork, red meat, and dairy products) and what we want to avoid are trans fats (i.e. fried and breaded foods). 

Those mono and poly unsaturated fats are essential for healthy hair, skin, and joints.  They also lower the risk of heart disease and give you a feeling of fullness.  They can be found in fish, leafy green vegetables and soy, flaxseed, hemp oil, walnuts, and more.  It is recommended that you have between 30 and 50 grams of healthy oils per day.

While fat isn't a mandatory part of the Fat Loss Plate, it can be added - with limits.  Fat should be limited to one portion (1 tablespoon) per fat loss plate.  This could be in the form of a fatty protein, a fatty fast carb, or a single serving of fat.  For example, if you have a grilled chicken Caesar salad, the chicken is the protein, the lettuce is the slow carb (2 servings), and the dressing (just 1 tablespoon!) is the fat.

To get metabolism roaring, the Food Lovers system recommends avoiding protein sources that are high in saturated fats.  They recommend choosing turkey, chicken, buffalo, and leaner versions of pork and beef with all fat trimmed away.  The recommendation is to keep saturated fats at 10 grams per day.  They provide a very handy chart to help.  When you look at the chart, a 4 ounce serving of Prime Rib has 10.4 grams of saturated fat while top sirloin with all the fat trimmed only has 1.7 grams.

Another important thing - read your labels!  Even though a label might say 0 grams of Trans Fat, there still might trans fat in the item as nutrition labels are based on percentage of an ingredient in a "serving".  You have to read the label and look for hydrogenated and fractionated oils.  If you see that, there's trans fat in the food.

I'm not going to post my food journal from today.  Take my word for it - nothing was good - no vegetables, no exercise, lots of crap eaten.  I've got to get over this plateau.  I'm making stupid decisions, ignoring my inner voice.