I went through a time about a year and a half ago where I lost a decent amount of weight by making some changes in my diet (Dave, too). It felt great to lose the weight, but recently I've hit a rut. I kind of stopped losing and just stayed within the same weight, give or take 4 pounds in either direction.Recently I feel a lot less healthy. I've been staying on the higher end of what I usually weigh, and haven't been able to easily get rid of it. I'd like to lose 10-15 pounds at this point. My diet isn't the best...I have a love of sweets, and on top of that I have a job that is more sedentary than my last one. I fit 2 workouts a week into my schedule, and then do some walking to and from school. I eat 3 meals a day with a few snacks here and there. But you can bet that I have at LEAST one serving of candy/sugary junk food a day. I really feel deprived it I don't have any sweets at all, so...
My question is: what can I do to still get the satisfaction of sugary foods without being horrible to my body? How much can I safely allow myself in a day? And, how much do I need to be working out to lose weight? ANY tips you guys have would be great. Thanks!
In other news...
Dave and I were lucky enough to be given tickets to the play "The Miracle Worker." It was a very neat show, very well done. Lots of yelling and screaming, though :) Gave me a headache.
6 comments:
these are good questions. like you, i love sweets. i always feel like i need something sugary after a meal. even if i'm stuffed to the brim i'll make room for dessert. and i've always had weight issues, or i should say the pressure to remain fit or the fear of becoming fat. now that i'm getting older my metabolism has slowed down quite a bit so i can't shed the pounds as quickly as i used to. ever since mike and i have started our diet/exercise routine, i have lost 8 pounds and 2% body fat. the routine we're doing isn't a weight loss program though, it's just for getting "buff." :) the first few weeks of the diet i always felt like i was depriving myself. but now, i'm not AS rigid as the first month. here's the thing i've learned. exercise is really the key. as long as you're burning more calories than you're taking in then you're going to lose weight. if you want to eat a lot of fattening junkfood like i do all the time, then you have to work your body extra. i mean, obviously eating better is also a pretty big factor. i've heard of people losing lots of weight just by taking white flour and sweets out of their diets. but everyone's different. some people can eat whatever they want and still stay skinny. here's my advice i guess. if you love sweets, don't take them out of your diet. but plan your day. if you know you're going to want a piece of chocolate cake later in the day, maybe you should skimp on the salad dressing or mayonaise or butter or white bread, etc. for that day. get your sweet fix in small doses. instead of a brownie with icecream and whipped topping and chocolate syrup, try eating a couple hershey's kisses instead. if it's just the taste, maybe something like that will suffice. i don't know. i wouldn't recommend not-fat or sugar free stuff though, because to me it tastes worse and it's usually bad for you in other ways. when i switched to skim milk in high school, the taste was much different to me than the 2% i grew up on. so i used to put a tablespoon of vanilla in it to make it a little sweeter. stuff like that has always helped me. make sure you're doing cardio and find out your target heart rate so that when you do work out, you'll actually be melting away fat and calories. maybe you should try weight lifting a few times a week. since my muscles have gotten stronger and leaner in the last couple of months, my body seems to shed the fat better and faster. other than that, i don't know what else to tell you. i've heard of people who just can not lose anymore weight after they've reached a certain point. i don't know why their bodies do that. maybe your body is in survival mode or something. i know there are ways to get past that and get your body out of the rut its in. but i'll have to research it since i don't have the answers on the top of my head. sorry i just went off there. hope you find what you're looking for. good luck!
sorry, i just thought of another thing...
don't skip meals. maybe try eating 6 small meals a day rather than 3 big meals. then your body will not think it's starving itself and hold onto the fat. when mike and i started our routine, according to the plan we were supposed to add like 600 more calories to our diets. i was like, "what? that's not going to help me get lean!" but since i've been working out so much more intensely, i've needed those extra calories, especially the extra protein to build muscle. so i trusted the diet plan, and started eating MORE (good foods though, like lots more vegetables and more proteins and less carbs) because i was eating less carbs (and only whole grain carbs when i did) my body was forced to burn off the fat on my body rather than burning off the carbs. and eating more helped my body not go into starving mode and hold onto the flab for protective purposes. :) by the way, i just wanted to also say that i think you look fabulous the way you are!!! i don't think you need to lose an ounce! but we are our own worst critics, aren't we?
