Betty Chambers Has Spoken

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Sugar
Saturday, April 5, 2008

There is too much sugar in my oatmeal.

I assumed, wrongly, that this was a great way to start the day. I enjoy a hot breakfast for winter and early Spring. The only thing that instant oatmeal does for me is trigger a ridiculous sugar craving hours later.

I am not a sugar fiend, but that instant oatmeal definitely turned me into one. I cannot tolerate a lot of sugar: it makes me sick. High blood pressure runs in my family. To me wherever there is too much sugar, there's likely to be too much salt.

Now that the weather's getting warmer, I've switched to one banana. I don't like any of those "diets" that recommend a slice of whole wheat bread, one egg, an 8 oz glass of orange juice, and some other junk.

That combination is guaranteed to cause a belly ache and make me barf. I kid you not.

Sometimes you can't win for losing when it comes to food these days.

Labels: breakfast, diets, sugar

posted by GoldenAh

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Food
Tuesday, February 19, 2008

The following is a random list of things I love to eat, and what I eat them with. I mostly bake. I don't like fried foods, except for French Fries.

Meat
Bacon Cheeseburger - medium
Steak - nearly raw, pink
Lamb - with curry
Shrimp
Lobster
Cornish Hen
Tuna
Salmon

I don't like the chicken that's out there. Although organic and antibiotic-free chicken are showing up in the stores. I want the non-Frankenstein-big-breast chicken. I still don't like the way the meat looks or smells. I've been cutting back on the beef, haven't had it in a long time. I don't like the oily odd chewy taste of it.

Seasoning
Olive Oil
Sea Salt
Black Pepper
Chili Pepper
Curry
Cumin
Tumeric

The spicier the dish, the more I like. I love Indian food.

Bread
Roti

Rice
Long Grain Rice
Spanish Rice
Basmati Rice

I have to work on getting into Brown Rice and cooking it with Coconut Oil.

Veggies, Legumes, Nuts
Spinach - baby
Spinach - frozen
Asparagus - in salads, baked, boiled or lightly salted
Yellow Sweet / Vidalia Onion
Cashews
Chic Peas
Kidney Beans
Portobello Mushrooms
Romaine Lettuce
Pumpkins
Tomatoes (plum, cherry)

Dishes
Samosa
Beef Patti
Pad Thai
Sushi - California Roll, Spicy Tuna Roll
Penne Pasta (Spinach)
Spaghetti (whole wheat)

Fruit, Snack
Dried papaya
Jelly-Belly Beans
Mangoes
Tomatoes

Labels: diets

posted by GoldenAh

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Weight Loss: Staying on Course
Thursday, October 4, 2007

In my daily journal (spiral notebook), I enter the following:

date of entry

weight for that morning, before I eat

exercise conducted

- period of time of exercise
- estimate of calories burned
calories to eat for the day

There you have it. Everyday, I keep track of: how much I weight, how much I exercise, calories burned and how much I will eat for the day.

It helps a whole lot.

Estimates for calories burned, I get from this site: freedieting.com, and for calories in food: calorie-count.com.

Labels: diets, exercise, weight, weight loss

posted by GoldenAh

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Weight Loss: glycemic index
Friday, August 24, 2007

I don't have diabetes, but I do visit web sites that recommend diets for diabetics.

Glycemic index is about ranking carbohydrate foods by how they raise blood glucose levels. It's that sugar rush one gets after eating something sweet, then getting hungry a short time afterwards.

There are people who are satisfied by eating sweets all day. I'm not one of them. I get sick when I don't eat properly. Eating sweets makes it worse. I can't skip meals, maybe only breakfast. I get the shakes five to six hours after my last meal. I would pass out if I don't eat all day.

It seems like I have a diabetic condition, but I found out that this is something on the order of low blood sugar, the sugar blues, reactive hypoglycemia(?), or hyperinsulinism(?).

I'm one of the few people on the planet that doesn't like chocolate. I can resist the call of that particular sweet. I get sickly (lethargic and queasy) if I eat a cake with too much icing.

