Informative Comment!

Thank you to Jackie Conn, a fellow blogger, (luv2lose, it is featured on the Raising Maine web site), for filling us in on Weight Watchers. I knew she worked for them, and asked her to describe the program. Please read her comment under "Is it Time for Professional Help". Thank you, Jackie! Hopefully, users of Nutrisystem and Jenny Craig will come forward and enlighten us. I will have comments when I have time to post. I do have some most definite opinions!

Interesting Radio Broadcast Tonight!

Hey, I don't know if I can tune in, but this sounds like something we should listen to. On Maine National Public Radio's Fresh Air show tonight, there is an interview with the Author of the book The End of Overeating: How Sugar, Salt and Fat have Highjacked our Brain . It airs at 7 p.m. tonight 90.1 FM Radio. If anyone gets a chance, I would love to have a report on that show! Thanks!

Is it Time to Seek Professional Help?

• Usually, this statement refers to psychological help (and believe me , with my harried life, I have asked myself this question from time to time :) What I am asking you is if you think perhaps it might be time to check out a weight loss club or system. If you think about it though, weight loss systems are a form of psychological help. I truly believe that what you put in your mouth is influenced primarily by your mind. If it was exclusively physiological you would stop eating when your hypothalamus (is that the monitor in your brain that tells you when you're full?) Your eating would not be influenced by external cues (happy, sad, tired which is a big one for me). So, maybe we do need some psychological help. Some one or some system to help us make those healthy choices. That's another psychological factor. When were truly hungry, (and not just eating cause we're bored, upset, etc.), our minds have a choice. Do we go for the potato chips or that apple? Then we go into all kind of rationalizations why maybe we could or should have those potato chips (I need extra salt cause I sweat a lot today, or I haven't eaten that much today, so I'll have some, and then I'll eat a light dinner...) These mind games are enough to make anyone cry out for help. What I am saying is wouldn't it be nice to have no guess work. I get so frustrated when I go out to dinner for example. Lately, I've become increasingly aware that just because I choose the turkey or fish item on the menu, doesn't mean I have made the healthiest or least caloric choice. I wish (and may even do something about it) that all menus were required to have nutritional info next to each item, so we can make educated decisions. Then, if we want to eat that 2,000 calorie burrito, it would be our choice! Getting back to the systems, I would love to know more about Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig and Nutrisystem. Does anyone have experience with these and would be wiling to share? I will write more about what I know and think about them soon!

The Day I Ate Everything I Wanted

What a powerful statement. As a woman, honestly ask yourself: Do you really let yourself eat anything you want for an entire day? I know I have perhaps been less strict with myself on days (well, actually a lot of days :) but, I don't think I have ever said, Okay, today it's anything goes. I bring this up because I just read this funny/sad article in the April 2009 Ladies' Home Journal. The woman who wrote it is a member of Weight Watchers, but too many "emaciated people who have no business being at a meeting" prompted her to walk out, vowing to splurge on anything that day. First stop Dunkin Donuts (what would your first stop be?), where she ate 1/3 box of donuts (normally she has black coffee there-no wonder she needed to binge!) Lunch consisted of Bacon Cheeseburger, lots of very salted fries, and a chocolate malted with whipped cream. After a trip to the bookstore to look at cookbooks, she stopped at a cafe to have a piece of chocolate cake. Right about now as I was reading this, I was wondering how much this lady weighs, cause I probably would have stopped there. I'll continue telling you what she ate the rest of the day cause you won't believe it, but first I want to share one of her insights with you. I loved her description of "fat" people and what skinny people think of them. She says skinny people envision fat people lounging on sofa immensely enjoying a carton of Ben and Jerry's or a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. She states, and I know this to be true, that when you are in that guilty act of overeating, you are eating and eating with your shoulders hunched and your head down, and you gobble things without even tasting them. She says "You start with I want and you end with I want, only now you have even more weight added to what is already too much and don't you think we know if all, all, all the time!" Powerful words, I think.

