paleomyway-blog

[paleomyway-blog]

Control Your ASSSS

I gotta have a plan. The "feed the crave" diet plan does not work for me. I need rules, but simple and easy to follow, while still allowing me the foods I love. I think I have come up with the perfect plan for reaching and maintaining an ideal weight while enjoying life..at least for me. I'm sharing it here in case anyone else can benefit from it!

Control Your ASSSS Lifestyle Plan

Diets Don’t Work. We’ve heard it a million times before, yet most people continue to try to lose weight by dieting. This is an easy to follow lifestyle plan that does not deprive you of any of the foods you love. By following this plan you will lose unwanted fat through moderation and portion control.

 The ASSSS

The “Control Your ASSSS” lifestyle plan focuses on the ASSSS:

Alcohol – One serving of alcohol is 12 oz beer, 5 oz wine, or 1.5 oz of liquor. If you add a sugary mixer with the alcohol (such as a margarita), this counts as a serving of alcohol and a sugar…so one margarita is 2 servings of ASSSS.

Sugar – Any sweets, desserts, candy, chocolate, and sugary drinks count as a sugar. Look at the serving size. If a chocolate bar says 2 servings per package and you eat the whole thing, you just had 2 servings of ASSSS.

Starch – Starches include all grains and potatoes. Examples are rice, bread, pasta, oatmeal, quinoa, chips, etc. Again, watch portion size! Starches are very easy to overeat. If you choose to have chips & salsa at a Mexican restaurant as one serving of ASSSS, count out 11-14 chips as your serving and then STOP.

Seconds – Each standard meal is one plateful of food. Use good judgment here. Don’t pile massive amounts of food on the plate. A good guide is a palm-sized serving of protein, lots of vegetables and fruit, and a small amount of healthy fat. If you want an extra portion of food after you’ve eaten a standard meal, then you can use a serving of ASSSS (Seconds) to have more.

Snacks – One of the easiest ways to pack on extra pounds is by snacking throughout the day. People often engage in mindless snacking out of boredom, stress, or even thirst. If you feel like you want something between meals, try a huge glass of cold water or unsweetened tea and just wait. The feelings that you mistook as hunger will most likely go away. Any caloric food or beverage between meals is a serving of ASSSS (Snack).

By practicing a few rules surrounding the ASSSS, you will automatically be controlling consumption of foods & drinks that cause a hormonal response that lead to holding on to and storing body fat. You don’t have to eliminate these foods – just control them. Don’t let your ASSSS be in control…YOU are in control.

Each day you will eat the standard 3 meals – breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and only one plateful of food at each meal. No going back for seconds, no snacking between meals. This is an easy way to incorporate portion control into your lifestyle. You don’t have to count calories or carbs. Your typical meals will be made up of quality foods like meat, vegetables, fruit, and good fats (aka "Paleo").

Watch Your ASSSS

Four days a week you will limit yourself to two servings of ASSSS per day. For most people, Tuesday through Thursday work well as the 2 serving days. So on these days you can have any 2 servings of ASSSS you choose. This may be a cookie after lunch (sugar) and a glass of wine at dinner (alcohol). Or perhaps a bowl of oatmeal at breakfast (starch) and a protein bar mid-afternoon (snack). ASSSS must be limited to only 2 on these days. If you have cereal for breakfast (starch) and a snack before lunch, you’re done for the day.

Two days a week you can have three servings of ASSSS. For most people, Saturday and Sunday work great for the 3 serving days.

One day a week you get No ASSSS. Monday is a good day for this, since you just came off the weekend with a little more indulgence. So one day a week you will only eat 3 meals…no snacks, no sweets, no seconds, etc. 

Save Your ASSSS

Willpower is strongest early in the day (this has been proven scientifically), so it’s a good idea to try to save your ASSSS throughout the day as best you can. Most people are weakest in the evenings after a long stressful day of LIFE, so having your allotments of ASSSS still available in the evening is a great idea. Have a protein/veggie breakfast in the morning, a big healthy salad at lunch, and by the late afternoon when your willpower is starting to wane; you will still have 2-3 servings of ASSSS available. Time for chocolate (sugar)!

