Scientific - esque trial

Okay, so I’ve had a bit of a zeitgeist here. I’ve read the information. I’ve understood the information, I just didn’t put 2 and 2 together.

I have been part of a Biggest Loser type competition at work off & on for the past year. (The competition has been off & on, my participation has been consistent.) Any road, since not everyone at work wanted to lose weight, and since some of the people in the challenge wanted to boost their weight loss by setting and meeting specific goals, we also have had what we call a ‘lifestyle’ challenge wherein we set two specific goals and then record how we do.

Piece of cake, right? Well, one of my specific goals has been to eat my full 5 servings of fruit and veg. I could do 4 no problem, but sometimes getting that 5th serving was pulling teeth. So I found a way to rectify that. Fruit. Because fruit is easier to eat than veg for the most part. Grab an apple. Grab a peach. Throw some berries in a bowl. Easy, peasy.

Over the past year, my 5 helpings of fruit and veg have become more like 4 servings of fruit and 1 of veg. And over the past year, not only have I NOT lost weight, I have steadily re-gained 20 of the pounds I had already so laboriously shed.

But this week all the nutrition reading and advice and thoughts just percolated in my head and, like that proverbial lightning bolt, I thought, “Hang on!” Fruit is good for you, yes. But fruit has fructose. Fruit has sugar. Lovely fiber, yes, but lots of sugar.

So I started looking into it and sure enough the literature is very clear. 4 veg and 1 fruit is going to do much better for you than 4 fruit and 1 veg.

Here’s the deal : If you are giving your body sugar, whether it’s sugar straight from fruit or sugar derived from fruit (or cane or beets or a chemical lab) or whatever, then your body is using that quick sugar for energy and never has to tap into your fat stores. Why bother using that stored fat when you keep feeding it all the quick sugar it needs?

So. I am going to do a scientific-ish trial. Over this weekend I am going to start the transition to 3-4 veg and 1-2 fruit servings a day. On Monday, 26 May, I am joining Running World’s streak challenge to run at least one mile per day from the Memorial Day holiday through the 4th of July. That Monday will be the start of my trial as well.

I am going to measure, weigh, and take pics at the start. Then I’m going to continue to eat as healthily as I have the past year, with the only changes being that flip to more veg and less fruit, and if I DO eat 2 servings of fruit, one of them must be accompanied by protein to help slow the effects of the sugars. (nuts or yogurt with the fruit, for example)

To help on this, I am going to check in here weekly with all results.

I really (REALLY, REALLY, REALLY) hope this is where the problem is. If not, I’ll keep searching, but one trial at a time!

Using my head

In Tai Chi we teach that we "Use the yi, not the li" which means to use your head, and not to react to things with brute strength, or without thought. 

In commenting on someone’s page today that thought came to mind, and it makes me think about how often we eat in response to something. About how much we eat is in response to something. Although not a big emotional eater, I have let the cold weather around me be an excuse for poor choices lately. “Ar, it’s freezing out. Have another cookie!”

There is a meme going around Facebook, a quote really, by Heather Morgan, a life coach and nutritionist. It says, “Every time you eat or drink, you are either feeding disease or fighting it.”

This one really caught my attention. Deep down. Not just a passing thought. We’ve had a few health crises around here over the past few years. As many of you know, my husband’s colon exploded nearly three years ago, putting him into ICU for three weeks. His reconnection surgery didn’t take so he was back in the hospital two years ago for another extended stay.  Fortunately, last May he was able to be put back together again and is doing well. 

While we were going through all this, my son-in-law was diagnosed with testicular cancer, my mother went into the hospital, first with blood clots in her legs, and more lately with blood clots in her lungs.

Now, I know that not all of this is a direct link to what we eat. My mom has a genetic disorder that pre-disposes her to blood clots, for example. But the fact that she started just sitting around and not getting up and exercising made that propensity a reality.

My husband’s colon had some physical problems, and we will never know how much of that came from poor food choices over the years. Eating better could have save him that ER and ICU visit, however.

And cancer? It just sucks the big one.  There still seems to be a lot of debate about the correlation between food and cancer, but I will say that the better shape you are in, the better your body will be able to tolerate the cancer treatments.

