A quick addendum...

In my post this morning, I mentioned a website, thedailyplate.com. This site has now been incorporated into www.livestrong.com. Just go there, and in the search box at the top right of the page, type the name of the restaurant or the food item you are looking for. If you tell it to search in "food and fitness" instead of "all", you will get where you're going much faster. You don't need an account to access this information. If you do decide to register for an account, you will have access to features similar to fitday.com, where you can input your food and track your progress.

Facts Are Our Friends...

"Facts are our friends."

 

This quote from Pastor Johnny Hunt, current president of the Southern Baptist Convention, is applicable to most areas of life. Most of us have at least one area of our life where we're not really interested in the facts, because this lack of knowledge helps us look past our own faults and shortcomings. I am reminded of the classic story "Snow White", where the evil queen asks, "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?" She was more interested in the mirror's opinion, and how she compared with everyone else, than she was in the mirror's reflection. She was enraged when the mirror declared that, with Snow White's arrival, she was no longer the fairest in the land.

 

In ministry, we have been known to fall into some of these same tactics - a fellow pastor asks how many we are averaging in church, and I have heard many pastors round the numbers WAAYY up. A crowd of 150 can easily become 250 through the power of the "guesstimate"; the latest trend is to add up the total number of people in every service, and that's the "attendance". If Sunday School attendance is 100, morning worship 150, Sunday evening 70, Wednesday night is 40, it is perfectly acceptable now to say that your church is running about 360 (well, 400, if you count those who would have been there if they could have been, and a few more if you count those who attended the monthly service in the nursing home).

 

The same thing holds true for our eating and exercise habits. Unless we are very intentional about tracking everything we eat accurately, we will often paint a very distorted picture of what our diets actually look like. One thing I discovered during ABL is that the rule of thumb is, you usually eat more than you think, and you usually exercise less than you think. This past weekend was Memorial Day weekend, and I ate some things I would not have normally eaten. I am on a stabilization plan with PHC, in which certain foods are gradually re-introduced back into the diet. I ate well outside of that list this weekend (not excessively bad, but a few things that weren't on the list). Predictably, my weight is up a little bit - with a three-pound swing in two days, I can tell you that it is water weight. When I sat down and plugged yesterday's eating into my fitday.com profile, I was rather shocked to discover that my sodium intake was THROUGH THE ROOF! During the competition, one of the pleasures that I allowed myself was the Chargrilled Chicken Sandwich from Chick-Fil-A, and I would indulge myself with this treat almost every Monday night following weigh-in. It was in the PHC book as an acceptable eating-out alternative; I ate it without giving it too much thought. Every week I faithfully wrote it down in my food journal, and I always had a good laugh about it with Savannah, my nutrition counselor at PHC. Previously I had recorded it in my fitday.com journal as a piece of chicken and a couple of pieces of bread, and figured, "ah, that's close enough". This morning, I looked up the actual nutrition information for the sandwich at thedailyplate.com (which lists almost every food you can imagine from every restaurant chain you can imagine), and discovered that my treat is probably responsible for every single mid-week gain I had during the competition. The calories aren't bad (about 300), but the sodium is off-the-charts (1120 mg). That wasn't too bad for weigh-in day, because most of us didn't eat anything between a light, early breakfast and weigh-in time at 7:00 PM. But when added into a typical day's eating, the results can be quite alarming. Yesterday (Memorial Day, remember), I ended up at nearly 4800 mg of sodium, almost four times what I would get in a normal day. Now, I can fix this... today I will be eating very low sodium foods, and will be drinking water like crazy to get my body to stop retaining the fluid.

 

Here's the point: you can't fix the problem until you can accurately define the problem; you can't accurately define the problem until you know the specifics. And you won't know the specifics until you overcome your fear of the facts. Fear of facts is why we won't get on the scale, or check our bank balance, or be accountable with our time. Ignorance may be bliss, but bliss can be a very dangerous thing.

Are You Committed?

As I write this, I am nearing the end of my personal weight-loss journey. But I'm only beginning the journey of staying fit, which is a trip that will take the rest of my life.