One would think I'd have no weight problems with my disdain for candy or sweets. I've never had a cavity, because I rarely ate candy as a child. Instead, I crave salty spicy foods. When the kids on the block wanted lemonade, I made my own version called poisonade. In my lemon drink, I added salt. I added salt to tomatoes and ate them raw.

I've cut back on my salt cravings, but my food must be a bit spicy salty to enjoy.

Following a diabetic diet it turns out that highly refined foods are no good. This seems like a no brainer. Avoid foods that are high in sugar, which are processed foods. Stick with raw foods or foods that have been processed at least once.

Does all of this sound familiar? Sure, keep to foods that haven't had the nutrients removed from it through excessive processing. Seems like the nutso raw foodies were right after all.

Labels: diabetes, diabetic, diets, glycemic, raw food diets

posted by GoldenAh

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Weight Loss: Eating Healthy
Sunday, August 19, 2007

In another attempt to ratchet up my healthy eating habits, I've added flax seeds to my diet. I toss in about a tea or table spoon of it to my blended morning breakfast drink. Flax seed is supposed to have all sorts of health properties: Omega 3 and whatnot.

I'm also looking at changing my morning drink to a yogurt / granola / wheat germ type of meal. I haven't put together the entire mix yet. I don't want to have to focus on stuff that I can't purchase at a local grocery store.

Hmm, that's got me thinking - I need to start adding bits of apple to my morning drink.

Finally, dropped another 5 lbs. I was hovering at the same weight for a number of weeks.

Man, this stuff is hard. I am not one who loses weight easily. Yet, the thing is I have to exercise for one hour daily and I cannot eat over 1400 calories per day. That's it in a nutshell.

Labels: diets, flax seed, granola, weight, weight loss, yogurt

posted by GoldenAh

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Weight Loss: What's For Breakfast?
Wednesday, August 8, 2007

I was talking with a friend of mine about recipes; she was sharing her vast list with me. I thought back to the Raw foods trend, and how I want to increase my raw or natural food intake. I'm not a foodie, because if I see food I will eat it. There are very few foods I am fussy about.

I used to only have instant oatmeal in the morning. I'd eat it each and every day without fail. I rarely skip breakfast.

A few months ago, I started eating one banana just to pretend I was doing the proper fruit thing in the morning.

Lately, I've decided to be more creative since my friend and I were talking about using the food processor / blender for cooking. I haven't used mine in years. We have kitchens packed with items we buy, use once, and never touch again.

A few weeks ago, I took out my blender. My goal? To create breakfast drinks.

The Bananas Whatever Drink:

2-4 ounces of water,

2-3 baby carrots,

1 banana (you could use half - my drinks are very thick),

squirt of lemon (optional),

ginger (optional sprinkle),

cinnamon (optional),

cranberries (optional),

and last but not least half of a plain low-fat yogurt cup.

Sometimes I'd add about 2 cashews or almonds.

Into the blender the entire mix goes, and that's breakfast. Doesn't make more than an 8-12 ounce glass. I drink this with multivitamins, followed by a glass of water, right before I work out.

The Breakfast Alternatives Drink: sometimes I leave out the bananas, cinnamon, and cranberries. I find that I like to add more carrots and add some fake sugar. Anything to switch up the drink.

I think my drinks are a nice tasting low calorie nutritious meal. They don't qualify as raw, but it's a change from having just oatmeal.

Labels: blender, breakfast, diets, food processor, raw food diets, weight loss

posted by GoldenAh

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Weight Loss: The Holding Pattern - Part 2
Saturday, July 7, 2007

There are many emotional issues behind the holding pattern regarding weight loss. I've certainly had my share of them.

Why the weight comes back or more won't come off:

1. Getting tired of it. The exercises become boring. The body is adjusting to the torture, um, exercise and after a while I need to find new tactics. The incentive seems to fade, why am I doing this again?

2. Weather changes: Now, it's too hot / too cold to begin that exercise routine today. I put it off. Next thing I know, six months have past and I'm over 30 lbs overweight again.

3. Emotional triggers: I get upset over something. Next thing I know, I'm wolfing down that salty snack I've been depriving myself of for the last few weeks.

Well funk that, I'm eating what I want, when I want, so there! After the binge, I feel horrible and eat more.

