Happy last
day of January and Tuesday everyone! How
has your week started out? Monday was
very busy for me, and Tuesday isn’t looking much better. However the remainder
of my week appears to be good and for that I am very thankful. I am looking forward to getting some of the
backlog of tasks crossed off my to-do list.
I will feel much better when my life is more “under control”. Some people do their best work under
pressure, but I am not of them any longer.
At this point in my life I find it hard to believe I ever thrived in a
high pressure environment, it must have been “smoke and mirrors” is I can say. ;-)
Day 2 – Determined our Purpose and Looked at Passion
Day 3 – Listed Our Goals for January
Day 4 – Listed the Things We Have Needed to Work on for a While
Day 5 – Looked at Optimism vs. Pessimism and Fear vs. Intuition
Day 6 – Practiced Conscious Eating
Day 7 – Hara Hachi Bu
Day 8 – Taking the Stress Out of Meal Time
Day 9 – Acknowledgments
Day 10 – No Excuses, Do it Anyway
Day 11 – Is it True?
Day 12 – Have You Really Connected With Someone Today?
Day 13 – Motivation is a Decision
Day 14 - Successfully Navigating Dinner at an Unfamiliar Restaurant
Day 15 - What Do You Want, Have You Asked?
Day 16 – Treating Others as You Wish to be Treated
Day 17 – Food as a Budget
Day 18 – Silence Your Inner Critic
Day 19 – Replace I Have to With I Want to
Day 20 – Identifying Your Rituals
Day 21 – Face Your Fears
Day 22 – Give Up the Diet Mentality
Day 23 – The Meaning and/or Purpose of Food
Day 24 – Trigger Foods/Situations/People
Day 25 – Words Have Meaning
Day 26 – Lose All-Or-Nothing Thinking
Day 27 - Decide to live as if ……
Day 28 – Two-Bite Test
Day 29 - Vision Board
Day 30 – Are You Hiding Behind Excuses
What did you
think of the last topic regarding hiding behind excuses? When I wrote that one I knew it was a tough
topic emotionally which is why I left it for the end of the month. Very few of us like to consider that there
are things we could be doing but we aren’t.
However being open to the idea that there is something that we could do
or change is the key to moving forward. I hope something that I wrote leads you
to consider changes that you have otherwise been unwilling to seriously
consider. If there is anything that you
would like to me explain differently about this or anything else just let me
know.
·
Do you routinely get adequate sleep?
·
Are the vast majority of your meals healthy?
·
Is your weight in a healthy range or steadily
moving in that direction?
·
Do you make it a point to be active most days
and preferably every day?
·
Have you learned to manage your stress?
·
Do you spend time cultivating your
relationships?
Being
healthy is not as complicated as people make it sound. However it does take consistently good
decisions. You can’t expect that eating
occasion healthy meals or working out on weekend is enough to stay or get
healthy. Being healthy requires consistently healthy
behavior which becomes how you live your life, not something temporary like a
diet.
·
Weight (based on height)
·
BMI (<24.9 = normal)
·
Body fat percentage/muscle mass (there are
different numbers based on age and sex)
·
Blood Pressure (115/75 or less)
·
Blood Sugar(<99, 100-119 = prediabetic, 120 =
diabetic)
·
Cholesterol (<150 is ideal)
In order to
determine if any of these need improvement you need to know what your numbers
are, and what they should be. I am going
to go back to the example of my friend whose weight loss has stalled at 50
pounds. When moderation was working to
reduce weight it might have appeared that the concept was working. However at the same time the weight was
dropping lab results showed that fasting blood glucose was 105. I knew this was pre-diabetic but my friend
was in denial and was convinced it was fine. This why it is important not only
to know your numbers but to also know how to interpret the numbers once you
have them. Do your homework and educate
yourself about what should be your health targets.
Items to
include in unlimited amounts in your diet:
·
Fresh vegetables, concentrating on leafy greens
(at least half raw)
·
Fresh whole fruit (fresh fruit juice should only
be drank occasionally since it can elevate your blood sugar)
·
A variety of beans (including soy but the less
processed the better like edamame, tempeh and then tofu)
·
Mushrooms are extremely healthy and make a
wonderful meat substitute (be sure to generally cook them as mushrooms contain
low levels of natural toxins which are probably fine in small amounts but
certain not in the quantities I think mushrooms should be consumed)
·
Green and white tea (unsweetened of course, but
be sure to add some citrus to increase your absorption of the EGCG)
·
Water (most Americans are chronically dehydrated
be sure you aren’t one of them)
Items to
include but not in unlimited amounts:
·
Whole unprocessed grains, like quinoa not things
made from whole grain flour (these are only on this list for two reason, they
are higher in calories and tend to crowd out the more nutritious food like
vegetables, fruit and beans)
·
Raw seeds and nuts (I listed seeds first because
they tend to be more nutritious, they are only this list because they are very
calorie dense and can lead to weight gain
·
Avocados (included here only because they are
calorie dense meaning if your weight is good this isn't an issue)
Items to
restrict or better yet eliminate from your diet:
·
Animal flesh (this includes red meat, pork,
chicken and seafood and I recommend eliminating it because of it elevates
IGF-1, is calorie dense crowding our healthier foods, increases calcium loss
and adds saturated fat to your diet.
