Real Change Requires Real Food, But I Don't Wanna!

I've come a long way from disaster to pretty-damn-good, a long way from sugar addict to mostly-healthy.  I'm hovering here in pretty good shape, but I wouldn't say I'm glowing with wellness or anything.  I won't be running a marathon any time soon, and my attempt at turning weekly CSA produce deliveries into healthy meals last summer resulted in a lot of rotting root vegetables.

I wish I could be like those snazzy whole food bloggers who make it look so easy:
20 Quick and Easy On-the-go Lunches!  Not so much.  I eat relatively healthy, but a whole hell of a lot of my lunches still come out of a box... an Amy's organic box, but a box nonetheless.

I keep squawking to my Body Baggage group about how I'd feel slammin' if I lost another 5 lbs or so, but with my current regimen, it's not happening. My body is not going to change if my diet remains the same.  I get plenty of exercise.  Those last 5 lbs are all about the food. I need to get real and decide if I'm happy here in mostly-healthy-land or if I want to take a leap into genuinely, deep-down-healthy-land.  If I'm not ready to do it, I should drop the act altogether. There's no point in feeling guilty about it.

If I do want to take that next step, I'm going to have to get better acquainted with my kitchen.  I'm going to have to get good with devoting time and energy to shopping more frequently and cooking every day.  The thought makes me twitch.  It's a lazy luxury to eat organic food that has been prepared, preserved and frozen for me, but I have zero doubt that I would feel a difference if I was eating real, fresh, whole food prepared by yours truly.

I'm not a cook by nature.  I don't have the skills to taste something and say, "Hey, that needs more oregano!"  Even if I had the time, I don't have the attention span to chop and stir for hours each day.  I just don't care that much.  I don't have the nurturing mama/cook-thing in me.  My family gets by with a whole lot of Trader Joe's basics, supplemented with fresh cooked vegetables or salads on the side.  We eat dark chocolate and drink red wine every night.  We have chips and crackers, boxed risottos, jars of sauces, and cans of beans crowded into our pantry.  Our freezer overfloweth with "healthy" pre-prepared foods.

I am finally coming to the conclusion to that I can only go so far putting these canned, jarred, boxed, bagged, and frozen foods into my body.  There is a giant row of cookbooks on my kitchen counter.  Staring at me.  Perhaps I should consider opening one.

For now, it's February.  It's too cold to get out from under my blankets, and I could swear it gets dark at noon... and yes, that is a big, fat excuse. I'm going to give myself a pass during these dark winter days. The produce section pretty much sucks right now anyway. Or that's what I'm telling myself.  The cookbooks will stay where they are for a few more months, but I'm declaring out loud in preparation for the summer...

I need to make a decision.  Am I happy with eating healthy kinda sorta?  Or do I want to actually do it right?  Not sure yet.  Will report back when the sun comes out.

P.S. To the "friend" who introduced me to the vegan, gluten-free dessert bar at The Wild Cow... PTHHHH.

The Infamous Weight Loss Plateau

Stuck. That is where I am at the moment. Very stuck. Nine pounds into what will hopefully be a seventeen pound weight loss after having a baby four months ago. Nine pounds down and STOP.

Here’s the thing about weight loss plateaus… if you hit one, you know you’ve arrived somewhere. You’ve accomplished something. When you are in the process of losing weight, there are points along the way where your body wants to put on the brakes. It’s a signal that your metabolism, your muscles, and your mind need a chance to catch up and get accustomed to the new weight.

It is profoundly frustrating, but it should be seen as positive thing, a space for taking stock, recognizing the new body for what it is… a huge accomplishment. It may not be the body you are ultimately striving for, but it is different enough from what you were maintaining before that it demands a moment to catch up. Your body is telling you something. It is saying, “Hold on a second! This is not normal. What does this weight loss mean? Am I starving?? Do I need to protect myself and hang onto the weight that is left?”

The key here is to stay focused and refuse to give up

The first week of a new weight loss plan is usually pretty successful. Dietary changes are consistent and exercises are new and challenging. You are sore. You might drop several pounds of water weight because you aren’t taking in as much sugar and salt. The scale proudly reports that you have lost three pounds in one week, and you feel like you will be able to do that forever.

