Numbers

Numbers. A strange topic to talk about, but do you know yours?
Do you know what your resting blood pressure is? How about your resting and exercising pulses? WOuld you be able to tell me your last cholesterol levels, both good and bad kinds? What about a blood sugar reading?
DO you know what a PCR is or a FBG? Would you know what your uncorrected ( minus glasses) vision is?
I bet the one number you alway sknow is your weight!
I found all mine out when my clinic started their Wellness Clinics last May. Lucikly, even though I'm classified as obese ( GOd, I hate that word!), my cardiac values plus my glucose values are all excellent and more than within normal limits. I have no history of cardiac disease, diabetes, thyroid problems or any endocrine abnormalities. I'm just fat. I must eat good food not a lot of fast, high fat food, so I just get weight on, not bad blood values! Both, beleive me, are equally bad.
Knowing what your body is doing with regards to your blood values, is an important part of knowing how to go about changng your lifestyle habits from bad to good ones.
Eliminating high fat fast food, stopping smoking, eating more fruits and veges and fibrous foods, restricting alcohol, all these factors have been around for decades promoting better health. And yet as as society, Americans still have such terrible eating habits. Childhood obesity has just become a national concern of the First Lady's. It's been one of my concerns for years. I can't tell you how many kids I see as patients who are HUGE! I just want to slap their parents and say "DO you know what you are doing to this kids' future?!"
DOn't worry. I keep my hands to myself.
For the next few days I'm going to explore what obesity does to the health care system in this country and the individual person's overall "Health status." For now, get to know your numbers and think about the changes you need to make inorder to get them down to perfection.

The thing I hate the most...

I really don't know anyone who hates exercizing more than I do! First off, I refuse to sweat so I never really do get a good cardio workout no matter what I do, because the instant I start to "glisten" I stop. SO , useless.
Walking on the treadmill may be considered a mild form of exercise, but at least I don't mind doing that. With the tv on in front of me, I can actually keepup a 3.5 mile an hour pace for upwards of 45 mins most days. That is a major accomplishment for me. But, as we all know, cardio isn't enough. You've got to strengthen the muscles too, so weight training needs to be incorporated somehow. Again, and here's my running theme with regards to exercise - I use my body bar and my free weights while I watch tv. It's pretty horrible how quickly I get bored if I don't have something visual in front of me while to "work out," a phrase that really can' t be applied to me in the true sense of the phrase. But anyway.
I just read a report that says women 50 and over need to get 30 mins of some kind of movement daily inorder to keep their bones and muscles healthy. 60 minutes is ideal if you are attempting to lose weight. 45 is my goal most days. After that I'm done and a wreck.
Walking, dancing, climbing stairs, whatever gets the body and muscles moving in a postive way has good long term effects.
So, I'm off to watch BONES on TNT and later I'll lift for a few minutes.
In a perfect world I would just watch BONES!

Saboteurs

Keeping in line with what makes people fail at weight loss plans is the subject of people and situations that sabotage the efforts. These are the people who - for whatever reason that motivates them - always try to get you to eat things you shouldn't, try things you know aren't good for you, encourage your to overindulge in desserts or alcohol, and who basically don't want to see you attain your goals. Included with that are situations that have failure built into them such as buffets, and allyoucaneat deals at restaurants.

How do you deal with these potentially dangerous situations?

The easiest way to avoid people who you know want to sabotage you is basically that: avoid them. If the co-worker you know drinks like crazy and thinks happy hour appetizers is a meal choice on par with breakfast or dinner invites you to got out, just say no. Nicely, but firmly. If you know the smell of those buffalo wings will put you over the edge, don't put yourself in the mix.

If you're invited to a wedding where the choice isn't chicken or fish, but BOTh and filet, and wings, and macncheese, etc, have a plan before going. When I know it's going to be a buffet, I tend to eat something before I leave for the event, that way I won't be starving and eat anything that isn't nailed down. I can make better choices without the thought that I need to eat everything in order to get my money's worth or have a good time. I've been to events recently where I haven't eaten a thing because I ate before I went and I just wasn't hungry or tempted.

If you have to eat - hey it's s it down dinner and you don't want to look like a crazy when everyone around you is eating and you're not, just make better choices. You don't need to eat the bread on that table. Pass it around instead. I share my meal sometimes with my husband. I remember one event we went to years ago where I gave him my filet mignon and he had already eaten his! There are always way to get around overindulging and sabotaging any efforts you've made in weight loss.

Don't let saboteurs get you down!!

a thought

MOTIVATION is what propels you to change. HABIT is what makes that change permanent.

More success!

As you can see, I'm down another 1.6 pounds! Something's going right!

One of the biggest changes I've made in the past six weeks is the journaling aspect of losing weight. At the beginning of this program I was supposed to write down every single thing I put in my mouth for one day. That included "tastes," gum, mints, etc. Anything that went in had to be charted. I was floored. By calorizing it I found that I take in about 500 wasted (waisted??!!Heehee) calories a day just by knoshing, tasting, and snacking unconsciously. That's 3500 extra calories a week or an entire pound of not needed fat.

Writing down everything you eat, when you eat it and how you feel when you eat it ( starving, bored, etc) has made a huge difference in sticking to my goal of weight loss and this program. And that's actually part 3 of Ferguson's reasons why people fail at diets. We lose track of stuff during our busy days, and even our not busy ones. I realized I eat more junk and snack unconsciously when I am home on the weekends. Part of this is boredom but a big part is because the food is so easily available and ready for me to eat. It's so easy to just go to the pantry and grab something lousy/snacky to eat. Bringing food with me to work everyday has helped tremendously is avoiding my buying crappy food when I am hungry. And writing it all down has definitely made a difference in how and what I eat.

The results are speaking for themselves, just look to the left of this page!!

More reasons for failure...

One reason for failure I forgot to mention yesterday was the use of pills to lose weight. All those things that claim to speed up your metabolism are a dangerous shortcut many people take to drop pounds. Relying on a little pill to change your metabolism and then starving on top of it will not - repeat -w ill not result in long term weight loss and in keeping it off for good. The only thing that has been proven to work to lose and keep weight off is a lifestyle reinvention of balanced food, exercise and paying attention.

A second reason people fail at weight loss according to Robert Ferguson is that they don't have a clean, concise goal planned out to implement. It's one thing to say I want to lose 5o pounds this year. It's quite another to define the steps that will be taken in order to accomplish that goal. In my case, 50 pounds for 50 years was the spring board idea. The plan was to find a weight loss program that I knew I could follow without the fear of deprivation, starving my self to death, or having to eat prepackaged food that many times tastes awful. It had to incorporate exercise because i knew I needed to do that in order to keep the weight off, and it had to be easy. FOODLOVERSFATLOSS plan was perfect for me because it made sense, I could eat, I need to exercise, and I need to journal. Plus I had a support system through the web that could help me if need be. So that was my plan. The goal was 50 pounds. The plan was to utilize his system for the weight loss. 5 weeks into it and I haven't felt deprived; I'm seeing results in my clothing and on the scale, and I've developed some good habits like journaling, tracking, and understanding the food I eat. I'm not knocking other legitimate weight loss plans that have proven successful for people. I just knew I was sick and tired of not eating, or eating food that had more preservatives than a person should see in their lifetime, of counting points, and trying to fit all this into my busy lifestyle.

So far, so good.

So don't be a vague goal say-er. Be a goal planner and implementor.