Finally Getting Fit

I was raised with the belief that cravings are an okay thing. Obey them because if you are craving something, that meant there is something in the food you’re craving that your body needs. However, when I got older and people talked about craving foods that were less than ideal for them, I began to think that cravings were a little more than what I’d been told.

I decided to do a little research because I have not been able to get enough yogurt lately. However, I’ve also been feeling sick to my stomach off and on, which may or may not be caused by being lactose intolerant. So, in theory, if cravings truly are what I was raised to believe, I should be able to replace the yogurt with something else that will give me what my body needs…

According to WebMD, “Surveys estimate that almost 100% of young women and nearly 70% of young men had food cravings during the past year. That covers most of us, doesn’t it?”

Well it’s certainly good to know that I’m not alone! But what does that mean exactly?

According to this article, food cravings pretty much are mostly in your head. Take away the pregnancy cravings side of things, and you’re most likely craving things because you want to calm down, comfort yourself, or are addicted to what you’re craving.

If you’re struggling with food cravings, read the article. It has seven facts about cravings and well as ideas on how to deal with them

As for me, I’m not too worried about yogurt cravings but will be taking a break from it nonetheless so I can see if I’m lactose intolerant.

And you shouldn’t be worried if you’re craving healthy foods. Just take things in moderation.

Hello and happy Monday everyone!

Today I’m doing something a little different…

When it comes to the healthy changes I made (some whether I liked it or not, hehe) after I moved to Australia, I will be the first to tell you the many, many ways those changes helped me. That’s why I am happy to introduce you to Sandy Power’s Organic for Healthy virtual tour.

Sandy is touring around the internet this month with her book (pictured right) Organic for Health. In it, Sandy tells us the many reasons why we should go organic.

An excerpt from the book:

‘I call them “The Big Offenders.” These are the guys that add hormones and antibiotics to dairy cows, beef cattle, sheep, and chickens. They inject these hormones into cattle and sheep so the animals gain weight faster. The faster weight gain reduces the waiting time for the animal’s slaughter, speeding the meat to your dinner table. Dairy cows are injected with hormones to increase milk production. This increase in milk production requires frequent milking which in turn leads to udder irritation and infections that require antibiotics. Since the infections don’t always completely clear up, the government permits a certain amount of pus to remain in the milk.’

If you would like more information on Sandy’s tour, you can check out Virtual Book Tours for Authors. She’ll be stopping back here this Friday with a guest post about going organic. I’ll also be posting a review of her book here after that.

Have a great Monday!

OrganicforHealth.com

Even though I no longer live in the United States, that doesn’t mean I have forgotten about one of the biggest traditions held there.

Celebrating the Fourth of July!

As with more holidays, food is a huge part of this celebration. With potato salad, hot dogs, grandma’s pies and all kinds of other goodies, it’s easy to overload and be groaning at the end of the night instead of ‘oooing’ and ‘ahhing’ when the fireworks are going off.

I’m not here to warn you to be careful about eating too much, though. If you’re going to do it, you’re going to do it. You know the consequences and only you will know how you will feel tomorrow morning.

No, I’m here to talk about the interesting benefits of one of the traditional fourth of July celebration foods: Watermelon!

If you haven’t heard the news, it turns out this tasty little fruit has a lot more going for it than a sweet demeanor and seeds that are fun to spit all over the place.

As it turns out, watermelon might be the new aphrodisiac on the ‘makes you hot’ list.

Scientists say that watermelons pack an interesting punch for you blood vessels and very well could increase your libido. Not only that, but there is a large list of other health benefits too.

The unfortunate part of this whole thing is that I don’t like watermelons. Back to oysters and green M&Ms for me.

Have a safe, happy, and fun holiday to those who are celebrating.

Hi all! Man it seems like forever since I’ve been able to post here. Do you feel the same?

Anywho, because of what happened, it came to my attention just how many people read here that have no way of getting in touch with me when the site is down. For the majority of you, that’s not a problem. Either you have my email address or you’re just not that upset about not being able to contact me for whatever amount of time. And that’s okay because I’m not always the best correspondent.

However, it would have been very nice to be able to let you know what was going on.

Because of that, I have been ‘inspired’ to tell you about a few of the other places you can find me, should something like this happen again. (Let’s all hope that it doesn’t.)

