Finally Getting Fit

After my experience of violently reacting to metformin (a very rare reaction, I’m told), saying that I’m ‘cautious’ about weight loss products is a huge understatement.

Today I found a flier in my mailbox that said “30 PEOPLE WANTED: LOSE 5-15 KILOS IN 90 DAYS”. It listed a few other things and a website, so I figured I would check it out. Losing five to fifteen kilos in about three months is actually a reasonable number compared to the gimmicks out there. Plus, with the “30 PEOPLE WANTED”, I assumed it was some sort of medical trial. Times are tight and I’m definitely not against being paid for a clinical trial.

I went to the website, http://www.healthherbalway.com, and lo and behold: Herbalife.

Herbalife was started and had expanded to Canada before I was even born, but I still remember hearing about it while I was growing up. The company that claimed to help everything from weight problems to skin conditions had quite it’s fair share of legal cases to deal with.

By all appearances, I don’t lose weight just by eating right and exercising. Even with that as part of my life, I can’t help but wonder how a company like Herbalife is still in existence. Have we all seriously become so entirely busy that we can’t bare to part with the snacks and sweets? Do we care so little about ourselves that the quick, dangerous fix is always better than the slower, natural one?

Okay, maybe Herbalife has worked fantastically for some people. That’s great. But unless you start introducing the habits that will help you lose weight naturally anyway, you’ll be on the stuff for the rest of your life, feeding money into a multi-billion dollar company. Do you really want to do that?

Yep, that’s right. No Thursday Thirteen.

And I bet you were thinking I was going to put up a list of Thirteen Reasons I Love My New Elliptical.

I thought about it, but obsessing about an inanimate object that much just isn’t my groove today.

Yep, I’m definitely in a groove today. In fact, I’ve been in a bit of a domestic groove this week. I’ve been cleaning, cooking, doing laundry, etc, etc. I’m not sure what’s going on with me. After the near heartbreaking morning I had on Tuesday (Oz time), I’m kind of surprised that I’m this perky. Maybe because life goes on? Maybe because the world didn’t end the moment I found out (again) that I’m not pregnant?

Who knows? I shouldn’t question.

I was talking to my friend Randi earlier about the health related stuff going on in our lives. She’s part of a study for PCOS that is hoping to determine the actual genetic bits that get passed down from mother to daughter to cause PCOS.

I think that is the coolest thing ever. I wish I could participate.

I don’t know if my grandmother had PCOS, but I know my mother did even though she wasn’t officially diagnosed. My aunt probably has it too, but I don’t think she’s been diagnosed either. I’ve been thinking a lot about it lately, especially given my want to have children and the fact that I have been losing and gaining the same ten pounds since I came to Australia.

I know I have to go to a gyno, but I’m really not looking forward to it. Blood tests galore and I really don’t want to go back on the pill… but I’ll have to do what I must, right? All in the name of fitness…

What an eventful few days. Where to start…

Well, I’ll start with the fact it’s actually a holiday weekend here. On Tuesday we have ‘the race that stops the nation’ which is a horse race like no other. People across Australia party, bet on horses and otherwise have a lot of fun. Most of the people in Victoria get Tuesday off.

My husband surprised me by taking Monday off, so we whisked away to western Australia for a mini-vacation of sorts. It was one of those trips where you don’t have a timeline and just go wherever you feel like. We ended up in a nice small town and met some interesting people.

The weekend was a bit emotional, however, because I haven’t been feeling my best. About two weeks ago I started on with a headache. Later on came a bit of tiredness, nausea, soreness and other sorts of fun things. We can to wonder – despite the near impossibility of it – if perhaps I was pregnant.

Maybe it’s silly or stupid for me to think that I could possibly get pregnant with all of the health issues I have going on right now, but I did believe in that chance and took a test. It was negative, as I knew it had to be, but I was still upset. Naturally.

However, if I think about it rationally – though being rational isn’t my strong suit today – I remind myself that my body is certainly not as healthy as it should be for a normal pregnancy. I am reminded that there are still issues I need to deal with because I wanted to turn to food for comfort. I didn’t, but the want was still there.

