Reality shows have been around longer than the media like to admit. The Academy Awards and the Emmys as well as other reward shows are reality shows. There are unexpected turns of events and you don’t always know who is going to win. Certainly televised football games and other sports are reality shows. Any game show, daytime or nighttime, is a reality show. I confess. I like reality shows – well, some of them. I don’t like the ones where people are playing mind games and acting like jerks. I don’t like the ones where the “star” got the show because he can use a power trip and yell constantly at the contestants. Yet, with some of them like American Idol, So You Think you Can Dance or Dancing with the Stars, and America’s Got Talent, though the judges are sometimes too blunt, the criticisms are mostly honest – not vicious.
When The Biggest Loser entered the list, I really liked Bob, but Jillian’s get in their face attitude turned me off. I have always fought weight issues and know just what the contestants are going through. They already feel bad about themselves and her screaming at them seemed to be for the dramatic effect to stir up interest but harsh. Then for some reason she left for a season and they had this Barbie doll, Kim. She was sweet but didn’t get the results Jillian had with the players as well as the ratings NBC wanted. So Jillian came back and led the team that no one chose – the black team who came back and dominated the challenges.
Next season it was Jillian and Bob. I imagined trying out for the show, but could someone my age – a baby boomer get on the show? But then I considered what it would be like to have Jillian as my trainer and I didn’t want her screaming in my face. But over the many seasons it has been on, they have allowed her to show her other side. I still don’t understand why she and Bob feel they have to make the contestants hurt – other than the show has to move them fast and the drama helps the ratings. But beyond the hype, Jillian has shown herself to be compassionate and smart. They have to promote the sponsors but once I got one of her books I believe that she doesn’t really believe in some of the stuff they put on that show.
I was particularly drawn to her book, Master Your Metabolism. My husband, Doug, and I have spent many years and many dollars studying nutrition and all the diets out there. He has had times where he was over weight but currently it is his blood pressure, dark circles under his eyes, and weakness in his muscles with lots of fatigue that concerns both of us. My weight, blood pressure, late onset acne, and another issue I won’t go into are my concerns but I really just want to be healthy and live life to the fullest.
I read the book and studied it. Doug read it. We have long believed that raw food is really the best, but all the food prep and time involved as well as trying to maintain the regime while working on landscaping jobs has pulled us off the program over and over. I liked the idea of mostly raw organic food when available with some animal protein. Most of the raw food “experts” are strict vegans and have volumes proclaiming why you should not eat any animal products. Yet, in the back of my mind I remember a Cherokee elder woman saying if you have Type “O” blood type and have Native American Blood in you, you will find it hard to be 100% vegetarian. When I am eating the raw diet and sticking with it, I really don’t crave the meat. But when we are doing heavy labor jobs and too tired to make food when we get home ten or twelve hours later, the men especially want some sort of animal protein. Nuts and seeds and veggies just aren’t enough. And none of us feel like preparing anything much less have the time to do it. We go get the chicken house salad or some other form of chicken meal.
Jillian Michael’s book left me with many questions and comments but I have yet to find a way to directly inquire with her. Of course there is the disclaimer in the front of the book, but, one, I don’t have the money to go get my own endocrinologist and have an exam and tests done, and two, the comments and questions I have are not so involved that I should have to pay someone for the answers. The idea of our metabolism being out of whack is right and I really agree with the basic premises. But just making the changes she suggests does not detoxify a lifetime of issues in your body.
For example, Doug handled a lot of pesticides working on the farm when he was growing up. Though the food on the farm was mostly homegrown and not full of preservatives, he had a steady diet of white sugar in deserts and white flour in bread. I suspect that Kansas mothers and grandmothers did like most post World Ward II cooks did and add lots of sugar to everything - and fat. He was breastfed, but his brother and sister had a bottle. I had a bottle filled with Pet Milk and Karo syrup. So until I ate food, which was pushed very early, I was mal-nourished. Is it any wonder I had a potbelly like the malnourished tribal people in other world countries? And what I was fed when they started me on solid food was starch, fat, and sugar. It was what they did in those days. It is not any wonder that I have had weight problems all my life?