Twitter

Facebook

I’m at other places to, but these two are the ones I generally check in on every day. If you have any recommendations of other things I should join, let me know. Just keep in mind that I’m usually quite lazy and I’m proud of the fact that I have two social sites that I visit daily.

Feel free to friend me on any of these sites. It would be great, though, if you could let me know that you’re friending me because you saw this post. (“Hi, I’m ___. I read you on ___.) That’s not possible for all the sites, but I will definitely appreciate it if you put it in when you can.

Thank you all. Now it’s time for lunch.

Hi everyone!

Phew! We are back in action (as you can see). Did you miss me? I missed you!

Group hug!

Too much? Okay. I’ll behave.

I am very glad to be back in action and posting here on site. I apologize for all the down time, but as happens with technology sometimes, we had a bit of a technology burp. Apparently some drives and servers went down at headquarters and things were a bit messy for a while.

Don’t ask me to go into it further because it’s probably, ultimately, quite boring.

Thank you all for your patience (and for coming back after such a long gap). I know that going too long without posting can be a bit of a ‘virtual death’ for any site, so I doubly appreciate all of you who have been checking in with me via email, twitter and other things.

If any of you are interested in alternative ways to contact me (should the sites ever go down again, heaven forbid), leave a comment and I’ll post up some of my information.

I would like to reward everyone who stuck around through all this by holding a contest. I know I just held two big contests, but that doesn’t mean I can’t hold a few more, right?

If you have any ideas for a contest, please let me know. I’ll be taking your suggestions for the next few weeks so we can hopefully get something going soon.

Once again, my apologies, and thank you to everyone for your patience. I’m very glad to be back.

Have a good one!

Hello everyone.

As you likely already know, many of the sites on the 451press network are down and have been down for some time (what seems like forever!).

I would like to apologize on behalf of 451press for the technical difficulties we have been experiencing lately. There are problems at 451press headquarters right now involving the equipment and machines we use to keep the sites up and running. The good news is that these problems are being addressed and hopefully we’ll get things up and running sooner rather than later.

Thank you very much for your patience. At this time, about half the sites are down so a lot of people are unable to post and a lot of readers have been left in the dark. If possible, if you know other people who read blogs here at 451, please let them know that the problem is being worked on and the sites will hopefully be up again soon.

Thankfully, this site is still up and working and I will continue to post here for as long as I can.

Remember, if you need to contact me for any reason, you can use the contact me button below the site description on the right. If these sites go down for any reason, you can also find me twittering away at http://twitter.com/JaimeMcD . Just remember that I’m in a different time zone so responding to you might take a bit longer than you anticipate.

Thank you again for your patience. Hopefully things will be back to normal soon.

One of the big reasons I am trying to lose weight is because I want to have as healthy of a pregnancy as I can. While having a baby isn’t in my close financial future, that just means I have more time to work with when it comes to losing weight.

I haven’t gotten on the scale for a couple weeks now, and I’m a bit nervous about the possible ‘damage’ I may have done by not weighing in. Despite that, the worry I feel about that is nothing compared to the stress and depression I was dealing with before, so I’m still glad that I went off the scale for right now.

Towards the end of next month, I have an appointment to see a doctor. I’m both excited and nervous about this appointment because it could mean changes in a lot of ways. I’m hoping to find out why I have such a hard time losing weight. I’m hoping that she’ll make changes to my diet that will help me get even healthier. I’m also hoping that the appointment will be a turning point.

I want to be a mother so badly, but I am afraid that whatever is going on with my body is going to prevent that dream from coming true. I know a lot of women with PCOS (I’m not 100% sure I have PCOS, by the way) just have to lose a little weight and then they get pregnant, but therein lies the problem.

So I guess you can consider me on a bit of a hiatus (though I’ll still be posting) until I go to that appointment and find out what’s going on.

Wish me lots of luck and patience.

I received an email today that linked to a page (it was just a question, so no link) that asked:

“What does overeating and being overweight giving you?”

I was a bit puzzled about the question at first until I realized it was the basic question of why overeat. And I haven’t stopped thinking about it all morning.

When I first started my weight loss journey, it was easy to figure out why I overate. I was abused as a child and shut down a lot of myself and my personality. I used to eat as much food as I could get my hands on until I would ache with being full. It was my way of feeling something without the fear of having something bad happen because of my feelings. I could eat until I hurt and no one would know it but me.

I’m in a much better place now with much better circumstances. Those reasons no longer apply, so it was a bit harder to think of what I was getting from being fat.

