Yummy Life

I’m taking some time to publicly declare my personal goals for the year.  I’ve also gone through the trouble to take a look at goals I’ve made in years gone by.  So far, my track record is not great as far as actually reaching the goals that I’ve set for myself.  Why is that?  Sometimes the goals were unrealistic considering what was going on in my life at the time.  More often than not I just did not take the time to keep the goal in the front of my mind and to track my progress.  Instead it got tossed aside into the closet of Forgotten Dreams and ended up on the bottom of the junk pile. No one ever asks me about all of the forgotten dreams because I never told anyone about them!  I totally missed the opportunity gain valuable supporters who could have cheered me on and encouraged me when I felt like giving up.  Well, not this time.  I have friends, family, my online communities, my clients and my clients-to-be.  I believe in being totally authentic, in practicing what I preach.  I’ve been taking small steps to total wellness over the last couple of years.  This year, I am going to make a giant leap.

So, this year, the following things are on my agenda:

1.)  Reduce my waist size by 5-8 inches by July 1, 2010.

2.)  Run a 10K on May 8, 2010.

3.)  Maintain a PCOS-friendly fertility diet that includes 4-6 servings of vegetables per day plus supplements to decrease my PCOS symptoms and improve my overall fertility.

4.) Begin IVF process in April, 2010 – before my 35th birthday, and be healthy enough to do it.

5.) Be able to buy clothes in ANY store I choose by July 1, 2010.

Those are my ultimate goals for the year.  I’ve decided to break it up into smaller goals for each month, to make it easier to achieve the bigger ones.  So for this month, I am going to maintain a regular schedule each week that includes regular times for exercise, work, and relaxation.  I will get up each morning at 6 am in order to run before the day begins.  I will do this 6X per week and allow myself one day off.  I will go to bed at the same time each evening in order to promote better sleep.  I will engage in strength training 3-4 days per week in the afternoon.  I will eat 5 servings of vegetables per day and maintain a 1500 calorie per day diet and re-evaluate on February 1.  I will write down what I eat each day and journal about my experience.  My pants will be loose on February 1, 2010.

All of these goals are realistic.  I want to lose fat and be as healthy as I can be.  I want to work my way toward being “athletic”, something I have never been.  Life is busy and hectic, and I am sure that I will not do things 100% perfectly.  That’s OK.  I am setting both my personal and professional goals high.  Research shows that the higher you set your goals, the more you achieve.  So, screw being 1 size smaller, losing 10 lbs, and running a 5K!  Though I am keeping my personal and professional goals separate, they do intertwine.  I want to be more comfortable on camera when doing my own videos and for when I make television appearances, so that involves continuing to lose fat and gain muscle.  I want to experience fertility treatment along with my clients during my Fertile Attraction group, so I want to get healthy enough to have a running chance at IVF working.  Basically, the healthier I am, the more I will be able to give my business.  They are indeed connected.

So, if you have some things to accomplish this year, outline some clear, concise goals.  Make them a stretch for you but keep them realistic.  Make sure it is measurable – you  must be able to track your progress.  Take that first step by sharing your goals on this post – make them public!  Let’s do this together!  Please comment – let’s keep each other accountable!

So many overweight women worry that their children will also have a weight problem.  If you have ever seen Dr. Phil or some of the other talk shows, I am sure that you have seen the overweight parents with severely overweight children.  It is clear that there is a link there. Genetics?  Perhaps a little, but mostly it is about lifestyle.  Allow me to elaborate.

I have been sort of nonchalantly watching my daughter lately.  Watching her eat, that is.  My mother-in-law is always worried about what she eats, that she isn’t eating enough meat, etc.  But my observations have really led me to believe that she is getting what she needs for now.  Sometimes she just is not hungry, so she doesn’t eat.  When she does eat, she eats until she has had enough and has no qualms about leaving food on her plate and walking away (or feeding her leftovers to the dogs).  She really enjoys her food and eats very slowly.  Sometimes she even makes “mmmmm mmmmm” sounds when she eats if she really likes it.  She is a typical 3-year old, she likes things that are sweet.  She prefers bread (but I only buy whole grain with no HFCS) to vegetables and does not like anything too spicy or “nasty” as she calls it.  She snacks on almonds, dried figs, whole wheat pretzels and other various fresh fruits.  She accepts that we do not eat ice cream every day.  I like to have her “help” me make food on a regular basis.  She can stir and pour in ingredients.  I turn it into a little lesson for her – we talk about what goes in the food, why we eat it, or talk about what letters all the ingredients start with.  I love that she knows what agave nectar is!

