Sunday, April 28, 2013
Falling off the wagon...
Friday, April 12, 2013
A little article that I found interesting...
Just copy-pasted the article below. The original is here.
I'll start by telling you what it's not. It's not willpower, determination or motivation. It's not avoiding carbs or sugar or fats. And it's not cooking, hitting the gym or sticking to your plan.
No, the most important skill in weight management is learning how to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get back on with it. Whether it's the predictable—holidays, birthdays, anniversaries or vacations—or the unpredictable—illness, death, marital discord or injury—life has a bad habit of getting in the way of our best intentions. And mark my words, you're going to fall down.
[See How to Handle Extreme Stress.]
So how do you maximize your chances of picking yourself back up? Unfortunately there's no app for that. Instead you're going to have to rely on these two simple strategies:
• First, you need to respect reality. The fact is, life happens. If you don't respect the fact that as a species we have comforted and celebrated with food since time immemorial, then the inevitable guilt, shame and frustration you're going to feel when you exercise your right as a human being to use food for purposes other than fuel may well lead you to throw in the towel.
[See A Shame-Free Food Lifestyle.]
Instead of being frustrated that your weight management or healthy living strategies are affected by reality, try to remember that your best efforts vary. The best you can do over the week of Passover or Easter is undoubtedly less healthful than the best you can do the week after. If your goal is your best, you'll never fall into the trap of repeatedly letting yourself down.
• Second, you need to like the life you're living while you're losing. This truism is perhaps the one most regularly forgotten by newly minted dieters. Ultimately, if you don't like the life you're living while you're losing, even if you lose a great deal, you're eventually going to head back toward the life you led before you lost weight.
[See Best Weight-Loss Diets.]
Putting this in the perspective of reality, when life does up and offer you a reason to stray from your plan, it's going to be that much harder to get back into it if your plan was one you didn't enjoy in the first place. The more weight you'd like to permanently lose, the more of your life you'll need to permanently change. And because "permanent" is an awfully long time, truly the easiest way to evaluate the approach you've chosen for weight management or healthy living is to ask yourself: "Can I happily keep living this way?" If the answer's no, you need to find a new approach.
Put another way, the most important skill in weight management isn't a synonym of suffering, it's one of embracing imperfection, of rolling with life's pleasant and unpleasant punches; it smacks of reality, not reality TV.
[See When Science Met The Biggest Loser.]
The healthiest life that you can happily enjoy sometimes isn't going to be that healthy. Accepting that is weight management's most important skill.
The No. 1 Skill for Weight Management
April 3, 2013 What do you think it is?
I'll start by telling you what it's not. It's not willpower, determination or motivation. It's not avoiding carbs or sugar or fats. And it's not cooking, hitting the gym or sticking to your plan.
No, the most important skill in weight management is learning how to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get back on with it. Whether it's the predictable—holidays, birthdays, anniversaries or vacations—or the unpredictable—illness, death, marital discord or injury—life has a bad habit of getting in the way of our best intentions. And mark my words, you're going to fall down.
[See How to Handle Extreme Stress.]
So how do you maximize your chances of picking yourself back up? Unfortunately there's no app for that. Instead you're going to have to rely on these two simple strategies:
• First, you need to respect reality. The fact is, life happens. If you don't respect the fact that as a species we have comforted and celebrated with food since time immemorial, then the inevitable guilt, shame and frustration you're going to feel when you exercise your right as a human being to use food for purposes other than fuel may well lead you to throw in the towel.
[See A Shame-Free Food Lifestyle.]
Instead of being frustrated that your weight management or healthy living strategies are affected by reality, try to remember that your best efforts vary. The best you can do over the week of Passover or Easter is undoubtedly less healthful than the best you can do the week after. If your goal is your best, you'll never fall into the trap of repeatedly letting yourself down.
• Second, you need to like the life you're living while you're losing. This truism is perhaps the one most regularly forgotten by newly minted dieters. Ultimately, if you don't like the life you're living while you're losing, even if you lose a great deal, you're eventually going to head back toward the life you led before you lost weight.