These days, I think food being a comfort thing plays a big part in things. I was betrayed and hurt by people I trusted with my life from an early age, so it’s very hard for me to trust people. Food has never betrayed my trust and has never failed to be there.

So that’s the food side of it, but what about the being overweight?

For right now, you’re guess is pretty much as good as mine. I think part of me thinks that fat equals unattractive equals safe as far as men goes, but I feel like I’m still missing a key element that will answer the question better.

So, what does overeating and being overweight give you?

I don’t know about you, but I love music. I listen to music when I’m cleaning, I use music when I’m writing to help me creatively and, of course, I like to listen to music when I work out. There is something about the right rhythm that can really keep me going on the treadmill and/or elliptical.

This week I am listing thirteen songs that keep me going (be warned - it’s a mix of all kinds of songs, new and old). Be sure to put what music you like to work out (or clean, or…) to in the comment section!

Happy Thursday Thirteen!

1. Love Fool - Cardigans
2. To Be Free - The Calling (kind of slower, but a good rhythm to walk to)
3. Swing, Swing - The All-American Rejects
4. Wordplay - Jason Mraz
5. Dancing Queen - Abba (Hahahaha)
6. Do You Only Wanna Dance - Dirty Dancing 2
7. Copacabana - Barry Mannilow (Yeah, baby)
8. It’s All About You - Emerson Drive
9. Carpal Tunnel of Love - Fall Out Boy
10. Standing Outside the Fire - Garth Brooks
11. Nothing on But the Radio - Gary Allen
12. Jesus of Suburbia (and connected songs) - Green Day
13. Sunday Morning Rain - Maroon 5

Check out my other Thursday Thirteens at Fiction Scribe, Write Anyway, and The Book Stacks

Hello everyone!

As you have all probably well and truly noticed by now, 451press blogs have been having a few… problems lately. The sites take a long time to load sometimes and it’s not always easy to comment.

I want to apologize for all the problems and let you know that you aren’t the only ones having difficulties. It’s not just you, not just your computer. Even we bloggers are having difficulties just posting.

Why is it happening? Well, going by the amount of spam comments I have to clean off my sites every day, I think being attacked by one or more spam monsters is driving our servers down into the dumps a bit. Day in and day out of offers to increase the size of your man parts and show you free cartoon porn would do that do anyone, I think.

Hopefully we’ll have everything sorted out very soon and will be back up and running normally soon.

Always remember that you can feel free to contact me using the ‘contact me’ button under the site description. I’m not sure if anything would be so urgent that you would need to let me know, but hey, I’m always up for a casual chat as well.

Please bear with me as all this stuff is happening. It’s not fun for any of us and we certainly don’t like it when our readers are unhappy.

And, just to occupy your time, here is a link to one of my favourite web comics:

Questionable Content

Or is it round three? I can’t quite remember.

I was roaming the weight loss part of the blogsphere yesterday and read on Irish Mom’s blog that one of her goals for this week is to keep a food diary. “If I bite it, I’ll write it,” as she says. (I love that little saying.) It got me thinking that maybe it’s time I get back into keeping a food diary.

When I first started on the ‘I’m in Australia now’ leg of my weight loss journey, it was a big kick in the head. I couldn’t believe how much food I would shove in my mouth (or rather, would have shoved in my mouth without the food diary) on any random day. Keeping the food diary made me think about what I was eating.

But I sort of grew out of it. I was more aware, more careful and all the better for it. I could easily recall everything I had eaten in a given day and I thought before I ate.

Now, as I skip the scale, it will be all too easy for me to fall back in to bad habits. Having a food diary would help me out at least a little in that area because it would at least keep me aware and away from ‘mindless munching’. Mindless munching is a bad, bad habit for me that I definitely don’t want to get back into.

So I’m thinking about taking it up again.

Do you use a food diary? Do you find it useful?

…or rather, sleep to be fit.

It may sound like a bunch of silly nattering, but getting adequate amounts of sleep is an important part of losing weight. Cammy over at Tippy Toe Diet talked about sleep and weight loss on her blog recently – linking to this Web MD article – and talked a bit about toning down her late night activities.

What I’m wondering is can you have too much sleep? Does it hinder your weight loss if you sleep too much?