I really try to avoid making a big deal out of eating.  Because I am trying my best to live a healthy lifestyle, you will rarely find junk food in my house.  I make one meal for dinner, either Lili eats it or she doesn’t.  I offer praise for trying new foods.  I hide vegetables whenever possible.  I would like her to think that this healthy way of eating is “normal”.  Of course she has not gotten to the age when she goes over to friends’ houses and samples their perhaps not so healthy lifestyles.  I do not ever tell her to “clean her plate”.  Food is just food.  It gives us nourishment and energy.  I really try my best to not use food as a reward, though I have bribed with a healthy dessert a few times when Lili was on a hunger strike.

Of course, a healthy lifestyle is more than just the food we chose to shove in our mouths.  I feel pretty good that Lili knows what all of my exercise equipment is called.  She likes to do my bhangra dance videos with me (I think she does it better than me to – she has rhythm!).  She enjoys going hiking in the woods, loves to swim, and is a great running partner even though she doesn’t run.  She does, however, tell me to “go faster!” and yells at me if I stop.  We try to incorporate some activity into every day.  Sometimes we turn on some silly songs and dance, sometimes we go to the playground and run around, sometimes we go to open gym at a gymnastics studio.  I don’t make a big deal out of it, it’s just something we do.  She does not appreciate the fact that I limit her TV time, but that’s part of life – learning to deal with things that we do not like.

I am no different than many other women.  Having been overweight most of my life, I do not want my daughter to have to go through that.  But I am not modeling the tactics used by my own parents.  I think these things made my problems worse.  Of course back then I did not know I had PCOS, and this in retrospect is probably a blessing since that probably would have made my mother put a lock on the refrigerator and cupboards.  I am not attempting to control, just model healthy behaviors the majority of the time.  I keep healthy food in the house, not buy junk food and tell her not to eat it.  I will NEVER NEVER tell her she is fat or give her nicknames like Thunder Thighs.  I will not drag her to Weight Watchers meetings when she is 10 years old.  I have to be careful about what I say too – I need to watch my own self-criticism because I do not want her to repeat it.  Most of all, I do not ever want her to think I do not love her exactly the way she is.  So many fat kids grow up thinking that their parents can only love them if they are thin.  I know I did.

Right now, Lili is a confident and active little girl.  I would like her to stay that way.  And I think the best way for me to do that is to give up some control, to have faith that she knows what she needs most of the time.  When it comes to food anyway.  There will be no Clean Plate Club in my house.  And no sugared cereals either.  Or white bread.  Ice cream is always organic and natural with no chemicals in it.  We are keeping it real around here.  And for now, we are all OK with that.  And it’s good to be OK!

I am very familiar with the feeling of guilt. No, I don’t have a terrible secret.  Many women experience this feeling as they continue on their journey to better health.  They describe themselves as being “good” or “bad”, depending on whether or not they have followed their eating plan for the day.  They describe foods as being “good” or “bad”, depending on their fat, calorie or carb content.  My question for all of you would be this:  Is this actually helpful?

According to Dictionary.com, this is the definition of the word guilt:

Oh my, we are talking about FOOD, not committing assault or murder!  I have been playing the weight loss game most of my life, and can admit that I too have viewed food and eating in similar terms.  I have used food to punish myself and reward myself.  When I am “bad”, I don’t get to eat foods I like.  When I am “good”, I get to eat things that taste good.  The problem is that the “good” foods used to reward are often not very nutritious and do not help me reach my goals, therefore once I have rewarded myself I have been “bad” again!  See how this can turn into a never ending roller coaster?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what food really is, and how I can help my clients let go of this guilt.  Definition 2 comes closest to what I think women who are trying to lose weight and get healthy feel in regard to food.  They often feel that if they eat something not so nutritious they have committed an offense.  And it reality, this offense is imagined.  Check the law books, I bet that eating a brownie is not on the law books as a serious crime.  So why do we treat it as though it is?

