r u l y

Adding some additional outdoor exercise lately to whip the garden into shape.

It’s the last day of April and time to check in on my weight maintenance progress as well as recap the last two-months of posts focused on diet and nutrition.

You may recall that my theme word for the year is “routine.” Without intending to figure out a diet and exercise routine that works for me, that is exactly what happened over the last two months. You may have noticed that I didn’t post a routine checklist for April. Because my mind was so focused on maintaining the weight loss I had achieved in March, I didn’t really feel up to working on all my routines at once. I think this focus really helped me. Now in May, I really need to add back in new routines, particularly for cleaning up around the house and working on the garden, which have suffered.

Below is a blank May 2013 daily routines checklist. I changed the format a bit. If you are using these charts, please let me know what changes you would like to see in them.

• 2013-05-01-BLANKDailyRoutines

Before I reveal to you how my weight loss maintenance has been going, I wanted to combine some lessons learned with a recap of the past posts.

1) If the inspiration strikes, act on it! When I received the offer to review the DDP Yoga system, I wasn’t really planning on a big weight loss or exercise focus to my blog. I don’t know why I was so enthusiastic about the program but I am so glad that I let that energy carry me. Diet and exercise require an intense amount of self-motivation so if the inspiration strikes you, go with it! Don’t wait for it to come again at a more convenient time. It may not!

2) Hard change requires a bit of anger. The last thing I wanted to have to do on my health regimen was go on a diet. I don’t like restricting my eating patterns. At the time, I was listening a lot to Dave Ramsey’s radio show, and he always emphasizes that you know you are ready to change when you get so angry and fed up with a situation to the point that you yell out, “I’ve had it! I’m not living this way anymore!” At that point, you are ready to commit fully to whatever changes you need to make to get your desired result. I was thinking about that when I kept stepping on the scale and seeing negative progress despite my exercise diligence and made the commitment to try a diet. It was that feeling that helped me continue my diet despite changing conditions like the snowquester and to take it to the next level by limiting myself to just 1200 calories per day. And with that level of focus and dedication, I achieved success, losing first 7 pounds, then 4 pounds, then 1 ½ pounds, then an additional 1 pound for a total of 13 ½! I faced up to some hard lessons during this process including realizing that dieting or calorie restriction is something that will continue to be necessary as I age.

3) Keep perfectionism in check. It is so easy for us to want our bodies to look like models or athletes since those are the images we are faced with every day. Yet we don’t really want to make the sacrifices these people make to look like that. Portia De Rossi’s book exploring anorexia helped me to realize that the key endpoint of exercise is to focus on achieving a skill or getting better at something. Exercising to achieve a body type is almost impossible. Also, we have to be realistic about our own time constraints to exercise and fix special diet-friendly meals. Parents, in particular, may be suffering from sleep deprivation or lack of energy and may have a harder time sticking to a diet. Pick an achievable weight loss. It’s so much more motivating to hit your goal than to be endlessly seeking a goal you can’t achieve.

4) It’s the big changes not necessarily the small changes that matter. While I spent some time agonizing over small changes like using whole wheat flour in my pancakes or coloring healthy hard boiled eggs or swapping out snacks for my kids, or reviewing the difference in fortified versus non-fortified processed foods, in the end, I’m not sure these changes made a whole lot of difference in my weight maintenance.

5) It’s hard to override human nature. When I first went off my diet, I had a great time eating! I showed you the paintable Easter Egg sugar cookies I made for my daughter’s preschool class and the Matzoh lasagna and matzoh lemon cake we tried.

6) You must have a pleasurable distraction if you are going to diet! When I am not eating, I am knitting a lot more. I made Easter sweaters, have completed another project I will share with you later and am halfway through a third knitting project. I had no idea how much time I spent eating! I also spent some time bargain shopping.

7) Be open to alternative interpretations of your results. While I knew my diet was giving me success in the weight loss department, I wanted to know if it really was healthier. My blood test results helped me to realize that my diet still could use a few tweaks.

8) Even when you are successful, keep looking out for new things to try. I keep reading just about every article I see about healthy eating and exercise habits. I get new ideas all the time. I try them out, like eating more parsley and drinking green tea. I was also introduced to fasting, the latest form of dieting through Dr. Michael Mosley’s PBS series. Ramit Sethi also hosted a webchat with his personal trainers and it was eye-opening to see how many women were facing the same problems. Why can’t I lose weight? How do I get these pregnancy pounds off? The trainers made an interesting recommendation that people try 16 hours of fasting per day and noted that estrogen is a challenging hormone when it comes to weight loss for women. It was about then that I realized that dieting often comes down to a “what” or “when” decision.

