Veggie Convert

going deep

2008-01-06T04:51:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've posted and I would be lying if I said I wasn't struggling. Of course all that weight I lost as a result of the flu came right back within a week or two and since then I've been fluctuating between 165 and 173. The last time I weighed myself I was at 167.

It seems that despite changing my eating habits quite drastically over the past year, I haven't lost my ability to overeat. I can still easily overeat things that are supposedly quite healthy. This means that I still need to tackle some issues. It's important to note to myself the amazing things I've accomplished so far:

I eat fruits and vegetables everyday. I easily surpass the 5-a-day minimum recommendations.
I exercise very regularly and have even started running - thus challenging a long-held belief that I am not a runner.
I have maintained a greater than 50 pound weight loss for more than a year.
I feel better than I ever have before.
I am medication free.

These great accomplishments aren't the end of the road on my journey though, I have more work to do and I think I'm ready to take it on. I am finally seeing a therapist to try to address all the negative self-talk that I do on a seemingly never-ending basis. I've gone three times so far and have begun to incorporate some of the tools she has told me about into my daily life. I've been writing down a lot of stuff - every time I notice that I have an automatic negative thought, I go through a list of questions to challenge it and test it out.

I've also been reading a couple of books that seem to be very timely for me right now. One is Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach (learning to accept yourself as you are) and the other is Eating Less by Gillian Riley (about ending food addiction). Great books, both of them! I've learned from the Gillian Riley book that I need to stop making this journey about weight and appearance and all about eating and my health. To that end I'm going to stop weighing myself for the time being and only do it very rarely.

The therapy and the books I'm reading are intensely personal experiences that I will not be documenting in this public forum, but I will check in periodically to say how it's going overall.

I will say that it has been a pretty stressful time - my Dad's cancer is officially back, my boss is leaving, I'm going to need to have a partial hysterectomy as a result of my past excesses (those damned fibroids), plus the holidays and everything. I'm very grateful that I never got horribly out of control with all of this going on!

Don't lose weight this way

2007-09-17T11:22:00.000-07:00

Hoo boy - it's been about 6 weeks since I last posted. I need to do a little better than that!

An update:

Since August I've had my ups and downs with eating healthily. Most of the time I've been doing pretty well, probably 80% following ETL. Some days I would go overboard on the nuts, but I would never take in more calories than I burned. The whole time I've been away from the blog I've been a faithful exerciser.

Then came vacation in Colorado (which was wonderful no matter how far I got off track!). We stayed with my in-laws, who are very, very supportive of what we are doing and went out of their way to try new recipes and make sure there were healthy foods available for me. For the first couple of days it went great - I stayed on track and was hopeful that with all the hiking we were doing that I might even lose weight. Then, somehow I started to get off track little by little. A granola bar here, just for a quick breakfast or a hiking snack, a piece of pizza there when we saw there weren't any better options and were too famished to go anywhere else, an ice cream cone over there because hey, it's vacation! And before you know it, I've introduced cheese, sugar and high fructose corn syrup right back into my diet. It's amazing how quickly those addictions can come back. When I got back to work the next week I watched myself be willing to eat anything that came available at work - first a cupcake, then, my god, a Twinkie! YIKES! I was a trifle out of control. I think the Twinkie helped me bring myself back to the healthy world. Altogether it was an unfortunate 9 days of poor eating - 4 while on vacation and 5 days after I got back.

I had been staying between 160 and 163 pounds on a day-to-day basis no matter what happened until that week when I bloated myself up to 165. Thankfully I didn't do lasting damage, with about 4 - 5 days of being strict again (and restricting nut intake too) I brought the weight quickly back to 162, where it has stayed pretty steadily. I think I've been on a plateau, though, for about 6 weeks overall, until this past week.

I've been sick with an upper respiratory flu for the past 6 days. For 5 of those days I had a fever which ranged from 99.9 degrees to 102 (I usually run a little cool - around 97.5 or so). My appetite was smaller, but it still existed and I ate only healthy, Eat-To-Live type foods. I averaged about 1050 calories a day, which is about 300 - 350 calories less per day than I was averaging the week before the flu. I've worked very hard to keep up my fluids having tea or a glass of water always around even though it hurts to swallow. In the six days before I got sick, I had exercised on 5, a couple of aerobic swimming sessions and a few workouts with weights. During my flu the only exercise I've gotten is to get myself out of bed and take a shower.

OK, so here's the end result. I've lost 7 pounds in 6 days down to 155. Strange! The body is very weird.

I can only surmise that the fever somehow shocked my set point into submission and my body somehow has decided to let go of the weight that I should have lost over the past couple of months. Or else shivering and body aches use way more calories than I ever would have thought. :-)

I just hope that it doesn't come back once I'm back on my feet fully. I'm determined to follow the six week plan closely now, at least until my one year anniversary on October 30th. I have a wish to be within the insurance company healthy weight range by that point - 149 pounds. It's not a true goal because at this point on my road to health it may not be possible to lose a pound a week. So, let's see where following the 6-week plan fairly strictly gets me.

Here I am!

2007-08-03T17:20:00.000-07:00

It's been about a month and my husband urged me to check back in on the blog. It's a good idea because I've gotten a little lax about things. I stopped tracking what I'm eating a few weeks ago and low and behold, the weight loss has stopped again. So by checking back here and beginning to track again I'm hoping to get my mental game back in order and keep making progress. The good news is that I've gotten down to 160. The bad news is that I've been snacking more and more lately and I surely know what a slippery slope that is. A friend told me not to give myself too hard a time, particularly since my hormones are readjusting (see below) and I have some big new stress in my life (see 2 paragraphs below).

Right around the time of my last posts I went off birth control pills. I used to take these because my cycle was so irregular and horrible. My gynecologist told me that it was likely that my cycle would self-regulate at a non-obese weight (under 190 pounds). Sure enough, about 33 days after my last cycle started, a new one came along. Yay! I can live without medication! This has been one of my goals. Now I just need to keep my fingers crossed that the fibroids don't give me any trouble.

The really bad news is that it looks like my Dad's cancer is back. This is the second time it's come out of remission. I'm so sad about this. I think he still has a lot of strength left in him, but the treatments are so very hard on him and my mom. I've kept pretty quiet about the nutrition stuff, but I think I'll give it a try to convince him to cut down on animal protein and increase his cruciferous veggie intake. I've already compiled a booklet of my favorite cruciferous veggie recipes and sent it along, along with one of Dr. Fuhrman's newsletters about them. I'm currently reading The China Study by T. Colin Campbell and am going to get him a copy. It's really compelling data about the connection of animal protein to cancer. I don't expect my dad to do anything different really, though I sure hope he does - I'd like for him to be around a whole lot longer! My dad is pretty good at living in denial, so we'll see. I just know that I'd regret it later if I didn't share what I know with him. I don't plan to pressure him in anyway - but I want him to have the information at least to make good decisions.

Closing on an up note... I've been keeping up with the exercise and last week we went to Six Flags New England where I had no problem fitting into roller coaster seats. Woo hoo! We discovered that our son loves roller coasters as much as we do!

refreshed and more progress

2007-07-06T18:45:00.000-07:00

After posting earlier this week, somehow I've turned my mental state around. I've gone from a mental "maintenance" mode to being fully committed again. I've had a string of 3 days in a row where I've stuck to the 6-week plan and it's amazing how quickly I've dropped the water weight again. I'm down to 162 already. Woo hoo! The 150's are getting close! Where I was in the 1600 - 1800 calorie range - now I'm in the 1200 - 1400 calorie range.

Earlier in the week, one evening I was chatting with my husband about the weight loss and goals and figured out that I was just 15 pounds from a "healthy" weight according to the insurance charts (149 pounds for a 5 ft. 5 in. woman). I sure do want to get there soon and I realized that it might just be possible to get to that point by my birthday in October. So a goal was born and that seems to have jumpstarted me again.

Today we went to a small beach/amusement park area about an hour away. I knew that there would be lots of temptations and bad food choices all over the place, so I packed my lunch and stayed at the picnic area while the rest of my family went to get ice cream for dessert. I felt really good about not putting myself near all that stuff and it worked! There was an arcade with tons of video games and stuff and my husband and I tried the dance dance revolution game. It was a blast! In the past I never would have tried that for fear of what I would look like. Today I didn't care and just enjoyed myself. It's a really nice change.

ups and downs

2007-07-02T16:39:00.000-07:00

Thanks to maya papaya I got a good reminder to get back over here and post an update!

Since my last checkin I've lost 2 more pounds (165) and have stayed pretty steady despite not following the ETL lifestyle as closely as I'd like to.

Lately I've been acting like I'm at a maintenance phase - eating more , probably averaging around 1600 - 1700 calories a day. Overall I'm still sticking with ETL foods, just eating more of them with occasional treats. This is really a mental plateau, rather than a physical one. What I'm happy about is that I haven't lapsed into full-out, eating-too-much like the old days. What I'm not happy about is that I haven't been able to stick with the strict ETL plan to continue to make better progress. I still have some mental housekeeping to do so that I stop eating when I'm not hungry.

My friend and I have finished our 5 week personal training sessions. I learned a lot! And I've now got 5 different workouts. She advised us to use one workout per month, gradually increasing the weights as it gets easier. Then the next month switch the workouts so that you work the muscles a little differently and your body doesn't get too used to any particular exercise. While I learned a lot about the machines and exercises, probably the best thing I learned is how hard I need to push myself in order to get a benefit from the exercise. Our trainer made us both work really hard - much harder than we would have tried to do ourselves. She said it was better to not be able to complete a set fully than to finish very easily. When you can just barely finish the set you know you have the right amount of weight involved.

I'm trying to do the full workout in the gym 2 times per week and do most of the workouts using a stability ball on the weekend. I definitely feel stronger and I can tell my arms are looking a little more toned. Woo hoo!

I recently had my yearly GYN appointment and I got some annoying news. I learned that my fibroids have grown larger since my last appointment a year ago. This is really disappointing because I was hoping they had at least stayed the same. I've had to get an ultrasound and I'll be seeing my doctor again next week to find out the next steps. Luckily I don't have any bothersome symptoms, so I expect that I'll probably have to get them checked out again in about three months to see how fast they are growing. I think the protocol is to do nothing if you don't have symptoms and the fibroids stay the same. My doctor has already talked about surgery, so I don't think that she has high hopes for them to be stable. We'll see.

I can't see how they could have grown given what I've been eating since October. The only thing I can think that could have happened is that they grew quite a bit in the first half of the past year. I really, really hope that they are now OK and I can just forget about them again.

The other bit of disappointing news was about my bloodwork. While there was a slight decrease in my "bad" cholesterol levels and a slight increase in my "good" cholesterol levels - they were only slight. I guess I should take solace in that they are in the normal range now and not borderline - but again, I was hoping for drastic improvement. I'll be talking to my doctor about that next week too.

On a fun note, I just got back from a week in Hawaii. I went to a conference there for work - not bad! I spent a couple of extra days so that I could go see the volcanos over on the Big Island. It was all fantastic! Foodwise, I didn't sweat it. I didn't go out of my way to eat ETL type portions of vegetables. I was able to get fruit for breakfast everyday and I got vegetables whenever I could. As usual, it was difficult to get beans consistently so I ate just a little bit of chicken and fish when I really felt the need for some protein (three times during the week). I managed to avoid sugar until the very last day before I came home. I maintained my weight for the whole week which was pretty astounding. I brought all my own food for both plane trips so that I wouldn't be tempted by the horrifying plane and airport food (and I learned never to bring a beet salad on a plane - the air pressure can make even the best container leak :-). I also got to enjoy lots of macadamia nuts while there and I brought some home too.

Our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share started up in June. We get a bunch of fresh veggies grown locally every week. They've been delicious and they've introduced some new variety in our meal planning. We once did a CSA when we lived in Illinois back in 1999 and I remember having trouble using up all the vegetables every week. Now though, it's not nearly enough for our family of four following ETL. We still have to supplement with produce from the grocery store! What a wonderful change!

I still feel terrific and I'm looking better and better too. I did a big shopping trip before my Hawaii trip and while I'm still wearing a size 14 in pants - they are starting to get a little looser! So good things are still going on in this body of mine.

To work on the mental parts of me I'm going to get back to listening to Dr. Fuhrman podcasts. I've downloaded all of the teleconferences from the member center for some good brain workouts.

Sticking with it

2007-05-28T06:10:00.000-07:00

I'm back for a brief moment. Things are going very well now though I certainly have hit a few bumps in the road over the past few weeks. There were a few days where I didn't track what I was eating in fitday - definitely a danger sign for me. But, I've pulled it together before gaining anything and I'm back on a good path.

My friend and I have started our 5 weeks with a personal trainer. Boy, oh boy was I sore after that first session last Thursday! Yesterday I did my second training session and don't feel too bad right now, surprisingly. I feel good enough to go play tennis right now which is a real positive.

Weight-wise I'm currently at 167 pounds, courting 166.

Life is wonderful!

doing well but uninspired to write

2007-05-07T18:22:00.000-07:00

I think I'm going to take a little break from blogging. Things are going well, but I don't have lots to write about at the moment unless I repeat myself. So, I'm going to use this break to see if there are other things I want to think/write about with regard to my journey to health.

See you soon!

a new low - in a good way!

2007-05-04T17:45:00.000-07:00

Today I hit a new low - 169 pounds! And it's in a new decade of weight! I'm such a numbers geek that this kind of thing is a big deal to me. For the rest of the weight I need to lose there are lots of little milestones, which is nice - because it's going to take longer and longer to drop each pound now. I can be as reward-driven as the next gal. So here's the line up of milestones as I see it:

At 167 - 60 pounds lost
At 165 - I'll hit the weight my husband has been for much of our married lives
At 162 - 65 pounds lost
At 159 - a new weight decade
At 157 - 70 pounds lost
At 152 - 75 pounds lost
At 151 - I'll weigh less than my husband weighs now
At 149 - a new weight decade
At 147 - 80 pounds lost
At 144 - what I weighed at my lightest in college
At 142 - 85 pounds lost
At 139 - a new weight decade
etc. etc.

There a lot to look forward to!

Today:
B: cantaloupe, banana, kiwi
L: Maharastrian salad, bean, rice, veggie burrito, apple, 1/2 oz. almonds
D: green salad, whole wheat pasta with sauce
S: (while cooking) taste of hummus, taste of cake batter, taste of frosting, blueberry truffle (blueberry, cocoa powder, nuts, dates)
Exercise: 1 hour biking, 20 minutes walking
Weight: 169
Total calories: 1332, protein 37g, fat 34g, fiber 31g

Yesterday:
B: fruit smoothie
L: Maharastrian salad, moroccan chickpea patty, whole wheat wrap, apple, 1/2 oz almonds
D: green salad, mixed frozen veggies, dinner from the freezer - tomato soup with beans and green beans
S: 2 date nut popems and 3 dates
Exercise: 40 minutes pilates, 30 minutes walking
Weight: 170
Total calories: 1262, protein 38g, fat 33g, fiber 50g

getting back on track

2007-05-02T17:22:00.000-07:00

I'm doing better - Yay! Things are back on track, though I still need to work on my need for snacking. I am hoping to break 170 this week and I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

My friend and I signed up for 5 sessions with a personal trainer starting at the end of May. We're going to concentrate on strength training and muscle building while keeping up our other activities (she runs, bikes, does yoga and I swim, walk, and do pilates). I've never had a personal trainer nor have I ever done a weight training program. I'm excited and curious about it.

I've been getting a lot of positive comments lately. It helps that I've been wearing clothes that fit. I think my body is continuing to change with all the exercise and I guess it's noticeable :-).

Today:
B: cantaloupe, banana, kiwi
L: 1/2 oz almonds, leftover roasted red pepper cannellini pasta, apple, pretzels
D: Maharastrian salad (The Everything Indian Cookbook), brussels sprouts with garlic and ginger, Moroccan chickpea patties (Vive le Vegan) with a whole wheat wrap
Exercise: walking 30 minutes
Weight: 170
Total calories: 1371, protein 42g, fat 33g, fiber 42g

Yesterday:
B: fruit smoothie
L: green salad with low cal dressing, red bean chipotle burgers, apple, 1/2 oz. almonds, a few triscuits
D: tomato cucumber salad, carolina kale, roasted red pepper and cannellini bean sauce over whole wheat spaghetti (Vive le Vegan)
Exercise: biking to and from work (60 minutes)
Weight: 171
Total calories: 1317, protein 46g, fat 25g, fiber 48g

still struggling

2007-04-30T18:51:00.000-07:00

Just a quick entry today. I'm still struggling with my eating despite my expressed resolve the other day. Today was better than yesterday, which was better than the day before, but still too much inappropriate eating. It really helps to not have much junk food in the house, so if I indulge I'm eating too much of food that is not too terrible for me.

I don't want to be one of those bloggers that exits when things aren't going great so here's what I've had the past couple of days:

Today:
B: cantaloupe, banana, pear
L: (ate out) small piece salmon, salad, potatoes, a few gnocchi, small roll
S: (event at work) fruit salad, pretzels, popcorn, a couple of triscuits
D: tomato cucumber salad, vegetable-barley medley (The Biggest Slow Cooker Cookbook)
S: bread and spread
Exercise: 30 min swimming
Total calories: 1370

Yesterday:
B: fruit smoothie
L: leftover hummus/quinoa casserole, leftover pecan basil pesto with whole wheat pasta, peanut butter on bread
D: chickpea spinach rice soup, whole wheat bread, green salad, szechuan green beans
Total calories: 2270

clearing the decks

2007-04-28T03:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had a pretty bad eating day - one of the worst in the past 6 months. I'm going to do a bit of self-analysis in the blog today to try to figure this out.

Before I get started, let me put it in perspective so it doesn't seem like I'm flogging myself too badly. I ate between 2200 and 2500 calories - which is about what my body needs in any given day to maintain my current weight. So I'm not talking about a binge of monumental proportions and I'm not worried that I'm going to gain any long-term weight from this (though I certainly do expect a water weight gain from all the sodium content!).