In part I believe that society and the diet industry has programmed us to think this way.  We come to view weight loss professionals, whether they be the person behind the Weight Watchers counter or a dietician, as the food police.  We often try to conceal our crimes by wearing light clothing before a weigh in or starving ourselves a couple of days before.  If confronted with our crimes, we sometimes “confess” as though we are about to be thrown in the slammer.  Once again I ask the question, is this helpful?

My answer would be no.  Viewing ourselves as always being on parole makes us feel like we are “bad” for being overweight in the first place.  Like we are second class citizens who need to be publicly flogged.  I am a believer in positive thinking and positive energy.  I think the more we think in these negative terms, the more negativity we will attract.

Instead, I believe in taking responsibility for our state of being and our actions.  This means letting go of the “shoulds” and “trying” and actually taking positive actions.  Punishing yourself is not a positive action, so throw away the handcuffs!  You may need to take a look at the way you view the foods that you eat.  As human beings we have the tendency to rebel when told we can’t do something, so making foods “bad” makes us want them even more.  And if we think of nutritious foods as something used to pay penance for our crimes, this will definitely not make us enjoy or crave them.

Tastes can definitely be influenced by the way we think.  Since I have trained myself to view food as something that heals and nourishes the body, I no longer crave some of my favorite “reward” foods.  A few weeks ago I ate something that was on the “bad” list, something that I had not eaten in quite some time.  It was too sweet, and tasted like chemicals.  Why would I reward myself by poisoning myself with high fructose corn syrup and other artificial, possibly cancer-causing ingredients?  It just didn’t make sense!

Is your thinking making sense?  Are you punishing yourself, and running from the food police?

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Be Well!

Holly

You can’t eat anything white.  No rice, no potatoes, no white pasta, no white bread.  When you are first trying to balance yourself out, you really can’t have any carbs at all.  So you can’t have ANY rice, pasta, bread, tortillas.  Oh, and no corn or peas either.  And for right now, no beans or lentils.  Absolutely no sugar.  None.

Read the above statement to yourself a few times.  Now take note of how you are feeling.  Do you want to be a rebel and go on a junk food binge?  Do you want to cry?  Does it make you mourn for all of your old “friends”?  Are you telling yourself “I can’t do this”?

You want to be healthy.  You want to release unwanted weight and feel better.  You want to be diabetes free and have the energy to live an active life.  You might even want to have a baby and you know that you are in no condition to conceive at the moment.  Being on any kind of restrictive diet is very difficult.  It’s hard to stick to long term, and impossible to do alone.  Every woman is unique and every woman’s body reacts to certain foods in different ways.  So what works for your friend who has PCOS may not work for you, even though you share the same condition.  How frustrating is that?

You don’t need to go on a “diet”.  You need to embrace a new, healthier lifestyle.  That includes some retraining of your brain as well.  It will not be easy to change your life if you focus on what is missing in your life.  Focusing on “can’t” will give you exactly that result – you won’t be able to make permanent changes.  Can you learn to love eating healthy food?  Absolutely!  There might be some steps that you need to take in order for this to become possible for you.  I’m not talking about gagging on a stalk of broccoli that you eat just because it’s good for you.  If you really hate something, don’t eat it!  But you may be surprised at how real food not only tastes yummy but also makes you feel better than you ever thought possible.

You can eat fresh, organic produce!  You can use alternative flours to make yummy desserts on occasion!  You can have creamy almond milk to make smoothies and shakes!  You can make your own ice cream!  You can eat exotic grains that do not leave you feeling sluggish and bloated!  You can have natural, organic meats that taste way better than the conventional stuff.  It may seem odd to you that eventually you will crave grilled veggie kabobs and baked cinnamon apples.

Do you want to spend your life really enjoying it or whining about what you “can’t have”?  The truth is, you can have your favorite things every once in awhile.  But chances are that if you really learn to listen to your body and focus on how great you feel, after a while you won’t even want to eat anything that doesn’t help you feel healthy and energetic.

I invite you to take a look at how you feel about eating healthy foods.  Does your mind drift back to things you’d rather be eating?  How can you change your thinking in order to make eating more enjoyable for you?  After all, it’s just food. More on that later…

Be Well!

Holly