Quakies

Monday, July 27th 2009

Yesterday, I began to read other people’s weight loss diaries. I was appalled at what I read. In so many cases, the blog writer reduced their calorie intake each day, but filled the calories with useless, non-nourishing food. I couldn’t believe it! They then ask the question: “Why can’t I lose weight?” Well, DUH!

I’m sorry…. A bagel with cream cheese is not diet food. Anything from a fast food joint is not diet food. Baked potatoes, chips, sodas of any kind and French fries are not diet food. So, the answer to the question seems to be, you can’t lose weight because you know nothing about nutrition. You are your own saboteur. You have set yourself up to fail before you have even started.

If you want to lose weight, you need to make informed choices. If you can’t or are unwilling to go “cold turkey” on the diet culprits in your life, you’re destined to fail. If you need someone to hold your hand while you lose weight, you’re destined to fail. If you feel you don’t have the willpower to diet and can only do it with Medifast, Optifast, Slimfast, Jenny Craig, you may still be setting yourself up to fail. If you follow their very expensive programs, yes you will lose weight, but at some point in time, you’re going to have to fly solo. You’re going to have to learn to eat properly without a special protein bar or a shake… without a prepackaged meal. They give you a false sense of security. If you can’t get your act together, you’re going to gain the weight back. Diet pills like Dexatrim will tell you that you need to eat properly and exercise. It won’t work by itself. Well, then what’s the point? You thought it would do all the work for you.

You need a plan. You need commitment. Nobody can do it for you. Find a friend to either diet with you, or be your sounding board. Find someone who won’t be an enabler but rather a committed partner to your decision to lose weight. If you are not committed to cutting out the addictive poisons in your life, YOU WILL FAIL.

I lost fifteen pounds in less than a month. How? I’m not on a diet. I changed my eating habits. I cut out almost all bread, most meats, dairy, sugars of all kinds, potatoes, chips, sodas (which I never drink anyway and I don’t drink coffee in any form), processed fruit juices in favor of vegetables (mostly green and yellow), whole grains like brown rice and oatmeal and whole fruits. I’m also testing CELLFOOD products. Because I am doing two things to encourage weight loss, I can’t attribute the weight loss completely to one or the other. I am only eating about 1200 calories a day, and I’m not feeling like I’m starving. Follow my weight loss diary.

In all fairness, I don’t eat a lot of snack foods like chips anyway. I am not a chocolate addict, though sometimes I would just love to have a Snickers bar (273 calories). I don’t use a lot of sugar per se, but tended to eat things with processed sugar in them like Honey Nut Cheerios (118 calories). These things are still in my pantry, but my weight loss has been so steady and phenomenal, I NOW CHOOSE NOT TO EAT THESE THINGS. This doesn’t mean that I can never eat those things again, I just don’t want to…. at least not right now. Before, once in a blue moon I would crave a Big Mac (540 calories). That is almost half of my recommended caloric intake. Add a shake (572 calories) and fries (450 calories) that’s 1,562 calories! That’s more than you should eat in a whole day! For now, I have cut all forms of fast food. If you have a problem with cutting out fast food, watch “Super-Size Me.” That ought to cure you. Fast food is GARBAGE!… even the salads. You have been lulled into complacency. Those “healthy salads” have processed meats, boiled eggs, fattening dressings and croutons (90 to over 400 calories!). They’re not doing you any favors…. They have you hooked into thinking you’re eating healthy. WAKE UP!

I want to continue to lose weight. I really need to lose about eighty pounds. For the first time in my life, this is a realistic goal…. One week at a time. At this writing, I have lost over fifteen pounds and I have gone down a full pant size…. How empowering is that? Yeah, I’m still obese, but now I’m a thinner obese. Next week, I’ll be an even thinner obese. That’s what it’s going to take until I get back down to a healthy weight. I don’t crave all that other stuff, even sugar which has always been my nemesis.

Do I exercise? Not like I should, I suppose. I get my weekly 2- 2 1/2 hour workout mowing the 3 lawns (we have 3 1/3 acres). My husband doesn’t understand why I don’t use the riding mower for everything. Well… riding a tractor-mower isn’t exercise. I really hate going for brisk walks for my exercise… always have. Pushing that power mower all over the place, working in my yard and doing all the other things required to keep a house together is all the exercise I’m willing to do right now.