9) Each person is different. My experience trying to help my husband eat a healthier breakfast was a failure. When it comes to weight loss, we are all motivated by different things and have different taste buds. It’s important to keep searching until you find a routine that speaks to you. I received many positive comments on the 400 calorie salad recipes that I shared, including a humorous one from my dad that 2 or 3 of those together would make a good meal!

10) Normal people have a lot to think about besides diet and exercise but that is not an excuse for why we can’t be successful. In our family, for example, I had to spend some time in April doing some detailed financial research to audit our accounts, get our taxes filed, review our college savings strategy, review our retirement savings plans, research ideas to improve our investing strategy and plan our children’s summer educational activities. I could easily have said that all this stressed me out and derailed my diet but I didn’t let that happen.

So now for the moment you are waiting for . . . did I manage to maintain my weight loss in April?

Yes I did! But it wasn’t as easy as these numbers appear. The first week after my diet, I managed to regain 5 ½ pounds eating a lot of Easter candy and lemon cake! I realized that something had to change. I contemplated going back on my salads but didn’t have quite enough willpower to do that. So I decided to continue with the one part my diet that was easy for me, the breakfasts. I also decided to experiment with fasting and added a one mile walk to my exercise program. So here is the “formula” that is working for me.

If I don’t do every single one of these things every single day, I will gain about one pound the next day. This program works for me because it allows me to eat what I want and the exercise is enjoyable. I love the one-mile walk because it warms up my muscles. I also have fun with my children along the way. After the walk, I like to do my 30 minutes of strength exercises right away while my muscles are still warm. It really helps with my yoga stretches.

I can maintain this diet even if I am on vacation or otherwise not in control of my eating situation. If I have to, I can bring a bag of chia seeds and mix them with water for my breakfasts. I can also switch up the timing of the fast period, etc. if there is a special feasting event. My diet does not really impact anyone around me except that occasionally they will have to accept that I am not eating and will be sipping my water. Over time, I may have to cut down the “forage period” to keep my weight in check but it seems feasible that I will always have at least one hour a day when I can eat whatever I want to. So I don’t have to “cheat,” I just have to wait!

I keep improving in my fitness and that is exciting. My legs feel strong and light. It sounds weird but it feels like it takes so much less energy just to do basic things like walk and climb stairs in this condition. My flexibility is returning. It has taken 60 days worth of exercise to finally feel like my muscles are loosening up. I even had one yoga-related injury along the way! I sought the help of a chiropractor who told me that my hip flexor muscles are too tight and that I need to work on stretches to loosen them. As I understand, the hip flexor muscles connect to the abdominal muscles in some way and as my abs are getting stronger, my hip flexors seem to be getting better as well.

Going into May, I feel confident that my new diet and exercise routine is under control and that it will take less effort to maintain what I have established. Now to tackle other areas of my organization that need addressing!

How do you feel going into May? What would you like to accomplish? Please share in the comments.

“Wonder Enriched Bread,” Photo by spablab. From the Flickr Creative Commons.

Reader Ben (also my wonderful brother-in-law) posted several comments this month on my nutrition series inquiring about how to evaluate the health benefits of foods that are fortified with various vitamins and minerals compared to natural, whole foods.

“I have been wondering if these ‘fortified foods’ are better for us, or if they have been overprocessed to the point of not being healthy. Some advocate ‘raw foods,’ or foods that have not been processed at all, are healthier and easier to digest.”

For example, the Bisquick pancakes made with white flour compared to the homemade whole wheat flour pancakes. It is a good question and one I needed to research myself.

Why do we fortify foods in the first place?

Fortifying foods began as a way to reduce public health problems. For example, iodine, a mineral naturally present in seafood, good soils and the meat of animals who consume plants grown in iodine-rich soils, was added to salt in 1924 to prevent goiters.

“Coal miner’s wife (note goiter) and two children. Chaplin, West Virginia” (1938) Photo by Marion Post Wolcott for the U.S. Farm Security Administration. From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

We now know that iodine may be vital particularly for pregnant women as it has been shown to impact fetal brain development. Although we hardly hear about goiters in the United States any more, it appears that iodine consumption is still a problem we need to monitor especially among poor populations. Some countries now mandate that iodine be added to all salt sold.

“Part of RR (Rural Rehabilitation) family, now dropped, children have hookworm, mother pellagra and milk leg, according to nurse’s report. Father works on WPA (Work Projects Administration). Coffee County, Alabama” (1939). Photo by Marion Post Wolcott for the U.S. Farm Security Administration. From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

In 1943, many flours were fortified with niacin, thiamin, riboflavin and iron to prevent pellagra, a brain and skin-degenerating condition.

Since 1998, folic acid has been added to enriched grains to prevent neural tube defects in children.

Most of these enriched products appear aimed at the very poor who most likely do not take vitamin supplements or eat a healthy diet.

