some tips I learned this week

I'm skimming/reading/listening to a few different books and learned some useful things from them.  Note that I've only just started some of them so there may be more discussion in future posts.

From Mark Hyman's books (Blood sugar solution and Ultrametabolism), you can get very good discussions about how bad sugar and refined grains are for you.  I think I mentioned this already in a previous post.  Another thing I learned this week is that high-quality fats contribute to weight loss by regulating insulin, as well as contributing to satiation.  I guess that's where that phrase "you have to eat fat to burn fat" comes from.  They also increase your metabolism which helps burn fat.  However, his definition of healthy fats is different from mine.  I'm pretty convinced that oils of any kind are not heart healthy and I want my heart to be as healthy as possible as I am prone to several heart ailments without a high-quality diet.   In my view, stick with nuts, seeds, and avocados for your healthy fats.  Also, in a departure from Dr. Fuhrman's recommendations, I actually like his idea to not get too hungry between meals but allowing a snack or two.  This week, my eating schedule was breakfast at 8 am, lunch at noon, snack at 3-4 pm (berries), and dinner at 8 pm.  It was liberating to tell the truth.  I didn't felt compelled to overeat to get to my next meal.

I started reading Brendan Frazier's Thrive.  I like how his first chapter is about stress.  Stress contributes to carb burning more than fat burning because of the well-known fight-or-flight syndrome that results from stress.  So limiting stress is good for weight loss.   He argues that the biggest stresses on most people is an unhealthy diet.  I don't know if that's correct but it's an interesting conjecture.  He is an athlete so seeks optimal physical performance.  The faster you can recover from exercise, the more you can train, and the better your performance.  A healthy diet leads to faster recovery times.  This is very motivating for me because I love to exercise and the more the better.  It's ironic that I love exercising because I have so little natural talent in sports!   I am slow slow slow.  But wait a minute, even though I was slow on the mountain bike trail today, I made it up a steep rocky/rooted hill that had the two guys in front of me walking and the guy behind me walking.  Ha! Of course, they passed me once we got to the top (with nary a nod to my awesome performance).  On a cautionary note, Frazier's recipes are appropriate for ironman athletes burning 10,000 calories per day.  I tried one out today with about 1/10 th recommended seeds and it was still very high-calorie.  However, it was useful because I went 7 hours between breakfast and lunch, with a 2.5 hour mountain bike ride in between.  

I'm listening to Psycho-cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz--I'm not too far along but I already learned something useful.  Motivational books don't work too well with me because I have a low self-image and can't convince myself that I can succeed if I believe I won't.  The tool (or maybe just one tool) in this book is visualization and imagination.  Now that I can do.  I fantasize all the time that I'm a fast swimmer and awesome mountain biker knowing well and good that I'm the slowest one on the course.  That's what's great about fantasy, it's all pretend.  So I can definitely see the value of fantasizing about my success with healthy eating.  The idea is to pick a goal and imagine in great detail what it would be like if you were there right now.  Like for example, say you want to lose 4 lbs in the next 2 weeks.  Imagine 2 weeks from now how you will feel and what you are doing.

I'm not sure where to begin

My tooth hurts.  I got a temporary crown last week and have not been following doctor's orders to eat soft food.  I eat too many crunchy raw foods and it hurts the tooth and I get food in there and I'm worried it's getting infected. That's not what I was going to talk about but when I wondered where to begin, my face told me it was hurting.  so let's get started:

I've been enjoying home-made soy yogurt!   A group of us from the Fuhrman forums are exploring this and having much fun with it.  I got this yogurt maker.   It's so easy!  you just take a quart of unsweetened soy milk, mix in yogurt starter (this or this or 4 oz of unsweetened Whole Soy yogurt), pour into containers, turn on the machine, wait 8-12 hours, put the lids on and refrigerate.  It makes creamy tart yogurt, way better than store-bought.  I've been having it over strawberries and lettuce/spinach/kale for breakfast.  It is also great with frozen (or fresh, when in season) sweet cherries for a dessert.  It would probably be great in salad dressings and dips too.  I've never been a big fan of the silken tofu for this purpose because it is so flavorless.  But the soy yogurt adds a great flavor and creamy texture to foods. 