However if you won’t eliminate it than eat it like the Asians an ounce
or so at a time and not every day)
·
Animal products (dairy and butter and yes I am
including skim milk and non-fat yogurt here for the same reasons that I listed
for meat. Diary and butter are more
harmful than meat due to the concentration of saturated fat some cheeses
getting 70% of their calories from fat.
I think this is very important to eliminate these.)
·
Soy protein isolates (should be eliminated for
the same reason as meat and meat-by-product, it elevates IGF-1)
·
Processed food (things with more than 5 ingredients
are suspect)
·
Sugar (it adds empty calories and increases your
blood sugar levels which isn’t healthy)
·
Oil (included here because it is empty calories
and also adds saturated fat, yes even olive oil)
·
Salt (increases
your risk of stroke as well as increasing your blood pressure)
·
Chemical additives like: artificial flavors and colors, pesticides and
chemical fertilizer residue, BPA and parabens (chemicals have been associated
with everything from cancer to autism and I do my best to keep our exposure to
a minimum without driving myself nuts)
Today’s
Exercise:
1.
Pick one item to change in your diet from the
dietary habits listed above. I would
suggest you pick a big one as it will make the most impact. However you should also pick one that you
know you can stick to. Many people find that giving up dairy has a huge
impact. I have heard from many people
that they didn’t realize they were lactose intolerant until they gave up dairy
and then had some later and the familiar symptoms of mucus and stuffed sinuses
came back almost instantly. Given how
prevalent lactose intolerance is you may want to start with dairy. I find that
being able to feel the difference helps people stick with dietary changes. There is a very good chance you will also see
an improvement in your weight and cholesterol as a result of this dietary
modification.
2.
Keep track in your journal of the results of
making this change. Did you feel better, lose weight, and need less OTC
medication? Just be sure to record your experiences. I would also suggest that
you try adding a little of whatever you have eliminated back in a few weeks so
that you can feel the difference. You might be surprised by the difference that
you can feel in your body. Maybe people
have told me that they feel things first by the change in their GI system and
that know immediately when their transit time is increasing since they start to
feel bloated and uncomfortable. However
you won’t usually know this unless you take something away for a while and then
add it back as a test. This is the same principle they use with a formal
elimination diet.
1.
Newsletters
– Monday was another busy day which meant the newsletters didn’t get worked on. This will definitely move up on my February
list now.
2.
Body Bugg
– I continue to wear my bugg and I have gotten back into using it the way I had
intended when I purchased it. Go
me! J
3.
Date with
Dan – No date on Monday, but we ran errands together Tuesday evening. I guess that doesn’t count for most people
but we have fun whenever we are together even running errands.
4.
Measuring calorie dense food – I am
making progress adding nuts and seeds to our food. I
5.
Working
on my business – My schedule got in the way of working on the business
today. Once January is over and I have more free time I will jump on this
again. I remember that I promised you
the link to my second website on February 10th and I really, really
don’t want to miss that deadline.
*eek* Nothing like self imposed
pressure. ;-)
Random Thoughts:
·
Recipes (which won’t be that frequent since I
don’t have much time to measure and document)
·
Our daily food choices and why we made the
choices that we did
·
The log of our day which would include the food
·
Links to articles on health and nutrition
·
The mental/emotional issues related to making
changes to improve your health
·
Nutrition specifics about individual foods (for
example the benefits of hempseeds or kale)
Do any of these ideas appeal to you or would you like to
see something different? Please let me
know what you think, I really do want to know.
·
The 2012 - 31 days to Better Health series is
finished! *woo hoo* I hope that it meant as much to you as it did
to me and that you found some ideas to apply to your life and health. It was definitely a labor of love for
me.
·
I received a $1,000 scholarship from IIN today
to award. I have offered it to the first
reader who contacted me about the program.
However if she doesn’t want it I am going to offer it to anyone who is ready
to sign up in a few days. The scholarship would require signing up for the
program between Wednesday and Friday of this week. If you are interested send
me an email at veganepicurean@gmail.com
and let me know. If now isn’t a good
time no worries, there will be future scholarships and I will keep you all in
the loop by posting the information here.
·
My fur children were very appreciative of the
Blue Buffalo cat kibble that we picked up for them this evening. I love to see
the little ones get excited about things like this. They are such sweet little babies it is nice
to make them happy with something like a special food. Normally they get prescription cat food but occasionally
we treat them to something different, like tonight.