Week two is a slap in the face. It is often the first mini-plateau. You’ve lost the water weight, and your metabolism is carefully adjusting to the new calorie intake and expenditure. You haven’t built up enough muscle mass to make you feel tight and fit yet or to help you burn more calories during the day. The dietary changes slip once or twice. It’s week two, and it is almost always a disaster. You might lose nothing. You might lose half a pound. You might gain a pound. Anyway, it feels like a failure.

Week two is a maintenance week and should be dedicated to maintaining your behavioral changes, not worrying about the results on the scale. This is the first of several plateaus you will likely face along the way. If you can just keep your head down and keep doing what worked so well the first week, you will keep losing. It might come off slowly, but that truly is the best way to go. Slow weight loss is much more likely to be permanent… and that, inevitably, includes plateaus.

As I wait here, stuck, it is my job to quietly, peacefully reassure my body that I have enough energy to function healthfully and that it is okay to let go of a little bit more extra poundage. In order to do that, I will have to keep up the workout routine and stick to the dietary changes I have made. I should NOT suddenly cut another 500 calories out of my diet or start spending six hours at the gym every day. I want to let my body know that this is a change I can maintain and that it will feel good in the end. Do not panic. Stay calm.

If after a few weeks I am still stuck, I may need to make some subtle changes to what I am doing. I might add some high intensity intervals to my cardio routine or investigate my diet to see if there is a food or a habit I’ve been ignoring that could make a difference.

I need to treat my body and mind like they have just been through a divorce because, in fact, they have just divorced themselves of 8 pounds they were accustomed to carrying around. I need to help them understand that this new unencumbered, lighter life is a huge step forward, not something scary to be resisted.

A plateau demands patience. You can’t rush genius after all, and if you’ve lost five pounds toward a fifteen pound goal or two pounds toward a fifty pound goal, that’s exactly what you are, a weight loss genius. It is incredibly tough to lose weight. You will get stuck, but keep moving forward. Don’t talk yourself out of it. Keep your eye on the prize, and don’t waver.

These last eight pounds I have to lose are pounds I was carrying before I got pregnant. It is the weight I swore I would drop before having a baby but never did. After walking around bloated and bulbous for nine months (and a few months after that), I’m tired of being squishy. I know where I want my weight to be, and I’ve never been so motivated to get there.

I’m at a plateau. My body is telling me, “This is where you were when you got pregnant. Let’s stop right here in the comfort zone.” But that’s not good enough anymore. I need to let my body rest here for a week or two and then give it a kick start to let it know I can be better, stronger, and lighter.

I’m not taking no for an answer.

G-bye Fat Jeans

So... the fat jeans I bought post-pregnancy are falling off. Just thought I'd share. It feels damn good. I think I'll keep wearing them for a while until they get nice and saggy. 3 lbs away from pre-pregnancy weight, 11 lbs away from goal... whoop!

Wedding Weight Woes: Just Say No to the Battle with the Scale

My latest article, Wedding Weight Woes: Just Say No to the Battle with the Scale, is out in Her Magazine's February Bridal Issue. Check it out!

There isn’t much that I love more than a wedding. I got married over three years ago but can still be found covertly recording Say Yes to the Dress on my DVR every Friday night. It’s a sickness, really. There is something so alluring about the romance of it all. Beautiful dresses and flowers, reluctantly adorable men in tuxedos, and the promise of eternal love and commitment. It’s all so picture perfect, isn’t it?

Therein lies the trap.

Picture perfect is all about appearances, and appearances, for many women, are inextricably tied to body image. When it’s our turn to be the bride, so many of us take what should be a happy celebration of our connection with our partners and turn it into a referendum on our bodies and sense of style, fixating on tired, old insecurities as the big day approaches.

As a personal trainer, I get a lot of calls from women trying to lose weight in advance of their weddings. They want to be able to pull that corset tight and fulfill the dream of how they should look in their wedding pictures. I get it. By all rights, it is the one time in our lives when it seems like everything should fall blissfully into place, and for some women it does. I have seen clients and friends drop weight without cutting out so much as a single serving of Manchego. When it happens that way, fantastic. However, if it doesn’t, if a woman maintains her regular, real-life weight, should her day be any less celebrated? Should she feel any less blessed, beautiful, and loved?