But what about the rest of us?

The debate about processed foods is confusing on many levels. Most of us have heard the message from various sources that we shouldn’t eat any processed foods and that we are better off eating “whole foods.” But what seems to get lost in translation is what a “processed” food is.

In today’s technology-rich world, I think it appeals to a lot of people to have one area of their life devoted to simplicity and relatively free of technology. For many people this area is food. It is easy to understand that a homegrown vegetable is better for you than a box of Mac ‘N Cheese. (and it most certainly is!) However, I think some people start to take this too far.

The case of flour is one example. You could grow your own wheat and grind your own flour (a processed food), for example. Your flour might be organic and pure and natural and all the other wonderful adjectives we can think of. But would your flour be better than an enriched flour that has been enhanced with various vitamins, such as folic acid and niacin mentioned above? Even though the enriched flour is produced by a large factory and probably grown in less desirable conditions, the answer might be that this “processed” flour is technically better for you. Similarly a yogurt with added fish oil might be healthier than one without.

*Note, I say might be, because there are factors like pesticide use and processing methods that could affect the final outcome.

What does “processed” really mean?

I also don’t think people appreciate that “processed” could also mean “cooking.” In my pancakes example, a whole foods purist would probably say that the healthiest pancake choice is neither pancake—that it would be better to just eat the eggs and milk (i.e. whole foods) in the pancakes alone and forget about making a cake out of them. We tend to deceive ourselves that just because there is whole wheat in a pancake it is less cake-like. There are some situations where cooking enhances the nutrient absorption of foods (like cooking tomatoes in oil) but most of the cooking we do probably “processes” our foods into less healthy versions of what we started with.

Recent nutritional trends also emphasize foods processed to remove “bad” ingredients, like high fructose corn syrup, gluten, and sugar. But what is amazing is the number of people who honestly believe that you can still eat the same products without those ingredients and it is somehow “healthier” for you. For example, you might buy “sugar-free” pudding at the store for your kids but when you look at the label, it generally has artificial sweeteners in it which could be just as bad for you. Perhaps you are buying gluten-free bread but bread itself is not that healthy for us and unless you have celiac disease or gluten allergy, the absence of gluten is probably of no consequence to you. Swapping rice milk for cow’s milk is not that great of a choice either as rice milk is converted to sugars in the body and has a relatively high glycemic index. Lately, a lot of “healthy recipes” I have noticed use rice milk in place of sugar as a sweetener. (For the record, I think rice milk is delicious but I don’t think of it as a health food.)

The Bottom Line

A whole foods purist would likely subsist on a diet that was almost exclusively vegetables, lean proteins and eggs with a splash of beans, nuts, whole grains and fruit. 99% of people don’t eat this way. But if you want a clear, simple, easy-to-understand guideline about what is healthy to eat, this is it.

We like our sugar, our carbs, our milk and cheese. In our family, we have come to accept that these foods may not be as healthy as we would like and should be eaten in whatever moderation we can summon. If we are going to eat these foods, we need to come up with our own hierarchy of evaluating bad versus less-bad food choices. I tend to go in this order:

1. “Banned” substances (There are certain things I won’t buy 99% of the time. Products with artificial sweeteners or trans fats are high on my list. The medical evidence may or may not support these choices but I think all of us have some things we just don’t perceive as healthy.)
2. Calorie count (At the end of the day, the calories have to stay low to maintain weight no matter what else is in the food. A low calorie count will generally only be overcome if the nutritional factors of the other food are extremely superior.)
3. Cost (Does it pay off enough nutritionally to justify the extra cost of healthier ingredients?)
4. Fat content (If it has trans fats, I will rule it out in favor of something that doesn’t. I will also go for lower saturated fat content.)
5. Dietary Fiber count (Higher dietary fiber is better.)
6. General vitamin and nutrient content (The more nutrients the better.)

Each person will have their own nutrition checklist based on nutritional needs and lifestyle choices. It is fascinating to learn what different people choose to eat and not eat. In some ways, we are all part of a grand experiment to find out what works.

How do you feel about the processed versus whole food debate? What is on your nutrition checklist? Please share in the comments.

In my quest this month to maintain my weight loss, I have come across so many interesting ideas about weight and health. None have been as shocking and interesting, however as these two videos from PBS where Dr. Michael Mosley investigates the latest trends in diet and exercise. They are not boring and Dr. Mosley presents the information as a grand experiment rather than preaching to us about what we ought to be doing.

I hope you take two hours to watch them both. The rest of the series looks fascinating as well!

Eat, Fast and Live Longer

Watch Eat, Fast and Live Longer with Michael Mosley on PBS. See more from Michael Mosley.

The Truth About Exercise

Watch The Truth About Exercise with Michael Mosley on PBS. See more from Michael Mosley.