One of the reasons I want to go through this analysis is that I wish to put it all out there for others to see. I think I've been doing so well in my health-seeking efforts this time around because I'm being much more public about my mess-ups. In the past I would binge or overeat in secrecy and never admit it to a soul and I think that was part of my self-destructive cycle. Now it's pretty cathartic to admit when I've made a mistake. The two ways I admit my mistakes these days are to tell my husband and/or to blog about it.

As I've been puzzling through my strange behavior, here's a list of possible reasons for overeating yesterday:

I'm premenstrual - while I don't suffer from bad PMS generally, I do think I have a few patterns to eating around this time of the month - perhaps a craving for more salt or sweets, for instance.
My husband is away for the weekend. In the past this would be an anxiety causing event - because all responsibility for running the house and family falls to me. Not that it's truly burdensome, but in the past my anxiety centered around not feeling adequate to the task - not having enough energy to get everything done. Now, though, I do have enough energy. Also, I prepared well for his trip - I took yesterday off so that I wouldn't have to run errands all weekend with reluctant kids. Perhaps this is an old pattern - eating to quell feelings of anxiety (even though I don't really feel the anxiety this time around).
My husband is away for the weekend. Perhaps I'm feeling like I deserve a treat for handling things this weekend.
My husband is away for the weekend. Perhaps I'm feeling like the other grownup is away, so maybe I'll be a little rebellious and be childish and eat whatever I want to.
(Boy, it sounds like I'm upset that my husband is away! - I'm not really. I'm happy he is getting to take this trip. He's going to have a great time and he'll come back refreshed and happy. A happy husband leads to a happy family and ultimately, selfishly, a happy me.)
I don't like to be solely responsible for anything. This is a pretty deep feeling for me and it probably needs deeper analysis all on its own. Some future therapy sessions perhaps. :-)
I was lonely. Rarely do I get to be home all by myself or running errands by myself. Does this mean that I need to surround myself with others to avoid overeating? I hope not! I just need to figure this out.
The whole process of overeating started while I was out shopping at the produce market with the awesome breads. I was feeling ravenous and I bought some lovely looking/smelling bread rather than picking out one of the lovely, healthy, on-plan apples that I had in the cart already. OK - I need to make sure I avoid ravenous hunger and plan a snack appropriately.
Eating the bread made me think about other treats I could pick up at my other stops along the way. And I did - I picked up a box of easy-to-make rice stuff comfort food for lunch at one store, and some chocolate chips at another store (even after having a conversation with my husband about not buying anything inappropriate like this while he was away!). Thankfully I purchased only a little portion of the chocolate chips - so now they are gone and finished and I don't have to think about them any more.
All or nothing thinking. I couldn't just be happy and satisfied with the bread I bought. Since I blew it already, it seemed a pretty simple mental process to continue the bad behavior because it was already justified by what I had already done.
Self-sabotage: I think that sometimes I get into a self-sabotage mode. In the past this happened most definitely whenever I got close to breaking the 200 pound mark. That was when I was most likely to bomb out and go back to old habits. I fear that I have some of this in me still. I'm at 170 pounds, just about to break into the 160's. Why do I fear success?

It sure does sound like I'm messed up in the head! But I have a feeling that I'm not all that unusual in these thinking patterns. At some point I know that it would be extremely productive to go see a therapist to truly work through some of these issues. I'm beginning to feel strong enough to do that. Until I do work through these issues I think I'm going to fear and feel anxiety that I'm going to backslide and all this hard work of changing my habits will be for nothing and I'll gain it all back.

The important thing out of all this is to stop the behavior right now and not let it get out of hand. I think writing about it here is one step to make sure I cut it out. Next is to get rid of the remaining bad stuff I bought yesterday - the rest of the (white) bread has got to go. Last, I need to make a commitment to myself that I will be mindful of what I'm eating today, one meal at a time. OK - done. Onto a better day now.

Yesterday:
B: fruit and greens smoothie
L and S: white flat bread, prepared (salty) rice dish, peanuts and chocolate chips
D: red bean chipotle burger, provencal spinach (The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen Cookbook)
Weight: 170
Total calories: about 2200, protein: about 59g, fat: about 68g, fiber: about 42g

Thursday:
B: cantaloupe, banana, pear
S: almonds, corn tortilla chips (not a good choice!)
L: leftover sunshine carrot salad, leftover bean and vegetable burrito
D: leftover Vicki's quinoa hummus casserole, leftover radish salad, microwaved frozen vegetables
Weight: 170
Total calories: 1512, protein 41g, fat 46g, fiber 38g

Truly, yesterday's bad eating day is part of a chain of poor eating choices over the past several days. One day I had popcorn when I didn't need it, on Thursday I ate a bunch of corn chips. OK, back into control now...

weight milestones and stress eating

2007-04-25T16:43:00.000-07:00

Today I weighed in at 170. Yay! I've been looking forward to this milestone because it is how much I weighed when I got married almost 19 years ago at the tender age of 21. I'll bet if I pulled out my wedding dress it would probably fit, or even be a little loose since I've been working out so much. Maybe I'll try it on this weekend. My daughter would get a kick out of that. She used to love wearing my veil and running around the house with it. Happy memories.

Today I waited for news from my parents about my father's latest cancer scan. He gets scanned every three months to make sure his lymphoma is still in remission. The news was good today, thank goodness. After I heard the news I could feel the stress just flowing out of me and it helped explain why I had felt compelled to eat a bag of popcorn this afternoon. I hadn't been hungry, but I think was feeling pretty anxious about my Dad's medical results. OK, it's a relief to know there might have been a reason for the emotional eating, but now it's time to move on from it, and be aware for next time.

Today:
B: fruit smoothie
L: 1/2 oz almonds, gazpacho, leftover pecan-basil pesto pasta, apple, corn chips
S: microwave popcorn
D: bean and vegetable burrito (Horn of the Moon Cookbook), sunshine carrot salad
Exercise: 30 minutes walking
Weight: 170!!!
Total calories: 1799, protein 51g, fat 60g, fiber 58g

Yesterday:
B: banana, cantaloupe, kiwi
L: vegetable, bean and rice burrito, cashews
D: green salad with low cal dressing, sauteed kale, Vicki's Hummus-Quinoa Casserole (Vive le Vegan)(Yum!)
Exercise: 60 minutes bike commuting, 60 minutes walking
Weight: 171
Total calories: 1395, protein 46g, fat 36g, fiber 39g

Looking good

2007-04-23T17:53:00.000-07:00

Today it got into the 80's in Boston (just last week there was sleet/snow). I wore my newest outfit today. A cute skirt (size 12!) that moves when I move, a lovely light sweater with a black camisole and new sandals. I'm not much of a clothes person, but my mother encouraged me to get these things when we went shopping a few weeks ago. I felt like a new person! It was an interesting sensation, to feel like a normal-sized, regular person. It's not yet familiar to me - so I have to admit that I revelled in it a bit :-).

In the past I would never wear a skirt without a split slip underneath to take care of any possible chafing on my thighs. Today I went without the slip and worried a little that my inner thighs might suffer. It turned out not to be a problem! What a relief! My thighs still touch, but I guess not nearly as much as they used to.

Today:
B: usual fruit smoothie
L: green salad with low cal dressing, pumpkin seed coated lentil patty with whole wheat wrap, apple, 1/2 oz almonds
D: Gazpacho (from an old Martha Stewart Living magazine), Tomato-lentil pasta sauce (Vive le Vegan) with whole wheat noodles
Total calories: 1409, protein 47g, fat 27g, fiber 54g
Exercise: 30 minutes swimming
Weight: 171 (unusually consistent lately!)

Yesterday:
B: cantaloupe, kiwi, strawberries
L: spring rolls with ginger/carrot dipping sauce (from a recent Martha Stewart Living magazine), pumpkin seed coated lentil patty with whole wheat wrap
S: peanuts and chocolate (oops!)
D: green salad with low cal dressing, green beans with lemon, Sweet Curry Chickpea Casserole (Vive le vegan)(very high fat!!), homemade whole wheat bread with a little flavored olive oil from Italy
Total calories: 1569, protein 46g, fat 58g, fiber 41g
Weight: 171

Mr. Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden Sun!

2007-04-21T16:27:00.000-07:00

It's been a beautiful two days (finally!). This has helped my mood immensely, as has my daughter's return home from her wonderful trip to Italy. My mood is definitely better. It was probably helped by a good dose of fun exercise too. Yesterday I walked to work in the sunshine. Today we played tennis again and I've noticed I'm not as sore.

Foodwise, I've had some high fat days these past two days. Yesterday I had one of my once-every-four-months Indian food favorites - chicken tikka masala. Definitely not ETL, but oh-my-gosh it's so good, and by not having it very often, I really and truly appreciate every single bite. I feel satisfied with what I had for dinner last night such that I've given the rest of my leftovers to my husband (unheard of in the past for such a favorite). I feel no guilt about this meal and I think I have it in good perspective. It hasn't awakened any cravings in me and it didn't make me feel sick, though I did feel very tired yesterday evening.

Today:
B: the usual fruit smoothie
L: radish cucumber salad (The Everything Indian Cookbook), pumpkin seed coated lentil patty, whole wheat wrap
D: green salad with low cal dressing, stir fried broccoli and bok choy, Pecan Basil Pesto (Vive le vegan) and whole wheat pasta
Exercise: 45 minutes tennis, 20 minutes walking
Weight: forgot to weigh today
Total calories: 1203, protein 42g, fat 35g, fiber 45g

Yesterday:
B: cantaloupe, banana, pear
L: pumpkin seed coated lentil patty, 1/2 whole wheat pita, bean sprout cucumber salad, clementine, 1/2 oz. almonds
D: (ate out) pieces of vegetarian appetizer, naan, basmati rice, chicken tikka masala, couple of pizza crusts
Exercise: 55 minutes walking
Weight: 171
Total calories: 1743, protein 75g, fat 55g, fiber 24g

feeling down

2007-04-19T18:18:00.000-07:00

It's bound to happen once in awhile. I've been feeling down for the past few days. I'm not sure if I'm coming down with something or if I'm just blue or if it's all these days of rain in a row. We did get some bad news - my father-in-law has been diagnosed with lymphoma - more cancer in the family. We have every reason to expect that he'll be OK with treatment, but even so, the uncertainty and suffering will be part of our lives as he goes through it.

Now would be a good time to really stick with eating as healthy as possible, because it's bound to help me feel my best, but somehow that's not what happens in reality. I haven't been particularly horrible, or in danger of slipping back to bad habits, but I don't seem to particularly want all these veggies. Thankfully, my husband has been in charge of cooking for the past few days, and he is definitely serving plenty of vegetables and that is what we eat first. So, I just need to get through these few days and I'm sure things will start looking up.

Today:
B: usual fruit smoothie
L: baked falafel, orange, cashews
S: popcorn (regular microwave stuff)
D: mung bean cucumber salad (The Everything Indian Cookbook), Chinese cabbage stirfry, Pumpkin coated lentil patties (Vive le vegan), 1/2 whole wheat pita
Weight: 171
Total calories: 1738, protein 59g, fat 51g, fiber 57g
I surely didn't need that popcorn, but if that's the worst I do - it's OK with me.

Yesterday:
B: cantaloupe, banana, pear
L: chickpea broccoli casserole, maharastrian salad, almonds, pretzels
D: spinach salad with low-cal dressing, frozen mixed veggies, whole wheat spaghetti with tomato sauce
Exercise: 30 min swimming
Weight: 171
Total calories: 1269, protein 38g, fat 25g, fiber 36g

podcasts

2007-04-17T16:33:00.000-07:00

I recently became a proud owner of an iPod. I love it! Now, when I walk to work, I have enough time to listen to a Dr. Fuhrman radio show from Voice of America internet radio. Since I got the iPod, I've listened to 3 shows.

The first show I listened to was the Dangers of Dieting. In that show Dr. Fuhrman talked about the four stages to have to go through to successfully lose weight. I don't remember all four of them, though I was nodding to myself that I've been working in all areas, but the last one really stuck with me. It was that you have to learn to really enjoy and love the new way you are eating, more than your old eating habits, so that you aren't drawn to go back. I realized, while I was walking, that this is what I've been working on the hardest with this new eating lifestyle, that I've never really addressed in my previous weight loss attempts. Since October, we've tried well over 100 new recipes, so that we could find new healthy dishes to love - and it's working! We have developed a new set of favorite recipes and are eager to keep exploring. I never thought I could crave collard greens and kale cooked in the slow cooker with a chipotle pepper. Or that a white bean with fennel dinner would have me mmm, mmming all through dinner. My old favorites, laden with cheese, just don't have the same appeal anymore (though I do still yearn for chicken tikka masala from my favorite Indian restaurant and do plan to have that on special occasions :-). While I feel rock solid with sticking with ETL normally, the realization that all our efforts to try new foods and recipes is really paying off, truly hit me during my walk with the Fuhrman show the other day.

Next time I'll blog about the show I heard today, about children's IQ.

On to the summary:
Today:
B: fruit smoothie with soy milk, flax seed and lettuce
L: green cabbage and apple slaw, chickpea broccoli casserole, 1/2 oz. almonds
D: Maharastrian salad (The everything Indian cookbook), Braised fennel and white beans (Martha Stewart Living magazine), frozen mixed veggies
Exercise: walked 40 minutes
Weight: 172
Total calories: 1206, protein 39g, fat 33g, fiber 41g

Yesterday:
B: banana, pear, clementine
L: baked falafel, green cabbage and apple slaw
D: Chickpea broccoli casserole (Vegan with a Vengeance), gree salad with low cal dressing, baked cabbage with garlic (The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen)
S: peanuts with chocolate chips
Weight: 172
Total calories: 1419, protein 43g, fat 52g, fiber 46g
(peanuts and chocolate chips - bad choice! I'm still suffering with a residual stomach ache from that one! Too much fat too!)

Sunday:
B: fruit smoothie - the usual
L: sunflower lentil pie, green cabbage with apple slaw
D: Baked falafel, green salad with low cal dressing, golden cauliflower soup
S: popcorn and a few peanuts with chocolate chips
Exercise: yoga 20 minutes
Weight: 172
Total calories: 1267, protein 47g, fat 29g, fiber 52g
This was a good day. I thought the protein, fat and fiber were in good ratios to one another.

exquisite pain

2007-04-15T08:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I did the last bit of exercise that I needed to make my minutes for the final week of the team-based fitness challenge that I've been doing for the past 12 weeks. My husband and I dusted off the tennis rackets and headed out to the courts to do a bit of rallying. We ended up playing for about 40 minutes. I haven't played tennis for that long in quite a few years.

Although I've been doing a lot of exercise for the past 12 weeks, I have to admit that it's all been somewhat low-impact, like swimming, walking, pilates, tai chi, yoga, etc. Tennis, on the other hand, is a full body activity where you contend with all the effects of gravity and move all your parts. As a result I am really sore today, but it's a really exquisite pain. I have great appreciation for what my body is beginning to be able to do. At the beginning of the 12 weeks I wouldn't have been able to play tennis for 40 minutes and now I can. During our playing, I began to feel a little light on my feet (one of my motivations for shedding all this excess weight), until the end, where I was decidedly feeling quite heavy on my feet when I began to get very tired. All in all I appreciate this soreness because it reminds me of how far I've come and it also reminds me of how far I have yet to go.

Yesterday:
B: cantaloupe, pear, part of an orange
L: (ate out) assorted appetizers at the local vegan asian restaurant, vegetable lo mein with tofu
D: red cabbage coleslaw, Veggie stirfry with spicy almond sauce (Vive le Vegan), a little red wine
S: pretzels, a little bit of dark chocolate
Exercise: 40 minutes tennis, 10 minutes walking
Weight: 171 (new low! 56 pounds down, 44 to go!)
Total calories: 1383, protein 49g, fat 53g, fiber 24g

A few problems yesterday eating-wise. Eating out is always a challenge and I indulged in a few high-fat appetizers. The dinner from Vive le Vegan, while delicious and full of veggies, was quite high in fat. Then, to finish the day I ended up having a snack without really being hungry for it. There are always things to work on!!

Reading: Omnivore's Dilemma

2007-04-13T17:07:00.000-07:00

I just finished the book The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. I loved this book, especially at this time of my life, as I make radical changes in my eating lifestyle. Indeed, if I hadn't already made a bunch of changes, I would be compelled to stop eating on the industrial food chain after reading this book.

Michael Pollan takes the reader through four meals; a McDonalds meal, an industrial organic meal (think food from Whole Foods), a sustainable farm meal, and a foraged/hunted meal. He is such a talented writer that I just wanted to linger over the book like a good meal, and I didn't want it to end. It's not at all about vegetarianism and I appreciated his balanced views on the matter of eating animal products. I'm not going to go out and buy grass-fed beef anytime soon, but I know that I am not going to ever buy corn-fed beef again.

Here's the past two days. I had some trouble with some corn tortilla chips that were out and about at work - so I didn't eat in the healthiest way possible. Thankfully I didn't gorge so much that I was out-of-control and made myself sick.

Today:
B: fruit smoothie with kale, soy milk and flax seed, 1/2 oz almonds
L: red cabbage coleslaw, refried bean soup, too many corn tortilla chips
S: more unneccesary corn tortilla chips
D: green cabbage, apple, brussels sprout salad, sunflower-lentil pie (Vive le Vegan) (small servings - not very hungry)
Exercise: 40 minutes swimming
Weight: 172
Total calories: 1205, protein 31g, fat 36g, fiber 44g

Yesterday:
B: banana, pear, cantaloupe
L: red cabbage slaw, corn chips and pretzels
D: (potluck at my son's school): chipotle corn and black bean stew (Vegan with a Vengeance, we brought this), green beans with a peanut sauce, tiny bit of pasta salad
later at home: cashew butter sandwich
Exercise: 55 minute walk to work
Weight: 172
Total calories: 1175, protein 32g, fat 36g, fiber 30g

looking forward to summer produce

2007-04-11T16:53:00.000-07:00

As we get ready for another Nor'easter to come around I can't help but think of spring and summer and the coming bounty of produce. Last fall I learned about Russo's, which has been a wonderful place from which to get our cartload of produce every week. We go out of our way for this place because the produce is of great quality and the prices are wonderful.