I've been reading up on sugar and refined grains.  I guess it's bad for you.  You probably knew that.  bummer.  But isn't it weird how everyone eats it all the time?  no, because it's addictive.  we're all addicted even after we give it up (I am anyway).  No wonder it's so hard to quit it.  here's a few articles about it:

http://www.peertrainer.com/cleanse/there_is_no_such_thing_as_healthy_sugar.aspx

http://www.peertrainer.com/health/complete-guide-to-sweeteners.aspx

http://drhyman.com/blog/2012/04/03/diet-drinks-helpful-or-harmful-to-kick-the-sugar-habit/ (check out the 60 minutes segment linked from there)

http://drhyman.com/blog/2011/02/04/stopping-addiction-to-sugar-willpower-or-genetics/

I came across this health program run by a evangelical church that looks really good in my opinion.  It's called the Daniel plan. It cracks me up that one of the organizers is Dr. Daniel Amen.  I laugh every time I see his name.  Anyway they seem to cover all the bases, not just what to eat but the psycho/social issues.  It looks like a very supportive environment from which to learn from.  I think you could follow Dr. Fuhrman's eating program without conflicting much with the recommendations here.  There are a lot of good articles on all topics related to healthy lifestyle.  I actually tempted to sign up and find out more about the program, if it's free.  I am not sure how much religion is involved in the program--I'm not a conservative evangelical myself so I don't know how I'd react to it.  But there's only one way to find out, haha.

My interest in sugar led me to read some of Dr. Hyman's work.  A lot of his recommendations conflict with Dr. Fuhrman, and his recommendations for supplements seem overboard and expensive to me.  But there are some things that suit me, maybe even a little better than Dr. Fuhrman.  I plan to stick to Dr. Fuhrman's food recommendations but here are some of Dr. Hyman's recommendations that I may incorporate:

• eat protein with every meal (for me that's beans, greens and soy yogurt).
• limit the sugars and refined grains, including sweet fruits.  (these days I'm mainly eating 1 lb of strawberries a day because they are in season and on special at the store)
• eat smaller meals more frequently (what?!)
• don't eat within 3 hours of bed

The third one directly contradicts Dr. Fuhrman's recommendations.  Here is what I find appealing about it: 1)  I won't get too hungry or too full which physically and psychologically feels better for me;  2) socially, it's easier on me because people are always eating around me and I can snack on healthy things with them; and 3) it keeps the metabolism running higher which aids in weight loss.  Dr. Fuhrman would like you to keep your metabolism low to extend your life.  He wants you to live in the catabolic stage often for lots of cell repair to do its wonders.  I can verify that following Dr. F's recommendations lowered my metabolism because it made me cold all the time.  I think I'd prefer running a little warmer (sacrilege!).   I think I will try this out as an experiment.  Of course, I won't be posting this on the Fuhrman forums, haha.

chocolate

As I said in my other posts, I made "healthy" chocolate cupcakes yesterday. I snacked while eating them, also sipped a little on housemate's chocolate cherry smoothie (maybe 2 oz worth?), and then ate 2 cupcakes. Well, that had me buzzing the rest of the day and night. I didn't sleep as well as usual, and I've been groggier than usual today. Yesterday's pomegranate didn't taste heavenly, like usual. And even today, my pom tasted better but it wasn't orgasmic, like they were last week. I want to get back to where my poms are orgasmic. I don't know if it was just the cocoa powder or the combination of that and the dates, but I feel that this is too much like a drug and I don't like drugs anymore. I'm not saying I won't eat chocolate cupcakes anymore, just that I think I'll be less likely to choose them. I have 4 in my freezer and 3 in my fridge and I don't even want them. Pretty weird huh? Fortunately housemate will be happy to eat them. It was fun making them and splurging on them; and I like knowing that if I do get the urge for cupcakes, this is a much healthier alternative than the bakery or co-op down the street.

Some Lessons Learned

Here are some of the things I’m dealing with now in my journey of healthy eating.