Dr. Mosley has written a book to accompany the series called The Fast Diet that looks fascinating too. If anyone wants to join me in reading this for a virtual Ruly book club, please comment!

“Miss Dorothy Ehmke, conducting urea tests on the blood of pregnant rats as part of a study of the effect of meat diets on toxemic pregnancy in rats. In the research lab in the home economics department at Iowa State College. Ames, Iowa” (May 1942). Photo by Javk Delano for the U.S. Farm Security Administration. From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

If you are a carb-lover like me, any news that avoiding carbohydrates is better for health is hard to take. Most American meals are somehow based on carbohydrates: pasta, pizza, bread, rice, etc. Eating low carb or no carb is so hard and takes tremendous discipline.

Last month, I managed to stick to a low carb diet for 30 days. It felt like a “no carb” diet because the only carbs I ate were oatmeal, whole fruit smoothies, an occasional amount of quinoa and any small amounts of carbs that happened to be in things like tomatoes, corn, or salad dressing. I didn’t eat a single slice of bread, not one bite of pasta. Hardest of all, I ate no sugars except for fruit and any small amounts that might have been in salad dressing. I ate tons of salad greens and vegetables, lean proteins like fish, turkey and chicken, healthy raw nuts, fruits and oatmeal. That was about it.

At the end of the 30 days, I wanted to scientifically quantify whether this type of diet is healthier or not. So, I had a blood sample drawn and analyzed to measure my cholesterol, blood sugar and other basic indicators of health. (It took so much discipline to eat this diet for 30 days that I was terrified some mixup would happen at the lab and they would lose the sample. Fortunately, all went well.)

I compared the results to the blood sample drawn at my annual physical a few months ago. At that point, I would describe my diet as “normal American.” It was not the unhealthiest diet (I rarely eat fried foods or red meat) but not the healthiest either (I have a weakness for sugar and carbs and don’t eat as many vegetables as I should.)

*Note: I am not a medical doctor and none of the information below is intended to be medical advice. It is only a report of my own experience. Always consult your doctor for advice specific to your own situation.

In general

Both before and after my diet, my basic blood indicators were all in the “normal” range. Likely, most busy physicians would take a quick look at the results and say, “Well, you were healthy before and you are still healthy. Congratulations!”

Looking a little more deeply

However, when you start digging in to specific numbers on the tests, some interesting results appear.

Factors Improved

So now, for those of us who resist low-carb diets, the bad news. There are several ways that a low carb diet improves health.

Lower Cholesterol

This was a little bit of a shocker to me. In general, I had been eating more meats than normal (lean proteins like turkey and fish mostly) yet my cholesterol went down! While most of us know that eating too much meat and saturated fats raises cholesterol, how many of us know that eating too many carbohydrates does the same thing?

Lower Glucose

With diabetes such a frequent health concern, we all should pay attention to our blood glucose levels. Not surprisingly, on a low carb diet, where you are ingesting fewer sugars than normal, the blood glucose level falls. In my case, it fell to the very lowest end of normal.

Decreased Bilirubin

While distinguishing differences in liver enzymes when both are in the “normal” range is almost pointless, it does make sense that when the body is having an easier time digesting healthful foods, the liver does not have to work as hard. A lowered bilirubin level generally means that the liver is functioning well.

Confusing Factors

The results below are counterintuitive to me. I am not sure how to interpret them and will have to ask my doctor at our next visit. Based on some online research, there are numerous ways to interpret these results.

Lower HDL Cholesterol

I am fortunate to generally have a positive level of HDL (“good”) cholesterol. It was interesting to see that while my total cholesterol dropped 19% and LDL (“bad”) cholesterol dropped 24%, my good cholesterol also dropped—by nearly 20%! I assume this might be related to the decreased acetyl co-A production issue mentioned above. Lowered HDL was also found in patients in this study of ketogenic diets. There is not a lot of research done about HDL so it is hard to say what this impact means. My HDL levels were still very good, even with the reduction so I am not worried.

Increased Triglycerides

The biggest shock was seeing my triglyceride levels increase by 23%! In general, you don’t want your triglyceride levels to increase as this is a risk factor for heart disease and other problems. Many studies of low carbohydrate diets only report that participants lowered triglyceride levels. Anecdotally, however, it seems that some people on low carb diets experience at least a temporary increase in triglyceride levels, which could reflect the body using fats as a source of energy. While we use terms like “burn off that fat” or “melt that fat” when we think about losing weight or exercising, what I was not connecting is that the body essentially has to process stored fat (through a process called ketosis) and get it out of the body. So, the fat has to circulate in the blood to get out and can be detected in your tests. One source I read indicated that this diet-induced triglyceride increase is not dangerous in the same way that increased triglycerides due to over-consumption of bad fats is and that the triglyceride levels fall over time as fat is eliminated from the body. I am not sure if this is a bad or good indicator of health.