[See Best Weight-Loss Diets.]
Putting this in the perspective of reality, when life does up and offer you a reason to stray from your plan, it's going to be that much harder to get back into it if your plan was one you didn't enjoy in the first place. The more weight you'd like to permanently lose, the more of your life you'll need to permanently change. And because "permanent" is an awfully long time, truly the easiest way to evaluate the approach you've chosen for weight management or healthy living is to ask yourself: "Can I happily keep living this way?" If the answer's no, you need to find a new approach.
Put another way, the most important skill in weight management isn't a synonym of suffering, it's one of embracing imperfection, of rolling with life's pleasant and unpleasant punches; it smacks of reality, not reality TV.
[See When Science Met The Biggest Loser.]
The healthiest life that you can happily enjoy sometimes isn't going to be that healthy. Accepting that is weight management's most important skill.
Friday, March 15, 2013
Cada dia mas gordos...
Un articulo publicado en el diario El Pais de Espana.
http://sociedad.elpais.com/sociedad/2013/03/14/actualidad/1363266248_862274.html
http://sociedad.elpais.com/sociedad/2013/03/14/actualidad/1363266248_862274.html
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Are *** allowed in the LCHF diet?
The questions are many...
Can I eat peas in the LCHF diet?
Can I eat beets?
Can I eat carrots?
......
Whenever I have a doubt I check Fineli, a fabulous site that tells me how many carbs (average, of course) each food has. For example, peas have 9.4% carbs (per weight), beetroot 6.9% ,carrots have 5.6%, tomato 3.5%, and boiled potatoes without skin have 15.5% carbs.
To decide if to eat or not a particular food type, you have to decide where do you draw the line. At 5%? At 3%? I think this requires trial and error for each person, for we are not all equal.
I draw the line at 5%, otherwise the choice of food is really limited. I bought myself a pack of ketostix and monitor the ketone amount of my body if I eat something I believe would get me out of ketosis and adjust 'dosage' accordingly. Also I suppose it depends on the carb content of the meal as a whole (you may add like 1 potato to the whole food and perhaps is fine), and interplays of the foods on each other. What I refuse to do is to monitor hysterically each food I consume. I just have a vague idea of what is not good for me and keep to that. For example I don't put potatoes in the food, or carrots, just because it is easy to go overboard.
The thing this diet has taught me is to listen to my body more. Do I feel well? Do I crave something? Why can that be?
Can I eat peas in the LCHF diet?
Can I eat beets?
Can I eat carrots?
......
Whenever I have a doubt I check Fineli, a fabulous site that tells me how many carbs (average, of course) each food has. For example, peas have 9.4% carbs (per weight), beetroot 6.9% ,carrots have 5.6%, tomato 3.5%, and boiled potatoes without skin have 15.5% carbs.
To decide if to eat or not a particular food type, you have to decide where do you draw the line. At 5%? At 3%? I think this requires trial and error for each person, for we are not all equal.
I draw the line at 5%, otherwise the choice of food is really limited. I bought myself a pack of ketostix and monitor the ketone amount of my body if I eat something I believe would get me out of ketosis and adjust 'dosage' accordingly. Also I suppose it depends on the carb content of the meal as a whole (you may add like 1 potato to the whole food and perhaps is fine), and interplays of the foods on each other. What I refuse to do is to monitor hysterically each food I consume. I just have a vague idea of what is not good for me and keep to that. For example I don't put potatoes in the food, or carrots, just because it is easy to go overboard.
The thing this diet has taught me is to listen to my body more. Do I feel well? Do I crave something? Why can that be?
