MyWeightLossForLife.com

Submit your health tips

As I’ve said before, I’d like to expand the focus on the blog to cover better health in general, not just weight loss.

So, to help with that, I’d like to run our first blog carnival here. The carnival will focus on tips for improving health, and it can deal with weight loss, diet, exercise, stress management, etc.

To submit an entry, post the link in a comment to this post. I’ll also list it on the blog carnivals site and provide the link here later.

I’ll keep the carnival open until the end of April, so submit your best get-healthy tips. Thanks!

Edited to add: I also created this as a blog carnival, so if you’d prefer, submit your post through there.

Simple Steps for Health Submission

My husband was diagnosed with diabetes a little more than a year ago. We’ve learned a lot in that time, but the biggest help for us is simply knowing one thing.

If it’s in the house, we’ll eat it.

Willpower is great, but it’s largely a myth as well! Try resisting those cookies or ice cream after a stressful day. Best of luck with that.

We’ve learned the hard way, if we don’t want to eat sugar- and carb-laden foods, then they had better not be anywhere in the house. Yes, that means the non-diabetics in the house have to learn to eat that way as well.

For information on submitting your own tip, read this.

The right and wrong

I’ve struggled a lot lately with my eating and exercise. Most of that I can attribute to stress and simple getting out of the habits that I’d been trying to form. However, all isn’t lost!

What I’m doing right

1. No seconds. This has been huge for me, and I credit this one habit with keeping my weight in check through the winter. I don’t even think about it any more; I very rarely go back for seconds.
2. De-stressing. This is another one that I’ve been working a lot on. I’ve started to come to terms with the fact that simply dieting isn’t going to do it for me. Since stress triggers my overeating, then dealing with stress seems to be a logical thing to do.
3. De-cluttering. This one may look weird in a list of how to lose weight. However, I know that clutter adds to my stress, so getting rid of it also makes sense for my weight loss. Bonus, if I’m busy decluttering, I’m not eating.
4. Exercise. I’ve still struggled with this one. However, I have been doing more to tone up, and I’m more active in general than I was this time last year.

What I intend to work on

1. Stress. I know that I need to work harder on this area. The more I deal with stress, the less I’ll eat without even thinking about it.  I have several ideas for how to make this work.
   • Continue working on clutter and organization. Whether it’s the general mess, not being able to find my shoes for a walk, or losing a bill I need to pay, the clutter really adds to my stress level. My husband and I have both been working on dealing with this, and so far, we’ve been doing great.
   • Me time. I’ve been making time to write almost every day. That in itself is a big help. I’m also taking time to knit, relax, do things with my husband on weekends, etc.
   • Deal with immediate stress. One of my triggers for snacking is immediate stress. Whether it’s a phone call, an emergency at work, or something at home, I often deal with it and then turn to junk food to replenish. And that’s exactly what it feels like, as if I need to be replenished afterward. Instead, I try to do something else for a few minutes, like read, take a walk, etc. This is one of the toughest ones for me.
2. Exercise. I really don’t enjoy exercising, so I’m not sure how to go about retraining myself. It’s something that I know I need to work on.
3. Habits.I already know how useful habit forming can be. I want to return to some of the 30-day trials that I did last year and rebuild some good habits.  Maybe exercising daily should be one of the first?
4. Journaling.Every dieter has probably heard that keeping track of your food and exercise is beneficial. I’ve done it for short periods of time in the past, but never for any extended period. The one thing that I’ve noticed is that it does keep me more aware of what I eat, which presumably can help me not eat as much.

So, to kick off my push to get back on track, I’m going to make two changes.

1.  I’ll start tracking what I eat daily. I’m using Google Docs Spreadsheet so I can log in from anywhere and update it.
2. Beginning May 1, I’ll do a 30-day habit building trial. My goal will be to exercise daily in order to build the exercise habit.  Before I can do that, I have a couple of things I need to do.
   • Buy walking shoes
   • Move some things so I can use the bowflex

Of course, I’ll be posting updates to the blog. Anyone care to join me?

Dealing with Stress, part 2

Read my first post on the topic, Dealing with Stress.

I’ve been doing some reading and a lot of thinking about stress and stress
eating and how that’s affecting my weight and weight loss efforts.