The food plans in the back of the book are good starting points but she is a little tiny woman. How can someone Doug’s size and being a man or someone my size eat such a small amount? Just reading the lists makes me hungry. There just isn’t much food – like 3 pieces of nitrate free bacon and half of a grapefruit are suppose to be a breakfast. And the idea of eating such small amounts every four hours AND exercising inbetween or working on a labor job does NOT work. In our case, we would get crazy or collapse. I do believe in portioning the servings but get in trouble when I get out shopping or paying bills and get beyond the four hours unexpectedly. Then I get really weak and shaky – and irritable. As with all “diets” it is about establishing your body’s needs into a rhythm that works for you.
All that being said, the Metabolism diet secrets are still the most effective way to make some changes in your lives. The reality is that if you want to be healthier, whether you are over weight or just unhealthy, you have to be ready to make a lifestyle change that is PERMANENT! No diet works if you think you can diet for a while and then go back to the old habits that caused the problem, whatever it was, in the first place. But we are stubborn. We rebel against never having those wonderful deserts and fried chicken we love and crave. We have always eaten for comfort, because of unhappiness or stress, or to be like everyone else. There is a list of excuses we make. Let’s be honest. It isn’t easy when the rest of society is out there eating crap and not worrying about it. Someone I know who is in my family says, “Just eat what you want” but boy does he get ugly about fat people. But you can’t just eat what you want if the imbalances in your metabolism have caused excess weight or high blood pressure or diabetes or acne or circles under your eyes or tumors or any other undesirable health condition.
If you have read my previous blogs, you know I believe in a spiritual connection with everything as well as belief systems and core beliefs. I will get into that more in future blogs. The most general thing I can say about this diet plan to balancing your hormones is eat whole foods, organic when you can get them and watch portions. That means eliminating the white foods – white flour, white sugar, white rice, and all the variations of processed food that are not real food. When you are watching what you eat, you don’t crave the sugar and non-organic whole grain bread as much. In fact, I can make an organic loaf of whole grain bread last 3 or 4 weeks. Fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, baked or grilled chicken and meats, organic dairy – I won’t eat any dairy if it isn’t organic, and no snack foods like chips and crackers are easy enough to find.
(end part one)
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Book Review, Dieting, and Reality Shows
January 26, 2010
Today’s topic – Reality Shows and Health and Dieting- part two
I just spent a week with my in-laws in the Florida Keys. They like to go out to eat because they don’t like to prepare food after a long day at work. The restaurants have many tempting things that torture a person trying to diet. Some choices are okay, but it was really hard because ordering salads that are 90% white iceberg lettuce can burn you out on salads – blah! Most places have grilled fish but the fried conch fritters or fried calamari are tempting tidbits and the family likes to order appetizers. The side dish choices are baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, white or yellow rice or fries usually. One place had fresh green beans. The family also loves to order a desert for everyone to have a bite or two – mostly because one person in particular like sweets and wants everyone to eat some so he won’t be the only sugar eater. But I just can’t do that. My husband complimented me on turning down the deserts. It helped that I really don’t like Key Lime pie. But on the last night they also ordered a cocoanut custard filled cake. That one was torture because cocoanut custard is one of my biggest former loves. And sometimes you order something that seems harmless enough and then it obviously has sugar in it. When you are a sugar-a-holic, one bite does you in. And you don’t want to waste the money paid for the food by not eating it.
Then there is the general stress of being in a family situation. There is eating the mother-in-law’s favorite appetizer she always fixes. There is eating when you are bored or wanting to avoid talking. There is wanting to try something new like conch fritters or catch of the day with almandine sauce, asking for a small baked potato and getting a large one, ordering crab and it turns out to be fake, sugar sweetened and artificial colored crabmeat. Field greens are listed as the ingredient of the salad and it is white lettuce and one little piece of romaine when they bring it out. The tomatoes are green and awful and HMO grown. Cheese on a salad is cheap processed fake cheddar. No restaurant has a salad dressing that isn’t commercial. Organic dairy is findable and it is a good thing you won’t be there long because it is too expensive to use it regularly. But you want to have a good visit with the family’s once a year get together and you don’t want to complain and bitch about the food choices. And you come home feeling like crap, tired, and having to go through withdrawal once again feeling like your clothes are tight because as hard as you tried, you still ended up eating food, or too much food, you didn’t want to eat.