It looks like we are going to shift our practice during the growing season. We are going to try to eat more locally and seasonally, and then shift back to Russo's next fall. We just signed up for a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) with Red Fire Farms in eastern Massachusetts that provides produce from Mid-June to December. If that doesn't happen to supply us with enough veggies (Eat to Live for a family of four requires A LOT of vegetables), we will supplement from the local farmer's market.

This will call for a different way of planning our menus because we won't know ahead of time what or how much we will get. I'm excited about it!

Today
B: fruit smoothie with flax seed, kale, soy milk
L: red cabbage slaw, Moroccan chickpea patty with a whole wheat wrap, clementine, 1/2 oz almonds
D: green salad with low calorie dressing, sauteed swiss chard with garlic and red wine vinegar, Easiest Black Bean and Brown Rice Chili (Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook)
Exercise: 40 minutes swimming
Weight: 174
Total calories: 1213, protein 41g, fat 28g, fiber 58g

Yesterday:
B: banana, cantaloupe, 1/2 pear
L: refried bean soup (recipe below), red cabbage slaw, 1/2 oz cashews, clementine
D: green salad, collard greens and kale (Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook), Moroccan chickpea patties (Vive le Vegan), whole wheat wrap
Exercise: 40 minutes pilates, 30 minutes walking
Weight: 174
Total calories: 1115, protein 37g, fat 27g, fiber 38g

Recipe:
Refried Bean soup

1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 c. veggie broth
1 28oz. can crushed or diced tomatoes
1 can (15oz) vegetarian refried beans
1 can (15 oz) pink or pinto beans
1 T. chili powder
1 t. cumin powder
1 t. oregano

Saute the onion and garlic in water until soft. Add the veggie broth, tomatoes and refried beans. Stir until the refried beans dissolve. Add the remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil and reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes.

Check in

2007-04-09T18:18:00.000-07:00

It's the last week of the fitness challenge at work. We have to get in 300 minutes of exercise between today and Sunday. I swam this morning for 40 minutes and had a walking meeting for 50 minutes. So, on the first day of this week's challenge I'm up to 90 minutes already. While that's great, I must admit I'm really tired!

Yesterday I tried a beginner's yoga tape. I did the tape with my 7-year-old son and it was pretty funny. He giggled the whole time and had a ball. Not quite the quiet meditation the tape tries to shoot for, but I sure enjoyed it this way!

B: fruit smoothie with soy milk, kale and flax seed
L: large green salad with low cal dressing, leek and oriental noodle dumplings, apple, 1/2 oz cashews
D: refried bean soup, 2 corn tortillas
S: pretzels
Exercise: 40 minutes swimming, 50 minutes walking
Weight: 175 (the soy sauce brings on the water weight every time!)
Total calories: 1197, protein 32g, fat 22g, fiber 47g

I needed some more vegetables today. Tomorrow lots of veggies will be my goal.

Happy Easter, day of indulgence

2007-04-08T18:01:00.000-07:00

I'm not a religious person, so Easter traditions in my family revolve around feasting, chocolate and jelly beans. Like Christmas and Thanksgiving, I decided to indulge in the holiday. I didn't get into chocolate and jelly beans, but, at the restaurant we went to, I decided to have some stuffed breads, baked ziti, and dessert.

What was amazing is that I really didn't like the stuffed bread. I tried the pepperoni with cheese and the spinach with cheese. In the past, I loved this stuff and could eat quite a bit. Now, though, one bite was enough to turn me off. Yuck! Also, I tried the baked ziti and again, it was terrible! I had no trouble not eating the stuff. So, my taste buds truly have changed for cheese at least.

Now dessert, on the other hand, was a different matter. I had a small cannoli, and man, that was delicious! My sweet tooth has not gone away, but I'm relieved to report that I'm not suffering from sugar cravings as a result.

This is good news indeed - maybe I'm not in danger from these former favorites too much after all. Now that I know that cheese doesn't taste all that great to my anymore, I don't think I'll have too much trouble in resisting it. I'm also feeling good about my reaction to sugar. I believe I'm in good shape to treat it as a very special treat, to be indulged in a few times a year without suffering horrible consequences.

This is progress!

Today:
B: banana
L: (ate out) 1 slice french toast, artichoke hearts, salad, cavatelli and tomato sauce, small piece baked white fish, pineapple, small cannoli and a couple of bites of stuffed bread.
S: a few pretzels
D: (quick dinner) mandarin oranges, leek and oriental noodle dumplings (frozen from asian grocery store)
Exercise: 20 minutes yoga
Total calories: 1631, protein 45g, fat 51, fiber 19g
Weight: not done today

Yesterday:
B: banana, clementine, plum
L: (ate out) french onion soup (no cheese), tuscan bean and lettuce salad with balsamic vinaigrette with foccacia
D: (ate out) spinach enchiladas with black beans and rice, lettuce and tomatoes, green tomatillo sauce (no cheese, no sour cream), corn tortilla chips with salsa
Weight: not weighed
Total calories: 1347, protein 41g, fat 31g, fiber 47g

Friday:
B: usual fruit smoothie
L: earthy lentil soup, broccoli soup, mung bean cucumber salad
D: (ate out) sauteed green beans, vegetable mei fun noodles
Weight: 172 !! (a new low weight! 55 pounds lost, 45 to go!)
Exercise: 40 minutes swimming
Total calories: 1359, protein 40g, fat 35g, fiber 47g

I was away again this weekend and, while I think I made good choices overall, it was far from excellent ETL nutrition. I'm looking forward to the upcoming week at home, where I can get back to eating very well.

busy, busy, busy

2007-04-05T17:07:00.000-07:00

I haven't had many chances to be online lately, so the blog is one of the first things to get neglected. Although I haven't been perfect at ETL lately during this busy time, I've avoided overeating and eating bad kinds of food. This is great because it means that there is hope that I can eat appropriately when under stress - something I've been wondering about. So things are still looking up and I've dropped another two pounds, to 173.

The weight is still coming off, but much more slowly. Even so, my body is ever changing. Lately people have been noticing the changes quite a bit. Also, even though I have 46 pounds to go, several people have commented that they don't know where I plan to lose it from. While the compliments are really nice, I know where it's all going to come from! Hips and thighs!! For sure!

Here's the summary of the past few days:

Today:
B: clementine, apple, pineapple, 1/2 oz almonds
L: (ate out) ginger pumpkin carrot soup, spinach salad with pecans and apple
D: green salad with low calorie dressing, whole wheat pasta with tomato sauce, red wine
Exercise: 70 minutes walking
Weight: 173!
Total calories: 1092, protein 31g, fat 40g, fiber 30g

Yesterday:
B: fruit smoothie with kale, flax seed, and soymilk
L: cashews, apple, pretzels
D: cucumber mung bean salad (The Everything Indian Cookbook), Slow Cooked Broccoli Soup (Not Your Mothers Slow Cooker Cookbook), Black-eyed peas curry (The Everything Indian Cookbook), whole wheat biscuit with fruit spread
Exercise: 40 minutes pilates, 20 minutes walking
Weight: 175
Total calories: 1002, protein 22g, fat 34g, fiber 30g

Tuesday:
B: banana, orange, pear
L: Earthy Lentil Soup, green salad with low calorie dressing, apple
D: (ate out) vegetable pad thai
Exercise: 75 minutes walking
Weight: 175
Total calories: 1062, protein 25g, fat 15g, fiber 36g

Back on track

2007-04-02T17:29:00.000-07:00

I'm so happy to be back home eating my usual stuff. I feel so much better! Not much to say, but I want to get in the summary for the day:

B: fruit smoothie with kale, soy milk and flax seed
L: green salad with low cal dressing, leftover earthy lentil soup, apple
D: green salad with low cal dressing, tomato tortilla soup (The Ultimate Slow Cooker Cookbook), Braised Fennel with White Beans (no butter, less oil), corn tortilla
S: pretzels
Exercise: 40 minutes swimming
Weight: 175 (I didn't gain any weight on my trip!)
Total calories: 1309, protein 52g, fat 18g, fiber 72g

Look at those numbers! I don't think I can imagine a better outcome.

I'm back!

2007-04-01T16:39:00.000-07:00

I'm back from Baltimore! It's so good to be home, back to my own bed, back to my food.

Overall I think I did about as well as I could in Baltimore. I didn't follow ETL precisely, but overall I think I made pretty good choices. I'll see tomorrow how the the scale says I did.

It turned out to be more difficult to get fruit for breakfast than I thought it would be. In fact it was difficult to get breakfast at all unless I was willing to spend $15 for 3 pieces of fruit at the hotel (I wasn't). So I typically had an ounce of nuts until I got to a break where they served pastries, yogurt and some fruit (I got the fruit).

I did manage to get beans twice while I was away. Once I got hummus and another time I had a black bean/spinach burrito. Otherwise I had two salmon dishes to meet my protein needs.

For most non-breakfast meals I managed to get some vegetable matter, either in a salad, or as part of the meal.

My biggest non-ETL foods had refined white flour in them - bread at two meals, potato gnocchi at another.

Also, consistently I'm sure I had too much salt and oil, which I couldn't control. The day I had potato gnocchi with pesto was my highest calorie day (it was a great indulgence) and came in just over 2000 calories. Otherwise I stayed between 1100 and 1400 calories (as far as I can estimate).

I got in a good amount of walking, usually more than 60 minutes a day.

Despite making pretty good choices, my body still did not like eating the rich foods that I had. On my last night there (yesterday) I had truly horrible gas pains where I could hardly stand to be me. It is not an experience I care to repeat ever.

I'm not going to bother doing a daily summary for the past several days, but here's what I had today:

B: apple, banana, cashews, pretzels
L: pretzels and bran muffin (darn that airport food!)
D: green salad with carrot and pineapple and low-cal dressing, Earthy Lentil Soup (Vive le Vegan)
Total calories: 1212, protein 42g, fat 34g, fiber 39g
Weight - not weighed today

reporting weight

2007-03-27T17:50:00.000-07:00

I've blogged before that I weigh myself everyday, but I haven't been it reporting here. Typically I report whatever new low weight comes along, rather than dwell on the normal daily fluctuations. My thinking is that if I've not seen a new low weight before, then I've truly lost some pounds. I rarely seem to weigh the same thing two days in a row. As long as I know that I haven't done anything eating-wise that would cause a true fat gain, I'll keep claiming my lowest weight and base my weight loss total on that. But, to give a more realistic picture of the ups and downs of this weight loss journey, I'm going to start putting my current weight on my daily summary.

So here's the new and improved daily summary:
B: fruit smoothie with flax seed, soy milk and kale
L: Maharastrian salad, Moroccan chickpea patty, whole wheat wrap, clementine, 1/2 oz almonds
D: orange stir-fried broccoli, black bean and sweet potato hash (Moosewood)
S: pretzels
Exercise: 40 minutes Pilates, 55 minutes walk to work
Total calories: 1140, protein 31g, fat 31g, fiber 37g
Weight: 176

Overall I ate within the calorie range I want and didn't overeat anything, but nutritionally it wasn't balanced appropriately. I think that I need to watch out for some of the recipes we are making and try to balance higher fat recipes with lower fat options. For instance everything I had for lunch with the exception of the clementine had some significant fat. The salad has some dried coconut, the chickpea patty has a bit of added oil, a corn tortilla or a pita would have been a better choice than the whole wheat wrap, and then the almonds. That one meal had 18g of fat which is really enough for an entire day.

Tomorrow I'm off to Baltimore until Sunday. I don't know if I'll have reliable internet connectivity so the blog will probably be pretty quiet until at least Sunday. Also, now that I've made a commitment to post my weight each day, it turns out that I won't have a scale available to me while I'm gone, so that new habit will have to wait until my return.

mental preparation for traveling

2007-03-26T16:45:00.000-07:00

After all the recent indulgences in eating out and high fat days, it's a relief to finish a day with good, balanced results, especially as I get ready to travel on Wednesday and eat out for four straight days. I've scoped out the restaurants near the hotel I'm staying at and will bring some nuts for food emergencies. I hope to find a store where I can also pick up a few pieces of fruit to further bolster my emergency supplies. It's not weight gain that I'm worried about, but what the loss of control will mean. I'm trying to be ever mindful of that long slippery slope to over-indulgence and the return of bad eating habits. I guess since it's my first trip away where I can't bring my food, I'm apprehensive about how I'm going to handle it. I haven't built up a repertoire of successful practices yet. I'll just have to take one meal at a time and not sweat the details too much. I still feel strong against dairy and sugar. I think what would be the first skill to go would be to let the veggies slip and go more for grains. OK, note to self, the salad is the main dish, the salad is the main dish, the salad is the main dish. This will be my mantra for the rest of the week.

B: cantaloupe, banana, clementine
L: leftovers: Maharastrian salad, Moroccan chickpea patty with a whole wheat wrap, clementine
D: Bean and Vegetable Burritos (Horn of the Moon), green salad with low calorie dressing
Exercise: 40 minutes swimming
Total calories: 1122, protein 36g, fat 23g, fiber 41g

exercise and team efforts

2007-03-25T16:34:00.000-07:00

Way back on January 22nd I mentioned starting a team-based fitness challenge at work. We are just finishing up week nine now. Three more weeks to go. The way it works is that each week there is an increasing goal for the number of minutes exercised. It started at 150 minutes/week and next week our goal is 280 minutes. If the whole team averages the goal, the team is eligible for prize drawings. Every individual who makes the weekly goal is also eligible for individual prizes. I have a love/hate relationship with this fitness challenge.

I love it because it has gotten me to step up my exercise beyond my comfort zone and I've found that I can handle it. I notice the differences in my body and the amount of exercise I can do. On the hate side, I seem to be incapable of letting my team down even if I feel sick and awful. Last week, when I had my cold I really shouldn't have exercised as much as I did, but I just couldn't let my team down and by golly I got those minutes in! Also, now that I'm getting to the last few weeks it will be pretty challenging to get 300 minutes in. This week I'll be traveling to a conference and I'm not sure how I'm going to fit in fitness during the busy conference days. In cases like these the fitness challenge adds a layer of stress to something that is good for me.

I suspect that when it's all over I'll end up settling down naturally to somewhere between 250 and 300 minutes a week - and that makes it all worth it since before the challenge I was averaging around 100 to 150 minutes per week.

Saturday:
B: banana, orange, apple
S: pretzels
L: (ate out) rolls, salad, tilapia with spinach
D: (ate out) spring rolls, vegetable dumpling, scallion pancakes, vegetable lo mein
Exercise: 1 hour 20 minutes walking
Total calories: 1583, protein 83g, fat 52g, fiber 19g

Sunday:
B: fruit smoothie with spinach, flax seeds, soy milk
L: Indian style coleslaw, leftover lo mein and scallion pancake, roll
D: Maharastrian salad (The Everything Indian Cookbook), Braised Cauliflower with three-seed sauce (Vegan with a Vengeance), Moroccan Chickpea Patties (Vive le Vegan), whole wheat wrap
Total calories: 1342, protein 39g, fat 39g, fiber 39g

OK, now I have the eating out days behind me and it's time to get serious again before I go out of town on Wednesday. I need to cut down on the fat!!!

quick post

2007-03-24T03:34:00.000-07:00

I have guests in town right now, so just a quick update...

Yesterday I struggled with the need for treats and in the end allowed myself not to worry about it too much. I had microwave popcorn, pretzels and red wine. I think I had a salt overload, my lips felt all weird after the popcorn.

Partly I think it was from boredom because I've had the same basic stuff all week long for lunch at work. I probably need to plan better!

On a positive note, I was down a pound to 175! Yippee!

Friday:
B: fruit smoothie with kale, soy milk and flax seed
L: red cabbage slaw, chickpea spinach rice soup, 1/2 oz almonds, clementine
S: popcorn
D: indian style coleslaw (The everything Indian cookbook), ginger sauteed kale with lime juice, chickpea ratatouille (Vive le Vegan)
S: pretzels and red wine
Exercise: 65 minutes walking
Total calories: 1649, protein 47g, fat 35g, fiber 47g

Thursday:
B: banana, cantaloupe, pear
L: red cabbage slaw, whole wheat wrap with pumpkin seed coated lentil patty, clementine, 1 oz cashews
D: curried rice and bean filled zucchini (Vive le vegan), green beans with coconut
Exercise: 30 minutes walking
Total calories: 1122, protein 31g, fat 38g, fiber 31g

Too much fat in the past two days! I think I need to cut out the nuts and find some lower fat entries for a while.

compulsions

2007-03-21T16:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening, after dinner, I ate two slices of home-baked, day-old bread. I wasn't hungry and I had just had a nice dinner that included whole wheat spaghetti, my one grain for the day. What was that about, I wonder? I'm not particularly stressed out. I do still have a cold, but why would that affect what I eat? I didn't really feel the need for a treat or anything. I still don't know why, but I need to note that it was definitely compulsive eating. Now I've admitted it for all the world to see and I need to move on from it.

On the bright side, I did stop at 2 pieces and it did fit into a reasonable number of calories.

Yesterday:
B: banana, cantaloupe, 1/2 apple
L: almonds, chipotle black bean soup, red cabbage slaw, clementine
D: carrot salad, whole wheat spaghetti with tomato sauce
S: 2 slices whole wheat bread
Total calories 1276, protein 42g, fat 27g, fiber 47g
Exercise: 40 minutes pilates, 30 minutes walking

Today:
B: fruit smoothie with flax seed, kale and soy milk
L: almonds, chipotle black bean soup, red cabbage slaw, clementine
D: green salad with low cal dressing, stir-fry cabbage, pumpkin seed-coated lentil patties (Vive le Vegan)
Total calories 1280, protein 43g, fat 38g, fiber 35g
Exercise: 55 minutes walking

upon re-reading ETL

2007-03-19T16:28:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I re-read Eat to Live. I had been slipping a little and having trouble with the number of grains I'd been eating and I thought it would be a good idea to refresh my knowledge.