Stress and Eating

This article was a real revelation to me. In short, we eat in response to stress because our bodies have evolved to need a calorie boost in response to stress. Eating that chocolate or bag of chips tells your body that everything is fine so it will turn off the stress response. No wonder that trip to the vending machine feel so good!

Of course, the easy answer is to get rid of the stress, but that’s also more of less impossible for most people, me included. I’ve found it helpful over the last week to just remind myself WHY I have the munchies and realize that it’s stress-eating, not real hunger, motivating me.

So, here is what I’ve been working on. When I feel the urge to munch, first I take a minute and evaluate how I feel. Am I worried, stressed, upset, etc.? Often I am. Then, I try doing something else for a little while to take my mind off the stress.

This often happens at work, where I’m limited to what I can do. I’ve found that taking a walk up and down the hall can help. Getting physically away from my desk and phone helps me to remove myself mentally from the stress as well.

I’ll ignore my e-mail and/or phone, particularly if they’re the root of the stress, and simply work for a while. I may switch up what I’m working on and choose something a little easier to give my mind  rest.

No, I’m not resisting the call of junk food all the time, but I am resisting more than I used to.

Dealing with Stress

I’ve been really thinking a lot lately about my issues with stress and how I stress-eat in response to that.

In general, stress sends me heading for the chocolate or other sweets. I don’t have to be particularly hungry, or hungry at all, to feel the need to indulge. I’ve also noticed that it tends to happen when I’m unable to remove myself from the stressful situation.

Let’s say I’m at work and something upsetting happens. I can’t do much there to deal with it, except continue working and try to ignore the event that bothered me. So far, that hasn’t worked well for me at all. I find that I head to the vending machine all too often in those cases, even when I don’t particularly even want what I’m buying!

Stress when I’m away from work is another story, and easier to handle. I’ll do something with my hands for a while, which helps a lot. I knit and spin, so working on something like that tends to help me get my mind off things. If I’m upset and angry, then I’ll do housework. If all else fails, I just take a nice nap and try to forget it for a while.

My point is though, I can do more away from work to deal with it than I can at work. So, stress eating is a particular problem for me there, and I’m not having much luck coming up with ways to deal with it.

I’ve actually considered putting some knitting in my desk and doing a few rows when I’m bent out of shape, but I have a feeling that wouldn’t go over so well. Besides, I’m so busy at the office, I would never be able to do that regardless of how much stress I’m under.

I’d consider taking a quick walk, but again, the busy factor comes in to play. There are days when I honestly don’t have time to do that, so while it may be an option some of the time, it’s not going to be one all the time.

So, I need to do some thinking and experimenting. How to deal with stress at work when I can’t use any of my usual techniques? If anyone has ideas, they’d be much appreciated.

Refocusing

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this blog, where I want to go with it, and whether I even want to keep writing it at all. For quite a while, it had gotten to the point that I just dreaded sitting down and trying to do a blog entry, and I didn’t want to keep it up like that.

I think the long hiatus was good for me, if not for the blog and my readership. I do want to continue writing here, but I want to have a broader view than before.

I really considered just starting another site and redirecting. I’m not crazy about  the domain name, and I doubt that will change. However, I know this site has readers, and I hesitate to just jump ship and expect everyone to follow me elsewhere. So, here we are, and here we’re staying.

Yes, I’m going to still talk about my struggles with losing weight and our (my husband’s and mine) struggles with his diabetes. No, the blog won’t focus so exclusively on those subjects any longer.

One thing I hope to do is make the blog a little more personal. I avoided that at first. I think I was uncomfortable in the beginning with exposing so much of myself right away. I’m feeling better about that now, so the tone there will change too.

I hope you stick around and keep reading. I’m excited about this blog again, and I’m really happy about that.

My husband has his retina specialist appointment tomorrow, so wish us luck. I’ll be sure to post about how things go.

Fruitcake Recipe

This is absolutely NOT a diet recipe, so be warned. This is rich and fattening. There’s a reason I only make one of these cakes a year.

I know what most people think about fruitcake, but I promise, this is one cake you’ll absolutely love. It also converts easily into a plain applesauce cake (see variations below).

If you’re doing a fruitcake, you’ll need to soak the fruit overnight first. You’ll need about five cups of fruit (yes, I said 5 CUPS). For the cake in the picture, I used 3 cups of green and red cherries and 2 cups of pineapple. Note that this is your typical candied-fruit that’s out this time of year.