And so, this week I take off from weighing in and Monday Mailbag. I need the break. I need to get back to the stricter diet my naturopath worked out, need to make an appointment with a gynecologist and I need to get started on my new elliptical…

Though I had heard many time that you have to do weight-bearing exercise as well as cardio to have healthy weight loss, I didn’t much see the point of it. All I knew was that when I started at the gym and was doing the weight exercises as well as cardio, I wasn’t losing weight. (I wasn’t losing weight for other reasons, but I didn’t realize that at the time.)

Then I went to the naturopath in August and started losing weight. I kept up with light cardio, but I wasn’t doing weight exercises. I didn’t think much about it until a few weeks later.

I noticed that my body shape was changing. I still had weight on me, of course, but I began to notice the real difference between fat and flab.

It may seem like a silly thing, but there really is a difference. Without weight (aka muscle building) exercises, my skin and muscles weren’t tightening up to compensate for the weight I was (am) losing.

It may have taken a while, but I finally get why you have to pull the weight as well as lose it.

(Yeah… Bad joke… I tried. No throwing tomatoes.)

My problem areas are the ever-so-common ‘chicken wings’ on my arms as well as my stomach area. It’s time to start doing sit ups and arm exercises with my hand weights, huh?

Despite the work involved in dealing with these things, I’m glad to finally be at the point where I need to start incorporating the different types of exercise to get the results I want.

I’m actually getting things done on time today! Well, catching up and now getting the current things done on time anyway.

This week’s question:

“If weight loss was easy, then no one would be fat.” – One of my friends said that, but that person will have to forgive me because I can’t quite remember who it was at this moment.

Getting fit certainly is certainly not the easiest thing you are going to do in your life. We all take on the challenge in different ways and sometimes have to fight different battles. Personally, I usually have to battle my own mind and sometimes lack of confidence when it comes to making my goals. I keep winning that battle, though, and I keep losing weight.

What battles have you fought and won on your journey to get fit?

I have quite a few battles in the realm of getting fit, many of which repeat. Which sucks, but such as life.

The biggest battle I have fought and won recently is the belief that I just couldn’t lose weight. I had tried everything, it seemed. Even exercise and healthy eating just didn’t seem to be doing anything for me. It didn’t help that the psychological factors weren’t exactly up to par.

It turns out it is just a matter of finding what works for you – even if it takes years to do so. Diets, non-diets, changing habits one at a time, detoxing first… You may have to go through a lot of them to find out what works, but it’s worth it.

Thankfully I was able to find something to smack me on the behind and say, “Hey! You can lose weight!”

Dr. J. R. Paine, D.SC. and Professor Dr. S. N. Gupta, Ph.D. are currently on virtual tour for their book Dear God, Let Me Lose Fat, Amen. Upon looking at their book, I couldn’t help but ask…

How is the “Dear God, Let Me Lose Fat, Amen” book different from the millions of others diets currently on the market?
_______________

First, allow me to apologize for the length of this guest post. When you consider that billions of pages have been written to talk about diets that don’t work, this is the “briefest” post I could write to tell you about the exciting new ways in which “Dear God, Let Me Lose Fat, Amen” can help you regain health and lose excess weight without, what we commonly call, a diet.

Let us now tell you how our Dear God book is totally different from 30 million diets. Have you noticed that these days the sound your ears hear the most is “change, change, change”? Well, dear friends, we realized over two years ago that what the world of dieting needed most was urgent change, real, honest-to-goodness change. Why?

Well, you and everyone else will agree that what 200 million dieters in America and two billion dieters around the world have right this minute is not a diet but a riot! It is a daily routine of repeated riots between the dieter and his/her emotions, hunger pangs and cravings. Right? As it is even at this minute, dieting is a daily cycle of war and surrender with food plus hunger and cravings cells. It is 24/7 worry about weight, diet, disease and health. Right?

“Dear God, Let Me Lose Fat, Amen” takes the fight out of dieting. War turns into peace and pain turns into pleasure as dieters follow Nature’s timetable as explained in the Dear God book. Dieters can be certain that lost weight will never ever be regained. This is a promise, not just ours but also Nature’s.

