Health and Fitness, February 2013

[OKay]

Keeping on.

Another .2 lbs down on the scales this morning. As long as it is moving in the right direction I'm happy.

Yesterday had no exercise and very little movement. Unless I counted the hours spent holding LO and rocking him. HEY! I just realized that it had no cardio but could probably be counted as weight exercise. Holding, lifting and carrying 60+ lbs isn't too shabby. Every cloud has a silver lining

[Cowinkie]

Okay...
When my son was small he would have terrible reactions to his immunation shots. They would cause him to become very fussy and run a temp for about 3 days. Didn't matter if I gave him Tylenol or not. He also suffered when he was teething. We live far from town and the Health Dept. would come out to give immunations shots to our community. They always came on Fridays.

When it was time for my son's shots, I would check my calendar to make sure my weekend was clear of any events and then take my son to get his shots. Before I left home, I would move my rocker from his bedroom to my livingroom and set up the TV tray next to it, I knew what to expect....I would be rocking my ds for the next three days. I called them my "rock rock" days. This went on for several years until I learned that he was having a reaction to the pertussin in the shots. Once I started making sure that his shots didn't have the pertussin in it, my ds was much better.

Now when you get a booster tenus shot, the pertussin is automatically included. I keep reminding my son of his reactions to it. Don't know if he's out grown it, but in his case the older he got, the worse his reactions would be. So I understand you're in your "rock rock" mode. Gotta tell you as much as it was a pain to spend all that time and being exhausted once we were over that spell, I would love to go back in time and have another "rock rock" day with my son.

[OKay]

(((Cowinkle))) you are the sweetest thing in the west. Thank you for the perspective and encouragement!

Keeping on.....

Scales are down 1 lb! YEAH!! The scales are definitely going in the right direction!

Yesterday I made sure to get all my water in (60 oz) plus about 30oz of coffee

Best food eaten - oatmeal, blueberries, sweet potato, flax meal, yogurt, salmon, egg, onion, turnips, pinto beans,
Not best food eaten - bread, cornbread, butter, cough drops

[Harriet]

Good answer, OKay. I wanted to answer Cowinkie yesterday but got teary about my 27-year-old baby boy and decided I was incompetent to comment! Great work on the lost pound.

Harmony, I am with you monitoring all those things (including the ph balance and capitalizing SODIUM) except caffeine and fat, and now that I've listened to dr I saw yesterday I may be monitoring fat.

Yesterday dr assigned me to read up on Dr. Barry Sears' (author of "Zone" books) recent research. I already found some on the net but will check the library. Some is very sobering. Sears is concerned that our diets (choices, but also including some things we didn't know about as far as toxins and new hormone additions) affect us at the cellular level. At the least, he says this cellular-level impact is driving the rise of many diseases.

As sobering as that is, Sears further worries that from the cellular level, gene expression is affected, and therefore the changes in our diets over time are impacting generationally. In other words, could it be worse for a future generation to eat poorly, because they are already born operating under a handicap of the previous generations' cellular-level dietary injuries? Wow. It takes a lot to wrap my mind around that. He suggests that on average we may be three generations in, to some damage that would take three generations to reverse.

Mostly, Dr. Sears is an advocate of 10 vegetable and fruit servings per day, and now hashis own "pyramid"(wear sunglasses to view - it is super colorful, lol). I strive to get in 5, and consider 6 successful, so he would be disappointed in me. If you can't get in 10, he has supplements he suggests to try to make up the difference. I do take a whole-food multi that might satisfy a little bit of my "shortfall". Also he wants to see 3 to 4 ounces of lean protein at every meal, and just a little of good fats. He wants us to consider grains and starches as condiments.

If anyone's interested in the comparison, here is Dr. Weil's pyramidI'd posted before, that HRH's digestion doctor wants him to use. As you can see, Dr. Sears' is much more strict and simple.

My dr says he and his wife reversed a lot of their worrying blood markers with Dr. Sears' "Zone" diet and both of them slimmed down and have stayed slim. This is the same (very white-haired and by rights should be retired) dr who does the grueling P90-X workout every day. He says my problem is that even though I think I've risen above the "diet mentality" I still fall back into it, and that's why I see myself as fighting a battle all the time. I respect him, but it dawns on me that finding 10 vegetables and fruit servings for your plate every day is also a "diet" of sorts. Oh well, vegetables, and after that, more vegetables - got it.

[Harmony]

I could have sworn I had a ZONE book around here somewhere...and looked through all my diet books and couldn't find it. Isn't the Zone the one where you do all the right things, diet is exactly right so you are in the "Zone" and if you deviate then you do all the right things again to get back into the zone...and there is 15 min of walking after every meal. I read one like that, man it was strict!