Fruit Substitutions:

• Use the fruitcake mix if you like the bitter citrus peel that’s included there. We don’t like that, so I don’t use it.
• Use whatever dried fruits you like. You may have to add a little more juice for soaking it if you go this route.

Put the fruit in a large bowl and add about half a cup of orange or grape juice. For a less sweet flavor, use brandy instead. Let the fruit soak about 10 hours or overnight, covered.

Cake:

Your fruit should have soaked for a few hours now. Make sure there’s no leftover juice in the bowl. Add in 2 cups of walnuts and 2 cups of raisins. Take about half a cup of self rising flour and sprinkle over the fruit and nuts and mix well so that the fruit and nuts are coated well.

Peel and cook a bag of granny smith apples, but don’t add any sweetener. Cut the apples in chunks, but you don’t have to be careful about size. Between cooking and mixing, they’ll be pulverized anyway! Measure out 3 cups of apples into a separate bowl. If you don’t quite have that many, round it out with a little unsweetened appleasauce. (I usually do this step the day before!)

Add your spices to your apples and mix it all thoroughly. Set aside.

• 2 heaping tablespoons of cinnamon
• pinch of cloves
• half teaspoon of allspice
• quarter teaspoon of nutmeg

Now work on the cake batter itself. Soften two sticks of margarine and add those to your mixing bowl (I use a stand mixer — it’s easier). Add in two cups of packed dark brown sugar and begin creaming the mixture.

Add in four eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each one.

Add in about half your apple mixture.

You’ll gradually mix in 3 1/2 cups of self-rising flour. When you’ve mixed in about half the flour, add the rest of your apples, and then finish the flour. When the mixture is well mixed, pour it over the fruit and nut mixture and mix well.

Pour into a greased and floured tube pan. Note that you’ll need a LARGE tube pan, not a bundt pan. This cake is huge.

Drop the pan three or four times on the counter to “settle” the batter. It’s thick, and you want to be sure there are no air holes in there.

Bake on 325 degrees for one hour. Increase heat to 350 and bake another half hour. Check the cake — it’s done when a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Tip: You may have to bake the cake as long as 2 hours, so don’t get worried if it goes a bit long. A lot depends on how wet the fruit was going in.

Applesauce cake variation:

Make the cake the same way, but don’t include the 5 cups of dried or candied fruit. Instead, add your 2 cups of walnuts and 2 cups of raisins, and that’s it! Bake at the same temperatures as above.

The cake freezes well, which is a good thing. It’s so big and rich, it’s not something you’ll be able to eat up in a weekend. Everyone who’s tried it has like it, even avowed fruitcake haters!

I talked in my last post about searching for some direction for the blog. I’ve decided to stick with health-related topics here, since it fits in with the domain and the readership I’ve built. I’m considering starting another blog where I can branch out a bit and discuss things that don’t really fit here.

When that’s up, I’ll be sure to provide you the link.

Searching for a little direction

I’ve been really struggling with what to do with this blog.

First off, I’m not happy with the domain name. This isn’t a weight loss blog, though I do talk about that. I also talk about exercise, eating better, dealing with diabetes, and other things as well. I don’t think the domain or the title reflect that well at all.

In short, I want this to be a place where I can discuss how I’m going about taking better care of myself, and I’m trying to work through how to accomplish that. I may end up redirecting this blog to another domain name. That way, those of you who are used to coming here will automatically get sent to the new home, and new domain, when that’s set up.

While this is in transition, I’d love to hear any comments you have about what you’d like to see more of, less of, etc. from this blog. Here are some questions to get started on, but feel free to not limit yourself to that in the comments.

1. Would you be interested in a blog that’s more general, for example “health related”?
2. If you read blogs on exercise, weight loss, health management, etc., what kinds of posts do you like best?
3. Would you like to see one or two longer posts a week, or more frequent, shorter posts?
4. Tell me anything else that might help me rethink where this should go.

Book Review: Personal Development for Smart People

If you head over to Steve Pavlina’s site, you’ll see plenty of reviews of his book, Personal Development for Smart People. I want to take a little different route here. I want to focus on what this book can do for you if you’re trying to lose weight or just get healthier.