Decreased White Blood Cell Count

My white blood cell count dropped 39% between the two diets! We have been conditioned to associate white blood cell counts with strong immune systems and the ability to fight off disease. So, a falling white blood cell count does not sound like a good thing! However, some additional research showed anecdotal evidence that white blood cell counts often fall when people are on ketogenic diets. Some researchers indicate that obesity and/or consumption of diets rich in saturated fats, trans fats and high glycemic index foods promote inflammation in the body and raise white blood cell counts. Therefore, when you start eating healthier, you see decreased inflammation and perhaps lower white blood cell counts. However, another study looking at ketogenic diets in children suggests that the lowered white blood cell count could also indicate a nutritional deficiency, such as Vitamin D.

Increased AST and ALT Liver Enzymes

While some of my liver enzymes were decreased on the low-carb diet, generally showing the liver having an easier time processing food, others were not so positive. My AST and ALT liver enzymes increased by 20% and 17% respectively. Anecdotal evidence suggests this may be connected to ketosis and that the liver has to work harder to process the body’s fat stores as a supply of energy than it does to process carbohydrates. Some suggest that over time, ketosis eventually results in lowered and better liver enzyme levels.

Other blood factors

I had a number of tiny changes in my blood factors that could be interpreted to show signs of dehydration and possible iron deficiency. I had never really thought much about iron before so I hope to talk about that in a future post. The changes were small but it does highlight that you have to be careful when you undertake any drastic dietary changes. Each body is different and has different dietary requirements for optimal health.

So, overall, how do I answer the question, “Is a low carb diet healthier?” I think the answer is that medical science is still catching up with popular dieting trends and the results aren’t fully understood yet. Most of us eat way too many carbohydrates and can have better health if we eat less of them and more of the healthy stuff like vegetables and lean proteins. However, we don’t need to cut out all carbohydrates completely and if we do, it might not be good for us. Eating more of the good kind of carbohydrates (whole grains) and less of the bad kind (simple sugars and candies) is another area we need to work on.

Have you experimented with low carb diets? Did you see any of the above health effects? After seeing this evidence, are you more or less convinced of the merit of low carb diets? Please share in the comments.

I made it! 40 days on an exercise routine (with 30 days on both a diet AND exercise routine)! Many people I have spoken with about my experiment express amazement for my discipline and self-motivation. Honestly, I do too! I am not sure why I was able to do it but it just seemed like the right time. I was ready for this change.

The last week of my diet and exercise program was to try to maintain my weight loss. I continued to eat oatmeal and salads primarily but tossed in a few additional snacks of nuts and dried fruit. I also was trying to clean out my freezer a bit so I substituted frozen broccoli and spinach for fresh as a base for my meals. It was just as effective and costs a bit less too.

Asparagus, broccoli, bacon, feta “salad.”

Shrimp, broccoli and asparagus (served with quinoa).

Broccoli, tomato, feta salad.

Cooked, frozen spinach, tomato, turkey bacon, cheese.

I have decided that I absolutely love yoga! Yoga is the exercise that feels best for my body. It also works well given the limited time I have to devote to exercise due to my child care responsibilities. Yoga is a great multi-tasking exercise because you are doing several different kinds of exercises all at once.

The DDPYoga program is great because it is a unique twist on yoga. There are a lot of the traditional yoga poses and exercises but Diamond Dallas Page doesn’t get too heavy into the meditative aspects of yoga and instead pushes it more like a workout routine. There is no soft music (no music at all really) and no relaxing scenery (it is all shot on a workout stage in a studio). The people in the videos are real people who used the system to get results. Diamond Dallas Page is dressed in a relaxed fix shirt and shorts. You can tell he is very fit but he doesn’t throw that in your face. He basically steps back and is communicating that this workout is to help you the user and not to enhance his own image. He gently suggests how to modify each exercise either to make it harder or easier depending on your fitness level and encourages you to modify the routine however you need to to make it work for you.

DDPYoga’s signature “Diamond Cutter” move.

The “hood ornament” move.

“Down Dog”

“Three legged dog”

“Warrior 3″

What I think will be surprising to most people is that even though this workout does not require any running or jumping around, you are going to work your body really hard, define muscles and burn fat. The DDPYoga system is described as “zero impact,” which is wonderful because you don’t have to worry about injury and anyone of any age can use it.

You may need a microscope to see all those arm muscles on me but they are there! DDPYoga push-ups are the hardest kind I have ever done.

Most women are a little cautious about building too much muscle in the legs. The DDPYoga system builds a lean, attractive muscle.