The first time I read Eat to Live I interpreted the plan very strictly and thought Dr. Fuhrman was espousing a really rigid way of eating (at least for the 6-week plan). So I commenced the program eating that way, deviating only slightly. Surprise, surprise, I started feeling guilty whenever I deviated from the 6-week plan.

After my 2nd reading I managed to notice that Dr. Fuhrman really isn't as strict as I was interpreting him to be. Aside from the 90-10 idea, he also mentions that if you incorporate a good portion of what he recommends, you will end up being healthier. I'm not bringing this up to rationalize any poor eating choices or anything. It's more that I believe I'm starting to make the transition from thinking of this as a diet to thinking of it as my permanent lifestyle - so it's good to see that my original rigid way of thinking really isn't necessary for the rest of my life, but it sure was useful to get me started and off my food addictions. I feel like I can eat out (occasionally), make decent choices, or indulge here and there and not jeopardize my progress. Maybe I'm starting to see what moderation is all about!!

Here's what has happened today:
B: fruit smoothie with kale, soy milk and flax seed
L: red cabbage and carrot salad, 1/2 oz. almonds, leftover chipotle soup, clementine
D: green salad with low calorie dressing, chickpea spinach rice soup, apple butter bread
S: hard pretzels
Exercise: 55 minutes walking to work
Total calories: 1243, protein 39g, fat 27g, fiber 50g

presentation by a blogging cardiologist

2007-03-18T17:38:00.000-07:00

This evening I went to a Boston Vegetarian Society event to hear Dr. Heather Shenkman speak about heart disease and vegetarian diets. I was intrigued to go because I read her blog, Vegan Heart Doc and I've never had a chance to see a blogger in person. It was an interesting talk and I'd like to get a listing of the studies she cited. One in particular mentioned that vegans have a higher incidence of fractures than non-vegans, but that vegans who consume 525mg of calcium per day don't have an increased risk. This bit of information made me check my fitday nutrition report and I'm glad to see that I'm getting, on average, more than 1200 mg per day (I supplement with 500mg of calcium a day). So even though I'm not getting the RDA per day directly from my food, I'm glad to see that I'm getting more than the minimal amount that I need.

After the seminar, the group stayed to have a buffet meal at the Grasshopper restarant. Realizing that I've already eaten out twice this weekend, I decided to call it a day and head home where my wonderful husband was making a terrific dinner. It wasn't an easy choice because I love the Grasshopper! I just know that there is a lot of oil and salt and I'd be facing some definite water weight gain as a result.

Here's what I've had the past two days:
Saturday:
B: fruit smoothie with chard, flax seed and soy milk
L: (ate out at Bertucci's) white roll with some olive oil, sauteed spinach and artichoke hearts, salad with italian dressing, cup of minestrone soup, pizza crust with tomato sauce
D: Morrocan Chickpea Patties (Vive le Vegan), green salad with low cal dressing, 3 oz. red wine
Total calories: 1506, protein 43g, fat 51g, fiber 49g
Bertucci's adds lots of oil to their food! It was a high fat day!

Sunday:
B: banana, pear, part of an orange
L: green salad with dressing, leftover chickpea patty in a whole wheat wrap
S: a couple of pretzels
D: green salad with mandarin oranges and a few pine nuts, Chipotle Corn Black Bean Soup (Vive le Vegan), 1 oz. almonds
Exercise: 40 minutes Pilates
Total calories: 1012, protein 34g, fat 27g, fiber 37g

Overall I've noticed that the fat grams I'm consuming has been going up lately. I think it's due to meals out and also to nuts and my decision to not worry about a little added oil in our meals. Another check in fitday tells me that I'm averaging about 24% of my calories from fat. Hmm.

down again!

2007-03-16T16:03:00.000-07:00

I'm down again, in both good and bad ways. In the good way, I'm down in weight to 176! So now I'm past the halfway mark, 51 pounds down, 49 to go. Whoo hoo!

In the bad way, I have another cold. This is my third cold since the beginning of the year. I'm pretty disappointed about it because I thought I would get fewer colds by eating so healthily. On a positive note, the colds don't seem to linger very long. They stick around, slowing me down for a few days and then resolve pretty quickly. Let's hope I see the same thing this time. It's interesting (to me!) that each cold has been different. The first one was all headache which lasted 5 days. The 2nd sapped my energy, had a little headache, and made me somewhat stuffy. The current cold came on with a bad sore throat, more stuffiness and some achiness. Each one has been traceable to one of my children. Enough about that!

Even though there is currently a whole lot of snow falling this evening, the weather has been rather warmer and I've recently stopped wearing long johns everywhere I go. It's shocking to me how loose all my pants are! The long underwear have been masking those changes from me. I think it's time to do some more shopping. The pants in my closet range in size from 14W to 16W or 1X. It's finally time to put the plus sizes behind me for good! I don't really know how to shop for regular clothes. I'm not a fan of clothes shopping in general - so I greatly depend on going to the same stores - it's a routine really to handle what for me is a chore. Just like we've begun all new food routines, I'm going to have to do the same thing for clothes. Somehow I'm not looking forward to it as much as I have with the food! Silly me - perhaps, just maybe, because I'm beginning to like my shape, it will make all the difference. Here's hoping that it won't be a chore anymore.

I can't believe I've missed three days of blogging! Here's the summary of the past 3 days:

Wednesday:
B: banana, kiwi, pear
L: green cabbage with apple slaw, raisin cabbage slaw, chipotle bean burritos (all leftover)
S: 1/2 oz. cashews, tea with a little honey
D: red bean chipotle burger with 1/2 a whole wheat wrap, green beans with pecans and lemon
Exercise: 40 minutes swimming
Total calories: 1052, protein 29g, fat 22g, fiber 22g

Thursday:
B: fruit smoothie with chard, flax seed, soymilk
L: Maharastrian salad, almonds and cashews, dried apricots, red bean chipotle burger with 1/2 a whole wheat wrap
D: Pureed Chickpea Pasta Sauce (Vive le vegan), whole wheat pasta, green salad with low fat dressing, green beans
Exercise: none
Total calories: 1308, protein 44g, fat 31g, fiber 48g

Today:
B: banana, pear, clementine
L: green salad with low calorie dressing, leftover pureed chickpea pasta sauce, 1/2 oz almonds, fruit leather
S: pretzel sticks
D: vegetable lo mein, fried vegetable dumpling, vegetable spring roll
Exercise: none
Total calories: 1206, protein 39g, fat 30g, fiber 29g

rocking on!

2007-03-13T17:11:00.000-07:00

It's been 19 weeks since I started ETL. Since reaching adulthood, I haven't been this successful at sticking with a healthy lifestyle. I feel like it's becoming a part of me, that eating this healthy really can become my way of life. After feeling pretty hopeless about my weight and eating habits for a major portion of my life, I can't tell you how wonderful it feels to think that I'm on a really good road.

Feeling good about this part of my life is definitely affecting other parts of my life as well - like at work I feel more focused.

It's good to take some time to reflect on these changes. It's been really fundamental!

Today:
B: fruit smoothie with soy milk, chard, flax seed
L: leftover green cabbage with apple salad and molasses baked beans
D: green salad with low calorie dressing, cabbage with black mustard seeds (The Everything Indian Cookbook), whole wheat spaghetti with tomato basil sauce
Exercise: 40 pilates DVD, 50 minute walk to work
Total calories: 1177, protein 40g, fat 20g, fiber 48g

It's been a great day!

diversity of food

2007-03-12T16:42:00.000-07:00

My husband just got the book The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan from the library. In the first chapter it says:

There are some forty-five thousand items in the average American supermarket and more than a quarter of them [including non-food items] now contain corn.

He goes on to quote Todd Dawson, a Berkeley biologist:

...we North Americans look like corn chips with legs.

I think Michael Pollan and Dr. Joel Fuhrman would get along on the food issue. In ETL Dr. Fuhrman talks about how good it is to get your food from a diverse set of plants. Today, I decided to do an inventory of all the whole plant food I've eaten today:

cantaloupe
banana
kiwi fruit
pinto beans
red pepper
corn kernals
cabbage
brussels sprouts
apple
red onion
oranges
lemons
dill
poppy seeds
strawberries
grapes
pineapple
swiss chard
pine nuts
garlic
chickpeas
grapes
peanuts
spinach
cilantro
coconut
semolina wheat (couscous)

(non plant based or processed foods: white flour, olive oil, salt)

WOW! That's a lot of diversity. Now, let's contrast to a typical day in my past dieting ways:

One year ago today, 3/12/2006, whole, plant-based foods:

pineapple
pecans
tomato

(non-plant-based or processed foods: bagel, cream cheese, fish, milk, butter, alcohol, chocolate syrup, biscuit, margarine, ground beef)

Twenty-seven versus three - now that is an excellent, positive change!!!

Today's summary:
B: cantaloupe, banana, kiwi
L: fresh fruit salad, green cabbage and red apple slaw (reduced oil), pinto bean/red pepper/corn salad, white bread roll, crackers
D: Maharastrian salad (The Everything Indian Cookbook), Swiss chard with chickpeas and couscous (reduced oil)
Exercise: 40 minutes swimming, 30 minutes walking
Total calories: 1258, protein 33g, fat 34g, fiber 33g

weight loss patterns

2007-03-11T16:53:00.000-07:00

After the heady weight-loss rate of the first two months on ETL, I've noticed a new weight loss pattern emerge in the following months. For about 3 weeks of the month I lose just a little, maybe one or two pounds, but then, during my period I can drop up to 5 pounds in a single week. No way am I getting rid of 5 pounds of fat all at once. Maybe, during those three weeks I'm steadily losing fat, but during the same time I'm slowly building up water weight. During that 4th week perhaps all that water weight drops off, finally revealing the loss of fat. It's a nice theory and I may never know the real answer. I just need to remember to be patient throughout the month if this is the way my body is acting.

Here's what's happened in the past two days:

yesterday:
B: banana, pear, apple
L: summer rolls, molasses baked beans
D: raisin cabbage coleslaw (from ETL), sunflower lentil pie (Vive Le Vegan!), szechwan green beans
Total calories: 1233, protein 36g, fat 17g, fiber 39g

today:
B: fruit smoothie with chard, flax seeds and soy milk
L: raisin cabbage coleslaw and sunflower lentil pie
D: green salad with low calorie dressing, ginger garlic sauteed kale with lime juice, Chipotle Veggie-Bean Burritos (Vive Le Vegan!)
Total calories: 1191, protein 37g, fat 23g, fiber 49g

not obese!

2007-03-09T17:46:00.000-08:00

I dropped another two pounds (TOM is good for weight loss anyway!). I broke 180 and am down to 178. This means my BMI has dropped below 30 and I am no longer considered obese. I've been waiting for this milestone for awhile! I even called my mother to tell her about it :-) Whoo hoo!

Today's summary:
B: fruit smoothie with chard, flax seed and soy milk
S: 1/2 oz almonds, clementine
L: cucumber salad, white rice with tikka masala sauce
D: green salad with low calorie dressing, brussels sprouts with garlic and ginger, Molasses Baked Beans (Vive le vegan), 1/2 slice of sunflower bread (The Big Book of Bread Machine Recipes)
Exercise: 40 minutes swimming, 20 minutes walking
Total calories: 1126, protein 47g, fat 21g, fiber 41g

figuring out a goal weight

2007-03-08T16:03:00.000-08:00

I was down another pound today! Now I'm at 180, just at the cusp of a new decade range. I've lost a total of 47 pounds.

I've been thinking about goals and weight today. I'm wondering what should my goal be for weight? In my fitday account I've set my goal for what Dr. Fuhrman says my goal should be: 115 pounds for a 5'5" woman. I've never really felt comfortable with that, perhaps because it seems so outlandish from my current vantage point. The lowest weight I ever remember weighing at my current height is 127 pounds when I was 14 years old. I totally comprehend what Dr. Fuhrman says in his book about how much people should weigh and I believe him - it's just that he is all about optimal health and I'm not so sure I need to strive for optimal. I just want to be healthy and practice healthy habits - I don't feel the need for perfection or total optimization.

Perhaps my goal shouldn't be about weight at all, maybe I should make my goal about practicing healthy habits and trust that the weight will get to where it needs to be. It sounds promising, but frankly I've been fairly restrictive about what I'm eating and I do eventually want to get to a place where I won't need to be so restrictive. Besides I'm such a numbers geek that I like the idea of having a numerical goal to strive for.

So for now, I'm going to draw a line in the sand and say that it's my goal to lose 100 pounds total. That will take me to 127 pounds. The geek in me thinks that's cool - it will be so simple to see how far I've come in terms of percentage - 47 pounds down? easy - 47% finished. When I get there I'll just have to re-evaluate. Will I be able to pinch an inch around my waist at that time? If so, will it bother me? Will I be able to do all the physical things I want to do? Are all my health indicators in a healthy range (e.g. LDL levels, resting heart rate, etc.)? So many unknowns at this point!

Here's the day's summary:
B: 1/3 cantaloupe, banana, pear
L: (ate out) 3 seed-crusted crackers, salmon, sugar snap peas, 1 small roasted potato
D: salad with low calorie dressing, Carolina Kale, lentil vegetable stew (from our freezer)
Exercise: walk to work 55 minutes, other walking 20 minutes
Total calories: 1077, protein 61g, fat 26g, fiber 32g

It was a rare non-vegan day for me as I had salmon at lunch. It felt like a good choice at the restaurant. I could have ordered a customized salad that was ETL friendly, but I really felt a need for protein today (maybe because I was low on protein yesterday?). Anyway, it was delicious.

no bobbles today

2007-03-07T17:16:00.000-08:00

Despite my husband making brownies today - he has a serious need for chocolate!, I have eaten only what I planned to eat. Actually, I really don't have a problem with the treats my husband makes for himself and the kids. Sometimes I make them treats myself, though then I feel compelled to try any baked good that I make myself. The Ritz crackers are still out at work (as well as some mint double stuffed oreos) and I've easily passed them by. I need to remember this resolve!

Here's how the day went:
B: fruit smoothie with chard, soy milk and flax seeds
L: leftover green cabbage and red apple salad, whole wheat wrap with peanut butter, clementine
D: green salad with low calorie dressing, bouillabaisse of spinach, potatoes, chickpeas and spinach (Mediterranean Vegan kitchen)
Exercise: 25 minutes Tai Chi, 35 minutes walking
Total calories: 1053, protein 29g, fat 32g, fiber 36g

I don't usually get more fat grams than protein, but I guess that's what happens when I have peanut butter instead of beans at lunch time. I have good leftovers for tomorrow's lunch so it won't happen again.

quick post

2007-03-06T18:00:00.000-08:00

Not too much to say today, but I want to be accountable! Here's what has happened:
B: cantaloupe, banana, clementine
L: green-cabbage and red apple salad, braised cabbage and red beans, clementine, 1/2 oz. almonds
S: 2 dried apricot halves, 3 corn chips
D: vegetable lo mein and tofu dumplings
exercise: 40 minutes pilates, lots of stair climbing
Total calories: 1338, protein 53g, fat 35g, fiber 33g

The take out dinner threw things off a little bit, but I was very happy with the rest of the day.

accountability

2007-03-05T16:57:00.000-08:00

It's been a few days since I last posted, so I have some catching up to do! This blog has been great for keeping me accountable. Everytime I eat inappropriately I think: I'm going to have to blog this! and sometimes that thought keeps me from going completely overboard. If I think about it, I've really avoided major binges (like going over 3000 calories in a day) since I've started - go me! I haven't eaten over 2000 calories since starting and I'm currently averaging about 1200 per day. I think the blog has something to do with keeping steady so far this year - while I'm in the hard days when the eating lifestyle is no longer shiny, brand-new and exciting, but it's not yet an ingrained-for-life habit. Accountability is crucial right now!

So here's what happened in the past 3 days:

Saturday:
B: fruit smoothie with chard, soy milk and flax seed
S: 1 oz cashews, pear
L: leftover chickpea broccoli casserole, radish-cucumber salad
D: whole wheat pasta with tomato sauce, green salad, asparagus with orange sauce
S: handful of air-popped popcorn
Exercise: 4 mile walk on a beautiful day
Total calories: 1279, protein 39g, fat 27g, fiber 44g

It was a great day!

Sunday:
B: cantaloupe, banana, orange
L: summer rolls and radish-cucumber salad, 1 oz cashews
S: grapes, a couple of corn tortilla chips
D: Moroccan chickpea patties (Vive le vegan!) with whole wheat wraps
Total calories: 1527, protein 45g, fat 44g, fiber 40g

Overall the day was fine. I got a little derailed at dinner when I had too many delicious chickpea patties. There were three patties left and before I figured out what they contained, I ate all three. I could have stopped at 2 and been very satisfied. Live and learn! In any case, this was the first recipe from Vive le vegan! and it was awesome - it definitely will be on our rotation.

Today:
B: fruit smoothie with chard, flax seed, soy milk
L: carrot parsley salad, leftover braised cabbage with red beans, clementine, 1/2 oz. cashews
D: curry-spiced lentils and spinach, green-cabbage and red-apple slaw with brussels sprouts (reduced oil)
Exercise: 40 minutes swimming and 15 minutes walking
Total calories: 1137, protein 39g, fat 23g, fiber 55g

Some good, healthy eating today. Lots of cooked veggies, lots of salad, beans, not too much salt. The slaw recipe was a new one for us and it was so good! It's from one of the recent Martha Stewart Living issues and I'm glad to see it's online. I'm loving the cruciferous vegetables these days!

compulsive behavior

2007-03-02T17:00:00.000-08:00

We had a nor'easter today in Boston and I got soaked on my way to work. The subway wasn't working right and I had to walk an extra 15 minutes getting even more soaked and making me late to the gym. Once I finally got there, a huge swim meet was about to start, so I totally missed my chance to swim. Whine, whine, whine. I don't know if I was feeling sorry for myself, or was feeling a little down from the heavy rain or missing my swim, but I saw some Ritz crackers in the breakroom and I indulged. I remember having a little head conversation with myself about it, but compulsion took over and I ate them. I'll console myself that I didn't eat an entire sleeve of them, but I still ate them compulsively. Bummer. Clearly I'm not out of the woods yet - nor did I think I was really.