Many of my clients who start exercising madly before a wedding end up disappointed because their goals are set too high or they don’t have the time or energy to make the changes necessary for significant weight loss. The struggle to lose weight is something they face every day whether there is a wedding on the horizon or not. I wish they could see the wedding as a reason to let go of that struggle rather than a reason to fixate on it. There are much better, much more wonderful things to think about in anticipation of the day you get to have everyone you love in one room, supporting you and wishing you well.

As my own wedding approached, I lost weight completely effortlessly for the first and only time in my life. Frankly, it was a bizarre feeling. The war I waged my entire adult life was suddenly no war at all. The stubborn ten pounds I could never kick suddenly lifted off and floated away. I felt like an idiot for wasting decades and incalculable amounts of energy battling myself over pounds that could be lost in a blink under the right circumstances. But my momentary reprieve from the weight loss Ferris wheel proved to be a mirage. After the big day, every pointless pound steadily crept back on like a dear old friend coming over nightly for a glass of wine on the couch and a few hundred old episodes of Say Yes to the Dress. I went down; I went up. And the funny thing is… it didn’t matter one bit to my husband. He loved me down, and he loved me right back up again.

Weddings can bring that magical lightness of being, or they can bring enormous pressure and frustration. The brilliant truth of the matter is that the husbands-to-be are always in love with their women just the way they are. They proposed marriage that way, and they want their brides to be the beautiful people that they have adored from the very beginning.

So I tell my clients: we will do everything we can to help you look as sexy and stunning as possible. But the best way to insure that you will look happy and healthy on your wedding day is to be happy and healthy, strong and fit, to exercise and get lots of fresh air, to celebrate the upcoming day and put your focus on spending the rest of your life with the person you love. It has absolutely nothing to do with losing weight or dropping a dress size. It has everything to do with confidence and joy. Letting go of the pressure to lose weight is easier said than done, but if you are taking good care of yourself, your beauty will shine brightly in the photo on the mantel "from this day forward, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health."

Is Your Workout Worth Your Time?

In short, the answer is always YES! No matter how brief or low-intensity, any physical activity during your day can contribute to your longevity and wellbeing. However, if you want to increase your fitness level, you can probably do more for greater results.

I met with a client the other day who has been working out for years, faithfully going to the gym, getting on the treadmill and elliptical for 45 minutes three times a week, occasionally using weight machines… and staying exactly the same weight year after year. It’s a common story.

If you are working out consistently for longer than three months and you feel like your progress has stalled, you are not pushing yourself hard enough or getting enough variation to force your body to grow stronger. You may very well be doing enough to maintain your current physique and cardiovascular fitness, and if that is your goal, then you are absolutely doing the right thing. However, if you are looking for increased fitness, you will have to challenge yourself and vary your workouts in order to keep advancing. It's hard and sweaty but well worth the effort.

There are a couple of indicators to let you know whether or not you are pushing yourself hard enough. Measure them regularly to keep track of your progress.

1. Soreness – You are looking for happy soreness, not painful, injury-induced soreness. Soreness should occur in your muscles but not in your joints, and you should not experience shooting pain of any kind. The ache of a good sore muscle usually occurs 24-48 hours after exertion. You should get sore when you begin a new workout program or when you increase your intensity as needed. Depending on the plan you are following, this can happen anywhere from every two weeks to every two months, but if you are not sore… ever… something is wrong. You are not working hard enough to challenge your muscles. You are too strong for your current regime. Take it up a notch!

2. Breathing – The conventional wisdom is that sedentary people, beginners, or casual exercisers should be able to carry on a conversation while engaged in cardiovascular activity like walking, jogging, or riding a bike. You should be able to talk but not sing. If you are singing as you stroll, you are not going fast enough. People with greater training experience can shoot a little higher. They can make it a goal to reach a level of exertion where they have some difficulty forming complete sentences but are able to get out a few words here and there between breaths.