Work Your ASSSS Off, aka Move Your ASSSS

Every person needs physical activity every day. Period. There is no excuse for not moving your ass! Get a step-tracker and aim for 10,000 steps per day. Find a group exercise class that you love. CrossFit and neighborhood boot camps are everywhere nowadays, and they are fun, motivating, and can be scaled to any fitness level. Even if it’s just walking in the beginning – you are still doing your body good! And incorporate some strength or resistance training into your week. Your own body weight is a great place to start. Push-ups, lunges, squats, planks…can all be done with just your body and a little space. Schedule your workouts each week so that you know exactly what you are doing each day. Here is my schedule:

*Walk 10K steps each day

Monday – boot camp

Tuesday – boot camp

Wednesday – HIIT/Sprints

Thursday – boot camp

Friday – rest

Saturday – boot camp

Sunday – long run (3-6 miles)

That's it! An easy to remember lifestyle guide that helps YOU stay in control while still enjoying what you love. If you try it out, please let me know what you think!

[paleomyway-blog]

On Narcissism

I was called out the other night on Facebook for being narcissistic. It was sparked by making the silly decision to participate in the latest girly Facebook challenge. The challenge was to post 5 photos that make me feel beautiful, and then to tag friends to do the same. I was lying on the couch watching Grease 2 for the 3,462nd time and thought, why not? I have lots of photos that make me feel beautiful. This will be easy. So I posted this:

  This didn’t go over well with at least one of my virtual friends (and probably more, but one had the guts to virtually voice her opinion). She called this challenge narcissistic and bizarre.

 So this got me thinking. Am I narcissistic? (side note – this is what I do every time I am criticized…first reaction is hurt & defensiveness, second is embarrassment, third is self-reflection. It works for me). Narcissism is defined by Wiki as “the pursuit of gratification from vanity, or egotistic admiration of one’s own physical or mental attributes, that derive from arrogant pride.”

 OMG. Yes. I’m a narcissist! And so are most of my friends! My friends that I love and adore and with whom I crave spending time! But wait…if we love each other and have healthy friendships…doesn’t that go against the theory of social and relational disorders? I dug a little deeper in the all-knowing Wiki library.

“Freud considered narcissism a natural part of the human make-up that, taken to extremes, prevents people from having meaningful relationships…It has indeed been suggested that it is useful to think of a continuum of narcissism , from the healthy to the pathological, with stable narcissism and destructive narcissism as stopping-points in between.”

 OK, that makes me feel a little better. So apparently by participating in the beautiful photo challenge I reached the point on the narcissistic continuum that this friend just cannot tolerate. And now we aren’t friends. Interestingly, she has lots of beautiful photos of herself on Facebook. But I guess admitting that you think you look beautiful in the photo you posted pushes you a little further to the right on the continuum. What if I post a photo that makes me feel pretty, but I comment that I think I look ratchet? Would that move me a little more to the left? Points to ponder…

 I will still use this whole event as a learning experience. I know I struggle with pride. We all do…just part of being egotistical human beings. It’s innate. But I also feel like I am taking micro-steps to the left of the continuum these days. I’m a work in progress…but I definitely haven’t reached the point where I’m ready to participate in the “5 photos that make you look ratchet” contest just yet. Baby steps! 

[paleomyway-blog]

So Now What?

Last night I asked my fiancé if he had a chance to read my blog post. His response: “I did, but I wasn’t really sure what it meant. Does this mean you aren’t going to worry about eating healthy anymore?”

Absolutely not! I’ve learned enough over the past few years about what food makes me feel amazing and what food makes me feel crappy. And I don’t like feeling crappy…who does? What I’m changing is my focus. I’m exhausted from the constant search for the holy grail of nutrition. I’m exhausted from hearing the voice in my head telling me I’m not good enough until I’m thin enough. I have read enough (ENOUGH) to know what I need to eat to be healthy. I mean seriously, how many books on Paleolithic nutrition does one girl need? (47 apparently...how embarrassing). I still think sugar is the White Satan that relentlessly tempts me to destroy my body from the inside out. That will not change, and I will continue to battle White Satan everyday. But it’s time to spend my precious time focusing on something besides ME.