After Lunch, she watched two movies that made her more hungry, so she went out to get a turtle sundae, extra caramel sauce, plus a big bag of Cheetos. At this point I am loving this lady, as she explains that every time she flies she buys a bag of Cheetos, because if she goes down, at least she has had a bag of Cheetos! (again, what is the food you would want on the plane? For me I guess dark chocolate). Dinner: A nice steak with sauteed buttered mushrooms, loaded baked potato with bacon, sour cream, butter, and Caesar salad with a buttered baguette. Apple crisp and crumbled cherry pie topped off the meal. Before it was ready, she helped herself to a martini with olives stuffed with bleu cheese and potato chips dipped in Lipton Onion Soup mix dip. Okay, are you freaking out at this point, because I certainly was. I think I enjoyed reading this because it made me look like an angel. Why am I fretting over my 2 glasses of wine and extra helping of dinner? She is REALLY BAD. Well, as you may have guesses, after her binge, she literally smashed her scale with a wooden mallet. OMG! She ends the article by going to her Weight Watchers meeting the next day, four pounds heavier. Your supposed to confess your slip-ups, but she didn't She just started counting points the next day. I started asking myself, would I want to do that. What's four pounds to experience that kind of freedom. The good news is I don't want to do that, not to that extent. But I wonder: Is it worse to cheat a little every day, therefore keeping the status quo in terms of a weight your not happy with? Or should you binge like a crazy lady once in a while, but then really stick to the plan? Since I have very little discipline, I think I would go through with the binge, but still continue to cheat a little each day. So, that won't work for me. Would you be able to do that? I'll leave you with the last comment that the author of the article made that may help you decide if you want to. She states "I would like to end this by saying that it felt really good to cheat all day long, to eat whatever I wanted. But it didn't. " I think we all knew that. When your thighs start throbbing because your excess food just has no where to go (imaginary or not), there is no way to feel good!

Is Kirstie "Nuts"?

The definition I like best of insanity goes something like this: Insanity is doing the same things over and over again, and expecting different results. I recently viewed the DVR'd Oprah show in which Kirstie keeps saying she is nuts. But is she? According to this definition, she ate until she could eat no more consistently, yet expected not to gain any weight back. Wrong. She said herself that she chose to ignore the consequences. That she did not act responsibly when it came to diet and exercise. So, she knew what would happen when she repeated her mistakes. That behavior could indeed make you crazy! And it is what a lot us do regularly. We know how we will feel after we eat poorly, don't exercise, or don't put our well being first. I, for one, do not want to be part of the crazy club (although I just almost burned my house down after putting water on for green tea with lemon and getting so involved in thought for this blog, that I forgot it!) So, I throw out this challenge: Don't be another Kirstie. Learn from her mistakes. Try to remind yourself to take it one day at a time. Don't get overwhelmed by the thought of a lifetime counting calories and tedious exercise. Instead, just show up! Just get to that exercise class, try to portion out your food and not go back for seconds. Chew gum while your cooking so you aren't full before you even serve dinner. A little something everyday can add up to a lot. You are just one exercise session, just one nutritionally sound meal away from feeling great. I know it works for me. I am not saying it is easy to stick to, but, like anything, if you break it down into baby steps, you just might be able to succeed without feeling overwhelmed.

Speaking of Green Tea with Lemon. Tip for today: Straight from, you guessed it, Prevention magazine. In order to absorb the powerful antioxidants in green tea called catechins, you should add fresh lemon juice. Doing so will help absorb 13 times more catechins than if you drank the plain tea. The vitamin c in the lemon juice will allow just one or two cups of green tea help your heart, as opposed to the 5 cups a day consumed by the Japanese subjects in this study. Just don't add milk as it interferes with catechin absorption. The magazine also states only freshly brewed teas, and not the bottled types, are effective in promoting healthy hearts and decreasing stroke risk.

Kudos to Kirstie

Okay, first of all, Kirstie Alley is 58! 58! I think she looks amazing for that age, even with the newly regained weight. I think we can all relate to her, as the yo-yo weight thing, especially after 40, is just a fact of life. On Oprah yesterday, she said she felt like a failure. When you find yourself in that downward spiral where you are out of control, you certainly feel like there is no hope, so you might as well keep over indulging. I applaud her for stopping her self-destructive behavior. She decided enough was enough, and is getting back on the right track. That alone is a victory. By going on Oprah, she is making a public commitment which will be hard not to follow through on. Yes, she made the same public promise when she was a spokes model for Jenny Craig. But, like many of us, she slipped, big time. I think it just humanizes her. I wonder about her, though. You have got to be in a really bad place in your mind to give up so entirely when you are a PAID NATIONAL SPOKESPERSON for a famous weight loss program. Kirstie is smart, though. She has announced that she is developing her own weight loss plan. Mark my words: When she does slim down, her program will sell like hot cakes. Maybe that was the plan all along.....