When Doug came home for two weeks for Christmas and New Years, he read the book but I found it harder to stay with the metabolism program. For one thing, he doesn’t need to lose weight. He needs to lower his BP and gain muscle mass back. He is a 6’1” man and needs more calories. He wants to eat in the evening especially after 9 p.m. – a habit he needs to break but he is working in FL living with his dad. So all the challenges I spoke of above being with family, he has all the time, every day. I have added some organic cheese and Greek yogurt but he can’t eat any dairy. Many of the recipes at the end of the book contain dairy.
I can do most of this because right now it is winter and our work is the work Doug is doing with his family in Florida. I have time now, but the truth is that I don’t like to cook all the time. When we are working, I don’t feel like cooking. I get burned out on cooking very easily. I would rather sit here and write about food rather than go to the kitchen and fix something. Last night I found myself eating something after 9 p.m. – not because I was hungry but because there was something in the frig. After I heated it up and started eating, I asked myself, “why am I eating this?” The routine is off after the week with family. I thought I could return to the routine the next day – but that hasn’t happened yet.
Eating the right foods is essential to living a healthy long life. When my mother started having health problems in her sixties, she asked me for some alternative ideas – but I knew she wouldn’t do anything I suggested. She had always refused to change her diet in any way making all the excuses in the world or just down right arguing with me about the sugar and white flour and all the cake and fake ice cream she always had in the house. If you asked Daddy if he like spinach and vegetables, he would say he did like them but Mother would argue that he wouldn’t eat them. I don’t know if he wouldn’t eat them or if it was her that didn’t like them unwilling to change her rigid habits. I answered her that she wouldn’t like the answers we would give her about her health when she wanted a quick fix. If she wasn’t willing to make some changes, then she needed to take the pills and advice of the Medical doctors. Their treatment plans were for someone with a Standard American Diet and lifestyle – not necessarily healthy but what mainstream society was doing. I hated it. She died of cancer at 72 and Daddy died one week after his 79th birthday of congestive heart failure. She had slight diabetes until the cancer treatment and steroids shot her insulin up into life threatening ranges. Now my in-laws are in their eighties and their comments and thinking are slipping. Just a conversation with either of them is a challenge. As many excuses I can list for not eating right, there really is not other choice. It means that I have to find other things to do for fun, to soothe myself when I need comfort or am lonely, and find foods that taste good. It means I have to prepare my own food and not eat out – that is a disaster waiting to happen on healthy eating. And I have to watch my thinking – take control of my thoughts and not let random thoughts draw to me things I don’t want in my life.
If you are ready to take charge of your life and your health and make PERMANENT changes, then I recommend Master Your Metabolism by Jillian Michaels as a starting point. Then contact me with questions and get some personal support with your decision. For many people, the ideas are so foreign that they may turn back to the old habits really quick. For us, it isn’t such a stretch because we know so much already and most of the book supports a natural lifestyle we already believe in – even if we haven’t always been doing the program. That is why I feel I can help others no matter where they are on the path to good health. Reading the book I have finally decided I do like Jillian Michaels and hope someday to get to talk with her. Meanwhile, it is time to make some healthy lunch and I have a full refrigerator to choose from.