One thing that will never change about me is my constant desire to be better…to improve things…to tweak processes for the best outcome. It’s no surprise that I am the Performance Improvement director at my hospital. But I’ve spent far too many hours (months) wasting my time focused on trying to improve my physical appearance. Jesus said “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Luke 12:34). And our time is part of our treasure. Do I really want my physical appearance to be my highest priority?  It’s prideful…and a sin.

So I will continue to try to improve myself, that’s who I am and I don’t want to change that. There is always something that can be improved. But it’s time to focus on what I can do to improve more important things about myself. What can I do to be a better Christ follower? How can I be a better wife? Mother? Friend? Boss? How can I serve someone today? These are the thoughts I would like to replace the mean voice that tells me I’m not pretty enough yet. I will come in contact with someone today who needs something that I have to offer…and I’m pretty sure she won’t care if my booty has dimples or not.

[paleomyway-blog]

Orthorexia, Paleo, and other unhealthy “healthy” stuff

Anyone who knows me knows that I am an open book. I stink at hiding my feelings, and privacy is just not something I value very much. I have no problem sharing my life story – the good, bad, and ugly – with pretty much anyone I meet. Sometimes my candor takes people very off guard, but that’s just me! Take me for what I am and love me or hate me…but please PLEASE love me…

 Well once again I’m putting it all out there. Mainly because I want people to know the real me, not the “perfect” version we all try so hard to portray; but also because I may have learned a lesson or two over the past few years that could actually help someone else.

 So I was recently going through some old pictures, and I found these pictures of myself taken in 2007.

This was how I looked before my complete and total obsession with healthy eating and weight loss. It’s important to note that these pictures were taken just a few months before Facebook, iPhones, and the WWW were at my fingertips 24-7.  So when these pictures were taken, I was full of confidence. I felt like I was at a healthy weight (which I was). I knew I wasn’t “model perfect” by any means, but I was in about the same shape as most of my friends that I ran around with, and I was content. But then something happened. I joined the wonderful world of social media, and started to compare myself to other people. Really pretty people. Fit people. HOT people. And as I compared myself to them, my self-confidence plummeted. I began searching for the perfect diet that would make me hot too. I searched. And I searched. AND I SEARCHED. I tried it all. You name it, I’ve been on it – at least for a few hours. South Beach, The Sonoma Diet, low fat, severe calorie restriction, Scarsdale, Atkins, vegetarian, 17-Day Diet, The No S Diet, keto, intermittent fasting…I could go on and on. Nothing worked. Or, should I say, I did not have the will power to make any of these plans work.

Enter Paleo. I listened to a podcast one day on the drive home from work in which Mark Sisson was talking about his Primal Blueprint and the Paleo diet. I was very energized after listening to him, and I immediately cut all sugar, grain, dairy, and legumes from my diet. Cold turkey. I was very motivated with this style of eating, and the weight started melting off. I was ELATED! I knew this had to be a lifestyle for me and not just a temporary diet. Here is me just a couple of months of Paleo:

 And this is when the obsession completely took over. I believed in the power of the Paleo diet so much, that it’s ALL I wanted to talk about, read about, study, etc. I pretty much drove my family and friends insane…so much so, that I was forbidden from using the word “paleo” after a while, and my little girl thought “paleo” was synonymous with the word “healthy.”

 I felt GREAT in my new body. Energetic, sexy, and confident. I was sure this was a lifestyle I could do forever.  Through the Paleosphere, I learned about CrossFit, and decided to start working out for the first time in my adult life. Seriously. And I fell in LOVE with it. I loved the supportive community, the challenge to improve my times and loads, and I was getting strong for the first time ever. So I was working out…HARD, and still obsessing over my diet. No cheats. “No, I can’t eat that” were common words that my friends and family (and Lord help me, my daughter) would hear me say. So with all the working out and feeding myself clean (and way too few calories and carbs) I started to get really, really thin. I dropped down to the lowest weight I had been since middle school. This is me at my skinniest – close to 100 pounds. Yikes.

I was also going through major life change during this time. I was going through a divorce, so that certainly didn’t help the situation. My world was turned upside down, and obsessing over every morsel I put in my mouth came even easier. It gave me a sense of control when my world was spiraling around me.

