Working with food rather than against it

For my own benefit really, I want to recap some ideas because I tend to write as I think and therefore am not as concise as I would like to be!

(I know how to diet when i need to)

1. I love food- who doesn't? I love fresh healthy unprocessed foods and the way they make me feel. I also love the taste of a lot of processed, high fat/high sugar foods. I love to cook, watch cooking shows, read and talk about food. I am a foodie!
2. I am also an athlete who loves to train.
3. My food choices are consistent with my current goals, therefore:
a) I make wise choices about how much and how often I eat high sugar/high fat foods.
b) If I want to lose fat or am preparing for a comp, I am comfortable with ‘being on a diet’ for that purpose and only eat what is on my plan. Not to fear, the plan is usually pretty flexible and generous to begin with anyway! Key points re dieting = never hungry, never deprived.
4. I am liking the approach of balancing my intake between “functional fuel and purely for taste”. Patent pending! I aim high for functional eating – 80-90%?
5. I probably wouldn’t touch the term ‘intuitive eating’ because my intuition might lure me into a sugar coma. My 90% goal would suffer.
6. Not only that but my portion sizes would be immense! Too much fuel can make you fat too you know :S
7. Learning to cook and making “functional fuel” (aka healthy food) taste great is worth it, given I'm eating it most of the time.
8. Lovely fresh ingredients don’t need that much help anyway- hello garlic! During prep I didn’t eat one thing I didn’t enjoy the taste of.

I also want to convey that although my posts tend to come across as advice (lectures?) I’m really just reflecting on my own thoughts/what is or isn’t working for me etc. I like to think that there’s people reading who might be able to relate or benefit from some of my ideas.

Intentional Chocolate

Chocolate doesn’t really even rate highly on my list of foods I crave but I love today’s title, borrowed from katheats.com. Yes, my current strategy involves intentionally eating all of the things I love, balanced by portion control and keeping up my training. Basically I like to see what I can get away with food-wise, lol! Keeps that metabolism cranking!

Katheats.com is one of the few ‘foodies’ blogs I like to read (I’d read more if I were allowed to surf the net all day). We share a love of thinking of all the yummy things we love and trying to eat them all at the same time…. For example I’ve gotten a lot of fabulously naughty ideas to make a bowl of oats for breakfast more like dessert… Kath is a runner so I guess can afford to ‘carb up’ a lot more than me (so lazy!) so my compromise is to choose one or two things to add to my oats each day to make life just that little bit sweeter. This morning I had 50g mango through my oats.. yum!

I think the ultimate goal for emotional eaters is to feel in control of your eating habits and enjoy food.

What about if you want to or like being all ‘hardcore’ and are genuinely happy to only ever eat food as fuel? Wow well if that’s true then good for you and I’m a little jealous of your six-pack right now! Although just quietly I am wondering what planet you are from and whether you have ever tasted hot chips with garlic aioli or baked cheesecake… haha. (Talk about “sometimes foods”!)

In the past I have wanted to achieve this and used to think that to truly consider myself an athlete, I had to be disciplined enough to eat ‘functionally’ 24/7. To be honest, I used to think that anyone who preached using a balanced approach was ‘soft’ and just wanting to justify eating crap….! At the end of the day you can tell a lot more about a person by what they DO not what they SAY.

For most of us, there’s a little struggle going on in your mind where some days you just want to be able to eat whatever you want but on other more motivated days, you’re willing to do whatever it takes to be lean as…. I’m about 80% fuel and 20% taste right now and am using a bit of common sense in planning my meals to balance these conflicting extremes and keep all the voices in my head happy …(!)

Using my list of foods from yesterday, I have a good idea of how often I should be eating each item and what is a reasonable portion for me – this is something we all have to consider for ourselves based on your foods, activity level and current goals (usually losing/maintaining fat and gaining lean muscle mass). It also depends on how disciplined you’re willing to be. There’s no point saying you want to have abs year-around but also want to eat chocolate everyday. Basically, you need to align your eating/exercise habits with your goal and keep it realistic. Break out of the cycle of setting unachievable goals and feeling like a failure because you can’t keep up with what it takes to get there.

As for these foods triggering overeating, I guess that’s a risk you have to manage by not eating when you’re upset and staying focused. But if you know you can have x food again tomorrow or later in the week then that makes it a lot easier to stop. I’ve been on some mad binges in my time. If I’m feeling that behavior coming on, I ask myself “you have to stop eating at some point – do you want to feel good about it or … gross?”

Its worth thinking about …. Personally, if I tell myself I can’t have a particular food for longer than say, a week - then I consider myself to be on a diet. I don’t want to be on a diet 365 days a year, do you? It’ll make comp dieting easier, I promise!

Too much of a good thing?

Hannie’s done a great post on what she’s been craving lately and possibly considers to be her ‘trigger’ foods. No its not oily greasy chips and KFC, its things like – bananas, peanut butter, natural yoghurt! I think a lot of us could relate to it, with the exception of the ricecakes (bleghh!) I could have written a very similar list. Just for fun, here is mine in no particular order:

Bananas, peanut butter, natural yoghurt, dried fruit such as dates and apricots, heavy grain/seed bread, plain oats, granola, fruit scones, banana bread, cheese, sushi, dark chocolate with nuts.