Thaanks for the help, Jamie! My plan right now is to add more exercise. I'm going to try to go jogging with Dave when the weather gets better, so hopefully that will help a lot. Maybe I should put a limit on my sugar, like you said. Like, one serving a day, instead of what it is currently (which is whatever the heck I want).
you should totally do P90X with us!
unsurprisingly, this will be a long comment.
first of all, you look amazing. i am so impressed by how healthy you look. but if you feel icky, that's another thing entirely.
i am the last person who should be giving advice about sugar or exercise, because i'm terrible about both. but i'll tell you the little bit that i know, as long as you recognize from the outset that i do not practice what i preach when it comes to either. :)
weight plateaus are normal and are your body's response to a sense of deprivation from losing weight. the number one rule of weight loss is very simply to take in less calories than you use, no matter where those calories come from. if you step up your exercise regimen, that will make a difference as far as burning calories and increasing metabolism. cardio is the most important exercise you can do for burning calories. also, exercising a little bit every day is better than exercising a lot just a couple of times a week. mixing up your routine is also important.
have you ever tried to keep a food diary? often we take in more food than we realize and keeping a record for a week, or even just three days, can help us to identify those miscellaneous calories. there are a few different free programs online for keeping track of your calories as well.
as for sugar, how much you are "allowed" varies depending on whom you ask. the government, for example, will tell you that it's acceptable to get 30% of your calories from sugar, which i think is a great big pile of steaming horsecrap. but generally 20 grams a day is a good number. that's hardly anything. it's like two chocolate chip cookies or one bowl of sugared cereal or one cup of regular yogurt. and most people get many more times this number every day.
one thing that i think is really important is to consider sugar not only in terms of cane sugar (sucrose), but in terms of all the other things we take in that are LIKE sugar. sugar is simply a refined carbohydrate. our bodies respond to refined grains like white rice and white flour the same way that we respond to sugar. this is why a piece of white-flour bread or mashed potatoes with the peel can screw a diabetic as much as a piece of candy. so even if we think that we're restricting our sugar intake we may still be taking in those very refined carbohydrates in other ways and perpetuating the cycle. replacing those foods with complex carbohydrates from whole grains and vegetables, as well as protein, can help to stop the cycle of rising and dipping blood sugar that makes us crave sweets. whole grains are really excellent for weight loss altogether because of the fiber; they're very filling and they'll help your body release retained water.
hidden sugars are a common problem as well. for example, many people consider those little cups of fruity yogurt a healthy snack. but one cup typically carries anywhere from 24-48 grams of sugar! the best way to avoid hidden sugars (and lots of other hidden yuckiness) is to reduce or eliminate processed foods, like flavored yogurt, breakfast cereal, store-bought granola, juice, and so on. reading the labels of food is essential. it's surprising how much sugar is in everything when you start looking for it. even meats and cheeses often have high-fructose corn syrup in them, as well as refined soy and grain products. most condiments have sugar in them. almost all packaged breakfast foods have sugar. focusing on whole foods and cutting out packaged stuff will help reduce the intake of random sugars.
i don't think it's healthy to completely eliminate sweets from our diets; we crave sweet things for a reason. from birth, we crave it for breastmilk, and after that, we crave it because finishing a meal with something sweet "closes" the digestive process. so i wouldn't suggest deprivation here. perhaps instead of thinking of sugar overall as the enemy, consider places where you can get sweet things without taking in something destructive. cane sugar is obviously the worst, but artificial sweeteners aren't much better; they just hurt us in a different way. the best place to get sugar is from fruit, whole, with the peel, pith or skin intact, which provides a complex carb to slow the sugar's effect on the bloodstream. (most of the vitamins are in the peel or pith, too.)
in most asian countries, meals commonly end with fruit, and this temperance regarding sugar is considered one of the hallmarks of the excellent health in many of those countries. i've tried this myself, whether a plain piece of fruit or a smoothie, and it definitely does feel very satisfying without getting that enormous high and crash from cookies, pie, cake or whatever. if i really start to crave something else, homemade fruit sorbet works. it's easy, quick and very low in sugar. another trick is that you can reduce the sugar in almost any homemade baked good by 1/3 without sacrificing flavor.
i've made some progress with my sugar addiction recently by allowing myself to indulge every now and then. deprivation just sends me on a cycle of binging and guilt. so a couple of times a month i'll make a cake, pie or batch of cookies. that mango pie i made the last time you guys were here was my first such indulgence in a few weeks. whatever i make, i always reduce the sugar and use whole, unprocessed ingredients so that it's at least a LITTLE BIT better than something i'd buy from dunkin' donuts. :) what's most important with sugar is how fast it hits our bloodstream. combining sugars with complex carbohydrates and other nutrients will help to temper its effects. and knowing that i can indulge from time to time keeps me on the straight-and-narrow the rest of the time.
one last suggestion that i wanted to make was in considering how you think about your weight and your health. i think too often we get hung up on the number on the scale and forget the ultimate goal, which should be good health. if you lose 10-15 pounds, it's not really going to be indicative, in and of itself, of an increase in your health level, unless you're quite overweight. you're already at a healthy weight, and from here weight control should be primarily about maintenance. what will be indicative of an increase in your health level is improving your diet and exercising more. for many people, women especially, it seems more productive and emotionally healthy to consider a number loss just a potential side effect of a healthy lifestyle.
okay, i've really completely and totally run off at the mouth but i swear, woman, don't ask nutrition questions if you know i'm reading it unless you want a novel. :)
sorry, that should say mashed potatoes withOUT the peel. :)
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