What makes this book different is that he doesn’t focus on one aspect of your life to improve. This isn’t a book about making more money, improving your career, finding better relationships, or improving your health. It’s certainly not a typical weight loss book. You won’t find a particular diet or exercise plan here, but you will be encourage to find something that works for you.

In short, Personal Development for Smart People is a manual for improving whatever aspect of your life you choose to work on. Maybe you want to eat better, develop closer friendships, or work on finding a truly rewarding career. Regardless of what you want to work on, you’ll find techniques in this book that will help you.

Will you get a to-do list to fix your life? No. That isn’t what this book is about. You will get tools that will help you evaluate where you are, where you’re going, and how to change that path if it’s not something you’re happy with.

Part I

In part one, Steve discusses what he calls the fundamental principles. You’ll use these principles later in part two, when you focus on specific aspects of your life you’d like to change.

The three primary principles are truth, love and power, and they’re covered in the first three chapters. I found these chapters a bit abstract, but I read Steve’s blog, so I’m used to his approach. He might take a while to give you the background you need, but rest assured, he’ll get to the practical application.

Truth

For those of you who think of the truth as being a little subjective, you might be better served to think of this chapter as “fact.” One of the most important things you can do is learn to take an honest assessment of your current state and use that to predict what your future will be like. When it comes to our health habits, that can be a little uncomfortable. Of course, if you don’t like the prediction, changing it is what this book is all about.

• Think about your eating habits. If you continue doing what you’re doing now, what state will your body be in in five years? Ten years?

• Think about your overall health. What is your blood pressure, cholesterol, weight, blood sugar? Do those numbers look “good”?

• Are you likely to be able to live the life you want as you age, or will you face a host of health problems.

It’s difficult to do, but Steve will encourage you to take an honest assessment of where you are today. That’s the first step to making improvements.

Love

Love isn’t, in this book, really about romantic love, although it does encompass that concept. Think of love as being connected to others, and you’ll have a good idea of what Steve is getting at.

Being connected to others can help you appreciate the need to care for yourself. Your family and friends need you to be healthy, so that can serve as added motivation to improve your habits.

In addition, you may find that working with others who have the same goals can help you achieve yours. Meet and spend time with others who are trying to improve their health.

Power

Power includes concepts like self-discipline, focus, and effort. Obviously, losing weight and getting more fit are hard work. You’ll need self-discipline and focus in order to succeed. Take the time to focus on what you’re good at, where you’ve succeeded, etc. Use those as reminders for how strong you can be. Tap into that when you’re feeling overwhelmed.

Part II

Here is where we get to the “meat” of the book. Resist any temptation to skip ahead to this half; you’re not likely to be able to follow it unless you know what Steve means by his principles discussed in part one.

Here Steve talks about practical things you can do to improve specific areas of your life. He covers habits, career, money, health, relationships, and spirituality. However, you’ll find techniques within these chapters that will help you evaluate where you are and work on changing your life into what you want it to be.

The chapter on health will be of particular interest. Steve talks about his changing eating and exercise habits, as well as things he’s tried that didn’t work out for him. One great thing about the book is his insistence that you try things for yourself and evaluate how well they work for you. That’s particularly important in weight loss. Remember, the best diet is the one YOU can follow, lose weight on, and stay healthy on.

The chapter on habits was also a useful one. Steve talks about his thirty day trials and how to do one of your own. Try giving up coffee for a month, or chocolate, or exercising every day for a month. Since you know you can stop at the end of the trial, it doesn’t feel like such a deprivation. Make it a game, and enjoy tracking your progress.

This book is a good choice if you’re tired of the typical diet and exercise book.

Exercise Habit, Day 11

I’ve been walking almost every day at lunch, so I’m please overall with the progress on the exercise habit. However, I hurt my back Friday helping my husband move some carpet, so I didn’t exercise yesterday or today. My back was just too stiff and sore to manage anything more than what I had to do.

Still, I’m going to work through the rest of the month. Losing two days is no reason to give up entirely.

We got some great news last week. My husband’s a1c is down again; this time it’s 6.8. We were very pleased, obviously.

If you don’t know what an a1c is, or why you should care, read my article on why your a1c matters.  In short, your a1c is a measurement of your overall blood sugar for the last three months (roughly). Diabetics are encouraged to keep it below 7.0.