Now that the weight loss portion of my routine has concluded, I have found that I really need to keep up the yoga daily to just maintain my weight. I actually look forward to the workouts (well, most of them) and enjoy how my body works and feels afterward. I am glad to have found a system that is sustainable for me and so grateful that DDPYoga sent this system to me to evaluate. What a tremendous gift in so many ways.

In the end I lost one more pound in my final week along with another 2.5 inches! (It seems once you start building your muscle base, your body naturally starts reshaping to burn fat). In total, my results were:

My body feels a lot better after my diet and exercise routine but, of course we all want to know whether I look any different! I dug in my closet and found the same outfits (yes I still have them!) that I wore about a year and a half ago after 30 days on my previous exercise regimen. I tried to duplicate the poses so you can judge for yourself.

November 2011 – just after finishing a grueling exercise routine but not dieting.	March 2013 – about 20 pounds lighter with DDPYoga and diet.
November 2011 – skinny jeans test.	March 2013 – skinny jeans test 20 pounds lighter.
November 2011. Looking pretty good for 3 months postpartum.	March 2013 – even skinnier in the skinny jeans, especially around the waist.
November 2011 – dress pants test. They zip!	March 2013 – dress pants test. They’re loose!
November 2011.	March 2013
November 2011 – Rosie tribute.	March 2013 – Rosie tribute.

I think you can see a difference! You can tell that I was carrying most of my excess weight on my belly and hips. Getting that weight off not only looks better but is supposed to be much better for health too.

But when I look at these pictures I also am glad that I didn’t beat myself up for 18 months worrying all the time about those extra 15-20 pounds and hiding from the camera. I don’t look horrible in the before pictures and in the top picture I even think I look better and less gaunt. (I also think it is time to update my makeup routine!)

Just as with all organizing projects, my diet and exercise work is not “done” but hopefully can be less intense this month. My goal is to stick with the DDPYoga system and make sure I maintain my weight loss by end of month.

Thanks a million to DDPYoga for allowing me to be a reviewer for their system! It was the email that changed my life!

**Disclosure: I received a free copy of the DDPYoga DVDs but my opinions and experience are my own.

“Exhaustion,” Photo by Katie Hargrave. From the Flickr Creative Commons.

Recent research shows that suffering even a minor amount of sleep deprivation (as little as one week) can result in your eating more and particularly eating more carbohydrates.

In the study, participants who slept only 5 hours per night ended up gaining about two pounds per week due to excess food consumption compared to those who slept a full 9 hours per night.

If anyone should take note of this study, it is definitely parents with young children! It is well-known that the infant period is full of sleepless nights but it is not as though the sleep improves shortly thereafter. Children seem plagued with insomnia, from nightmares to hunger pangs to middle-of-the night illnesses to having difficulty adjusting to daylight savings time.

When I first became a mom, veteran parents often said to me, “You will never sleep the same again.”

It is definitely true. Even when everyone is sleeping soundly, you find your parental instinct waking you to check briefly in the middle of the night to make sure everyone is ok before going back to bed. It is really exhausting to keep up with this schedule night after night, year after year.

Since it is rare that most parents have a night nanny or occasional overnight breaks to allow them to rest fully, in my experience, everyone needs some sort of crutch to help them get through these early childhood years. We all pick our “poison” of choice:

Until this month, I was definitely a sugar/chocolate/carbohydrate girl. If I got tired, I went right for them, whatever was at hand. It takes a lot of discipline and retraining to stop doing that and just suffer through the tiredness. You get pretty much zero energy boost from eating vegetables. Proteins help a little but they are slower and more long-term in their energy-boosting capability.

Recently, I was reading a nutritional article about insulin and apparently eating all these carbohydrates can really be damaging your body over time. The more sugars you are eating the more insulin your body is producing to reduce the amount of sugar in your body and the less effective insulin becomes as a sugar-removing agent in your body.

Apparently it is very difficult to make a medical diagnosis of insulin resistance (a precursor to diabetes) but WebMD indicates that the following are risk factors:

Waist size. A waist size of 40 inches or more in men and 35 inches or more in women
Fats and cholesterol in the blood. Increased triglycerides or low HDL (<40 mg/dL for men and 50 mg/dL for women)
High blood pressure. 130/85 or higher
Blood glucose levels. 100 mg/dL or above (Australian doctor and nutritionist Sandra Cabot advises 97 mg/dL or above), or being treated for diabetes

Dr. Cabot also suggests the following signs:
Acne and large pores on the face
Skin tags
Hunger and cravings for sugar or carbohydrate rich foods.

So, what is the solution for parents who want to stay healthy?

Obviously, the ideal solution would be for parents to get the occasional break to get a full-night’s rest or at least a good afternoon nap. This is very hard to achieve unless you have an excellent support network or enough money to afford nighttime child care.