“Dear God, Let Me Lose Fat, Amen” lets a diet be a diet. This book makes peace between the dieters and their diet. How? Here is how. While the Dieter feeds the mouth, “Dear God, Let Me Lose Fat, Amen” provides plenty of Auto Slim knowledge nutrition for the brain. With the mouth and the brain working in harmony and cooperation, the body no longer has to cope with biological hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes because the mouth, at peace with the brain, no longer needs to send that overdose of food, fats, sugar, salt, carbohydrates and carbonated fluids into a helpless body.

“Dear God, Let Me Lose Fat, Amen” is a slim book packed with concentrated wisdom supplied by legendary thinkers, educators, scientists, philosophers, physicians, researchers over 2,000 years. This book houses the one and only, never before available, fast delivery system for Fast Knowledge and Fast Facts 30-second, Hot Tips Team of virtual nutritionists, tutors, trainers, bodyguards, slimmercials, dietmercials, healthmercials and more to feed the brain the knowledge it must have to make the right health and weight decisions for the body it governs.

“Dear God, Let me Lose Fat, Amen” is literally a “Pot of Gold” filled with health gain and weight loss, delicious nuggets of hot tips for instant, Nature approved results. For instance, dieters worldwide will be thrilled to know how to lose 150-200 calories in just 30 seconds. All they need do is look at Pages 28 and 31 of the “Dear God, Let Me Lose Fat, Amen” book.

Dieters worldwide will be delighted (more…)

Well, six weeks and five days after I started my restricted diet, I went back to the naturopath for a bit of a check-in and progress report. The appointment went great and I’m scheduled to go back in another six weeks.

Never in my life would I ever have though I would have someone tell me that I should probably slow down the weight loss.

How funny!

Anyway, just had to get that out of my system. I’ve been chuckling about it for days.

I got retested and things were fantastic. Instead of all my systems – yes, all – being completely out of whack, this time my systems were calm and quiet. The weight and PCOS issues are still of concern, of course, but no longer is my body going a bit crazy.

I’m quite proud of myself. Six weeks without so many of the things I have come to love? That’s hard. But, unlike things I have tried in the past, I am actually seeing results and feeling good about myself. No longer is it a waiting game of ‘maybe the weight will come off soon’ in trying to find the right diet for me.

Basically, I’m still on the restricted diet. However, things have loosened up a little bit. ‘Forbidden’ things have now become ‘try to avoid’ and instead of alternating between having one grain meal a day and two, I can now have two grain meals every day. (Woohoo!)

I’m feeling very good about this. I know I can achieve my goals.

I hope you are all doing well!

(For those of you who don’t know who the man on the right is, check out Watching Doctor Who.)

I have recently fallen in love with a new video site: VideoJug.com They have hundreds of videos on many subjects, including health, sport and fitness. I’d like to highlight some of the videos on the site that I think are interesting.

1. How to Detox Your Mind and Body – I like this one because you hear a lot about how to detox the inside of your body, but this video concentrates on detoxing the outside of your body.
2. How to Prepare Yourself for a Detox Program – Another detox video, I know, but it has a lot of good advice if you’re after a detox.
3. Best Tips for Dieting – A lot of advice I’ve already heard, but it’s a good way to receive the advice and a good reminder.
4. Fit Exercise Into a Busy Schedule – Goodness knows most of us have a hard enough figuring out the regular day-to-day things without trying to figure out how to incorporate exercise in. This video gives a few tips.
5. Introduction to Nutrition – This is a multi-segment video that touches on nutritionists, nutrition, the food pyramid, etc.
6. Nine Quick Food Facts – Some of the questions on here may seem a bit ‘simple’, but there is a lot of good advice and facts here that you may not know. There are also a lot of very important simple changes you should make for your health.
7. Why You Should Eat Fruit – A bit of a funny hokey video, but it has good information.
8. How to Add Vegetables to Your Diet – Pretty self-explanatory.

I hope you like these videos and take the time to nose around VideoJug.

Okay, so I’m a little late and this Monday Mailbag question is from last week… Oops. I’m finally catching up on things, though, so please bear with me.

So last week I asked everyone:

What are your other reasons for getting/staying fit? Who are you getting/staying fit for other than you?

This is one I have answered halfway in a few of my posts, but I will go ahead and answer it anyway. I have a few reasons for getting and staying fit:

1. I want to have a baby. Sure, I could go ahead and try now, but I know I’ll have a better chance of conceiving and having a healthy pregnancy if I’m fit. So while we’re still preparing mentally and financially, I’m preparing physically.