Shape Magazine Bikini Cover girl Julia Louis Dreyfus (age 48!) was interviewed yesterday about what she does to stay fit. I really liked what she said. Basically, it went something like this: Life should not be a prison sentence. She likes wine, bacon, chocolate, and she has them, just in moderation. Seems like a simple concept, but I think hard to follow through with on a regular basis. Sometimes we do slip up and that's OK. If you don't think that is OK, you set yourself up for a major slip up. If you fall off your health regiment one day, don't let it go to two. Get right back at it the very next day.

Sharing is Caring...Do you care?

Okay, I am going public! How much more public can you go than a blog, you ask? Well, I have only mentioned in passing to a few people that I started this blog. I really didn't want to admit that I spend so much time thinking about how I look, weight, etc. Well, the truth is that you have two choices after 40: you can care about your weight or not. If you do, unfortunately, you have to be mindful of what you eat and how active you are. If you don't, eat what you want and wear elastic waistbands. I was recently at a comedy show with a very funny lady preforming (http://www.pattyross.com/). She joked that she was 50 and had basically given up. She got tired just thinking about all the mind games she played with herself about her appearance. She didn't have the energy any more, didn't give a crap, and was now happily wearing elastic waistbands. As I was laughing, I was torn inside: Did she really not care? Would I be too tired to care when I turn 50? Even now I find it exhausting and find myself devoting way too much time to examining what I eat, workout plans, etc. It's such a catch 22: When I do devote the time to all of that, I feel really great. When I pretend it's not important, and I fall off the weight management/healthy bus, I feel awful. I should say I feel bad. Which brings me to my next point. In our society (and it others) women are always describing a diet slip as being bad. I hate that. Men absolutely do not call themselves bad if they eat too many chocolate chip cookies. They just are not programmed that way, either internally or socially. But, in defense of the feeling bad description, if I eat unhealthily, I do feel bad physically. That is what we should be focusing on-the not caring for our bodies that make us feel lethargic, etc., and not that we were naughty. I think this is a very important distinction.



Change your thinking...



So, getting back to that comedienne, I do think she cared. She had a hip hairstyle and nice makeup. I think that we all have to change the way we think about fitness and nutrition. To stay in shape, we don't have to deprive ourselves of everything we love. Just have smaller portions. You would be amazed that once you start doing this, your stomach will actually be full with the smaller portion. I've noticed that if I eat a lot, then I feel hungrier the next day, like I stretched my stomach and need to fill it again. If I eat less for a day or two, then if I listen to my body, I get fuller faster. As for fitness, I used to think that if I didn't do "official" workouts, then I wasn't really burning the calories I needed to. Well, remember, just like every calorie you eat counts, every calorie you burn counts too. I realize now, you don't have to do 40 minutes, 5 days a week of repetitious, exhausting, and boring workouts. Yes, do the cardio/fat blasting workouts 2 or 3 times a week for 40 minutes. Just vary them. When you are on the treadmill, skip for a few minutes, then run, then walk up the incline. It will be much more bearable and fun that way. With any workout you do, try to vary it to make it fun. On the other days when you don't have an "official" workout planned, try in some way to work up a sweat. This can be done by vigorously cleaning, (sweeping for 30 minutes burns 100 calories), but I think the most rewarding, is to play with your kids! It's fun, and at the same time you are developing a closer bond with them. So, lately I have been jumping on the trampoline with them, not just watching. I have been playing hide and seek, tag (makes you run!), kickball, hopscotch. I have been doing this in an experimental way to see what my weight would do considering I haven't been exercising as much lately. Guess what? Although I felt I haven't been controlling my portions enough, I have not gained any weight, and in fact, am on the lower side of my range. Awesome! Today I am going rollerblading while my girls ride their bikes and scooter.



Have you tried...



Covergirl Simply Ageless foundation with Olay Regenerist? Ellen Degeneris (is it Ellen Degenerist :) is the spokeswoman. Olay Regenerist has been the recipient of many awards in the beauty magazine contests. When I run out of my present foundation, I am going to try it. If any of you have tried it, please write in! Or, if you have found a anti aging product that really works for you, please pass it! Sharing is caring, after all.