4. Unwanted attention: On some level (as an introvert) I likes being ignored as the "thick" or "fat" person. People accept me as I am. I'm the same person in a new body. I start to wonder, why weren't these folks friendly before the weight loss? Shallow bitches.

5. Unwanted attention: Yeah, I know I've lost a lot of weight. Did I require your permission? (Some people don't like you changing on them.) How many effing damn times are you people going to talk about how I look now? Did I ask your effing opinion about my weight? No? Then shut up about it.

There are people who think if you lose weight, you are doing it for them. WTF? Health is the number one consideration for weight loss.

6. Unwanted attention: The worst (to me) is attracting the eyes of men I didn't want even when I was "fat" or "thick." It makes me long for the days when I was chunky enough to be ignored by these guys. Hmmm. Maybe being 30 lbs overweight did have its advantages.

7. Unresolved issues and keeping it off. If losing weight is the goal, when is it accomplished? The hardest part is keeping it off, because if the exercises have to be heavy duty strenuous to get to this itty bitty size, and the food has to be constantly monitored, it becomes self-defeating. It must become a consistent, everyday good habit.

8. Unresolved emotional issues- Weight has been lost, yet if the "other" problems haven't gone away, then nothing has been accomplished. The weight will come back and with a vengeance.

9. Don't care - at some point, the indifference (to appearance) will return. So what, if I take an extra bite? So what, if I didn't exercise? What's the difference? And then the vicious cycle begins again.

10. The injury - I lose count of the number of times I overdid it on the treadmill. I would stop exercising, and this stoppage turned from days into weeks and into months.

11. Too much energy - when I start working out, I turn into this hyperactive child. I am so "psyched" and full of energy that I need to exercise even more. It's similar to drug addiction, I need to work out more to hit my next high.

If I don't, I may get so blue, depressed and down in the mouth that I stop exercising. So each time I work out, I have to up the ante. I've gone up to 90 minutes of walking, 85 minutes of running / walking on the treadmill, and stationery cycling at 13 speed for one hour. I do each exercise every day. For now, I never take a day off.

I know it's coming. I'm going to crash when I reach my limit...

Labels: diets, exercise, health, weight, weight loss

posted by GoldenAh

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Raw Food "Diets"
Friday, June 8, 2007

I remember Susan Powter from the 1990's. She's the Australian who - to me - was the first to talk about eating non-processed foods. It made sense, limit the amount of processed foods; eat as much raw (uncooked) foods as possible.

She fell off the map after filing for bankruptcy, but her ideas (although I doubt she was the originator of this trend) live on.

I was browsing around YouTube, when I saw something about Raw Foods. Turns out that being a Vegan is not enough, one has to be a totally Raw Vegan to top that.

Damn, we can't just figure out how to eat in moderation, eating has to become this complex, overly researched, overly sensitive, politically correct method to show folks how pure one is as a person. A nutso foodie to be exact.

I'm all for eating raw foods. I wasn't aware there was a new name for simply eating fruits and vegetables. Get that? Eating fruits and vegetables now has a trendy new name: raw vegan. Help yourself to that new ideology.

It sounds cultish to me, but that's my twist and bend on this topic.

There were a number of male (and female) YouTube videos, which started at the new year proposing a new resolution: to eat like a deer. Oh sorry, I mean rabbit. No, monkey is more appropriate. Scratch that - monkeys eat meat.

Anywho, initially lots of people showed terrific success eating raw fruits, nuts, vegetables and other non-meats. However, based on timelines some slipped and fell off the foodie wagon.

If I could, I'd tell them straight: there's nothing wrong with broiled or baked steak, chicken, or fish. Nothing wrong with a wicked, sugary, salty snack. The key to weight loss is moderate eating.

Unfortunately, because the raw method is so ... raw people clearly weren't having fun with their food. Everything they ate was devoid of pleasure; that's why people fall off the wagon and return to binging.

If someone is going to go raw or vegan or whatever, the meals they eat must be pleasurable. Food is like sex, not only do you need it, you should also enjoy it.

Labels: diets, raw food diets, vegan, weight, weight loss, YouTube

posted by GoldenAh

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