Don’t start to think about beginning to commence to begin a weight loss program, get your head together and educate yourself. Check out what Roger Mason at “Young Again“, has to say about the foods we eat. Read “Skinny Bitch,” a funny and alarmingly direct book about how we eat and how to change your diet. Would you eat rat poison? No, of course not, but you’re eating other things which are just as poisonous to your body and it’s function. Just because some company offers a processed food, it doesn’t mean it’s good for you. They are there to make money. They don’t care if they’re killing you and they’ll tell you whatever they need to in order to get you to buy and eat what they’re selling. Information is your weapon. When you know what your body needs, you’re not going to want to put junk in it. Remember, It’s your body and you need to take care of it and love it. It’s the only one you’re going to get.

“I do (blah, blah, blah) … but why can’t I lose weight?” This seems to be the big question for overweight people.

Most Americans can be considered obese. Why is this? Simple. It’s what you put into your mouth. If you eat slimming and healthful foods, you’re going to be slim and healthful. If you eat garbage?…. Well… you get the picture. There were no obese people in Auschwitz or any other concentration camp during WWII. If they weren’t killed outright, they were essentially starved to death. The point I’m trying to make is; don’t tell anybody it’s “glandular.” That’s bull! Your body needs a certain number of calories to function. If you eat more than your body can use, it is stored as fat. If you eat less than your body can use, you lose weight. Period. If you deprive your body of what it needs, you will jeopardize your health…. Your body will feed on itself to function.

People are constantly looking for that “miracle diet” or that “miracle supplement.”

WAKE UP AMERICA! THERE AREN’T ANY! GET A CLUE!

People and companies are getting filthy rich on mankind’s gullibility. If you Google the word diet, over 500 million sites are listed. Of course, they’re sites where the word diet is used. You can find any diet or fad supplement that will fit your mental picture of “speed dieting.”

Quick loss diets are, for the most part not particularly healthy because you are depriving your body of nutrients. Your body needs a balance of nutrients to function properly and efficiently metabolize the food you eat.

Pre-packaged food diets may give you the desired results, but when you lose the weight, you need to maintain the caloric intake that the program handed to you on a silver platter. These programs are expensive and eating that energy bar with the energy shake isn’t realistic. You are fooled into thinking there is such a thing as a healthy brownie. If you don’t change your eating habits and learn to eat proper foods, you’ll gain the weight right back, sometimes with a vengeance. Been there… done that.

Americans have essentially made food an Olympic event. Everything we do seems to in some way, revolve around food. Food should be eaten so you can do other things. Food should be for sustaining life, not the other way around.

You want to lose weight?

Make a commitment – “Can’t” never accomplished anything. You’re defeated before you even start.

Educate yourself – Read up on nutrition. Read up on processed foods. Read up on how the media has effectively brainwashed you to believe whatever they tell you. Want to read a great, no-nonsense book? Get“Skinny Bitch”. Food industry myths are debunked in this very funny and informative book. The companion book, “Skinny Bitch in the Kitch” is full of recipes for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Also, read up on the nutrients that your body needs to function at Young Again run by Dr. Roger Mason, a nationally known research chemist. You’ll find all kinds of free articles on health and they also sell supplements incidentally, the essential vitamins and trace minerals that have been leached out of our foods.

Am I thin and healthy?

Nope, but I’m getting there.

It started when my husband got a free bottle of CELLFOOD Dietary Supplement with the literature. After taking it for a couple of days, he said he felt he had more energy. I started taking it and I started feeling better too. I read up on CELLFOOD and purchased the Essential Silica Formula, the Weight Loss formula and the Oxygenating Skin Care Gel as well. I immediately began to lose weight without doing anything, really. A supplement came from Young Again and I read the pamphlet then went to the website. Everything he said makes sense right down to the fad diets and miracle weight loss elixirs. On that recommendation and what I had learned from “Skinny Bitch” we have been on a semi-macrobiotic diet. We both feel much better. In less than a month, I’ve lost fifteen pounds. That’s one pant size for me. I didn’t eat special food pre-prepared for me or go to classes. I simply decided that lugging that extra eighty pounds around was not acceptable anymore. I’m getting older and with that much extra weight, I look it. I lumber and tend to shuffle my feet rather than pick them up.