Today’s topic – Reality Shows and Health and Dieting- part two
I just spent a week with my in-laws in the Florida Keys. They like to go out to eat because they don’t like to prepare food after a long day at work. The restaurants have many tempting things that torture a person trying to diet. Some choices are okay, but it was really hard because ordering salads that are 90% white iceberg lettuce can burn you out on salads – blah! Most places have grilled fish but the fried conch fritters or fried calamari are tempting tidbits and the family likes to order appetizers. The side dish choices are baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, white or yellow rice or fries usually. One place had fresh green beans. The family also loves to order a desert for everyone to have a bite or two – mostly because one person in particular like sweets and wants everyone to eat some so he won’t be the only sugar eater. But I just can’t do that. My husband complimented me on turning down the deserts. It helped that I really don’t like Key Lime pie. But on the last night they also ordered a cocoanut custard filled cake. That one was torture because cocoanut custard is one of my biggest former loves. And sometimes you order something that seems harmless enough and then it obviously has sugar in it. When you are a sugar-a-holic, one bite does you in. And you don’t want to waste the money paid for the food by not eating it.
Then there is the general stress of being in a family situation. There is eating the mother-in-law’s favorite appetizer she always fixes. There is eating when you are bored or wanting to avoid talking. There is wanting to try something new like conch fritters or catch of the day with almandine sauce, asking for a small baked potato and getting a large one, ordering crab and it turns out to be fake, sugar sweetened and artificial colored crabmeat. Field greens are listed as the ingredient of the salad and it is white lettuce and one little piece of romaine when they bring it out. The tomatoes are green and awful and HMO grown. Cheese on a salad is cheap processed fake cheddar. No restaurant has a salad dressing that isn’t commercial. Organic dairy is findable and it is a good thing you won’t be there long because it is too expensive to use it regularly. But you want to have a good visit with the family’s once a year get together and you don’t want to complain and bitch about the food choices. And you come home feeling like crap, tired, and having to go through withdrawal once again feeling like your clothes are tight because as hard as you tried, you still ended up eating food, or too much food, you didn’t want to eat.
When Doug came home for two weeks for Christmas and New Years, he read the book but I found it harder to stay with the metabolism program. For one thing, he doesn’t need to lose weight. He needs to lower his BP and gain muscle mass back. He is a 6’1” man and needs more calories. He wants to eat in the evening especially after 9 p.m. – a habit he needs to break but he is working in FL living with his dad. So all the challenges I spoke of above being with family, he has all the time, every day. I have added some organic cheese and Greek yogurt but he can’t eat any dairy. Many of the recipes at the end of the book contain dairy.
I can do most of this because right now it is winter and our work is the work Doug is doing with his family in Florida. I have time now, but the truth is that I don’t like to cook all the time. When we are working, I don’t feel like cooking. I get burned out on cooking very easily. I would rather sit here and write about food rather than go to the kitchen and fix something. Last night I found myself eating something after 9 p.m. – not because I was hungry but because there was something in the frig. After I heated it up and started eating, I asked myself, “why am I eating this?” The routine is off after the week with family. I thought I could return to the routine the next day – but that hasn’t happened yet.
Eating the right foods is essential to living a healthy long life. When my mother started having health problems in her sixties, she asked me for some alternative ideas – but I knew she wouldn’t do anything I suggested. She had always refused to change her diet in any way making all the excuses in the world or just down right arguing with me about the sugar and white flour and all the cake and fake ice cream she always had in the house. If you asked Daddy if he like spinach and vegetables, he would say he did like them but Mother would argue that he wouldn’t eat them. I don’t know if he wouldn’t eat them or if it was her that didn’t like them unwilling to change her rigid habits. I answered her that she wouldn’t like the answers we would give her about her health when she wanted a quick fix. If she wasn’t willing to make some changes, then she needed to take the pills and advice of the Medical doctors. Their treatment plans were for someone with a Standard American Diet and lifestyle – not necessarily healthy but what mainstream society was doing. I hated it. She died of cancer at 72 and Daddy died one week after his 79th birthday of congestive heart failure. She had slight diabetes until the cancer treatment and steroids shot her insulin up into life threatening ranges. Now my in-laws are in their eighties and their comments and thinking are slipping. Just a conversation with either of them is a challenge. As many excuses I can list for not eating right, there really is not other choice. It means that I have to find other things to do for fun, to soothe myself when I need comfort or am lonely, and find foods that taste good. It means I have to prepare my own food and not eat out – that is a disaster waiting to happen on healthy eating. And I have to watch my thinking – take control of my thoughts and not let random thoughts draw to me things I don’t want in my life.