For most of us, the best we can do is to retrain our bodies not to eat (and especially not to eat carbs) when we are tired. It is definitely hard but at least from the experimenting I have done this month, it can be done. There is a lot of resistance to overcome at first but it does get gradually easier.

Do you have a healthy parenting exhaustion remedy? Please share in the comments.

I never get tired of looking at these gorgeous snow-covered trees. My one consolation of our delayed winter.

Happy spring! Here is the photo from outside yesterday. As you can see, we have had our third snowstorm of March! It doesn’t feel very springlike.

This weekend, I took my ladies to Washington Ballet’s performance of Cinderella. Afterward, we took a brief stroll by the Jefferson Memorial where we checked in on the cherry blossoms (nowhere near blooming) and the spring break tourists hanging out on the steps near the Tidal Basin.

Chocolate chip cookie to share at intermission. Mmmmm! (Not for me, though!)

The ultimate Washingtonian kid would have one of these Maileg Easter bunnies from the Kennedy Center gift shop in their basket. At $22 a piece, however, we had to be content just looking at the great display.

View from the Jefferson Memorial.

The past week was a little rough for my diet and exercise routine. I was exhausted from all the work caring for everyone’s illnesses and slacked off a bit on my exercise. I started level 2 of the DDPYoga DVDs. The workouts get quite a bit tougher and longer too! There are two new routines, one at about 30 minutes and the other, a killer at 50 minutes. As a mom, it is really hard to get in a 50-minute workout. Small children can only behave for so long. I liked the routines in level 1 because they were only 20 minutes, which was perfect for me.

I did stick with my diet, however, even though that got really tough.

On Wednesday, I was so sick of eating salad greens. I didn’t want to see any more lettuce! So, I had to be creative with some of the vegetables in the fridge and came up with some more new salads.

My favorite salad was this one, though. Instead of lettuce, I grated a raw zucchini for my salad base. The asparagus was so perfect looking. I steamed it lightly and added some grilled salmon. Delicious!

During the week, however, I decided that I had hit my goal weight. I liked the way I looked and my clothes fit exactly the way I wanted them too. I told my husband that whatever weight I happened to be on Sunday was the weight I “should” be. I don’t need to lose any more than this.

I looked forward to weighing in on Sunday to find out what this weight was. So, how did the weigh-in go?

If these kind of results had happened the first week, it would have been very depressing. But by week three, it was OK for me. In total, I have lost 12 ½ pounds and 7 ½ inches!

This week, the challenge is to adjust my diet again so that I can maintain my new weight. The good news is that this means more calories! But that’s also the scary part too. Once you are used to eating so little, you worry that if you start to eat more you will go right back to where you started. My fear is that I will end up having to do this diet again, which I desperately do not want to repeat unless I have to!

My plan is to use the calorie counter for my desired weight at MayoClinic.com as my guide. MayoClinic has not steered me wrong yet with their calorie guidance. I am still sticking with salads and oatmeal this week but will gradually ramp up the calories by adding some more snacks and weigh in each day to make sure I am not going over where I should be. I really don’t want to end the week weighing more so I will cut back where I need to.

One more week left of only healthy stuff! Looking forward to Sunday to celebrate my progress!

“the portions at margie’s diner” Photo by emdot. From the Flickr Creative Commons.

I was thinking about the advice my doctor gave me that the metabolism resets about every 5 years after age 30. It made me wonder if the recommended calorie intake changes over time as well.

The last time I remember learning about recommended calorie intake was probably in high school health class. Unfortunately, the basic numbers that were drilled into my head at that time (about 2000 calories per day for women and 3000 for men), are correct for teenagers and very young adults but are not good guidelines as you age.

As an experiment, I plugged in the average height and weight data for men and women into the Mayo Clinic’s calorie calculator. I assumed that my hypothetical people were “somewhat active” (i.e. not couch potatoes but not doing regular strenuous exercise either). The only input I changed each time was the age of the person.

Remember, these are the calories necessary to just maintain weight, not to lose any weight.

The results were very interesting. For both men and women, recommended calorie consumption peaks at age 18 and then trends downward. By age 25, calorie consumption should be cut by about 2%, about 5% by age 30, about 8% by age 40 and about 10% by age 50. By age 99, calorie intake drops by almost one-third.

Source: Mayo Clinic Calorie Calculator

Source: Mayo Clinic Calorie Calculator

Men start off at age 18 being able to handle a huge amount of calories. Their calorie intake trends down fast, dropping by about 50 calories every 5 years. Women start off with lower calorie intake and drop slightly slower at around 50 calories every 10 years.

50 calories doesn’t sound like much but over time it adds up. For example, by age 40, you should be consuming about 200 calories less than what you ate at age 18—about one good-sized snack.