1) One thing that caught me off guard in this transition to healthy eating was that as my body cleaned up, it became much more sensitive to the drugs I used to ingest on a regular basis: caffeine, alcohol, and, the biggest surprise, sugar and refined grains. I never thought of sugar as a drug but now I’m not so sure. It’s so processed I’m not sure I’d call it real food anymore. Dr. Fuhrman says it’s a drug if you feel bad when you don’t have it. i.e., if you get addicted to it. I’ve got to the point where caffeine, alcohol, and sugar affect me very strongly when I ingest them, and then I feel yucky and get cravings the next day for something to perk me back up. So now I’ve given up caffeine and alcohol, not because I felt I should but because I didn’t like them anymore. And now the same thing seems to be happening with sugar and refined grains. They affect me so strongly that I’m thinking I don’t want them anymore. I don’t like the high I get from them and I don’t like the way I feel the next day. For a while I wondered if I was developing an eating disorder, but I think I’m just so much more affected by sugar than I used to be that the effect from it is magnified. I think I prefer just doing without it. Whole dates are a great sweetener, so I don’t need it anyway.

2) In addition, as my body cleaned up, the food started tasting better, much better. Now I can’t imagine anything more delicious than a pomegranate (my current passion). This, plus the large volume of food we healthy eaters ingest on a regular basis, has caused me to start overeating. So recently I’ve been reminding myself that food is nourishment, and it tastes much better when you are hungry. I can make getting my nourishment as enjoyable as possible by preparing delicious meals, and by waiting until I’m hungry to eat them. But if I go beyond that to overeating, then that’s unhealthy. It’s a balance I have to make with some mental discipline, because it’s our natural instinct to seek pleasure, and food is definitely a pleasure. Not only that, we are surrounded by it, day in, day out. Every meeting or social event I attend has food—food I choose not to eat in most cases, but it influences me and makes me want to eat something, even if it’s healthy. Part of it is physical—the sight of food causes my digestive system to secrete enzymes. My poor digestive system gets bombarded with this all day long in this society! Even at home, I spend a lot of time in the kitchen preparing meals I don’t eat, because I don’t eat lunch when my housemate and visitors do, and I’m the resident cook (because I love it). It’s kind of hard to resist nibbling but I find that can often lead to overeating.

ADHD

Interesting the side effects I'm still getting from my cookie indulgence last night. My heart was beating faster last night--I could feel it and I usually don't feel it. I wasn't tired and went to bed an hour later. This morning I was doing my usual reading and my mind kept wandering all over the place. It feels like ADHD. No wonder that's a near epidemic among kids.

Oh, I also have some congestion this morning, which is unusual. Yes, one of these days I will stop experimenting on my body with unhealthy food!

Nov 4, OOPS

okay, I blew it today. But I actually feel positive about my future, because 1) I feel yucky right now and would like that to end, and 2) I've felt good the last few days and would like to return to that. Also after reading posts on the forums about sugar addictions, I'm realizing I don't handle sugar well, and I think I know why now: It's because I hardly ever eat it anymore and I'm really sensitive to it now. That's pretty obvious but it took me a while to realize it. I thought I had some weird psychological control problem. Well, maybe I do, but it doesn't help that I'm so much more sensitive to it than I used to be. That's why I quit alcohol too because I'm so much more sensitive to it now, and I react strongly to a small amount and feel crappy the next day after just 1 drink. I think I have to tell people I just can't handle refined sugar and grains anymore when faced with their thoughtful vegan concoctions. Okay, so here's how today went:

Late Brekky: smoothie, black bean soup and steamed veggies. This was a bit too much. Next time I can do with less of the veggies. They were good though.

Dinner: salad.

After dinner Oops: I was at a meeting, and the host said BYOC (bring your own cookies), and the host found out I was vegan and bought all these freshly made vegan cookies from the co-op. Then my friend Colleen brought these vegan cookies that were from a recipe I'd given her! And I thought, oh, those are okay because they have peanut butter instead of oil. Well, this is how your brain does not think rationally: I forgot it's loaded with maple syrup. Don't trust your brain when faced with cookies! The recipe is peanut butter, spelt flower, maple syrup and chocolate chips. It's really simple, and really tasty. So I ate one. and then another. At some point I remembered the maple syrup ingredient but it was too late. I think I ate about 8 of them. They were relatively small, but still. I'm buzzing and I have a stomach ache. I definitely prefer the calm, centered feeling I usually have.

Okay, tomorrow starts day 1. I actually feel more confident about this than I did a few days ago because I think I've undergone a mental shift. It's like when I decided I don't want the alcohol anymore. It's not denying myself something I want, but deciding I really don't want it anymore.