If you are ready to take charge of your life and your health and make PERMANENT changes, then I recommend Master Your Metabolism by Jillian Michaels as a starting point. Then contact me with questions and get some personal support with your decision. For many people, the ideas are so foreign that they may turn back to the old habits really quick. For us, it isn’t such a stretch because we know so much already and most of the book supports a natural lifestyle we already believe in – even if we haven’t always been doing the program. That is why I feel I can help others no matter where they are on the path to good health. Reading the book I have finally decided I do like Jillian Michaels and hope someday to get to talk with her. Meanwhile, it is time to make some healthy lunch and I have a full refrigerator to choose from.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Happy New Year
I'm back to the blog and have many things to talk about but the first thing is to say to all Happy New Year. As we start the new year with resolutions and dreams and hopes to see the economy improve and our own individual circumstances, I am reminded that one of the ways to keep the flow going is to be grateful. It is important to make a list daily of what we are thankful for. Start with the easy stuff and keep writing until you have said thank you God for everything.
Thank you God: for a warm home, electricity, natural gas, water, a bed, a computer, a TV, music, food and coffee.
Thank you God: for my family, my cats and my dog, for my children, and adopted son's son who has brought joy to the whole family.
Thank you God for Love, for Peace, for Joy, for prosperity, for abundance, for sunshine on a cold day, for sunshine every day, for the bird that wakes me every morning even though it seems so cold outside you would think it wouldn't be happy - but still it sings its morning song - thank you God. Thank you God for the blue jays and crows who seem to be around a lot keeping watch over my yard and me.
Thank you God for the rest of the family that help us through these lean times.
Thank you God for my friends and my spiritual community, SLCA, and for every blessing I receive from that big group of happy non-judgmental people.
Thank you God for my education, for my dreams and thoughts and ideas. Thank you God for the opportunity to grow and to learn and to share with others and to get better and better. Thank you God for Love and for showing me how to give love to others.
Thank you God for my good automobiles, for the city and state who provides good roads and good utilities. Thank you for my cell phone and the internet. Thank you for good books and good music.
Thank you God for good and perfect health for me, for my family, especially for my pets as they age.
Thank you God, Thank you God, Thank you God for everything for I KNOW that God is all there is. God IS ALL there is! It is so.
Thank you God: for a warm home, electricity, natural gas, water, a bed, a computer, a TV, music, food and coffee.
Thank you God: for my family, my cats and my dog, for my children, and adopted son's son who has brought joy to the whole family.
Thank you God for Love, for Peace, for Joy, for prosperity, for abundance, for sunshine on a cold day, for sunshine every day, for the bird that wakes me every morning even though it seems so cold outside you would think it wouldn't be happy - but still it sings its morning song - thank you God. Thank you God for the blue jays and crows who seem to be around a lot keeping watch over my yard and me.
Thank you God for the rest of the family that help us through these lean times.
Thank you God for my friends and my spiritual community, SLCA, and for every blessing I receive from that big group of happy non-judgmental people.
Thank you God for my education, for my dreams and thoughts and ideas. Thank you God for the opportunity to grow and to learn and to share with others and to get better and better. Thank you God for Love and for showing me how to give love to others.
Thank you God for my good automobiles, for the city and state who provides good roads and good utilities. Thank you for my cell phone and the internet. Thank you for good books and good music.
Thank you God for good and perfect health for me, for my family, especially for my pets as they age.
Thank you God, Thank you God, Thank you God for everything for I KNOW that God is all there is. God IS ALL there is! It is so.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Announcement
Just checked my analytics of my blog and saw there are a few checking in. I have been preoccupied with the holidays and having my husband home and a few other things. Keep checking back readers as I will be posting new blogs in a day or so. Hope all are having a great New Year and do let me hear from you. K
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