 

Also, as I write this, some of you reading this have already given up. You meant well... you were serious. THIS was going to be your time. THIS time was going to be different...

 

But here you are again. And not feeling good about it.

 

Let me just take a minute to try and encourage you to get back on your plan. If you did it for a week, you can do it for another week. If you did it for a month, you can do it for another month. I read a good quote last month - it was something to the effect of, if you are doing the best you can, then you can't try any harder. What you CAN do is try different.

 

You can also ask for help. I have learned that even the most brilliant plan loses its effectiveness once your body has gotten used to it, and then you have to make changes. During the past 6 months I've been on plans that included all the food groups; plans of nothing but protein; plans of nothing but dairy and poultry; plans of nothing but vegetables and fruits; and at times, nothing but yogurt and a little fruit. Some of you did your plan the first week, and lost 4 or 5 (or more) pounds; then it slacked off to a pound, or maybe a little gain... but instead of, to use an analogy, going looking for another axehead, you kept swinging with just the handle, and then wondered why you couldn't chop down the next tree.

 

If you've quit, or just fudged a little, please consider getting back on track. I know I've not sent out a lot lately, but you have to understand that the things that I wrote in the first 5 or 6 weeks are the exact same things that I'm having to do right here at the end of my journey - starches, sugar, salt are still the enemies; lean protein, dairy, and vegetables are still the things to eat; water and exercise are still the catalysts for change. There's not much more to it than that.

 

Please feel free to contact me at any time... I did not do this to keep all this knowledge to myself. God has put me in this place in my life to be a blessing to others, and I welcome the chance to help you.

Some Random Tips...

We got these tips at one of our recent ABL meetings, and I'm just passing them along. They are in no particular order - some are diet related, some are supplement related, some are exercise related. Hopefully you can find something that will be of help to you!

 

* Green tea - you can drink it (2-8 cups per day), or you can take the green tea extract in capsule form. One cup of green tea can burn an additional 80 calories per day.

 

* Lemon juice - the juice of one lemon in 8 oz. of warm water first thing in the morning will help get rid of excess water.

 

* While losing, limit your fruit selections to apples, berries (strawberries, blueberries), and grapefruit. Stay away from citrus fruits, bananas, pineapple, and watermelon because of high sugar content.

 

* Bread, potatoes, cereal, and crackers are a no-no. As little as one piece of whole wheat bread can derail your diet, depending on how sensitive your body is to carbohydrates.

 

* Drink water (preferably cold) 30 minutes before meals. The liver converts stored fat to energy, but if you are dehydrated, the liver will abandon that job in order to help the kidneys. Dehydration = lower kidney function = increased liver involvement in waste processing = less fat burned. (FYI, alcoholic beverages do the same thing - pull the liver off its primary task. If the liver is busy processing alcohol, it will NOT metabolize fat.

 

* Cardio exercise is most effective first thing in the morning, before you eat your first meal. You will begin burning fat right away.

 

* There's a reason for all the 'grapefruit' diets - grapefruit does aid in weight loss. It helps lower insulin in the body, which makes you feel less hungry; lowered insulin level is also an aid to breaking down stored fat.

Fatty Foods May Cause Cocaine-Like Addiction

Scientists have finally confirmed what the rest of us have suspected for years: Bacon, cheesecake, and other delicious yet fattening foods may be addictive.

A new study in rats suggests that high-fat, high-calorie foods affect the brain in much the same way as cocaine and heroin. When rats consume these foods in great enough quantities, it leads to compulsive eating habits that resemble drug addiction, the study found.

Doing drugs such as cocaine and eating too much junk food both gradually overload the so-called pleasure centers in the brain, according to Paul J. Kenny, Ph.D., an associate professor of molecular therapeutics at the Scripps Research Institute, in Jupiter, Florida. Eventually the pleasure centers "crash," and achieving the same pleasure--or even just feeling normal--requires increasing amounts of the drug or food, says Kenny, the lead author of the study.

