some tips I learned this week

I'm skimming/reading/listening to a few different books and learned some useful things from them.  Note that I've only just started some of them so there may be more discussion in future posts.

From Mark Hyman's books (Blood sugar solution and Ultrametabolism), you can get very good discussions about how bad sugar and refined grains are for you.  I think I mentioned this already in a previous post.  Another thing I learned this week is that high-quality fats contribute to weight loss by regulating insulin, as well as contributing to satiation.  I guess that's where that phrase "you have to eat fat to burn fat" comes from.  They also increase your metabolism which helps burn fat.  However, his definition of healthy fats is different from mine.  I'm pretty convinced that oils of any kind are not heart healthy and I want my heart to be as healthy as possible as I am prone to several heart ailments without a high-quality diet.   In my view, stick with nuts, seeds, and avocados for your healthy fats.  Also, in a departure from Dr. Fuhrman's recommendations, I actually like his idea to not get too hungry between meals but allowing a snack or two.  This week, my eating schedule was breakfast at 8 am, lunch at noon, snack at 3-4 pm (berries), and dinner at 8 pm.  It was liberating to tell the truth.  I didn't felt compelled to overeat to get to my next meal.

I started reading Brendan Frazier's Thrive.  I like how his first chapter is about stress.  Stress contributes to carb burning more than fat burning because of the well-known fight-or-flight syndrome that results from stress.  So limiting stress is good for weight loss.   He argues that the biggest stresses on most people is an unhealthy diet.  I don't know if that's correct but it's an interesting conjecture.  He is an athlete so seeks optimal physical performance.  The faster you can recover from exercise, the more you can train, and the better your performance.  A healthy diet leads to faster recovery times.  This is very motivating for me because I love to exercise and the more the better.  It's ironic that I love exercising because I have so little natural talent in sports!   I am slow slow slow.  But wait a minute, even though I was slow on the mountain bike trail today, I made it up a steep rocky/rooted hill that had the two guys in front of me walking and the guy behind me walking.  Ha! Of course, they passed me once we got to the top (with nary a nod to my awesome performance).  On a cautionary note, Frazier's recipes are appropriate for ironman athletes burning 10,000 calories per day.  I tried one out today with about 1/10 th recommended seeds and it was still very high-calorie.  However, it was useful because I went 7 hours between breakfast and lunch, with a 2.5 hour mountain bike ride in between.  

I'm listening to Psycho-cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz--I'm not too far along but I already learned something useful.  Motivational books don't work too well with me because I have a low self-image and can't convince myself that I can succeed if I believe I won't.  The tool (or maybe just one tool) in this book is visualization and imagination.  Now that I can do.  I fantasize all the time that I'm a fast swimmer and awesome mountain biker knowing well and good that I'm the slowest one on the course.  That's what's great about fantasy, it's all pretend.  So I can definitely see the value of fantasizing about my success with healthy eating.  The idea is to pick a goal and imagine in great detail what it would be like if you were there right now.  Like for example, say you want to lose 4 lbs in the next 2 weeks.  Imagine 2 weeks from now how you will feel and what you are doing.

I'm not sure where to begin

My tooth hurts.  I got a temporary crown last week and have not been following doctor's orders to eat soft food.  I eat too many crunchy raw foods and it hurts the tooth and I get food in there and I'm worried it's getting infected. That's not what I was going to talk about but when I wondered where to begin, my face told me it was hurting.  so let's get started:

I've been enjoying home-made soy yogurt!   A group of us from the Fuhrman forums are exploring this and having much fun with it.  I got this yogurt maker.   It's so easy!  you just take a quart of unsweetened soy milk, mix in yogurt starter (this or this or 4 oz of unsweetened Whole Soy yogurt), pour into containers, turn on the machine, wait 8-12 hours, put the lids on and refrigerate.  It makes creamy tart yogurt, way better than store-bought.  I've been having it over strawberries and lettuce/spinach/kale for breakfast.  It is also great with frozen (or fresh, when in season) sweet cherries for a dessert.  It would probably be great in salad dressings and dips too.  I've never been a big fan of the silken tofu for this purpose because it is so flavorless.  But the soy yogurt adds a great flavor and creamy texture to foods. 

I've been reading up on sugar and refined grains.  I guess it's bad for you.  You probably knew that.  bummer.  But isn't it weird how everyone eats it all the time?  no, because it's addictive.  we're all addicted even after we give it up (I am anyway).  No wonder it's so hard to quit it.  here's a few articles about it:

http://www.peertrainer.com/cleanse/there_is_no_such_thing_as_healthy_sugar.aspx

http://www.peertrainer.com/health/complete-guide-to-sweeteners.aspx

http://drhyman.com/blog/2012/04/03/diet-drinks-helpful-or-harmful-to-kick-the-sugar-habit/ (check out the 60 minutes segment linked from there)

http://drhyman.com/blog/2011/02/04/stopping-addiction-to-sugar-willpower-or-genetics/

I came across this health program run by a evangelical church that looks really good in my opinion.  It's called the Daniel plan. It cracks me up that one of the organizers is Dr. Daniel Amen.  I laugh every time I see his name.  Anyway they seem to cover all the bases, not just what to eat but the psycho/social issues.  It looks like a very supportive environment from which to learn from.  I think you could follow Dr. Fuhrman's eating program without conflicting much with the recommendations here.  There are a lot of good articles on all topics related to healthy lifestyle.  I actually tempted to sign up and find out more about the program, if it's free.  I am not sure how much religion is involved in the program--I'm not a conservative evangelical myself so I don't know how I'd react to it.  But there's only one way to find out, haha.

My interest in sugar led me to read some of Dr. Hyman's work.  A lot of his recommendations conflict with Dr. Fuhrman, and his recommendations for supplements seem overboard and expensive to me.  But there are some things that suit me, maybe even a little better than Dr. Fuhrman.  I plan to stick to Dr. Fuhrman's food recommendations but here are some of Dr. Hyman's recommendations that I may incorporate:

• eat protein with every meal (for me that's beans, greens and soy yogurt).
• limit the sugars and refined grains, including sweet fruits.  (these days I'm mainly eating 1 lb of strawberries a day because they are in season and on special at the store)
• eat smaller meals more frequently (what?!)
• don't eat within 3 hours of bed

The third one directly contradicts Dr. Fuhrman's recommendations.  Here is what I find appealing about it: 1)  I won't get too hungry or too full which physically and psychologically feels better for me;  2) socially, it's easier on me because people are always eating around me and I can snack on healthy things with them; and 3) it keeps the metabolism running higher which aids in weight loss.  Dr. Fuhrman would like you to keep your metabolism low to extend your life.  He wants you to live in the catabolic stage often for lots of cell repair to do its wonders.  I can verify that following Dr. F's recommendations lowered my metabolism because it made me cold all the time.  I think I'd prefer running a little warmer (sacrilege!).   I think I will try this out as an experiment.  Of course, I won't be posting this on the Fuhrman forums, haha.