Of course, you can always exercise more as you age to allow yourself to be able to eat more calories.

Are you surprised at this calorie knowledge? Have you been gradually cutting calories as you age? Please share in the comments.

It has been a tough week at our house. My children picked up a norovirus-like bug somewhere and have been so incredibly sick. We have been dealing with fevers, bodily fluids and sleepless nights for several days now. We keep hoping we are done with this virus but two of my children still have straggling symptoms. I have not left the house in almost a week. My husband has picked up all the grocery shopping and errand-running for me.

Somehow, my husband and I were spared this illness. At first, I tried to tell myself it was all the healthy eating I have been doing but since my husband also didn’t become ill it must be that we have somehow been exposed to this thing before and have immunity.

The weather is also going a bit crazy here in Virginia. It was just starting to look like spring when the second snowstorm of March blew in last night. We celebrated a chilly St. Patrick’s Day. For me, the celebration consisted of eating my greens (in salad of course!).

Even though it has been busy and I have been tired, I still managed to stick to my diet.

I added another salad to my rotation.

We also got take-out this weekend at Chipotle. Chipotle is not a low-calorie place and the portions are so hugely sized you can easily get two meals out of one dish. I saved up all my salad calories for Saturday to be able to eat a barbacoa burrito bowl, which is salad-like and has fewer calories than their salad. (Chipotle has a terrific calorie-counting tool on their website so you can easily calculate how many calories are in your dish depending on what options you choose.) I was starving by the time I ate but it felt good to have such a large meal. Sometimes on a diet, bunching and spacing calories can help you get over the hungry feelings.

I had to slack off three days of exercise, though as I just didn’t feel up to it in my sleep-deprived state. I did start disc two of the DDP Yoga series, though and it does get a little more challenging. I am glad I spent so much time on disc one as I now have the basic moves down so it is easier to incorporate the newer poses and movements.

I weighed in last Sunday and was pleased to see that my hard work is still continuing to pay off!

To date, I have lost 11 pounds and 7 ¼ inches! Technically, I have hit my goal weight now. My husband has noticed the wonderful results.

I continue to be surprised that a weight loss of just over 10 pounds could result in so many inches lost. If I had known that, I would have worked harder earlier on to get this weight off!

My most exciting moment this week was trying on my skinniest jeans and finding they fit comfortably!

I am still going to keep going on my diet. It has become easier and easier to stay on it as time goes by. I don’t desperately crave all the foods I am preparing for the rest of my family the way I did the first week (although they still look yummy to me). I haven’t cheated yet and I don’t think I am going to. I still don’t enjoy eating salad all the time but it fills me and is healthy.

This diet is not an exercise in anorexia. I am not trying to get down to size zero. I would like to give myself a cushion of a few pounds though in case I slip up coming off the diet. The pace of weight loss is likely to slow down a bit from here as well.

On to another week!

[Female students exercising, one with a wall-mounted device using ropes and pulleys, Western High School, Washington, D.C.] (1899?) Photo by Frances Benjamin Johnston. From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

It’s been one week on my new diet. I am still keeping up with my DDP Yoga daily exercise regimen. It has been tough adjusting to the increased energy needed to exercise while dieting but I seem to get mentally stronger on this every day.

We also ate out for the first time while on my diet. My children really wanted to go to McDonald’s. My children are not too bad about their food choices. They like the grilled chicken sandwich or the chicken nuggets and white milk.

What on earth was I going to eat at McDonald’s? Salad, of course! The brilliant part of my diet is that almost every restaurant on the planet now offers some form of salad. I went with McDonald’s Southwest Chicken Salad with grilled chicken. It’s pretty yummy and 325 calories with dressing! I picked off the tortilla chip topping but it turns out I didn’t really need to. If you want, you can have the southwest dressing it’s supposed to go with rather than the vinaigrette for about 65 calories more.

I also invented a new 400 calorie salad this week with turkey bacon, 1/2 an avocado, 80 calories worth of cheddar cheese and a little dressing. It’s the most satisfying of the salads I have created so far. Even my husband likes it!

Enough suspense….how much did I lose this first week on my diet. The results are astounding to me!

Aside from delivering my babies, I have never lost so much weight so quickly in my life! It is really thrilling to get results this quickly! But is it unhealthy to be losing so fast? New research suggests that it is not, that the faster you get your excess weight off, especially in the beginning of your diet and exercise program, the more motivated you are and the more weight you will lose long-term.

Tempted as I am to up my calories at this point, any avid watcher of The Biggest Loser knows that you always lose the most the first week and then you can taper off and lose less or even nothing the following week. So, I’m just staying the course this week to see what happens.

*I have no affiliation with McDonald’s.