"People know intuitively that there's more to [overeating] than just willpower," he says. "There's a system in the brain that's been turned on or over-activated, and that's driving [overeating] at some subconscious level."

In the study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, Kenny and his co-author studied three groups of lab rats for 40 days. One of the groups was fed regular rat food. A second was fed bacon, sausage, cheesecake, frosting, and other fattening, high-calorie foods--but only for one hour each day. The third group was allowed to pig out on the unhealthy foods for up to 23 hours a day.

Not surprisingly, the rats that gorged themselves on the human food quickly became obese. But their brains also changed. By monitoring implanted brain electrodes, the researchers found that the rats in the third group gradually developed a tolerance to the pleasure the food gave them and had to eat more to experience a high.

They began to eat compulsively, to the point where they continued to do so in the face of pain. When the researchers applied an electric shock to the rats' feet in the presence of the food, the rats in the first two groups were frightened away from eating. But the obese rats were not. "Their attention was solely focused on consuming food," says Kenny.

In previous studies, rats have exhibited similar brain changes when given unlimited access to cocaine or heroin. And rats have similarly ignored punishment to continue consuming cocaine, the researchers note.

The fact that junk food could provoke this response isn't entirely surprising, says Dr.Gene-Jack Wang, M.D., the chair of the medical department at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, in Upton, New York.

"We make our food very similar to cocaine now," he says.

Coca leaves have been used since ancient times, he points out, but people learned to purify or alter cocaine to deliver it more efficiently to their brains (by injecting or smoking it, for instance). This made the drug more addictive.

According to Wang, food has evolved in a similar way. "We purify our food," he says. "Our ancestors ate whole grains, but we're eating white bread. American Indians ate corn; we eat corn syrup."

The ingredients in purified modern food cause people to "eat unconsciously and unnecessarily," and will also prompt an animal to "eat like a drug abuser [uses drugs]," says Wang.

The neurotransmitter dopamine appears to be responsible for the behavior of the overeating rats, according to the study. Dopamine is involved in the brain's pleasure (or reward) centers, and it also plays a role in reinforcing behavior. "It tells the brain something has happened and you should learn from what just happened," says Kenny.

Overeating caused the levels of a certain dopamine receptor in the brains of the obese rats to drop, the study found. In humans, low levels of the same receptors have been associated with drug addiction and obesity, and may be genetic, Kenny says.

However, that doesn't mean that everyone born with lower dopamine receptor levels is destined to become an addict or to overeat. As Wang points out, environmental factors, and not just genes, are involved in both behaviors.

Wang also cautions that applying the results of animal studies to humans can be tricky. For instance, he says, in studies of weight-loss drugs, rats have lost as much as 30 percent of their weight, but humans on the same drug have lost less than 5 percent of their weight. "You can't mimic completely human behavior, but [animal studies] can give you a clue about what can happen in humans," Wang says.

Although he acknowledges that his research may not directly translate to humans, Kenny says the findings shed light on the brain mechanisms that drive overeating and could even lead to new treatments for obesity.

"If we could develop therapeutics for drug addiction, those same drugs may be good for obesity as well," he says.

Copyright Health Magazine 2010

Collecting Evidence Of Your Success...

This is from my personal blog, which I first posted on my Augusta's Biggest Loser Official blog (at augustasbiggestloser.ning.com). I thought it might help someone - just some thoughts I had about motivation this morning:

 

Since we began with the ABL competition, I have done some things that could be taken as being vain, even though I have tried my best to explain what I was doing. On my facebook page and on here, I have put pictures up of me before I started losing weight, and pictures taken along the way - down 50 pounds, down 70 pounds, down 90 pounds, etc. I write in my personal blog about 3 times a week or so about my experiences. I share my victories (and my defeats) with my friends. And I always feel like I have to write, "I'm honestly not trying to brag or anything..." I have wanted to explain why I was doing what I was doing, but I never could find the words to correctly express my intentions. Until now...