Looking at my books, I found a few I haven't read for a long time and really don't remember. Metabolic diet was one. I've come to the conclusion, whatever works has gotta be something easy to maintain over the long haul. Otherwise it's just a temporary fix.

Life is not conducive to doing it all perfectly unless one has unlimited time to put into this one thing. I need something easy. Hm, cake for lunch wasn't good....at least there wasn't frosting, and it was a small bite...

Interesting dr. S. has potatoes on the bottom of his pyramid. not in starches. Are you trying to do this, Harriet?

[Nancy]

I've done 5 mi. on the ex. bike today.

[Lynlee]

I liked this page Harriet :- http://www.zonediet.com/tools/zone-classic
I try to keep to the palm size serve of protein thing. Some days the plate is more full of veg than others - though - just thinking - I need 2 palm size serves of veg - and a dash of good oil.

I have defined the word diet to mean whatever I eat is my diet. Whatever you eat is your diet. It doesn't mean that you are on a strict diet, or into good food, or weight loss.
Joan Breakley used to say - whatever they can't have is what is what a person defines as junk food - so that is different things to different people too. for me thats stuff with artificals. mostly .

I think seeds are missing from the zone diet pyramid. Maybe they count as fats? I put them together as protein but don't have them with a lot of fruit /veg. I avoid pulses and dry beans because of IBS and fibro myalgia concerns so I'm not missing them on the list. They are another thing you put together to = protein - so in that way maybe it is covered.

Last night I realised I had eaten no carbs all day and felt a need to add some before bedtime. I don't think carbs are optional - just they shouldn't be the staple as was promoted after ww2. I like the thing of the carb being secondary to what you are eating with it. Noting the 1fat: 2protein: 3carb ratio suggestion. I will need to weigh the rice cakes, the dollop of PB, and the banana. I need research again its composition. though I like and need it for the fruit veg score it adds. lol . Just looked at http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fru ... ces/1846/2
and I'm going to say it has stuff in its favour. Yep - stuff being a tech term.

[OKay]

Very Interesting! I CUOP and followed the links.

IMHO, it all starts with learning what a portion of food is. I noticed even with the Zone diet and Dr Weil diet they both refer to size of portion. Over eating even good food is not recommended.

Over the past month, I have been developing the fruit mixture to make DH birthday cake. It is a 60 day process so I am half way there. Yesterday was a big day in dumping the mixture out in order to harvest 1.5 cups of starter. That left about 10 cups of fruit mixture starter remaining. What to do with it? I've already tried to give it away (unsuccessfully). I don't want to throw it away. So I started experimenting. First experiment turned out successful. HOWEVER, that means we now have this great tasting cake. Last night was a disaster as we tested it without using portion control. Today i will slice and package up cake portions.

Keeping on...

[Harriet]

I remember my dmom keeping/preparing that fruit-for-cakes starter, OKay, and that eventually she gave it up because she felt so bad wasting it. I also remember that it was SO good. The name she used had something about brandied? But there wasn't any alcohol used.

Are you trying to do this, Harriet?

Never have plans come past me quite so rapid-fire and at this point I certainly may be a "jack of all trades, master of none". But, sort of, Yes I did assure my specialty/hormone dr that I would give the good college try to his idea for me, which was thoughtful of him to share, and caring. I don't think he realizes how much reading I already do on this subject, though, and that I probably don't need more swimming around in my head, lol! He just realized I was interested and listening, which may not happen to him as often as he'd hope.

Let's see, how did this series of events go again? I had headed back to the book store to buy Bob Harper's book on good "rules" for eating well. They had sold out, but Jorge Cruise's book on limiting sugars caught my eye. Reading and trying that one at home, I realized that my old copy of Rachel Heller's Carb. Addicts would help me limit sugars Cruise's way but in an easier-to-follow (as Harmony notes) meal-by-meal plan. Then I went to the dr.!

I went overboard on the fruit this morning, which often happens to me when trying to increase my fresh foods. I need to watch that. I mistakenly thought the half-banana qualified as one of the Zone-allowed fruits but I was wrong. The peach was fine, though. I made a protein shake out of them - been a while since I did that, and it reminds me of yet another plan, my (easy to follow) stand-by for decades, the Fit for Life books. It's all good.

[Harriet]

Have learned that Enter the Zone is at the closest library. That's a possibility. Like you, Harmony, at some point I need to start considering which books I actually want to own and which could go, knowing the library will still have them if I actually need them. I have a shelf for these and there is no rule that says I have to FILL the shelf.

Tonight was T-Tapp again. Btw, other nights were hula-hooping with dd14. I get so winded hula-hooping, but no where near the sweating as with T-Tapp.