·
Dan and I were talking this evening and we are
going to try to step up our diet a little.
In our case that means more beans, and raw veggies. We are also going to start shifting our
sleeping schedule so that we can get back to 6am workouts at the gym before
work. Wish us luck on this one since neither of us are morning people. ;-)
Monday:
·
We had the most amazing weather on Tuesday; it
was literally 68 degrees here on the last day on January. It does not feel like this is Maryland in the
winter time but I am not complaining.
·
Our refrigerator is stuffed full of fresh
produce again which means that I feel much better. We had an appointment to
take care of this afternoon and decided to stop for food while we were
out. Life is definitely better with
produce. ;-)
·
We picked up a bag of Blue Buffalo cat kibble
for the little ones and you would have thought we brought home drugs. They dove
at the bag and opened it with their teeth while I put away the produce. Okay so
they were a little uncivilized but they are felines so I cut them some
slack. It was nice to see them so happy
about different flavor of kibble.
·
There was the cutest little bird at the pet
store all by himself that I was talking too. Dan had to practically pull me
away from him. I am sure my fur children
would not have appreciated a bird in the house but he was darned cute.
·
Dinner was raw veggies and hummus this evening and
I loved it. That is such a simple dinner but one that I never grow tired of, I
could eat it every day I think.
Get plenty of R&R! I loved the series and found myself nodding in agreement to many of the things you wrote. Also I took away some cool ideas and discussion material from it too.
ReplyDeleteFor future blogging, I like your list - I certainly enjoy the food logs with pictures. I also love your nutrition research and information "sessions".
Cheers!
Hi Possum (N),
DeleteThanks for letting me know that you enjoyed this. I am so happy that I could give you some ideas. :-)
I had planned on resting but later this afternoon I am writing a post about green smoothies. Long story but after 20+ emails I thought it was necessary. So much for my day off. ;-)
ttyl,
Ali
Congratulations on finishing the series and finishing it strong! This was an excellent post that summed it all up: our health depends on our everyday decisions surrounding food, excercise, friendship, etc.... one decision at a time, we strive to choose the healthiest path. It's not always easy, but we do the best we can and try not to make excuses.
ReplyDeleteI know you'll be taking a break, but hopefully you'll be back to share more of your nutrition knowledge, research links, book reviews, and cooking methods (measurements probably aren't necessary). General health and fitness topics are always welcome too. Thanks for all you do!
Thanks Laura,
DeleteI agree with you completely on the little everyday decisions and doing our best, which is all any of us can hope for. Certainly none of us, me included, are perfect and that isn't even necessary. When most of our decisions are healthy things will take care of themselves.
I was going to take a break, but you might want to the post I have planned for tonight defending and supporting why green smoothies are good for us. I got so many emails asking what was up with green smoothies being bad I knew I had to write it this afternoon for tonight.
I hope you are having a great day with the same gorgeous weather we are having here. It definitely feels like spring.
Ali
I'm not sure if you ever read the blog Happy Herbivore, but I'm curious what your reaction is to her post from yesterday: http://happyherbivore.com/2012/01/why-i-stopped-drinking-green-smoothies/
ReplyDeleteI know that you have a lot of green smoothies, as do I (heavy on the greens), so this really made me pause.
Sarah,
DeleteI did not read that post nor do I read that blog, but my phone and email lit up over it. I will be writing a rebuttal to that later today. Dan and I both had big glasses of green smoothie this morning if that tells you what I think.
Thanks for making sure I knew,
Ali
I was commenting to leave the same link! I hate that she not only closed but hid the comments. I really wanted to read the discussion, having gotten to the post late.
DeleteCongrats on getting through the month, Ali! I've loved reading even if I don't always comment. It's something I may revisit later in the year, too.
DeleteBrigid,
DeleteThanks for making sure that I had heard about the controversy. That is very telling that she closed and hid the comments in my opinion.
I appreciate you letting me know that you enjoyed the series this month. It was definitely a labor of love but one that was harder than I realized when I signed up for it. I am very glad to hear that you found it useful.
talk with you later,
Ali
Ali,
ReplyDeleteI also loved this series!! Just wondering where eggs fall on the "Why this os not good for you scale?" I appreciate all your hard work on the blog. Also looking forward to the posts on "why we ate this" and "the nutritional benefits of food!"
Susan,
DeleteSorry for my delay in responding. I read your comment and posted it from my phone and then forgot to come back and response. Senior moment? LOL
We don't eat eggs for the same reason that we don't eat animal flesh or dairy. The protein in the egg white also elevates IGF-1. Additionally all animal products increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, suppress immune function, slow down the bodies ability to detoxify and increase oxidation. If you still want to consume eggs knowing that I would say only buy the omega-3 enriched eggs and don't have them often. I hope that helps.
thanks for letting me know you enjoyed the series,
Ali
Thanks Ali!!
ReplyDelete