This thought is haunting me a little. Not in a bad way. I’ve written a lot on here about choice, about will, about taking charge. Since reading that quote, every time I start to cook or eat something I stop and take a second thought. I do not just make something because it is simple after a long and stressful day. I use my yi : Will this meal feed disease? Will it nurture the dark side? Or will it help me fight off any potential for disease? Will it keep me strong? Will it add to or aid my fitness?

I want to be fit to live my life. I want to be fit to face the future. I want to be fit for me.

Welcome 2014

This blog was meant to be a tribute to John Denver and all he means to me on what would have been his 70^th birthday, but it turned into something else, so I've had to come back and look at this again. To be sure, I made a note that his songs, his singing, his voice gave me my life back, and in many ways what else is there to say?

I found it impossible, when I first sat down to write this, to move my fingers. For someone who has been able to shape words to her bidding, I find that words fail to hold form when I try to express how much this one person has meant to me.

The grief of losing this voice that kept me afloat when all I wanted to do was sink is so deeply hard-wired into my soul, that sometimes it overwhelms me, even sixteen years later. 

To say John Denver saved my life is an understatement, but it is the truth, and the thing is, I meet people over and over with a similar story. 

Like many others, John Denver helped pull me out of a morass, and put me on a path to living a good and honest life, where helping others and the environment is part of that life. The times I have deviated from that path have proven disastrous for me, but because of that clarity of voice, I continually find my way back. He is my touchstone. 

Sometimes I think I need to be reminded that while it was a tragedy to lose him so soon, the miracle is that we had his voice at all.

John Denver, you are loved still. Your message is as true as ever. You are missed. Thank you.

Choices

I’ve been thinking a lot about choices lately. I’ve been reading that our lives are what they are because of the choices we make and while I want to shake my head and shout, ‘no! no! no!’ the fact is, it’s true.

 

We make certain choices for a lot of different reasons. We are influenced by our Faith, by our families, by what we want at the moment, by what we want down the road a piece. We make choices based on our relationships and friendships and what we want those to be. We choose for security, for happiness, for money, for health. But make no mistake, I am where I am because of the choices I’ve made, and only by making other choices can that change.

I hate my job. I despise it. It keeps my brain active but my body stagnant. I am surrounded by hate and discontent and a management that seems to thrive at making snap decisions, snap judgements and snap criticisms. But I can’t leave my job. I am trapped, right?

Many years ago I read a foreword to a book in which an old Ozark woman explains Free Will. She said that if you give each of 50 quilters in a room the same material, you will have 50 different quilts in the end. 

Lloyd Alexander explained it in his book Taran Wanderer like a piece on a loom : If you are not happy with the design, you are the only one who can choose whether to continue with the design you’ve chosen and wear a cloak you hate, or whether to unravel it and start again.

And Mary Stewart’s heroine, in the book, Touch Not the Cat says : “We forge our own chains.”

So am I trapped?

Of course not. I can leave my job any day. I make good money and chose to use that money to help pay for my husband’s medical bills. To make up that kind of money in this area I would need two or three jobs. The job I have has generous vacation and sick time, and a not over-burdensome health care offering. That is not the case of most employers in the area. 

I choose to stay. I stay because I feel that the need to get these medical bills under control is important. I choose to stay because I would have been fired from many other jobs having to take off the kind of time I’ve needed to care for my husband, mother, uncle, brother. 

That doesn’t mean I can’t work on pursuing my dreams still. Not enough time? Pooey. You choose to watch TV. You choose to hang on FaceBook. 

And I hear the buts. I say the buts often enough myself. In the end, when I take apart every one of those buts, I see the choice within. There are sometimes great challenges and certainly walls within which we must make our choices, and I am not trying to belittle that. We all live within our own gardens and our choices are made within our own set of circumstances.

But make no mistake, the things that make me unhappy are often situations that I’ve chosen, or chosen to accept. 

Knowing this, understanding this has been liberating. Right this minute, I choose not to leave this job. I have begun taking steps to move my life in a new direction. I need to continue to make the choices that will see me into my new life, rather than just wringing my hands and saying how much I hate how my life is. 

I have forged my chains, and I am the only one who can break them.