2. For my husband. For him I am willing to do pretty much anything. I want to be as active as he is so we can explore places together without worrying about me getting exhausted or whatnot. I want him to be attracted to me (he is now, but if I got heavier, it would be hard on him) and to be the woman we both know I can be.

3. For my health. This is probably the obvious one, but it’s still relevant. When I was growing up, I didn’t have much motivation or reason to take care of myself. I didn’t care much about myself and a lot of people didn’t seem to care that much that I was overweight, so I didn’t give it much of a go.

I tried a few diets here and there, but I didn’t stick with them because I felt no reason to. But now when I have people who love me, care about me, want to see me succeed, living a long life has become important. Being healthy has become important. I want not only to live but to live a healthy lifestyle.

So what about you? What/who are your reasons and motivations?

As part of my new dieting scheme, I have to eat smaller portions every three hours (maximum). As someone who loves food, you would think that would be an incredibly awesome turn of events. Even with the restricted diet and smaller portions… That’s a lot of eating during the day.

Strangely enough, that is what I am – so far – struggling with the most.

Mind you, figuring out dinners that I can eat and my husband will enjoy hasn’t exactly been a walk in the park, but eating every two or three hours is hard!

The thing about the way I used to be is that I would usually eat a little something for breakfast and then completely forget to eat until my husband got home. That sounds nice and all, but it definitely didn’t encourage any weight loss in me.

I have alarms set on my computer to remind me to eat, and it’s a good thing I do because I would never remember otherwise. It’s hard for me to not just ‘dismiss’ them most of the time and not eat.

The problem with that is I have to eat small portions this often because the naturopath is trying to balance out my blood sugar. Unfortunately, it’s only been serving to make me a bit grumpy (which could just be TOM) and I have no idea how my blood sugar is doing.

This week I’m just trying to get my body used to the times and the food. Next week I’ll work on being even more strict with the portions so hopefully I’ll actually want to eat as often as I’m supposed to.

Well, today is the day I start implementing the things the naturopath has told me that I need to do for the next six weeks. (Until September 12.) While things have been a bit confusing and hard (already) while trying to get everything figured out, my husband keeps reminding me to stick with the “I only have to do this for…” mentality.

As he says, “You can do anything for an unlimited amount of time as long as you know it’s going to end.”

So today is day 39 and my first weigh in. I have to weigh in every week and then bring the figures back in to the appointment in September. So I figured why not put in a new ticker? I’m keeping the actual figures in a notebook.

Whee! I do love the cute little tickers. I’ll admit it.

So far (at 3pm my time) things have gone pretty well. I did get a little upset while I was grocery shopping, but I again reminded myself about what my husband said and started to think creatively about how to create meals. Lo and behold, I created something pretty darn nice for lunch. (Now I just have to worry about dinner when the man will be eating as well.)

If this post sounds a bit here and there with things, that’s pretty much what my mind is like today. I have tons of stuff to do and I’m trying to remember it all so forgive me if I’m a bit scatterbrained.

Anywho, I’ll be posting more about my various food adventures today, that’s for sure.

You know you’re in for a hard time when your naturopath/doctor tells you to enjoy yourself this weekend because the next six weeks are going to be hard…

You know you’re in for a hard time when your naturopath/doctor tells you to enjoy yourself this weekend because the next six weeks are going to be hard…

Today, as I have been waiting to for weeks now, I finally got to go to the naturopath. The ‘one hour consultation’ turned into a two-hour session that was very thorough and left me feeling pleased with all the information I have to work with.

First things first, I highly recommend that each and every one of you go and get allergy testing. There were things I was eating that are ‘healthy’ and that I love, but it turns out those things are not good for me at all. Sulfur was a big surprise in the negative reactions. What does that mean? For the next six weeks (until I get tested again) beans and a bunch of other things are a no-go.

Anyway, I went in and did a bunch of testing to find out that even though I’ve been eating much healthier than I used to, my systems are still quite out of balance. She double-checked and even tripled-checked some things to make sure that they were working right and that I understood what the reactions meant.