Ritz crackers aren't some great treat. If I'm going to indulge I'd rather have any number of things besides those. I was going to say that they didn't have sugar in them, but I just checked the ingredients and they have high fructose corn syrup :-(. Shoot.

B: fruit smoothie with kale, soy milk and flax seeds
S: 1 oz. almonds (an effort to not eat the crackers)
S: Ritz crackers
L: green salad with low fat dressing, chickpea broccoli casserole
D: orange, cucumber, red onion salad, braised cabbage with red beans (The Vegan Mediterranean Kitchen), whole wheat homemade bread
Exercise: 20 minutes walking
Total calories: 1448, protein 39g, fat 47g, fiber 36g

to weigh or not to weigh

2007-03-01T17:05:00.000-08:00

I typically weigh myself almost everyday. Sometimes I wonder if that's good for me and sometimes I think that it's not bad thing to do at all. There are a few schools of thought about weighing. One side says that it's just a number and you shouldn't be afraid of it. Knowledge is power and the more you are conscious about your weight, the less likely you are to eat improperly. Another camp says that it's easy to become obsessed and that it's better to stay focused on the healthy habits, the weight loss will follow.

Right now I've been relishing the weight loss progress and I find that knowing what I've lost is motivating. I suspect that I'm not too far from the time when my weight loss slows down and it might become demotivating. At that point I'll definitely try to change my game and weigh periodically and concentrate on all the great habits I've established. We'll see!

Here's today:
B: banana, clementine, apple
S: 1/2 oz of nuts
L: leftover maharastrian salad, black bean enchiladas, kale and collards, clementine
D: (ate out) vegetarian pad thai, fried dumplings, spring rolls
Exercise: 55 minutes walking
Total calories 1401, protein 47g, fat 47g, fiber 36g

I might not want to weigh myself tomorrow after that dinner :-). The pad thai and spring rolls weren't too bad, but the fried dumplings definitely weren't ETL friendly. I will weigh myself though - even if I show a water-weight gain, it might reinforce that I don't want to have indulgences like this too often.

BTW, when I weighed myself this morning, I dropped another pound to 181, total 46 pounds lost. Here's the monthly statistics for weight loss:
November - 17 lbs
December - 11lbs
January -11lbs
February -7 lbs

beautiful day

2007-02-28T16:47:00.000-08:00

Today was a lovely day in February in the northeastern United States. It was sunny and in the 40's. It made me think that spring can't be too far away and put a little spring (so to speak!) in my step. I'm slowly getting over my cold that started late last week, but I decided to keep on exercising anyway. At some point during my typical cold I get tired of resting and begin to feel restless - I guess that's a good sign that my mind/body wants to start moving again. When I do start moving again I have to get over a large amount of tiredness. This morning I went swimming and I walked for a while at lunchtime. While it felt good then, I sure am tired now!

I'm so glad for the team-based fitness challenge I signed up for at work. It's the 6th week of the challenge and every week they increase the number of minutes needed to qualify for the fabulous prizes. This week we need to exercise a total of 225 minutes. So far I'm at 160 minutes for the week since Monday. The obligation to my team has kept me moving even when I would normally bail out. I hope by the end of the 12 weeks that I can sustain the 300 minutes per week that we work up to. It will be a challenge to do that!

Here's the day's summary:
B: fruit smoothie with kale, soy milk and flax seed
L: leftover Maharastrian salad and black bean enchiladas, 1/2 oz cashews
D: green salad with low calorie dressing, green beans with almonds, red bean chipotle burgers with whole wheat wraps.
Exercise: 30 minutes swimming, 20 minutes walking
Total calories: 1293, protein 44g, fat 31g, fiber 47g

living life like a normal person

2007-02-27T16:41:00.000-08:00

Today I hardly gave a thought about how I was eating and was able to do it pretty healthily. It was a nice feeling not to think about it too much. Someday I hope that I always eat this way unconsciously.

Here's the day:
B: cantaloupe, clementine, banana
S: 1/2 oz almonds
L: (ate out) vegetable pad thai with tofu
D: green salad with low-cal dressing, braised cauliflower with three-seed sauce (Vegan with a Vengeance), and black bean enchilada (Horn of the Moon)
Exercise: walking for 70 minutes
Total calories: 1007, protein 33g, fat 19g, fiber 31g.

With the meal out, the day wasn't a perfect ETL day - but perfection shouldn't be my goal. This is still so much better than I ate in the first forty years of my life. I paid attention to my hunger level and ate a smaller dinner as a result. These are nice victories for me!

I forgot to report that I was down another pound to 182! 45 pounds gone in 17 weeks! Every pound is still so exciting.

keeping on

2007-02-26T17:10:00.000-08:00

I don't have too much to say today, but I'd like to give a reckoning of how I've been doing:

Yesterday:
B: cantaloupe, banana, clementine
L: leftover Maharastrian soup, chickpea spinach rice soup, tortilla chips with guacamole, bread and smart balance spread.
Total calories: 1099, protein 29g, fat 30g, fiber 27g
I indulged in bread and chips and spread. Enough such that I was pretty full. I decided to follow my hunger for the rest of the day - so I didn't end up eating anything else.

Today:
B: fruit smoothie with kale, flax seeds, and soy milk
L: leftovers: Maharastrian salad, chickpea spinach rice soup, clementine, 1/2 oz almonds, wheat thins
D: broccoli chickpea casserole (Vegan with a Vengeance), bok choi and broccoli stir fry
Exercise: 40 minutes walking
Total calories: 1284, protein 37g, fat 39g, fiber 39g
Wheat thins were my issue today. I didn't overindulge, but there was some compulsion involved in eating them.

cooking extravaganza

2007-02-24T17:50:00.000-08:00

This evening we had our neighbors over for dinner. We cooked all day long and made quite a feast. It was fun to do, though I'm pretty exhausted by the whole thing because of my cold.

This was the menu:
hummus and guacamole with baby carrots, whole wheat pita and corn tortilla chips
whole wheat pizza bread (The Big Book of Bread Maker Recipes)
Maharastrian Salad (The Everything Indian Cookbook)
Collard Greens and Kale (Not your mother's slow cooker cookbook)
Swiss Chard Dolmas with Chickpeas (The Mediterranean Cookbook)
Creamy Peach Pie

It all turned out splendidly! I'm so stuffed.

I think I could have the collard greens and kale recipe everyday it was so yummy. We just recently learned about chipotle peppers and I love them in every recipe I've tried them in so far and this one is no exception.

This wasn't a 100% ETL day, more like a 80-20 day. I'm really happy with the amount of greens I got.

B: fruit smoothie with kale, flax seeds and soy milk
L: Maharastrian salad and leftover white bean and roasted garlic soup.
D: see above (a little bit of everything except the bread, pita, carrots and hummus)
Exercise: none
Total calories: 1410, protein 44g, fat 50g(!), fiber 50g

Last but not least, I received a new cookbook today - Vive le Vegan! by Dreena Burton. I can't wait to add some new recipes to our list!

sick again

2007-02-23T16:56:00.000-08:00

I felt it coming on yesterday, but I was hoping that all this superior nutrition would win out and this cold wouldn't materialize. When I woke up I had a full-blown cold - muzzy headed, stuffy, headachy, sore throat, yuck. I stayed home in bed for most of the day. I did get to finish re-reading Eat to Live and I also got to listen to a couple of Dr. Fuhrman's radio shows over at Voice of America. I don't have an ipod for my commute and never have enough free time to listen to a whole program, so that was a treat today.

I am now fully re-immersed in the Eat to Live lifestyle! Here we go!

Oh yeah, I also lost another pound. I'm at 183 with 44 pounds gone.

Today's summary:
B: banana, 1/2 cantaloupe, clementine
L: leftovers: Maharastrian salad and Honolulu skillet beans
D: large green salad with low-fat dressing, sauteed kale (with no oil), white bean and roasted garlic soup (Vegan with a Vengeance), whole wheat homemade bagel with fruit spread (Big Book of Bread Machine Recipes)
Exercise: none
Total calories: 1121, protein 43g, fat 15g, fiber 38g

all or nothing thinking

2007-02-22T16:36:00.000-08:00

I had a nice walk with a friend of mine today. I shared with her my current worries about slip-sliding back to my old SAD ways. She said a couple of things that were very helpful to me. She noted that I'm engaging in all-or-nothing thinking. Either I'm on the program doing it perfectly, or else I'm going to blow it and fail miserably. Perfectionism - not good.

The funny thing is that I'm so good about not being a perfectionist in so many areas in my life. I'm used to doing good enough work or effort in areas where it's OK to do that, and doing great work where it's important. Perhaps I need to think of this change in lifestyle as something where good enough work will get me the greatest gains in health - especially if perfectionistic thinking gets me to a place of failure.

On our walk we also talked about the law of attraction (see Steve Pavlina's blog for more details), and self-fulfilling prophecies. So if I'm worried about what I don't want to have - e.g. too much fat - maybe that's what I'll ultimately attract into my life if I continue to think about it that way - too much fat. If I switch it around and say that I want optimal health - that's ultimately a better thing to have as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Good food for thought (so to speak!)

Today's summary:
B: berry smoothie with orange juice, kale, and flax seed
S: 1/2 oz almonds
L: corn tortilla chips and salsa, red cabbage and carrot slaw, fruit salad, corn/vegetable/bean salad.
D: large green salad with low-fat dressing, asparagus with orange sauce (The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen), Summer Vegetable Soup (The Ultimate Slow Cooker Cookbook)
Exercise: walking about 1 hour and 40 minutes
Total calories: 1014, protein 34g, fat 24g, fiber 45g

I was so excited at lunch today. We had a small potluck retirement party for one of our colleagues. The wonderful thing was that there was lots of ETL-friendly food so that I could have a whole plateful. I had brought my lunch just in case I didn't get enough, but I saved it for tomorrow. The food at the party was wonderful and there were even a couple of other things I could have had as well. I didn't need the corn chips - so that was one thing I could have done better. I did avoid eating cheese doodles, a cheese ball with wheat thins, cold cuts with cheese and white bread, devil's food cake with buttercream frosting, white pasta salad, etc.

trouble ahead? or trouble behind?

2007-02-21T17:26:00.000-08:00

Despite re-reading Eat to Live I had a little struggle yesterday. I was home in the afternoon with my kids during their February vacation and my daughter had a friend over. They decided to make some popcorn with butter (the last animal product in our house). I ended up having about a cup of it. Later I made some more oatmeal cookies for the kids, and... I had one of them.

These indiscretions add up to a mere 120 calories - not much in the grand scheme of things, but ... it makes me a little worried. First of all, I wasn't really hungry. Second, butter and sugar, ACK! Can you say trigger foods? Third, in the past, with other diets, I've typically fizzled out after about 4 months and/or 40 pounds. Guess where I am right now?

So, I need to be very conscious about what I'm doing here - I don't want to backslide! So, to keep up the commitment, I joined up at Dr. Fuhrman's site. I'm going to need to spend some time there and re-immerse myself in this mindset - and remind myself of my health goals.

Yesterday's summary:
B: fruit smoothie with soy milk, kale, and flax seed
L: sunshine carrot salad, leftover old world minestrone
S: oatmeal cookie, buttered popcorn
D: green salad with low-fat dressing, stuffed zucchini (Ultimate Slow Cooker Cookbook), a dinner from the freezer (I don't know what recipe it was, but it had white beans and tomatoes in it :-)
Exercise: 40 minutes pilates and 40 minutes walking
Total calories: 1308, protein 40g, fat 26g, fiber 42g

Today:
B: banana, clementine, 1/2 cantaloupe
L: maharastrian salad (The Everything Indian Cookbook), leftover bean and vegetable burritos, clementine
D: green salad with low-fat dressing, spinach chickpea and brown rice soup (see below for the recipe)
Exercise: 40 minutes swimming
Total calories: 1078, protein 35g, fat 23g, fiber 36g

Spinach, Chickpea and Brown Rice Soup
Serves 4

1 large yellow onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic
1/2 t. marjoram/oregano
1/4 t. rosemary
1 lb. fresh spinach, trimmed and rinsed, or a thawed 10 oz. package frozen spinach
2 15 oz. cans chickpeas, drained
6-8 cups of vegetable broth
1 cup cooked brown rice
black pepper to taste

Water saute the onion until soft and cooked. Stir in the garlic, oregano and rosemary and saute for 2 more minutes. Add spinach, cover and cook over moderate heat until tender, about 5 minutes.

Add chickpeas and broth and bring to a simmer over moderate heat. Add brown rice and cook uncovered, stirring occasionally 10 minutes more. Stir in pepper to taste.

re-education

2007-02-19T16:42:00.000-08:00

Given the slow backslide I've been experiencing, I decided to re-read Eat to Live. I really, deeply want to succeed this time and I want to heed the signals of slippage. I'm about a third of the way through the book and I'm finding it very useful to reconnect with the basics. This time I'm underlining things and really thinking about what Dr. Fuhrman says. I've even put a sign on my refrigerator that says, "Salad is the main dish!" right when he says to do it in the book.

Needless to say, today has been a great E2L day!

My mother called me yesterday while browsing her local Barnes & Noble bookstore asking me about Eat to Live. She was planning to pick up a copy! I don't know if she is just trying to figure me out, or if she might be thinking about trying it. I'm happy in either case!

Summary:
B: banana, 2 clementines, kiwi
L: leftover sunshine carrot salad, leftover bean and vegetable burritos
D: large green salad with low-fat dressing, orange broccoli (Martha Stewart Living magazine), Honolulu Skillet Beans (Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home)
exercise: nothing formal, but we worked all day on fixing up my daughter's room, putting it all back together, cleaning up, hanging pictures, curtains, moving furniture, etc. I'm tired!
Total calories: 1116, protein 38g, fat 22g, fiber 41g

cookies

2007-02-18T17:08:00.000-08:00

Since I started eating in Eat to Live style, my family has come along for the ride. My husband and daughter have been doing great, but my son has been tough to convert. He's also on some medication that suppresses his appetite so we've been a little concerned that he is not gaining weight. He's very tall for his age (99th percentile) and is totally skinny. So I'm always on the look out for yummy, E2L-friendly food with a good number of calories for him. This is difficult because he won't eat nuts or beans or vegetables. He'll eat grains and fruit reliably. My main success so far is doctoring up his smoothies. I put in some kale, avocado and nut butter in with the banana, blueberries, strawberries and mango.

Today I made some oatmeal cookies that were fat free and vegan. I made half of them plain for my son and the rest with dairy-free carob chips for my husband and daughter. The good news is that he loved the cookies! (It's good news because he really doesn't go for cookies very often). The bad news is that the recipe I used has sugar in it. Now that I know he likes vegan oatmeal cookies, I need to figure out what to substitute for the sugar. So, if a recipe calls for 3/4 cup of sugar, what can you put in its place?

Now, the problem with making a new recipe for cookies means that I just had to taste them. So that's what I did. I had two - one with carob chips, one without. I can see why my son likes them - they were great! So I had some sugar. Hmmm. I think it's time to stop this little creeping backslide - extra grains here, extra grains there, and suddenly I'm eating sugar! No way! No more!

OK, I'm calm now...

Here's how today worked out:
B: fruit smoothie with kale, flax seed, soy milk
S: 2 fat free vegan oatmeal cookies (with sugar!:-( )
L: leftover summer rolls from restaurant, leftover old-world minestrone soup, sunshine carrot salad
D: green salad with low fat dressing and mandarin oranges, Dilly Beans (Moosewood Cooks at Home), Bean and Vegetable Burritos (Horn of the Moon Cookbook)
Exercise: painting (1 hour)
Total calories: 1394, protein 47g, fat 27g, fiber 50g

Yesterday was really busy - lots of shopping and getting my daughter's room ready to be painted (the color of a raspberry-blueberry smoothie!). Here's how the day looked:
B: banana, 2 kiwi's, orange
L: (ate out), one fried vegan dumpling, summer rolls, vegetable lo mein
D: green salad with low fat dressing, Old-World Minestrone with beans (Ultimate Slow Cooker Cookbook)
Exercise: painting (1 hour)
Total calories: 1200 (estimate), protein 50g, fat 21g, fiber 38g

We went out to eat at the same restaurant as we ate at a few weeks ago where I sampled lots of stuff and generally overate. I did a lot better this time, I tried only one fried thing. I'm sure there was oil in my lunch, but not too much. The major indulgence was salt, I'm sure.

my nemesis

2007-02-16T16:25:00.000-08:00

My nemesis is grain-based stuff. Tonight the big temptation was a lovely pizza bread, crafted by my husband. It had tomato sauce in it and it smelled so wonderful as I walked in the door from work. I did indulge in 2 slices. It was made very healthily, whole grains, low fat and all that - but I had already had oatmeal for breakfast and so I didn't need it.

Perhaps I'm stress eating. I had to teach a class today. I'm not a big fan of getting up in front of strangers and I always feel a fair amount of anxiety for at least a day ahead of time. As usual, the class went off great and I got positive feedback. Maybe anxiety is at the root of this indulgence in grain-based stuff. Now that the class is over, if stress is the culprit, then I should be home-free. Let's see how the weekend goes.

Here's the day's summary:

B: oatmeal with apple, and raisins
L: leftover Indian coleslaw, leftover Easiest Black Bean chili, clementine, 1 oz. almonds
D: green salad with low-fat dressing, Vegetable Soup for all Seasons (Ultimate Slow Cooker Cookbook), 2 slices pizza bread.
Exercise: swimming 20 minutes
Total calories: 1211, protein 44g, fat 28g, fiber 48g.

Ultimately today was a healthier day than yesterday.

vulnerability

2007-02-15T17:06:00.000-08:00

I had too many grains today. Lately I've been pretty good about it, but I succumbed at dinnertime by having whole wheat pasta, when I could have had leftover chili. Since I had some brown rice at lunch, I really didn't need the pasta. My husband had even heated up the chili for me and it was sitting side by side on the table with the pasta. I guess I just really wanted the pasta. So what's my vulnerability here? Is it pasta? Should I make up my plate in the kitchen before I go out to the table? Could it have been that I was tired? I'm not so sure that was the reason.