For the first year of our relationship, my husband and I lived thousands of miles apart. I was used to the university lifestyle, though, so staying up until three in the morning (when he got home from work) and talking to him until about seven (when I had to get ready for class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays) wasn’t a big deal to me. After moving to Australia, I reignited my love for sleep.

I can go to bed about ten or ten thirty at night and wake up between eight and nine. I don’t because I’m at the gym by seven thirty each morning, but I most definitely could.

So, logically, combined with a good diet and exercise, I should have been shedding off the pounds. Even now with getting up early for the gym, I am clocking between eight and nine hours a night. (Don’t hate me because I sleep more than you do. Hehe.)

But, of course, I haven’t. I’m considering going into a coma for a fortnight to test things out a bit more. What do you think?

If you’re having trouble sleeping, Cammy has some excellent tips to help you get the sleep you need.

No, I’m not talking about the mystery dish Aunt Ethyl always brought to Christmas dinner that everyone was always too afraid to try.

When I was growing up, I hated the beans my mother bought for us. The beans were gross, whatever they were packed in was almost sweet (not a taste I think should be associated with beans, that’s for sure), and the beans were really small. I avoided beans at all costs unless it involved a burrito (that my mother didn’t make).

When I started on the South Beach diet, I saw that I could have beans. Kidney beans, butter beans, chickpeas, soy beans, etc. Seeing as I could obviously well and truly indulge in the bean side of things, I decided I would give them another go. After all, since coming to Australia I have tried a lot of things I ‘didn’t like’ only to find I like them a lot. (Broccoli, mushrooms, pumpkin…)

There are cans of ‘three bean mix’ that I get for less than a dollar a can at Aldi’s and they are fantastic! (Well, as fantastic as beans go, anyway.) A little bit of soy sauce or sesame oil can give me a bit more flavor if I want it. I can add in mushrooms to bulk it up a bit or even melt cheese on top.

I now absolutely love beans and it’s such a good thing!

Beans are great for a number of reasons:

*Low GI
*High protein (which makes them excellent for vegetarians)
*High iron
*High calcium

…and oodles of other things.

So even if you didn’t/don’t like beans, I urge you to try some different kinds. They’re great!

Yawning and probably flirting heavily with the thought, “Maybe I could just skip today…” Having successfully gotten yourself out of bed, now it’s time to get dressed even though the bed seems to be calling your name… You are finally outside or at the gym, and now it’s tempting to just do a short workout instead of a regular one… Time to get exercising…

It’s often quite hard in itself to get yourself exercising, let alone sticking to a routine. Because of this, an injury might be a relief to you mentally, but it can be devastating to you workout routine. Any injury sees you with the possibility of not getting back into exercising after you have healed.

The best way to keep yourself from giving in to giving up is to stay as active as you can even when you are injured. Doing that is easier said than done…

Here are a few ways you can exercise even if you have injured a part of your body:

*Do stretches. Stretching is a great form of exercise that often feels so, so good.

*Concentrate on what you can move. If you have injured your upper body, do exercises with your lower body, and vice versa.

*Try new small exercises. There are foot and hand exercises, neck exercises, ankle exercises… Start doing some investigating to see just how much you can do.

*Remember that everything counts. From tapping your toes to tightening and then loosening your muscles repeatedly, every little bit can help – even if you are keeping up the mental aspects of exercising regularly.

Weight Watchers taught me that muffins aren’t the way to go when you are trying to lose weight. My high school biology teacher taught me that white bread has no nutritional value and that I’m much better off eating grain breads. Life has taught me that a bowl of nutritious cereal isn’t something I always have time for. Life has also taught me I have a bit of a sweet tooth.

Solution? Banana bread, of course!

I love banana bread. Good banana bread is soft, moist, sweet and good for you. Right? After all, it’s made with bananas.

I had a rude awakening reading the food section of the newspaper the other day. Banana bread, my preferred sweet treat on special occasions, wasn’t the great, healthier sweet treat that I thought it was.

As it turns out, according to the article I read (no link; it was in an actual paper newspaper), a single slice of banana bread at a café can have twenty to thirty grams of fat in it!

I was disappointed, to say the least.

Even the low-fat banana bread is said to have about the same amount of carbohydrates as three or four slices of regular bread.

So today I say goodbye to my beloved banana bread and go on the search for something else that’s healthier…

Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever had a treat or dish that you thought was healthy or ‘not so bad’ and it turned out that it was bad?

I would love to hear your story!