LCHF weeks 7 and 8
I bought myself some ketostix, so now I can monitor what happens with my ketosis. I often drink during the weekends and I could now monitor that those excesses bring some diminishing amount of ketones in my body. Therefore the slow change on my weight. I am now at 72 kg... The same I was before I ate the cookies and fell off the diet wagon. The thing I learned was that once you fall out of the diet, all the usual carb cravings come back. So you have to re-adapt once more to the diet like you just started it. Tough price to pay for one infraction, but at the same time, this diet is easy to follow (never hungry!) and something is gotta give, I guess. Going out for dinner is truly an art, as many places cannot conceive you don't want fries or potatoes (aren't they the same?), but I just have to bite the bitter pill and pay more (ordering an extra salad, for example). Tapas is the best option for me, as they usually have nuts, olives and some meaty things that I can consume. I feel leaner though, and a bit trimmed, and my ego has taken this with cherish relief. I would love to have my BMI below obese for the summer, just that would make me very happy. My contentment with myself shows: people say I look sunnier than before... even though I often have this sad/sensitive/raw feeling in me. I don't understand it and I think it is a by-product of the burning of the fat on my body. Fat cells store the toxins of the body, and depressive people are full of toxins, so it makes sense that if you are full of toxins you feel prone to sensitivity, sadness, anger.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
LCHF diet week 6: La carne es débil
What was interesting was the effect it had on me: on the day I felt really stuffed (no dinner) but in the unpleasant way when you eat way too much. I remember feeling like that all the time before the LCHF diet. I also felt guilty, as I knew I would stop ketosis for a while.
On the following day I felt literally sick. I had stomach cramps, sluggishness, diarrhea. I felt bloated and sick for a couple of days. But the most interesting was the tiredness I felt. I came home exhausted (as I used to), I went to the couch, I didn't move for the rest of the evening (like I used to). I also started feeling depressed, numb. This regression got my weight to increase accordingly, I accumulated water and stopped the fat-burning process, so my weight went to 73.5 kg.
Fortunately I went back to the LCHF diet and all this horrible symptoms disappeared in a few days. But the lesson is learned: any sugar (at this point) and I pay dearly. It does make it easier to resist the cookies.
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Colds, flu, running nose
After I started this diet I have been ill with colds more than usual. I was wondering why (and if it is healthy at all to follow this diet) until I found the following paragraph in the site of a fellow low carb diet follower:
Around this time, I caught the flu, and developed a really serious case of chest congestion. I hadn't been that sick in a long time, and it scared me into figuring out why. My thought was "wait a second, I eat really well, why am I so sick?"
So I did some research, and found out Vitamin D was essential for respiratory health, so I had my vitamin D levels checked. My levels were super low - a measly 27. Normal is between 50-100. Not surprising since I live in Wyoming, where we have Winter 10 months out of the year, but not good.
Having read how beneficial it is for so many body systems, I started a program to get my vitamin D levels up. I started taking 5000 IU a day and then checked it again several months later. It was better, but still only at 31. So I upped my daily intake to 10,000 IU. I felt even better at this point. Last time I had it checked, my vitamin D level was at 76, and I rarely get colds any more. So, one more puzzle piece fell into place.
I started taking more vitamin D and walks in the sun now, and I feel better and less asthmatic. I did not have my vitamin D checked. I don't think the doctor would help me with this anyways...
Around this time, I caught the flu, and developed a really serious case of chest congestion. I hadn't been that sick in a long time, and it scared me into figuring out why. My thought was "wait a second, I eat really well, why am I so sick?"
So I did some research, and found out Vitamin D was essential for respiratory health, so I had my vitamin D levels checked. My levels were super low - a measly 27. Normal is between 50-100. Not surprising since I live in Wyoming, where we have Winter 10 months out of the year, but not good.
Having read how beneficial it is for so many body systems, I started a program to get my vitamin D levels up. I started taking 5000 IU a day and then checked it again several months later. It was better, but still only at 31. So I upped my daily intake to 10,000 IU. I felt even better at this point. Last time I had it checked, my vitamin D level was at 76, and I rarely get colds any more. So, one more puzzle piece fell into place.
I started taking more vitamin D and walks in the sun now, and I feel better and less asthmatic. I did not have my vitamin D checked. I don't think the doctor would help me with this anyways...
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