3. Heart rate – Know your maximum heart rate and your target heart rate range. Bear with me here for a minute while we do some math. The easiest way to figure out your max heart rate is to subtract your age from 220 (ex. 220 – 35 = 185 beats per minute). Moderate exercise is 70-85% of your maximum heart rate. So, a 35-year-old person with a maximum heart rate of 185 bpm would want to keep his or her heart rate between 129 and 157 bpm while exercising. To find out what your current heart rate is, take your pulse for 10 seconds and multiply by 6. You can also get a watch with a heart rate monitor or use the monitors built into the handle bars of most commercial cardiovascular machines.

FYI, there is a new study from Ohio State University out this month suggesting a different maximum heart rate calculation exclusively for women. They recommend women calculate 206 minus 88% of your age. For a woman age 35, her maximum would be 175 bpm with a target heart rate range of 122 to 149 for moderate exercise. High intensity heart rates could be higher, but should stay below your personal maximum. Figure out your numbers once, and keep track a few times while you are exercising. Eventually, you will know your own body well enough to tell easily if you are in the appropriate heart rate zone.

4. Measurements – What your measurements are and how your clothes fit are better representations of changing fitness than weight. Instead of hopping on the scale everyday, consider asking a friend to measure your hips, waist, bust, and the widest part of your upper arm and thigh once a month in order to measure your progress. Whether or not you lose weight, your shape could be changing. Also, remember that dietary habits have everything to do with losing weight and keeping it off, so if your goal is weight loss, you will probably need to take a hard look at your diet and find places where excess calories can be cut. If your goal is overall fitness, set the scale aside and measure your progress by how you feel and how your clothes fit.

All of that said, some form of exercise is always better than none. A ten-minute walk every day is so much better than no walk at all. Take the above tips only if you are seriously interested in increasing your fitness level. Otherwise, make your goals much more manageable. Find ways to stay active whenever you can: garden, do crunches while you watch TV, walk around the block at lunchtime, park far away from the entrance to the movie theater, and take the stairs whenever possible. All of it is worth your while.

Please tweet or email me any questions, and I will do my best to answer!

@sarahhayscoomer

sarah@strengthoutsidein.com

Dear Friend, Get Bariatric Surgery and Give Us All of Your Money

I received a letter in the mail recently from HCA/TriStar Health System, touting the wonders of bariatric surgery. The headline states boldly in red, “The more you lose, the more you win”, and the letter begins, “Dear Friend”.

My “friend” goes on to tell me “One of the worst consequences of being overweight or suffering from obesity is that quality of life suffers. Enjoying life’s simple pleasures – traveling, experiencing the outdoors or being socially active and meeting new people – can be difficult when living with this disease. If obesity is affecting your life or the life of someone you love, TriStar Health System can help. Our surgeons are experts in a variety of minimally invasive bariatric surgical procedures, including: gastric bypass, gastric banding, sleeve gastrectomy… Think of everything you have to gain when you decide you are ready to lose!”

This was sent to me, not based on a doctor’s recommendation, not because I am working with a psychiatrist or a nutritionist or trying to overcome morbid obesity. It was sent to me merely based on the fact that HCA has my mailing address because my doctor practices under their umbrella. It has nothing to do with my medical needs. In fact, it even says “If obesity is affecting your life or the life of someone you love...” Who doesn’t have someone they love who is affected by obesity?! Their marketing team is counting on that, and therefore this letter is suddenly, miraculously relevant to every patient in their purview.

I know lots of obese people, most of whom do not have difficultly “experiencing the outdoors” or “meeting new people”. Most of them are working tirelessly to achieve a healthy weight, or they have made peace with their bodies as they are. If the extra weight is dangerous, their doctors and counselors should be the ones to help them decide which interventions are best… not an advertising mailer made out to “Dear Friend.”

Call me old fashioned, but I find this kind of shameless, money-grubbing, condescending advertising to be totally and utterly disgusting. HCA/TriStar Health System should be ashamed of themselves. Instead of spending their money on marketing flyers and postage, they should donate a few hundred thousand dollars to healthy school lunch programs or food banks. Then maybe I would be proud to be one of their patients and happy to refer my friends and family for their services. Shame on you, HCA. Shame.

But I Can Be Perfect! Tomorrow.