After one month and fifteen pounds, I look better and feel better. I have more energy and I need less sleep. You can follow my diet at The Thistle and Rose diet blog. I do my best to make a daily entry. HasCELLFOOD caused this weight loss? I can’t make any claims except that I have more energy and my small complaints are fewer. Since I have reduced my calorie intake by at least half, of course my body has been forced to adjust.

As far as exercise goes, I’m not doing any scheduled exercise except the things I regularly do such as my weekly 2 hours of lawn mowing. Yes, it takes that long to do the three lawns. The riding mower is for the area outside of that. We have 1 1/3 acres and most of it must be mowed every week. No, I don’t think mowing is a drag. Actually, I rather enjoy it. I’m getting exercise, I’m getting something accomplished and I can be alone with my thoughts (usually) without interruption.

So, what are you waiting for? Get your head out of the sand and stop waiting for somebody to fix you. Get a diet buddy and go for it!

Many studies have been done about keeping a weight loss diary. These diaries are a good thing; the most important element being accountability.

When you write down everything you eat and when, you are able to see any eating patterns which may emerge. Some people have triggers which cause them to eat such as stress in general, certain people that stress them out and even visual or auditory stimuli such as the television or radio.

Just because everyone else is having a doughnut, it doesn’t mean you need to. It isn’t the last doughnut on the planet and you won’t die if you don’t eat it. It’s about willpower and making informed and empowered choices about what you eat. Abstaining stinks when everyone else is eating a doughnut, but what you gain is much more important…. Self esteem and willpower. Every time you make that “right” choice, you are making yourself stronger. Writing everything down about how you felt when you made a good or bad choice and helps you understand why you made that choice.

DON’T EVER BEAT YOURSELF UP when you mess up. It’s not healthy and it’s counter-productive to what you’re trying to accomplish in the first place. All you need to do is acknowledge that you had a weak moment.

DON’T BLAME SOMETHING OR SOMEONE ELSE. Only you can make the choice to put food into your mouth.We all have weak moments and we are human. Trying to lose weight is an in-your-face endeavor. Nobody said it would be easy. “So and so was being a jerk to me and hurt my feelings so I got ice cream.” The ice cream probably didn’t make you feel any better and you just added hundreds of empty calories to your food intake. If anything, you’re now feeling guilty for having eaten the ice cream in the first place. DON’T DO THAT!

ONE DAY AT A TIME is the mantra for AA. Each day is a new one and each day you get to start over. Don’t worry about what happened yesterday, work on what you’re going to do to not make the same mistake again. People who have compulsive eating issues really need to look at weight loss this way.

LOWER YOUR DAILY CALORIC INTAKE. “But I don’t want to sit around and count calories!” Too bad…. You don’t want to sit around being fat either, do you? This is sniveling and being a whiner. There are free online calorie counter reference sites. The easiest thing to do is purchase a food calorie book. You can also look at food labels.

BE CAREFUL: A package has two very important features. The first is servings per container and the second is calories per serving. A package may have three servings in it and 120 calories per serving. If you mistakenly eat the whole package, thinking it’s only 120 calories, you’ve just eaten 360 calories… probably not what you intended. There is other extremely important information also, but I’m only addressing these two items here.

When you begin to make appropriate food choices, you learn the approximate calories certain foods are. For instance, I know from the experience of my own diet that one cup of cooked brown rice is 230 calories. That may seem like a lot, but considering according to many studies, men should only take in 1800 calories and women, 1200. The benefits of brown rice far outweigh the caloric number. You get very filling fiber, healthy nutrients and a perfect compliment to vegetables. It’s a grain… a whole food…. It’s GOOD FOR YOU! White rice is gummy poison. It’s been processed and has lost it’s nutritional value.

Keeping a written diary reinforces your choices and teaches you what you can eat a lot of and what you can’t.

You can view MY WEIGHT LOSS DIARY or visit my site; The Thistle and Rose.