I am so glad I was recommended to that clinic. I have never had someone be that thorough. We talked about everything that is going on, has gone on, my family history, my insides, my outside (skin and hair), and I even got the chance to test whatever foods I wanted.

Right now, it’s a bit of an information overload. I know some foods I have to cut out straight off – dairy, mushrooms, beans, deli meat, sweets – but I have yet to get to the nitty gritty of planning out menus.

Yep, it’s come to what I never thought I would do – planning each and every meal. It’s going to be an interesting six weeks! I’m starting on Monday with my first weigh in and whatnot.

I’m a little scared… Hehe.

Yesterday I confessed to the fact that I don’t trust myself to have chocolate in the house with me when I’m alone during the day. After having a talk with my husband, I began to realize just how big of a part psychology is playing in my weight loss (or lack of weight loss).

I know that I have the common lack of confidence that runs rampant among overweight people, but beyond that, I’m a bit clueless and thus a bit clueless as to how to approach things to make them better.

The thing about it is I know when it started. I actually remember one of the first (if not THE) first time I ate until my stomach hurt so, so badly. I was a child then. And now, though I can blame my weight and all the other fun things that come along with it on PCOS, the psychological fixtures remain.

And I don’t know what to do about them.

When do you hit the point when you need to go talk to a professional? Does it even really need to go that far?

The problem is I don’t know where to start. I just plain can’t keep up with food journaling. I have so much going on in my mind that I always forget about it. But then again, maybe that’s the key and I need to start kicking my arse into gear that way.

Maybe I need to explore my true feelings through journaling. Or maybe…

I just don’t know.

How have you faced the psychological side of your weight? Has it been a problem or not much to think about for you?

Tonight my husband asked me – and I can’t remember the segue into it – how I was going with all the ‘weight loss stuff’ and when I was planning to ‘get back into it’. We talked a bit about how I had stuck hardcore to the South Beach diet earlier this year but that had tapered off into not so hardcore but still sticking to most of the basic principles.

While I am more than happy to admit that the lack of progress (losing pounds) doesn’t take long to get to me, I told my husband that I was trying to ‘be good’ until I got to the naturopath appointment (which was scheduled for Monday but got rescheduled to August 1st (grr)) and they could tell me how to fix things.

However, (I went on) if I had to be really honest with myself, I think a lot of my problems come from the psychological side of things. I get daily emails from very weight loss/fitness support groups, and most of the time they ask questions. “What are you getting from being fat?” “What foods are you addicted to? Why?” “What are you giving yourself when you binge and how you can replace that behavior?”

They might not have all been those questions verbatim, but that does pretty much cover it. And the frustrating thing, to me, is that I don’t know. I don’t know what being fat is giving me that causes me to self-sabotage. I don’t know why I still can’t trust myself with chocolate in the house.

Yes, folks, that’s the sad reality. I received a bunch of chocolate from a friend who lives overseas and I just plain don’t trust myself to have it in the house with me when I’m alone during the day…

When it comes to how often you should or shouldn’t step on the scale, there are a lot of differing opinions. Some say every day so you can map out your body’s natural weight fluctuations. Some say every week to keep in touch and help deter yourself from bad eating during the week. Some say every month and some say never.

Check every day, every week, every month, or never? It can be hard to decide.

I used to weigh myself every day when I started on the journey to get fit. It took a while, but eventually I would forget a day here and there and it would be a little niggling stress that I really didn’t need. However, I did learn more about my natural weight fluctuations.

After that, I took to weighing myself once a week, and that worked out well. Knowing I had that Monday weigh-in coming meant that I would keep to staying away from more of the bad weekend foods than I normally would.

However, even weighing myself once a week became too much. The numbers never failed to depress me and I was becoming more focused on what the scale said than how I was feeling. So I took a break off from the scale – and stuck to my diet – for the month of June and it felt great to not be so focused on numbers.

However, without that reminder there, it has been harder than usual to keep sticking to my diet. Weighing in was kind of my weekly alarm clock, so to say, that kept me on track. And for now, because of other health issues, I’m stuck in a bit of a state of flux until I see the doctor in a couple weeks.

Overall, I’m undecided. I think you need to do what’s right for you as long as it doesn’t consume you.

How often (if ever) do you weigh yourself? Would you recommend other people do the same as you?