Time flies when you're drowning in life!
Well, "drowning" isn't the right word, I guess. Far too negative.
My cup runeth over! Life is so very full! I'm blessed beyond measure!
.......and I'm damn tired, and can't seem to find the time to put away all the laundry!
Spring is a busy season in our family. Work picks up to a crazy pace for my husband. The kids are involved in a lot of sports and activities (track, multiple soccer teams, hip hop - including recital preparation). School starts to hit that frenetic pace when every special project, field trip, field day, ceremony is jammed into the fourth quarter.
I love my life. I love the fullness, and even the craziness at times. I love that I have two healthy and active kids who embrace trying new things. But I'm not going to lie - sometimes this fullness makes it very hard for me to slow down enough to focus on my own health and weight loss goals.
First, the good news: I am a person who works out 4-5x per week. Period. It's what I do now, and I find a way to do it no matter what. I still find this very cool as someone who avoided sweating for the first 38 years of my life. Lately, I've had to get serious about shoehorning workouts in wherever I can. This means running in the neighborhood near the soccer fields while one of the kids is practicing. Or racing home from work to get to a 4:30pm Jazzercise class, and then racing a child to a 6pm activity while I'm still a sweaty, gross mess. It's meant a lot more crockpot dinners so that I can run at the time I would normally be preparing dinner. And it's definitely meant getting up super early on both Saturday and Sunday to work out before starting the day with the family.
 |
| My longest run in the last few months. Slow and steady, and a look at that calorie burn! |
Now, for the less than good news: Diet. I've been struggling. I've indulged in more processed food. We've been eating out about once a week - some celebratory meals but mostly due to the busyness of life, and I've been very lax about those meals. We've had a few more at-home cheapo date-nights, and the wine has been flowing as Andy and I have enjoyed binge watching Game of Thrones. All of those things add up to 5 extra pounds according to my scale.
However, I finally feel back on track with diet. Meaning it might not be a coincidence that today is the day I'm resurrecting my blog. Ha! I'm pretty excited because I just may have found the perfect approach to long-term health.
Mark Bittman is a food and cooking writer. His classic book "How to Cook Everything" is one of my favorite cookbooks of all time - although, it's really much more than just a cookbook. It's the best cooking reference book ever.
Bittman has a new book out based on a diet (lifestyle) philosophy that has worked well for him for weight loss and general health, and it just makes so much sense to me.
A real foodie, Bittman had no interest in giving up animal products forever when his doctor suggested that a vegan lifestyle would benefit him due to his emerging health issues. Instead, Bittman came up with a simple way to bring much more of the good stuff, and far less of the bad stuff into his daily diet. Bittman explains that the reason he chose to eat vegan only before 6pm is because dinner tends to be the most social meal, and would be the hardest time to not share the meals he loves with the people he loves.
The premise is simple - before 6pm (really before dinner - the time is arbitrary), Bittman eats no animal products - his diet is consists of fruits, veggies, whole grains, nuts and legumes. He also doesn't eat processed sugar or refined grains before 6pm. After 6pm, Bittman eats what he wants within reason. He still tries to greatly limit any processed junk food or alcohol, but will have those things without guilt if he really wants them.
I started the VB6 approach just four days ago, and so far I'm really loving it for many reasons.
1). I really do enjoy a real food diet, and such a diet is important to me for health, ecological, environmental and even social justice reasons. This is a great plan if those issues are important to you, too.
2). I enjoy simple rules. Counting calories, points or carbohydrates really does not work well for me. I want to eat intuitively, but still need guidelines to help me make better choices.
3). It works with my current lifestyle. I already eat different breakfasts and lunches than the rest of the family. With this approach, I can continue to make the dinners my family loves. The majority of my dinners are based on whole grains, organic vegetables and lean meats, but I also make a mean Sweet and Sour Chicken, and Buffalo Chicken Casserole. None of that is off-limits in this approach.
4). It's not pulling any of my emotional triggers. With different approaches, I would feel a lot of guilt and hopelessness if I screwed up (ate something I shouldn't eat). With this approach, I can't really screw up. Each day starts anew. Of course, every day does ;) - but I've tried a lot of diets where it didn't feel that way. Weight Watchers, for instance, always seemed "One Week At a Time" to me with the focus on weekly meetings and weigh-ins. If I screwed up one day, I was likely to throw in the towel for the entire week and that could snowball very quickly. Now that's not Weight Watchers' fault - that's my fault, but it was a problem I consistently had with that program. With this approach, if I'm a little overindulgent after 6pm - well, I'm back to veganing it up the next morning. Something just feels good, and self-limiting with this approach. I'm definitely at the beginning stages of this, but I also don't feel any desire to go crazy at dinner time just because I really can eat whatever I want. Surprisingly, this plan doesn't make me feel like I need to eat whatever I want.
Here's an example of what I ate yesterday:
Breakfast: Overnight Refrigerator Oats (Mix 1/4 cup quick cooking oats, 1/2 cup rice milk, handful of blueberries, packet of almonds, 1 tsp chia seeds, dash of cinnamon in mason jar and refrigerate overnight. In morning, take out of fridge for 30 minutes to take chill off. Eat and enjoy)
Lunch: Big Salad (spring mix lettuce, bean sprouts, homemade whole wheat croutons, tomato) with red wine vinegar and oil. 1/4 cup tahini-free hummus and baby carrots.
Snack: grapes
Dinner: 2 cup serving of Mulligatawny Soup (chicken, butter and cream in this soup - all off-limits prior to dinner foods) and Ak-Mak crackers
Snack: 1/2 cup Trader Joe's' Honey Greek yogurt (the best greek yogurt, IMO) and a cup of hot tea.
A pretty satisfying and tasty day of eating! I'm pretty optimistic about these guidelines, and definitely looking forward to taking off those 5lbs that crept up on me, and then moving forward with my greater goals. I promise I'll be checking in sooner than two months from now.
Finally, on a totally unrelated note- Gotta share my new favorite running song (although not a new song). Seriously...add this to your playlist, and fly! I 'm pretty sure I skip and wiggle when this one comes on, but I don't really care.
No comments:
Post a Comment