In any case it seems that my post from a few days ago about not craving stuff may be a bit off. Boy, this is a grand learning experience. On a positive note, I didn't overeat the pasta!

Here's the day's summary:
B: fruit smoothie with chard, soy milk and flax seed
L: (ate out) vegetable saute with tofu (fried) and brown rice
S: cashews
D: green salad with low fat dressing, whole wheat spaghetti with tomato sauce.
Total calories: 1159, protein 39g, fat 37g, fiber 31g
No exercise today

It's amazing how, on the days I eat out, the fat content goes way up and the fiber goes way down.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2007-02-14T16:21:00.000-08:00

I missed posting yesterday because I was making a Valentine's card for my honey.

I've dropped another few pounds and I'm down to 184. Yay - 43 pounds total so far!

Here's what has happened over the past two days:

Yesterday:
B: oatmeal with apples, raisins and flax seed
S: 1 oz. almonds
L: (ate out) spinach salad with green apple and sugared pecans, tomato basil soup
D: Green beans with coconut (The Everything Indian Cookbook), Italian-Style bean soup (The Ultimate Slow Cooker Cookbook), whole wheat bread
Total calories: 1250, protein 37g, fat 45g(!), fiber 36g
Exercise: 40 minutes Pilates and 60 minutes walking
The salad dressing that I had at lunch had a full-fat salad dressing and I'm sure it had some sugar in it too. That accounts for the high-fat day (which in the past would have been a pretty low fat day for me!). The salad was truly wonderful though!

Today:
B: 1/2 cantaloupe, banana, clementine
L: 1/2 oz. almonds, red cabbage/carrot coleslaw, leftover Italian-style bean soup, clementine.
D: Carrot Tomato Salad (The Everything Indian Cookbook), Baked Cabbage (The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen), Red Bean Chipotle Burgers with catsup in a whole wheat wrap.
Total calories: 1190, protein 40g, fat 19g, fiber 44g
Exercise: 30 minutes swimming

lack of cravings

2007-02-12T16:23:00.000-08:00

I'm starting to be a believer. I've read that if you feed your body good nutrition, and don't feed it refined carbs and high fat foods, that you no longer crave to overeat food of any kind anymore. I don't mean just getting over cravings for toxic things. For me, I find that I'm not needing to overeat on any kind of food these days, even the healthy things that I shouldn't eat too much of - like nuts. I'm able to stop at 1 oz. without a problem.

The need to eat for emotional reasons seems to be totally gone and I haven't been doing any deep soul searching or anything like that. This past weekend, when faced with all kinds of unhealthy foods, I found that it wasn't too hard to bypass all the sweets, even though I was in a situation where I didn't know many people and was expected to socialize, which is quite stressful for me. I'm coming up on 4 months on ETL and I have to say that I've never found it this easy to stick with an eating plan for so long.

I've been feeling so strong and resolute, thinking that somehow I've discovered some awesome willpower source (that I've never had before) - when maybe, just maybe, it's simply my body and brain getting their acts together since they are being fed so well.

Today has been a really good day:
B: fruit smoothie with chard, flax seed and soy milk
L: 1/2 oz almonds, red cabbage and carrot cole slaw, leftover lentil and roasted red pepper soup, clementine
D: Indian-style cole slaw (The Everything Indian Cookbook), Easiest Black Bean and Brown Rice Chili (Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook), 1/2 whole grain tortilla
Exercise: 40 minutes swimming
Total calories: 1227, protein 46g, fat 23g, fiber 58g

This is a much more nutritious day than yesterday!

busy day out

2007-02-11T17:50:00.000-08:00

I had two meals out today. At lunch we went to a potluck with my son's class to welcome a new student. We brought a red cabbage/carrot coleslaw so that I knew that I could have something ETL friendly. That, and a fruit salad were the only appropriate things for me to eat. I ended up having those two things, plus a couple of pieces of sushi, some baked pita chips, part of a fresh waffle, and some noodles with peanut sauce. It amounted to a plate of food that wasn't overly full. I managed to avoid eating the cheesecake, bagels with cream cheese, apple pie, brownies, lemonade, pound cake, syrup, etc. etc. We had a blast and I'm glad with my choices for today.

Right after that we went to Ikea to get some stuff for my daughter's room. I managed to avoid the frozen yogurt and cinnamon buns, but we needed to eat out afterwards since we were still far from home and totally hungry. We stopped at a pizza/sub shop. I got some pasta with tomato sauce that came with some garlic bread. I could have gotten a salad, but I knew that it wouldn't have been enough for me given how hungry I was.

So overall, it was a very white flour intensive day. Here's how it broke down (even being generous with what I ate):
Total calories: 1144, protein 31g, fat 17g, fiber 20g

These days it is shocking to me how quickly the nutritional content of my day goes way down when I don't get to eat my regular food. Look at that fiber number! It's way below my average - though it's funny to think that 20g would have been a lot for me in the past.

one push-up

2007-02-10T16:17:00.000-08:00

After dinner today we got a little silly and tried out various physical feats in our living room. We observed that my husband really needs to work on his flexibility. My daughter could also improve her flexibility and her ability to do push-ups. I was able to do a single push-up, which is probably one more than I used to be able to do, but it would be great to do more. I'd like to also work on my flexibility. It will be interesting to see how much more I'll be able to do over time!

I also took measurements today because I desperately need a new swimsuit and plan to order one online. I hadn't taken measurements before I started, but I had a vague idea what some of my measurements had been. I was shocked to see that I've lost at least 7 inches off my hips, and at least 5 inches each off of my bust and waist. No wonder all my clothes had been falling off! It has been terrific to see so many amazing changes in my body since October - all in addition to feeling great from eating such nutritious foods. I expect to be able to order a size 14 swimsuit. Right now I'm wearing a size 20W - you can imagine how enormous that must be!

Here's the summary of the day:
B: 1/2 c. oatmeal with apple, raisins and flax seed
L: green salad with low fat dressing, leftover red, gold, black and green chili, 1 clementine
S: cashews and pecans
D: green salad with low fat dressing and pineapple, golden cauliflower soup (see below for recipe - it's yummy), Indian red kidney beans
Total calories 1165, protein 42g, fat 35g, fiber 46g

Golden Cauliflower Soup (originally published in the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine?)
serves 4 (main dish soup), or 8 (side dish)

2 heads of golden cauliflower (I used white cauliflower), florets only
1 medium onion, chopped
6 cups vegetable broth
1/4 c. fresh thyme
black pepper to taste

In a large pot combine the cauliflower, onion, vegetable stock, 1/2 the thyme and pepper. Bring to a boil over medium-low heat. Lower the heat, cover the pan and simmer for 30 minutes. In a blender (or with an immersion blender) puree the soup.

Return to a boild and add more pepper, stock, and/or thyme to taste.

a disappointing meal out

2007-02-09T18:21:00.000-08:00

We tried another vegan restaurant tonight - a vegan sub and pizza place. Sadly it wasn't very good. They tried very hard to replicate a typical New England sub shop, but the imitations aren't nearly as good as the real stuff. It would have been great if they embraced their vegan-ness and came up with creative alternatives to the traditional sub shop fare. Case in point is that they offered very few vegetable dishes! I think the best part was the smoothie I ordered. My husband and I split a broccoli and spinach calzone (with no fake cheese). For some reason they served it with cold tomato sauce. Very strange! I think the broccoli was thawed frozen broccoli, rather than fresh. Oh well, we aren't likely to go there again. I wasn't able to stick to strict E2L, but I think I made the healthiest choice possible - which is definitely progress.

Here's the summary of the day:
B: fruit smoothie with romaine, flax seed and soy milk
S: minneola orange
L: green salad, leftover chickpea broccoli casserole, leftover red, green, black and gold chili, 1/2 oz. almonds
D: 1/2 broccoli/spinach calzone with tomato sauce, citrus smoothie (made with fruit and juice)
Exercise: 30 minutes swimming
Total calories: 1226 (estimate), protein 31g, fat 26g, fiber 41g

40 pounds gone!

2007-02-08T18:06:00.000-08:00

I'm now 40 pounds down from my starting weight. It has taken 14.5 weeks. 187! Yay! My weight loss has slowed down a bit, but I still feel really committed and strong. My biggest challenges aren't avoiding sugar and dairy these days - but making sure I don't eat too many grains or fats. Struggling over eating too much healthy food versus the old struggles to not eat lots of sugar - it a good trade to make!

Here's the day:
B: 1/2 cantaloupe, banana, orange
L: (ate out) veggie wrap and roasted eggplant soup, cashews
D: green salad with low fat dressing, Red, gold, black and green chili (Moosewood Cooks At Home), small sliver of corn bread
S: popcorn
Exercise: walking 3o minutes

lots of exercise

2007-02-07T16:25:00.000-08:00

I tried out a new exercise DVD today, Kundalini Yoga. I did pretty well until they tried an intermediate yoga exercise. Since this was my first time ever trying yoga, I'm not surprised that I couldn't do it. Something to work toward!

Then I decided I would walk halfway to work. I'm lucky that there are lots of public transportation options on my way to work. I could walk almost any distance and then pick up the subway or bus to go the rest of the way. It was about 10 degrees out this morning so walking halfway seemed reasonable, but I didn't want to be too cold. I started my walk, and by the time I got to Kenmore Square (1/2 way) I was feeling nice and warm so I decided to walk another quarter of the distance. That felt pretty good too and I decided to brave the Harvard Bridge, even on a windy 10-degree day. The warmth lasted the whole way, but my legs did start to feel the cold by the end. I'm so glad I did it! A total of 1 hour and 40 minutes of exercise, all before 8:30am.

Here's the food situation:
B: fruit smoothie, green lettuce, soy milk
L: spinach salad, leftover baked falafel, leftover lentil and red pepper soup
S: almonds
D: Chinese cabbage with lemon and ginger (Fields of Greens), Chickpea Broccoli Casserole (Vegan with a Vengeance)
Total calories: 1117, protein 40g, fat 29g, fiber 47g

No grains! Lots of exercise! Plenty of protein! Plenty of fiber! Life is good!

ETL evangelism

2007-02-06T17:06:00.000-08:00

I had lunch with a good friend today. Her husband has diabetes and struggles with his weight. About two months or so ago, he found out that his doctors want to put him on medication for the diabetes. I told my friend about Eat to Live, that many people have had great results with their diabetes on it. Well, he did read it, but he rejected it. He has decided that the doctors who say diabetics should follow a low-carb, high-fat diet are the right ones to follow.

Fast forward two months to today. It turns out that he also is depressed and his blood sugar is still too high. I so wanted to go see him and tell him to just try Eat to Live for 6 weeks. What has he got to lose? I'd be shocked if he didn't feel a lot better.

It didn't go like that though. I kept my mouth shut and listened and just tried to be there for my friend. As someone who is taking a long time to figure out how to live healthfully (I'm not there yet!), I can understand the mental state of my friend's husband - you just aren't ready until you're ready. I also appreciated how hard it is for my friend to always be there for him and yet feel powerless to help him. It made me think of my husband and how supportive he has always been, no matter what self-destructive behavior I've engaged in. People do a lot for love!

In any case, I reigned in my evangelical impulses - and I think we are all better off that way :-)

Here's today's summary:
B: 1/2 c. oatmeal, apple, raisin, flax seed
S: small fruit smoothie (at a work event)
L: leftover Maharastrian cabbage salad, leftover black bean enchiladas
D: spinach salad, carolina kale, lentil and red pepper soup (Not your mothers slow cooker cookbook)

Total calories: 1117, protein 47g, fat 22g, fiber 57g
Exercise: 40 minutes pilates

It was a really great Eat to Live day for me!

back to normal

2007-02-05T18:24:00.000-08:00

Back to work, back to my regular ways of eating. It's such a relief! Today was a good day - here is the summary:

B: 1/2 cantaloupe, orange, small banana
L: green salad with pineapple, black bean enchiladas (Horn of the Moon)
D: baked falafel (recipe recently posted on the Eat-2-Live yahoo group), Maharastrian Cabbage Salad (Everything Indian Cookbook), Curried Peppers and Corn (Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home)
Exercise: 30 minutes swimming
Total calories: 1261, protein 44g, fat 22g, fiber 47g

My husband is amazing - he made those three dishes for dinner from scratch (as he does every night). I'm just so thankful that he is so supportive. Whatever success I'm having is as much due to his support as from my own hard work. I must never underestimate his wonderfulness!

I made it through the weekend!

2007-02-04T15:35:00.000-08:00

Our guests have left and I survived 3 meals out of the house in a row. My plan for last night at the meat-intensive barbeque place came off without a hitch - I had a salad with low-fat dressing on the side and some baked beans (probably not vegetarian - oh well). It wasn't too hard to pull off after all. It helped that the smell of all that meat was somewhat off-putting. It's continually fascinating to me how my body and tastes have changed - I used to get a pulled-pork sandwich with corn bread and butter and corn-on-the-cob and butter (note all the butter!) at this place.

This morning for brunch, we went to a local favorite place, called Zaftigs. Think: totally indulgent Jewish deli. Yum. We shared a potato pancake order (I had 1/2 of one pancake) and my main dish was a fruit plate and a bowl of oatmeal. So, I had a small indulgence, and was really good otherwise.

Here's how it's been for the past 2 days:

Saturday:
B: the usual smoothie
S: almonds
L: vegetable pad thai , 1.5 steamed dumplings
D: green salad and baked beans
exercise: 15 minutes walking
Total calories: 1410, protein 60g, fat 57g!, fiber 23g (estimated)

Sunday:
Brunch: 1/2 potato pancake, 1/2 c. oatmeal with raisins, mixed fruit plate
Dinner: green salad with pineapple juice dressing, stuffed zucchini (The Ultimate Slow Cooker Cookbook), black bean enchiladas (Horn of the Moon Cookbook, no cheese, no oil)
Total calories: 1197, protein 40g, fat 19g, fiber 42g

Saturday wasn't so bad considering I had two meals out and ate something Fuhrman unfriendly (pad thai). I certainly don't want to make a pattern out of it though! Today was much better. I was really hungry by dinnertime and enjoyed the recipes we made very much.

This weekend I feel like I've finally gotten my energy back after the bladder infection and then the headachy-virus thing over the course of 2 weeks. Yay! It's good to be back to normal.

Our house guests were my parents and my mom brought some clothes for me. She had lost some weight last year and was bringing me stuff that no longer fits her. It all fit me though - it is fantastic to have an infusion of clothes that fit. It inspired me to go through my closet and fling all the big stuff. I got rid of 3 garbage bags full of too-large clothes. The new things are a little more form-fitting than I'm used to - so it's going to take some getting used to. My husband assures me that I look great and it is time to show off my emerging curves. The cool thing about the new clothes is that they are all large and x-tra large - finally - clothes from regular stores. I'm going to have to retrain myself to shop entirely differently!

a quick entry

2007-02-03T13:50:00.000-08:00

We have house guests this weekend so my posts may be sporadic.

I had a good day yesterday - swimming in the morning, healthy food all day, even eating out at lunch. Because I didn't get beans at lunch I was probably low on protein, but no biggie.

Today we ate out at lunch and are going to eat out at dinner. We went out to my favorite Thai place. Instead of getting the Fuhrman-friendly vegetable saute with brown rice, I got the vegetable pad thai (had tofu and egg in it). So, I won't be surprised if I have some sugar cravings later because I know that pad thai is made with some sugar in the sauce. I really enjoyed it, but it makes me aware of how slippery the slope is with regard to eating off E2L.

Later we are going to a barbeque/ribs place. There is not much E2L food there, so I think I'll have a salad. If I must I'll get some baked beans. If I manage to avoid the baked beans, I could always run next door to Baja Betty's and get a side order of black beans and salsa and eat it at home. I feel like I have a plan and we will see if it all works out! If I stick to this plan, I'll manage to stay just above my goal range of calories.

A walking fool!

2007-02-01T17:20:00.000-08:00

Today, quite by accident, I ended up walking for more than 2 hours. The best part is that while I certainly feel tired, I'm not at all sore. This is major progress for me. One hour of walking in the past would cause joint pain and achiness. I guess carrying 38 pounds less makes a huge difference!

This morning the weather felt good - not too cold, so I decided on the spot to walk all the way to work, which takes an hour. Later, I had set up time with a friend to have a health check in (which we used to do, but hadn't for a long time). We had planned to walk for a half hour, but we got so into our conversation that we walked for a whole hour. It was fun!

She's the first person from work that I've told about my blog. I've kept this anonymous from everybody I know except my husband because I don't want to feel reticent about sharing anything. But my friend is different - she knows all this stuff about me already. It felt good to share it with her. It turns out she is creating a new blog too.

Here's the daily run down:
B: fruit smoothie with kale, flax seed and soy milk
L: leftover indian-style coleslaw, leftover ziti with broccoli and white beans, minneola orange, 1 oz. cashews
D: large green salad with low fat dressing, garlicky kale with tahini dressing (Vegan with a Vengeance), black bean and corn chili (Ultimate Slow Cooker Cookbook)
Exercise: 2 hours walking
Total Calories: 1489, protein 56g, fat 38g, fiber 51g

It was a lot calories - the ziti and the chili dishes added up quickly! - but lately I've been averaging at the low end of my range of 1100-1300, so an occasional day with more calories isn't a terrible thing. Also, all that walking is good for burning off some :-)

Happy Meals

2007-01-31T17:47:00.000-08:00

Has everyone seen this article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine this weekend?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

It's a fantastic article about nutritionism (notice the "ism" at the end) and how it's affected the typical western diet. The recommendations are very similar to Eat to Live - eat whole food and not too much of it.

There was a concept in the article about the western diet moving from "leaves to seeds" - where our typical diet relies too heavily on "seeds" - aka grains and roots and fruits and nuts, which are relatively lower in micronutrients compared to "leaves". What we want to do is move from seeds to leaves instead, particularly to have a good balance between plant-based omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids. It's a helpful way to look at how I've been eating today - the "leaves" I've had today include red cabbage, celery, broccoli, cilantro. The "seeds" include cantaloupe, bananas, kiwi, almonds, pecans, peanuts, carrot, potato, whole wheat pasta, white beans, cucumber, tomato, onion, and tangelo. By all accounts, especially by volume, calorie amounts, and number of species, I've had way more "seeds" than "leaves". So it would probably be in the best interest of my health to try to get some more leafy greens. I still feel really good about how I ate today, but I do need to get my leafy green salads in .