Any of you who know me well have heard my mantra about setting small, easily-achievable goals. Just a couple of blog posts ago in Set, Point, Match, I was ranting about setting a goal you know you can reach and then hanging out there for a while, getting accustomed to how that new behavior or the new body feels in space before moving on to bigger, more exciting goals. And my last post was about our need for Quick Fix Clutter and how the resulting, inevitable failure can lead down a rabbit hole of obsession and insecurity.

Well, along those lines, Dr. Will Aguila has recently posted a brilliant blog on Huffington Post about The Link Between Obesity and Perfectionism. In reference to himself and others struggling with obesity, he says, "We're not the lazy procrastinating, passive-agressive people that many think we are. We set very high, sometimes unreachable, standards for ourselves... When we find we cannot achieve our goals, we stop trying because we fear failure."

His post is extremely insightful. I see it all the time in myself and my clients. It's the impulse that prompts you to go from pizza at the office party to skipping your workout because... well, you blew it with the pizza, so why bother? You'll just have some ice cream tonight and start fresh tomorrow. Oh yeah, and might as well have some chocolate sauce and a cookie with that since today is blown anyway. The next morning your clothes feel a little too tight, and you know you won't make your weight loss goal for the week. You feel low-energy and depressed, so your diet and workout plans suffer that day too. Rinse and repeat.

Dr. Aguila's point is that perfectionism can drive us all directly down the path of obesity. We must give ourselves a break, set goals we can achieve, and give ourselves a healthy reward if we get there. Small changes are the ones that change lives and bodies permanently. Reaching too far, too fast will likely only lead to crash-and-burn failure and even more unwanted weight gain.

I implore you to give yourself a break. Only then can you see clearly and discover exactly which goals make sense in the long run.

Set Point Match

I am currently taking up more space in the world than I am accustomed to. This is not a fun feeling. In spite of my increased size being totally natural and necessary to make room for a little human, it feels disconcerting and strange to be so BIG all of a sudden.

Everybody develops a comfort zone at a certain weight, a set amount of space we are used to taking up in the world, a set point that feels familiar if not necessarily ideal. To change that set point feels odd, off kilter. Whether it is the result of weight gain or loss, the change is disconcerting and requires adjustment to remain in the new space, but eventually we get used to it. I am keenly aware of this as my body expands daily. My clients also struggle with it as they work to familiarize themselves with how their bodies feel in space after significant weight loss. Especially in weight loss, the body and mind want to pull you back to your customary set point. It feels easy and natural to drift peacefully back up to your customary weight.

My set point is generally about ten pounds heavier than I would like it to be. When left to drift aimlessly, without any effort or control, I will always come back to that same weight. Whether I'm approaching from it higher or lower, I always float back.

Why that particular set point and not another? Why not ten pounds down or twenty pounds up?

It's a warm and cozy combination of my habitual eating patterns, the portion sizes I have grown accustomed to, and the workout intensity I gravitate towards. It has to do with my overall daily activity level, the number of errands I run in a week, the number of clients I see, and the hours spent writing. It is neither good nor bad, neither terribly healthy nor unhealthy. It's just, plain middle of the road and seems to be how I roll when I'm not paying attention.

So what I would like to know is... when this ballooning belly is gone, when my set point has been upended for nine months, can I reset it where I wish?! Most of the time, we are busy allowing our set points to settle up ten pounds or so. But I've also seen the opposite happen... women so happy to have endured a pregnancy or men so happy to have overcome an injury that they want to feel as fit as possible. While it's up in the air, who's to say I can't reset it downward 10 pounds to that lovely, ideal hot bod in the sky? A girl can dream, right?

I'll have to wait to find out, but in the meantime, I challenge you to discover your set point. Figure out where you land naturally. Evaluate whether it makes you happy and how long it has been established. Then consider how it would feel to take up a different amount of space in the world. See if you can take your set point down 5 pounds. Take it down in your mind and in your body. Make the new weight, the new space, into the only acceptable option. Just like the limit on your credit card... there's only so far you can go before they shut you down. Shut yourself down a little earlier than usual.

Take it down, and match it for a while. Match that small change until it feels inevitable. Then, maybe, if you feel like it, evaluate your space all over again and find out if your new set point is a match for the long haul.