 As I recovered from my failed marriage and started living life again, I slowly began eating less obsessively and continued with my new found passion in CrossFit. I entered a competition for newbies and was truly at the fittest I have ever been in my life.

Just a month after the pictures above were taken, I started a new job that was quite a trek from my house. With all the time I was spending on the road, I didn’t have the time I used to devote to CrossFit. At the same time, I started missing all of the amazing foods I had given up over the previous 2 years since going Paleo. So my CrossFit workouts dwindled and my poor eating habits slowly crept back into my routine. First occasionally, and then regularly. In a few months, I started slowly gaining weight. This was really a good thing. I had gotten down so small that the size 0s were too big for me. Finding clothes was impossible. But here’s the unhealthy thing…a big part of me was upset about no longer being a size 0. What’s up with that?? Someone who was preaching “healthy living” constantly was beating herself up for being a size 2 instead of a 0. If one of my friends would have said about herself what I was speaking to myself daily, I would have slapped some sense into her! But as the weight slowly crept back on, and my size went back to normal (a 4 for me) I immediately began beating myself up. “I’m getting so fat” were words I would say to myself constantly…obsessively. “I have to diet….crash diet….gotta get the weight off….I’ll try I.F.…I’ll try calorie restriction…what’s wrong with me?...why can’t I stop indulging???” And listening to these words in my head only drove me to seek immediate comfort in food (mostly chocolate…and LOTS of it).

 I recently read about a disorder called “orthorexia.” Basically, it’s an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. Um, hello, that’s ME.  Yikes. In my quest to be perfect, I was making myself SICK. I can’t do this anymore. I’m done! I’m ready to live my life for something other than what I’m going to put in my mouth!

 So here I am. A very healthy 40 year old woman. I do not eat perfectly. I love to workout. LOVE it. And I will just eat in a way that gives me the energy I need to perform at my best. My thigh gap is no longer knee to crotch. Don’t even get me started on the bikini bridge. In less than 4 weeks I will be on an amazing beach in paradise saying “I do” to the kindest, most thoughtful, most loving, most ACCEPTING man I have ever known. I would like to just love myself now, the way that I am, booty dimples and all.

  Peace out!

[paleomyway-blog]

[paleomyway-blog]

My Rules for Looking and Feeling Fabulous

1. Eat real food - meat (cage free, wild, pasture-raised, or organic when possible), non-starchy veggies, healthy fats (EVOO, coconut oil, avocado, ghee or grass fed butter), fruit, and a few raw, unsalted nuts & seeds. May add a serving of unprocessed, whole grain (rice, oats, quinoa) on a heavy workout day. 2. Eliminate all sugar, artificial sweetener, and refined carbs. No candy, pasta, white bread, crackers, cookies, etc. 3. Drink 2-3 liters water daily. Add lemon, lime, or cucumber slices for flavor and natural cleansing. 4. Stop eating after dinner. Fast at least 12 hours daily. Eat 3 meals a day that include protein, carbs, and good fat. Don't eat your first meal of the day until you are actually hungry. 5. Avoid snacking. It's ok to feel hungry when it's getting close to meal time. I promise, you won't die. 6. Lift heavy things (your own body will work in a pinch) 2-3 times per week. 7. Workout and sweat every day for at least 30 minutes. Push yourself beyond what your mind says you can do. This is when the magic happens! 8. Enjoy a small treat with or after dinner - a square of quality dark chocolate, berries with heavy cream...mmm...life is too short not to! Savor your indulgence slowly, and a small amount will satisfy you. 9. Drink alcohol no more than 3 days per week, and never more than 2 drinks in a day. No sugary cocktails! 10. Get 7-9 hours of sleep every night in a cool, dark room. Invest in quality sheets, mattress, and pillows. You deserve it! 11. Supplement with fish oil, Vitamin D & a multivitamin. 12. Take control of your thoughts. Cut off negative thoughts as soon as they creep in. There is truly power in positive thinking! Replace negative thoughts with thoughts of gratitude. 13. Don't complain - no one wants to hear it, and you're just reinforcing negative thoughts when you do. 14. Look for the good in every person you encounter, especially those you spend time with every day. 15. Play several times a week, and do it outside whenever you can. ❤️