Here's the summary:
B: 1/2 cantaloupe, banana, kiwi fruit, 6 almonds
L: red cabbage slaw, smoky pinto bean soup, 1/2 tangelo
D: indian-style coleslaw (The Everything Indian Cookbook), ziti with broccoli and white beans (365 great 20 minutes recipes)
S: banana and 10 walnut halves
Exercise: swimming 30 minutes
Total calories: 1166, protein 36g, fat 25g, fiber 36g

cookbooks!

2007-01-30T18:00:00.000-08:00

My headache finally broke today! Thank goodness. This headache didn't do the expected thing and turn into a cold. Instead it just hung around making a nuisance of itself.

On to better things!

Finding new recipes for eating according to E2L has been so much fun and it has caused me to get to know all my cookbooks in a whole new way. I hardly touch the old standards, and some that we've kept around all these years are suddenly wonderful.

Here's my inventory of cookbooks:

Moosewood Restaurant New Classics
365 Great 20-minutes recipes
The Everything Indian Cookbook
The Ultimate Slow Cooker Cookbook
The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen
Eat to Live
The Biggest Book of Slow Cooker Recipes
Vegan with a Vengeance
Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook
More-with-Less Cookbook
Moosewood Restaurant cooks at Home
Beyond the Moon Cookbook
Horn of the Moon Cookbook
Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook
From Asparagus to Zucchini: A Guide to Farm Fresh Seasonal Produce (created by a CSA we used in Illinois)
my trusty binder, which holds all the loose recipes I've gathered over time (such as those from fatfreevegan.com

These sources have yielded 62 cooked vegetable recipes, 18 raw veggie recipes (doesn't count green salad possibilities), and 73 bean-based recipes. It's been a huge variety! Once we get through the recipes on a first pass, I'll have to post our favorites.

I have my eye on a few more cookbooks as well, but I think I'll have to wait until we make it through our existing recipes. My wishlist includes the Vegan Lunchbox, 20 Minutes to Dinner: Quick, Low-Fat, Low-Calorie Vegetarian Meals, La Dolce Vegan, Vive le Vegan, Rice and Spice, and Vegetarian Planet. Thinking about all this is making my mouth water!

Here's what happened today:
B: oatmeal with apples, raisins and flax seed
L: leftover red cabbage slaw, leftover smoky pinto bean soup, a huge tangelo, 1/2 oz almonds
D: green salad with lowfat dressing, leftover cabbage with black mustard seeds, leftover spicy couscous with chickpeas and mixed dried fruit.
S: dried apricots
Exercise: 30 minutes walking
Total Calories: 1109, protein 34g, fat 18g, fiber 43g
I think my leftovers that don't have many beans are almost gone - so hopefully I'll start seeing an improvement in my protein numbers. It feels like they been a little low lately. I didn't realize until I wrote it all down that I had grains or starchy vegetables at every meal today. I'll have to watch out for that. I also had more dried fruit than I would usually have. Overall though, I'm happy with the day.

2007-01-29T17:46:00.000-08:00

Still feeling crappy, but I'm happy to report that I haven't been going off the plan as a consequence. This hasn't turned into a cold as I was expecting, but has remained a bad headache. Overall it just makes me very tired.

Here's what I've done today:
B: fruit smoothie with kale, flax seed and soy milk
L: red cabbage cole slaw, leftover spicy couscous with chickpeas and mixed dry fruit, apple, 1/2 oz. of almonds
D: green salad with low fat dressing, cabbage with black mustard seeds (The Everything Indian Cookbook), smoky pinto bean and potato soup (Ultimate Slow Cooker Cookbook).
S: dried apricots
Exercise: 30 minutes walking. Normally I would swim today, but I figured that walking would be enough.
Total calories: 1192, protein 33g, fat 23g, fiber 45 g. It was a good day for fruit, raw and cooked veggies, and grains/starchy veggies!

smug no more

2007-01-28T16:53:00.000-08:00

I'll admit I've been feeling some nutritional superiority over my fellow humans who have been suffering with this winter's round of colds and other assorted nasty bugs. I've been fortunate, that even with two kids picking up whatever germs are out there, that I've avoided being sick (with viruses anyway) since starting E2L.

Well, I can't say that anymore. Nope. I thought I was suffering some headachy withdrawal from my Friday evening indulgence at the restaurant, but I have to come to the conclusion that I've picked up some virus along the way. I even took a nap this afternoon. Now I'm curious (and hopeful?) about how quickly I'll come out of it given all this healthy living.

I haven't had enough calories today, but frankly, I'm just not that hungry - I think I'll follow my body's cues on this one.

B: 1/2 cantaloupe, banana, kiwi
L: red cabbage slaw, slice of whole wheat bread with peanut butter
D: red cabbage slaw, green beans with tomatoes and basil (Vegetarian Gourmet, Summer '95), spicy couscous with chickpeas and dried fruit (365 Great 20-minute recipes, no oil)
No exercise

Total calories: 932, protein 30g, fat 14g, fiber 34g
Good on fruit and raw veggies. Not too many grains, though quinoa would have been a better choice than couscous. Light on beans and cooked veggies.

yesterday's summary

2007-01-28T14:31:00.000-08:00

Didn't get to post yesterday due to lots of busy-ness. It was a good day. After the morning errands (lots of grocery shopping as usual!), I got to play Mah Jongg with some work friends. The hostess was so sweet - everything she had for our first round of snacks was perfectly E2L appropriate (except the veggie dip, which wasn't hard to avoid)! I was able to be quite satisfied by the time she brought out the non-E2L-appropriate sweets tray (baklava and other assorted pastries). I brought mineral water and cashews to contribute.

B: 1/2 oatmeal with banana, raisins and flax seed.
L: radish salad (The Everything Indian Cookbook), leftover black bean and quinoa chili
S: raspberries, strawberries, cashews and almonds, Trader Joe's papadum chips (about 6)
D: green salad with low-fat dressing, stir-fried cauliflower (Everything Indian Cookbook, very, very spicy!), Spicy Three Bean Chili (Ultimate Slow Cooker Cookbook) (this turned out to be so-so and not spicy at all!)
Total calories: 1220, protein 44g, fat 27g, fiber 56g

P.S. The total calories for my eating out frenzy yesterday came to about 1700 - not as bad as I was expecting! I definitely am noticing that I'm retaining water like crazy after all that soy sauce and MSG though.

eating out frenzy

2007-01-26T17:42:00.000-08:00

I had the good fortune today to get to eat out twice. For lunch I went to Anna's Taqueria and made some good choices. I had the grilled mixed vegetables with pinto beans, hot sauce, salsa on top of a little bit of vegetarian rice. Contrast this to what I used to get there: a super steak burrito with extra cheese, refried beans and sour cream. Big difference - probably about 800 calories and lots of saturated fat!

For dinner, my family and I went to an Asian, vegan restaurant called Grasshopper, in the Allston neighborhood in Boston. We had never been there before and wanted to treat ourselves to a dinner out. Boy, oh boy I indulged. I've never been to a vegan restaurant before, nor tried any of the common fake meats. I had gone in thinking I would find the E2L friendly dishes and stick with that, but that's not what happened at all. Here's what I had: a taste of wonton soup, a taste of hot and sour soup, a taste of "chicken" fingers with duck sauce, a bite of fried spring roll, 3 small fried tofu dumplings, 3 pieces of fried yellow bean cake (appetizer size), 2 pieces summer roll (not fried) (1" cylinder size), 1/2 a small fried wonton, a taste of my husband's "beef", and then finally I had my main course - vegetable lo mein, of which I ate most of the veggies and about 1/3 of the noodles. Holy fried foods! I think I might have overdosed on salt, oil and MSG, but I sure did enjoy every bite. Hopefully this bit of indulgence will last me for some time. It's funny, but I don't feel any remorse and I am not the least bit worried of falling off the wagon. We'll see tomorrow and the next day!

When we left the restaurant, we noted another vegan restaurant two doors down - T.J. Scallawags - a sub and pizza place. We picked up a menu on our way to the car. It looks like it might be easier to do E2L at that place than at the Grasshopper even. They have smoothies!

The summary of the day:
B: smoothie with kale, flax seed, and a bit of soy milk
L: see above
D: too much, see above
Total calories: more than usual - though I expect it was still less than 2000 calories.
Exercise: 30 minutes of swimming and about 15 minutes of walking more than usual.

daikon and red cabbage

2007-01-25T17:18:00.000-08:00

Today I tried two new vegetables that I've never had before: daikon and red cabbage. I knew when I started Eat to Live that I have long been pathetic with regard to vegetable consumption. Since we've started I've tried so many things: beets, cauliflower, kale, collard greens, swiss chard, chinese cabbage, bok choy, butternut squash, and acorn squash. Amazingly, once my taste buds came out of detox, I find that I can more than tolerate them - I dare say I even like the majority of these things! Today I can add two more to the list. I have to say that the daikon didn't thrill me, but it was fine - I would eat it again, though I might not go out of my way to do so. Red cabbage was really nice though.

I still have my blind spots for some foods - eggplant, mushrooms, tofu, okra. Someday I'll conquer those - but I'm not quite ready yet :-)

The daily summary:
B: 1/2 cantaloupe, banana, tangelo
L: raisin coleslaw (E2L), leftover sweet potato black bean hash, cashews, apple
D: vegetable medley with sesame sauce (vegetarian gourmet, winter 96), Simple mung bean curry with brown rice(The Everything Indian Cookbook)
S: air popped popcorn
Total Calories: 1292, protein 42g, fat 27g, fiber 46g
Exercise: 30 minutes walking

variations from eat to live

2007-01-24T17:18:00.000-08:00

I have two days to report on today:

Yesterday:
B: fruit smoothie with kale, soy milk and flax seed
L: spinach salad with maple pecan dressing, candied pecans and apple (lunch out!)
D: provencal spinach gratin (Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen), mixed-bean italian soup (Better Homes and Gardens Biggest Book of Slow Cooker recipes)
S: air-popped popcorn
Total calories: 978, protein 31g, fat 33g, fiber 44g
Exercise: walking 30 minutes

Today:
B: 1/2 oatmeal, apple, raisins, flax seed
L: leftover orange/cucumber salad, leftover swiss chard dolmas, almonds, apple
D: green bean salad, shredded carrot salad (The Everything Indian Cookbook), Black Bean and Sweet Potato Hash (Moosewood Restaurant New Classics)
Total calories: 1079, protein 30g, fat 34g, fiber 39g
Exercise: swimming 30 minutes

For both days I was good on grains and vegetables, but both days ended up high on fat and low on protein. The fat part usually happens if I have a full ounce of nuts during the day. But that's not the cause of the large percentage of fat for these two days. This is evidence of one of the intentional ways in which I've not been following E2L. We are still cooking with oil if a recipe calls for it. Most of the time we cut the oil back drastically and eliminate it here and there. I don't get more than a tablespoon in a day if any. I suppose this makes me a 90-10 eat to live person. I'm still losing weight at a pretty fast rate, so I'm not too worried about it. If my weight loss efforts stall, this will be a lever I can still pull, if need be.

The other way that I intentionally don't match eat to live is for salt. We still add it here and there, though I know my consumption levels are way lower than they used to be. I've dropped so many other addictions - caffeine, sugar, cheese, but this one seems more difficult than the others. Since I've been such a vegetable hater in the past, one of the challenges has been to make sure that what I'm eating tastes really good to me so that I keep eating it. It's been working great for me - I've been liking what we've been eating but have managed not to eat too much. My blood pressure hasn't been sensitive to salt, so I figure I still have some time to conquer this part.

The unintentional way I don't follow the plan is my struggle with grains. I'm working on that every day.

For the past two days I was also low on protein and overall calories, but I don't usually struggle with those things. I just didn't get my minimum cup of beans.

It's good to be conscious about it all. It keeps me on my toes and always trying to do better.

mini-plateau over

2007-01-22T17:27:00.000-08:00

I love it when plateaus of any kind end! Today the scale said I was at 190, for a total loss of 37 pounds. I had a good grain day, finally, too!

At work we've started a 12-week fitness challenge. My department is fielding 2 teams, and over the 12 weeks there are progressively increasing goals. This week starts with a goal of 150 minutes and by the final week the goal is to exercise 300 minutes. I got my first 30 minutes in today with a swim. The first few weeks aren't too hard but by the time we get to 300 minutes - it's pretty challenging to fit it all in. I work with a bunch of great people. We've had teams in this fitness event for the past 3 years and somehow we all manage to make it. The group encouragement is really cool and seems to work for all of us who sign up.

Here's what happened today:
B: 1/2 cantaloupe, 1/2 a large orange, 2/3 banana
L: raisin coleslaw (from E2L), swiss chard dolma leftovers, apple, cashews
D: orange, cucumber, red onion salad (Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen) and Black Bean and Quinoa Chili

Total calories: 1144, protein 38g, fat 25g, and fiber 38g
The protein is lower than I expected since I had beans at both lunch and dinner - but I suppose the dishes didn't have as many beans as I thought. Also the fat grams are higher than expected, but that seems to happen whenever I have nuts. I got the fruits and veggies covered today though! And it's worth saying again to myself - I had only one serving worth of grain (some brown rice in the dolmas, and quinoa in the chili)!

On to plan B

2007-01-21T17:06:00.000-08:00

OK, the plan I conceived of yesterday didn't work for me today. Once again we didn't have leftovers (those red bean chipotle burgers were great!), so at lunch I needed something with beans. I made the hommus as planned. But I forgot that I needed to eat it on something. I could have had carrots, or celery, or something, but what did I go for? Triscuits. Bummer. And on an oatmeal day too. I also forgot how bad the garlic breath is after the E2L recipe for hommus, even after brushing my teeth.

So I need a plan B and I think I've figured it out. I forgot that I bought some quick cup bean soups from Whole Foods awhile back. I just need to keep a few around for days like this, and then remember that I have them :-).

So here's how it went today:

B: 1/2 c. oatmeal, apple, raisin, flax seed
L: sunshine carrot salad, hommus and triscuits
D: green salad with low fat dressing, swiss chard dolmas with chickpeas (Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen cookbook - very, very yummy recipe!)

Total calories 1215, protein 38g, fat 32g, fiber 38g

We tried an indian broccoli dish with our dinner and it failed miserably. We tried to alter it to fit E2L but it didn't translate well. Oh well. What this means is that I was woefully short on cooked vegetables today. I was also short on fruit and heavy on the grains. I'm usually pretty good about getting the cooked veggies - but I have no good excuse for the grains, once again!

No exercise today, but swimming tomorrow

I need a plan!

2007-01-20T16:52:00.000-08:00

Today I got caught without a good plan for lunch. Usually I rely on leftovers for my midday meal, but for the first time since I've started, there weren't any leftovers to be had except for carrot salad. I should have realized that this is dangerous for me. So, I ended up with a less than great choice - a peanut butter and fruit spread sandwich with my carrot salad. Perhaps I need to have a default meal in mind when things like this happen. Maybe I should have my default be homemade hommus - it's pretty quick to make and would get me the beans I need.

I already have a default dinner if my family is having something that I shouldn't - it's that refried bean soup. That dinner is pretty quick to make, and has cooked veggies and beans in it.

So here's today's menu:
B: fruit smoothie with kale, soy milk and flax seed
L: sunshine carrot salad and a peanut butter and fruit spread sandwich
D: green salad with lowfat dressing, brussels sprouts with a dijon vinaigrette, red bean chipotle burgers

Calories:1237, protein 42g, fiber 48g, fat 31g (!)
High fat because the dressing for the carrot salad has nut butter in it, and then peanut butter - this is the first time I've gotten too many nuts. Otherwise the day ended better than expected and I really loved the new dishes at dinnertime.

I got out for a walk today for exercise. My son and I walked to an Indian food store about 3/4 mile away and got some new ingredients for some new dishes this week. We got some chickpea flour, amchoor (Mango) powder, black mustard seeds, and asafetida. They smell great!

mini plateaus

2007-01-19T16:26:00.000-08:00

I thankfully got the needed antibiotics today. I also took a sick day. It felt good not to have to rush at the doctors and then be able to go home and take a nap.

I weighed myself this morning and I was up a pound (193). There's no reason my body should do that based on what I've been eating, but there it is. It's probably due to the bladder infection, though how can I be retaining water when I have to go all the time. This also marks a full week and a half of staying at the same weight (more-or-less, despite the gain). So I'm calling it mini plateau #2.

My first mini plateau started just before Christmas and ended New Year's Day. The hardest part of that plateau is that the number on the scale was 200. You know how hard it was to have to wait to make it to "onederland"? Especially since I've been averaging a steady 3 lbs a week weight loss since I started E2L. During that plateau I weighed myself pretty much everyday because I was anxious to break that barrier. Of course that made it harder.

The mini-plateau ended finally on New Years Day with a 1 pound loss and then I proceeded to lose 8 pounds total in about a week and half (doing nothing different!) to my present stuck point of 192 (well, 193 now). Bodies are very strange! Now I'm not weighing myself everyday and I'm content to wait it out. Getting to 191 isn't as big a thing as breaking 200 was. I know it will eventually drop and patience is the key.

I have a friend who recently went through a 14 month plateau despite doing all the right things (according to the eating plan she is on - not E2L). She finally broke through it and she noted that she did manage to drop 2 sizes during those 14 months despite the reluctant scale. I'll have to keep that in mind when I eventually get to the inevitable major plateau. It's still possible to affect the % of fat on your body, build muscle and get healthier and healthier. With enough time doing E2L and getting closer to a healthy weight, I hope that I become less focused on the weight loss and more focused on overall health. It's something to shoot for!