In my email this morning, I learned that Kindle, the electronic book device from Amazon, now has an application that will allow you to download and read digital copies of books on your PC. I installed the application, and the first book I downloaded was "Believe It, Be It: How Being the Biggest Loser Won Me Back My Life" by season 5 winner Ali Vincent. I've been wanting to read it for a while. I read almost the entire book this morning, and in it, she talks about the struggle she had trying to change her mind about herself. She said that she still saw herself as that fat girl, just a smaller version of it. The way she got past it was to begin, to use her words, "collecting evidence of (her) success".

Johnnie tells us there are no moral victories in this competition, and he's absolutely right in regards to the competition itself. There are no prizes for tiniest waistline, smallest shirt size, fastest 5K run, heaviest bench press, best "after" photo, or even for the most pounds lost. But the tiny waistline, the small shirt size, the 5K time, the weightlifting capacity, the photos, and the scales are "evidence of your success". As I've written before in my blog, when I look in the mirror, I still see the guy in the "before" photos. I need evidence of my success in order to re-define who I am.

Nandy and I were at the TV studio Tuesday morning, she with her big ol' pants, and me with a gargantuan suit jacket that used to fit me. Bragging? no... just collecting evidence of our success. My last three weeks on the scale have been like this: no change, down 10, up one. I was not upset or concerned with the "no change" or the "up one", because all along the way, I have been collecting evidence of my success. As I post pictures and statistics about pounds and inches lost, I am not trying to tell the world, "look what I've done"... I'm telling the old self-image in my head and my heart, "look what I've done". My blog, my photos, my ever-changing clothing sizes, my "PR's", my health status - all those things are evidence of my success. The people that I'm sharing those things with are my "witnesses" that help validate that evidence.

If by the grace of God I do happen to come out on top in this competition (and that is by NO MEANS a "given"), I will not regard that as having achieved my goal. My goal is to change my life for the rest of my life - a victory would only be another piece of evidence of my success, no more and no less important than fitting into the next size smaller jeans. If I do not win, that fact simply will not be part of my collection of evidence. To my fellow competitors - do NOT look at winning or losing this contest as the end-all, be-all gauge of your success. Twelve of us were chosen for this competition; ten of us are not going to "win". But all of us can use what we have accomplished as evidence of our success!

Updates...

Some of you may have wondered why I am not writing as often as I was when I began this blog. The posts have slowed down largely because I've shared most of the basics of weight loss with you. In spite of all the late-night TV commercials claiming to have "THE answer" to weight loss, there really is no silver bullet. People who have not seen me in a while ask me what I'm doing to lose weight, and the answer is always the same: "I'm eating lots of bland, boring food and working my tail off in the gym every day." Most people who are wanting to lose hope for a different answer, like "I take these pills - they're $4.99 at CVS - and the weight is coming off." They - quite literally - want to have their cake and eat it, too.

 

Over the next couple of days, I will re-read everything I've written, and see if there's anything earth-shattering that I've forgotten to share. But here, in a nutshell, are the things every dieter needs to keep in mind:

 

1. It takes a deficit of 3500 calories to lose one pound of fat. You either have to find a way to reduce your calorie intake (like giving up the cheeseburgers) or increase your calorie burn (like exercising until you feel like your lungs are going to explode).

 

2. Little cheats go a long ways. You can undo an entire week of benefits from exercise with one slice of pizza, one soda, or one double cheeseburger.

 

3. Your body needs water to flush out the fat. And then you have to make sure you get rid of the water. Drink water like a fish (take your weight, divide by two - that's how many ounces you should drink per day); watch the sodium, which will cause you to retain fluid. Don't cook with salt, don't add salt at the table, and don't eat anything for which you can't verify the sodium content.

 

4. If you exercise to the point of sweating and then quit, you're just warming up. Walking is good for you, but you have to walk a LOT for it to be beneficial. I gave you a guideline of 10,000 steps per day, or approximately 5 miles. A stroll around the block with an ice cream cone in your hand ain't gonna cut it.

 

If you've lost the link to my tips, you can read everything I've written here:

 

http://healthyagain2010.blogspot.com