So here's the day's summary:

B: 1/2 cantaloupe, banana, apple
L: fennel/orange/black olive salad, refried bean soup, corn tortilla
D: sunshine carrot salad, marinated zucchini (Mediterranean Vegan), lentil-veggie soup (Biggest Book of Slow Cooker Recipes)
S: air popped popcorn
lots of water

1150 calories, 39g protein, 20g fat, 45g fiber

I figured it out

2007-01-18T16:53:00.000-08:00

I now know why I've been dragging. I have a bladder infection - Ugh! I haven't had one of these in more than a decade, but it became abundantly clear today that is what's going on. I'll have to get myself to a doctor tomorrow before the weekend starts.

I did go swimming this morning despite feeling yucky. It felt good and I didn't get the sensation that my arms were going to drop off. After about 5 laps on Tuesday my arms were pretty beat and I could feel every stroke. But by the 10th lap or so, that sensation went away, though I could definitely feel the workout later. Today I didn't have that achy sensation, it just felt great!

Food was good through lunch, but by dinnertime I was feeling more out of sorts and didn't really make an effort. Here's what I had:

B: 1/2 c. oatmeal, grated apple, raisin, ground flax seed
L: clementine, 1 oz. almonds, fennel/orange/black olive salad, leftover braised cabbage with red beans and rice.
D: green beans and leftover refried bean soup with a toasted corn tortilla.

Total calories: 1060, 38g protein, 25g fat, 42g fiber
I had my usual pitfalls - I could have done without the corn tortilla (too many grains!) and I didn't start my meal with my usual leafy green salad. I was tempted to have whole wheat pasta and tomato sauce with the rest of my family, but knew that would totally overdo it with the grains and I wouldn't have ended up with as much protein. So I made a good choice there I think.

I can't wait for some antibiotics!

Tomorrow I think I'll write about mini-plateaus - because I think I'm on one :-)

Dragging today

2007-01-17T16:56:00.000-08:00

I'm feeling the effects of my swimming day yesterday - I'm beat! It's not quite 8pm and I'm ready to go to sleep!

It could be that I've made it worse by not having a terrific eating day today. I ate out for lunch at a local seafood restaurant. I managed to eat vegan but it was heavy on the starchy veggies and brown rice and I ate one of their great rolls (white flour based). I skipped the salad because the entree was already a budget buster. At home, for dinner, we had two new dishes and neither of them was very good (to me), so I filled in my meal of a salad with a couple of slices of homemade whole wheat bread. So it's been a high grain day - very atypical of me lately. I'm not quite sure of the cause and effect here - did I eat badly because I'm not feeling great? Or do I not feel good because I didn't eat well today? I'm not quite sure which it is. In any case, I'm going swimming again tomorrow - I'll get another chance to get exhausted and see what happens! :-)

B: fruit smoothie with kale and flax seed
L: roll, vegetarian box
D: green salad, 2 small slices of whole wheat bread with fruit spread, vegetable vindaloo
Total calories: 1144, 32 g protein, 37 g fat, 32 g fiber.

Why I Count Calories

2007-01-16T17:24:00.000-08:00

I've been rigorous about entering everything I eat into www.fitday.com to see how I'm doing each day. For some people this wouldn't be helpful, but for me, for now, it is essential.

Back in the bad old days of dieting I could recite how many calories there were in probably hundreds of foods, but I couldn't tell you anything about the nutrients, or how much fat there was, or how much fiber I was eating.

I got pretty good at figuring out how much I could eat in 1600 calories, but when I look back at those journal entries (when I was tracking such things) I'm amazed at how nutrient poor those days were.

When I changed my eating lifestyle to E2L, I had no way to gauge what I was getting in terms of calories or nutrients. It's been a whole new ball game. In the earlier weeks of E2L I'd finish dinner and have a headache, or feel like going straight to bed. When I would track what I ate, more often than not I found that I hadn't gotten nearly enough calories (like sub-1000). So, tracking calories and nutrients is helping me retrain my brain to understand how I good/ill I feel based on the amount of stuff I take in. It's a good kind of feedback to me.

Lately I feel like I'm making progress. I think I'm learning now how to make choices such that I automatically get to the 1100 - 1300 calorie range by the end of the day. Perhaps in the not-to-distant future I'll be able to stop looking at the calorie figures altogether. Then the next challenge will be to be aware that I'm getting the right types of foods in a day. I have to say that sometimes I'm so busy that I forget what I had for breakfast and lunch by the time I get home for dinner - in that situation it would be all too easy to go for grains, grains, grains. So I think I'll be tracking the foods I eat for a long time - to stay aware that yes, I did get some leafy greens today, and yes, I did get a pound of cooked veggies.

The ultimate goal, of course, will be to eat when I'm hungry and learn to listen to my body to understand the type of food that it really needs at that moment. I'll admit I'm really far away from that right now. No matter though, baby steps is what it takes and I'm committed to taking whatever amount of time it takes to get there.

So, how was today anyway?

B: 1/2 cantaloupe, banana, clementine
L: almonds, clementine and leftovers: fennel, orange, black olive salad and refried bean soup
D: large green salad with low fat salad dressing, some pineapple, and a really awesome dish from the Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen: Braised Cabbage and Red Beans and Rice (very risotto-like)
S: air popped popcorn

This came in at 1190 calories, with 40 g of protein, 44 g of fiber, 24 g fat. From an E2L perspective, this was a little light on the cooked veggies, and just slightly too many grains.

I got a lot of exercise today and I am totally exhausted (in a good way)! I'm back at the gym and swam for a 1/2 hour after taking 6 months off. I also walked for part of my commute for 1/2 hour.

the daily report

2007-01-15T17:21:00.000-08:00

It was great to have the day off. I love working for a university!

We did some Tai Chi today. Just the warm ups and working through the first few forms. We are total newbies at it and my legs were shaking!

Here's the food situation for the day:

B: 1/2 c. oatmeal, grated apple, raisin, flax seed
L: leftovers: parsnip and scallion pancakes, cannellini beans and sauteed kale.
D: fennel, orange and black olive salad (Mediterranean Vegan cookbook), green beans with lemon, and chipotle black bean stew (Vegan with a Vegeance).

It came to about 1170 calories for the day. Good numbers on protein (46 g), fiber (54 g), and fat (16 g). I feel good about my choices for today, but it wasn't perfect E2L. I was a little light on fruit and raw veggies, and a little heavy on starchy vegetables. Live and learn - in any case it's a way better day than I would had ever had pre-E2L!

finding wisdom in unlikely places

2007-01-15T14:18:00.000-08:00

I'm not a big magazine reader, and since starting E2L I'm very skeptical about dieting advice that I might read in them, so I was a little leary of picking up "Real Simple" this month with a headline: "Diet no more: eat well, stay healthy, feel great." In the story they give seven principles of healthy eating. Surprisingly, they are not a bad match to E2L. Here they are:

1. Know yourself
2. Give peas (and peaches) a chance (eat more veggies - this certainly applies to me as a former veggie hater!)
3. Eat less meat
4. Separate your fats (stay away from saturated and trans fats)
5. Watch those portions (eat when you are hungry)
6. Eat, don't drink, your portions
7. Limit packaged foods and read labels.

So it was nice to see my dietary choices supported in a mainstream publication. They also published a recipe that could be easily adapted to E2L: Swiss Chard with chickpeas and couscous. The only adaptation needed is to saute in water, not oil.

One of the reasons I read this magazine is for the columns and essays and in this issue I wasn't disappointed. There was a column about daring to be different by Gail Blanke. It's all about how it is not useful to seek to be liked by everybody because you become like water, well liked, but ultimately flavorless. I often seek to be liked at the expense of forming and expressing my own opinion, so this article was a good read to me. I didn't get a lot of tips from the article, but awareness is a really good thing. Any insight about issues like this are ultimately useful in terms of sticking with a healthy lifestyle. I know that my addictions to food and eating are due to a whole lot of underlying emotional issues, so I'm seeking wisdom whereever I can!

the day's report

2007-01-14T17:29:00.000-08:00

It's been a quiet day at home today. Here's what I ate:

B: smoothie with kale
L: raisin coleslaw and cannellini bean with sauteed kale leftovers
D: green salad with low fat dressing, refried bean soup (tomatoes, onion, vegetarian refried beans, pink beans, etc.) with a toasted corn tortilla.

It has come out to about 1100 calories. I got enough protein, vegetables and fiber.

No exercise today - tomorrow I'll remedy that situation!

Recipe Geek

2007-01-14T15:11:00.000-08:00

I have a certain amount of geekiness in me. I used to be an engineer and I love having systems to make life easier. In order to make a huge life change like going from a nutrient-poor to a nutrient-rich diet, we had to come up with a whole new system to make the transition easier. Also, since I was a veggie hater, I needed recipes that make vegetables really yummy.

In the past we had a repertoire of about 40 different dishes we prepared for dinner. Now, with Eat to Live, we needed to have dishes with raw vegetables, cooked vegetables and beans. So, I've gone through our cookbooks one by one (I have 4 more to go), and found the recipes that could work in our new lifestyle (some with a bit of adaptation). For each, I've created a color-coded index card (here's where the geekiness comes in!) (see right) listing the ingredients and the page and cookbook it came from. Green cards for raw veggies, yellow cards for bean dishes, purple cards for cooked vegetables. I think that we have only 4 recipes from our old lives that made it onto the index cards in our new life.

When I do my weekly shopping, I pick 7 yellow, 7 purple and a few green (because I also make a lot of green salads and those don't need a card :-). I have a pantry list (a list of things I buy frequently) that I print out and I mark it up with all the ingredients listed on the cards. Then I go through my kitchen to see what I already have and take those items off the grocery list. Last I add things to the grocery list to fill out breakfasts and lunches (for the kids mostly).

Given that I had a pretty limited set of vegetables that I used to eat, I knew that I needed to expand my horizons with this plan. So, we've been going through all the cards, one-by-one. Since November, we've tried more than 60 new dishes. After every meal we rate the recipe on a 1 to 10 scale. So far we've only had four that rated below a four. Everything else has been a six or above. I only have about 10 cookbooks or so, and we still have a lot of cards left to try. I've tried so many new vegetables, it's astounding to me. What's even better is that I like them!

This all takes a lot of work out of planning our meals. It's pretty easy to deal out the cards for the week. And it takes about a 1/2 hour to put together the grocery list. Each weekday before I go to work I pick out the cards for the dinner meal. My husband works from home so he ends up cooking all our meals during the week. I usually put together the salad. My lunches are usually leftovers from the night before.

Since we started we find we spend a lot of time in the kitchen - probably too much time in the kitchen. We do need to find ways to simplify a bit. Slowly we are building up some freezer meals, so that we won't have to cook 7 meals from scratch a week. Also, I have my eye on a vegan cookbook for dishes in less than 20 minutes. Any excuse for a new cookbook!

this day

2007-01-13T18:10:00.000-08:00

It's been a rainy Saturday here. No exercise for today except for a lot of errand running, but a very good eating day. Here's the breakdown:

B: 1/2 cantaloupe, banana, apple
L: raisin coleslaw (from E2L), leftover spinach chickpea rice soup
D: green salad with low fat, low sodium dressing, parsnip scallion pancakes (sauteed, not fried, from Vegan with a Vengeance), and cannellini beans with sauteed kale (no oil added, from The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen).
S: air-popped popcorn

I entered it all in www.fitday.com and have these results:
calories: 1231, fat: 13 g, protein: 40 g, carbohydrates: 260g, fiber: 47g
My nutrition levels were high today and I think I would have made it to at least a 100% even without the multivitamin supplement I take (except in b12, of course).

We did our usual Saturday morning routine of grocery shopping. First stop is always Russo's where we fill up our cart with amazing, reasonably priced produce. It's a great thing about living in the Boston area! The refrigerator is fully loaded for another healthful week of eating.

Motivation

2007-01-13T16:38:00.000-08:00

So what makes an avowed veggie hater into a veggie convert?

Now that I've had a chance to think about it, there are many reasons that seem to have converged all at once.

My current health:
The main area in which my health has been sensitive to obesity is my reproductive system. I think I have PCOS (though it's never been formally diagnosed) and I have a fibroid tumor. I've been treated for infertility and I've never been able to get pregnant (I have two children through adoption). Last spring, at my yearly ob/gyn exam, my doctor told me that since I was turning 40 and I am obese, I was no longer going to be able to take birth control pills to control my menstrual cycle because of an increased risk of breast cancer. The options available to me were not attractive, and besides, I've always hoped that someday my cycle would regulate and I would be medication-free. To be told instead that I wouldn't have a choice and the menstrual hell I used to go through might become the norm was not a scenario I wanted to consider. If I finally am able to get my weight under control, then I won't need the birth control pills for the cycle regulation and I could use any number of options for birth control purposes. If I eat healthfully then perhaps the fibroid might even go away. Oh yeah, and my LDL cholesterol has hit the borderline range this year.

My parent's current health:
My Mom and Dad have had quite a few years of health issues. They both turned 60 this year. My mom has irritable bowel syndrome and has had malignant melanoma. She also has genetically high cholesterol. In the past couple years she's been doing the low carb thing and I'm worried that she is really placing a lot of pressure on her cholesterol levels. She looks terrific and slim, but I'm worried that it has come at a cost to her heart.
My Dad has been a health disaster in the past few years. Several years ago he had to have surgery to fix a 90% blockage in one of his renal arteries. Then he had prostate cancer and had his prostate removed. Over the past year he's been battling lymphoma (not related to the prostate). The first round of chemotherapy didn't work, so he has had to go through stem cell replacement therapy - really tough stuff. Lately he has been suffering from schwannoma causing pain in his back. Thankfully, he has a really strong constitution, and he has been surviving all the treatments beautifully, but he has aged drastically and all this medical intervention has taken its toll. There's a chance that the cancers are due to Agent Orange exposure when he was stationed in Vietnam, but I would imagine that any predisposition to cancer that it caused has been exacerbated by his typical American diet of too many calories, too much saturated fat, too much animal protein and too many refined grains. He also smoked for 22 years - that sure didn't help! This all is motivation for me, because I believe that my parents are really good predictors of what I'll go through if I keep on the same unhealthy road. They are only 60 and are already seeing the results of poor-nutrition diets.

My family's current future health:
My attitudes and actions influence the attitudes and actions of my two kids. I haven't been doing them any favors by eating the way I do. My son has a variety of developmental issues that I'm confident will improve (though not totally go away) if we practice nutritional excellence. Already, after cutting out dairy at home, he has stopped wetting the bed (and this used to happen every night, despite getting him up at 11pm, using pullups and not allowing him to drink after 6pm). My daughter is getting ready to start puberty and I'd like to get her started on a healthy road early.

Given all of these motivators, I also finally read Eat to Live. The way Dr. Fuhrman laid out his evidence struck a chord with me - It's like I've always known deep down that all of it is true. His reassurances about protein and calcium were some of the tools I needed to finally take the plunge. His acknowledgement of how tough the first little while could be was appreciated. And his tough love attitude to make a commitment and just do it happened to be what I need this time around.

It feels good to finally be on a healthy path again. I haven't been this light for more than 15 years.

progress, progress

2007-01-12T17:37:00.000-08:00

The day is winding down, so it's time for reckoning how it went:

B: 1/2 c. oatmeal, grated apple, raisins and ground flax seed
L: tomato/cucumber/basil salad, braised cauliflower leftovers (Vegan with a Vengence, yum!), spicy lentils with 1/4 c. brown rice.
S: 1/2 oz. cashews
D: green salad with low fat dressing, spinach/chickpea/brown rice soup, 1/2 slice of homemade whole wheat bread with blueberry fruit spread

It adds up to about 1050 calories. It's a little light on fruit and a little heavy on the grains for the 6 week plan. I think I'll finish the day with a banana. That will get me up over my minimum calories.

I'm shooting for between 1100 and 1300 calories a day, with the ultimate goal of eating only when I feel hungry. Since I've never really felt true hunger (a la Fuhrman), I'll have to track this stuff because I don't quite trust myself yet.

I wasn't able to get myself out of bed to do my Pilates DVD at 5:30am, so I decided to walk to work to get my exercise. It took about an hour. It felt great!

All in all a great day!

Introduction!

2007-01-12T07:17:00.000-08:00

Just like I thought I would never convert to veganism, I also never thought I'd create a blog. It's obviously a new time in my life, because I'm doing both!

This blog will be focused on my journey to master a new lifestyle, based on the book Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman, M.D. About 3 months ago I went from eating a typical American diet, high in saturated fat, many, many refined carbohydrates and hardly a vegetable in sight, to a plant-based, whole foods diet. I can hardly believe that
1. I'm actually doing it, and
2. I feel so fabulous

So, if my ramblings here can offer support and encourage to anyone, that would just make my day. I've been inspired by many bloggers and have become a devoted blog reader recently.

A little bit about me:
I'm 40 years old and I live in the Boston area. All my adult life I've been overweight and have been making regular (read: failed) attempts to address it. No matter though, because I traditionally end up gaining back more than I lost. I've been a lifelong picky eater. I couldn't stand most vegetables, or even having the food on my plate touching each other. And who wants fruit when cookies are so yummy! This time I started at 227 pounds (I'm 5'5" tall) and in the past 12 weeks I've lost 35 pounds. I have long thought that I've been dealing with food addiction issues and that it would be great if I could just give up food cold turkey. Well, Eat to Live has nothing to do with giving up food, but the 6-week program has everything to do with giving up all the foods I've been addicted to - so it is essentially the cold turkey plan I was looking for. While the first 2 weeks were tough for me, I was so sad to not have flour-based stuff and cheese and milk and caffeine, I stuck it out. Now I'm happy to say that I'm craving free and having fun trying new things. It has taken a deep commitment to change and my life revolves around food and planning meals for the time being, but I've accepted that it's our new hobby for now.

I am married to a most amazing man. I have two children, a daughter who is 12 and a son who is 7. They have all been troopers and have joined me in eating in this healthy way. My husband and daughter are doing great with it. My little guy is quite resistant (though he needs this eating style as much as any of us) and we've resorted to sneaking kale and avocados in his fruit smoothies (otherwise he would exist on whole wheat bread, bananas and applesauce as his sole sources of nourishment).