We all LOVE food. We understand that there are a lot of clean foods that taste great AND make us feel good. In the right quantities, many of the above things that I crave can form part of any healthy meal plan … But that’s the issue – can you stop at ‘the right quantity’ or ‘in moderation’? It always comes back to good old portion control!

When it comes to clean foods emotional eating may not play as great a part in controlling portion sizes (unless perhaps if you’ve placed yourself on a restrictive diet). However, because most of the items are (sweet) fast acting sources of carbohydrate we also have the body’s physiological responses to contend with. We get an insulin rush then drop AND a nice release of happy chemicals from the brain and can end up overeating. Cheese is slightly different but apparently releases a similar chemical in the brain found to be released in the brains of heavy drug users… addictive much? Unfortunately it is possible to have too much a good thing.

So what is the solution for you? To eliminate these foods? Completely or just for a while?
Don’t eliminate them but keep them out of the house? Or … purposely incorporate them into your meal plan?

I’ll let you know what my current strategy is and how its going so far in part 2

xx

I'm on the seafood diet

I ‘see food’ and eat it, lol- I never get tired of that joke. But seriously, I was really excited about my lunch today….

On the weekend I went down to Southport on the gold coast to visit my mum. Having not seen her in about three years I didn’t know what to expect but this post is going to focus on what I think was the highlight of the trip – we had an amazing seafood lunch at Georges Restaurant, next to Australia Fair shopping centre.

As you know when it comes to seafood only the best (freshest) will do – luckily George’s menu is half price at lunch time J We all chose a mixed appetiser that had 2 oysters, 2 king prawns, a bug and smoked salmon with capers on salad with avocado, seafood sauce, fresh lemon wedges and fruit garnish. Plenty of food leaving us feeling satisfied and fantastic rather than full and sluggish!
So for today’s lunch I treated myself by replicating part of the meal - smoked salmon on salad with avocado, capers and fresh lemon juice. I tried making my own figure friendly seafood sauce too by mixing together equal parts of low fat mayonnaise with low sugar tomato sauce.. clever aren’t I? hehe.

I am loving my food at the moment and the increased energy I have for training. After going through a little bit of a struggle patch recently I worked out that if I could make small increases of healthy things that I love on a daily basis eg oats, fruit, natural yoghurt etc I can shake this ‘on a diet’ feeling once and for all. This has been working really well and I’m not getting cravings for junk or the urge to binge. Keep asking yourself – how will food X make me feel compared to food Y? For example, I have been raving about that seafood at Georges all week and before I ordered it I was tempted by the lasagne on the menu (you know its my favourite!) The main reason I went with the seafood was that I knew it would be very high quality but by the end of the meal I felt so good that I knew I had learned a valuable lesson. I wish I was on the seafood diet, I would love to eat this stuff every day, wouldn't you!!? .... imagine it, living on a beautiful island - before long you'd be saying McWhat?!

I weigh myself once per week and this morning was sitting just over two kilos heavier than I was the week leading up to the show. 2kg of FAT mind you = looking and feeling a lot softer. I have been keeping training intense with the goal of gaining at least 2kg lean muscle mass by the time I’m ready to compete again (2kg heavier onstage). I’m estimating that if I keep working hard, this will take me about 2- 3 years. If anyone tells you that as a natural female you can gain muscle faster than this, I’m sorry but they’re having you on!

I’m also absolutely amazed at how much fluid I seem to hold. I look positively FLAT in the mornings before I’ve had a drink (and of course that’s when I weigh myself!) Ali told me that when we were dieting toward the end there I looked like I was dying first thing in the morning, haha! The positive side of that was that dehydrating for comp worked really well for me, our coach couldn’t believe the difference!

I’m getting more and more used to my new ‘offseason’ look and although I miss looking and feeling ‘hard’ I certainly cannot complain. I have been meaning to take a photo to post – can someone harass me if I don’t do this over the weekend please?

Get out of my way!!!

Trying to get out of my own way really- yes, I'm talking to myself in the title! Thanks Jehanne for giving me a lil push to blog :)

I have been very up and down in terms of mood, which I'm really over! I'm sure its the hormone issues at play - wish I could just feel ... calm and on the level but I'm usually either pumped and full of positive energy or down in the grumpy dumps!

I still find it difficult to relax too, but am getting better. I've discussed 'anxiety' with a few people lately and its shockingly common these days, many people seem to struggle with it to some degree. You know that overwhelmed feeling? hate it. Sometimes your own head can be a scary place to be. Got it every now and then during comp prep which was to be expected I guess but its still popping up now. A good measure for me is whether or not my food prep and housework is getting done without me going totally nuts about it, lol!

So the goal of de-stressing continues! Especially not to stress or worry about things that are out of our control. During prep I worried far too much about what others thought about me and how what I was doing affected other people. There was nothing I could do about that and really, what others think of you is none of your business (unless they want to let you know). The advice I would give to others is:

Do NOT be apologetic or let anyone make you feel guilty for your decision to compete or live a healthier lifestyle. Be open, honest and polite about it but assert your right to choose what you put in your mouth and how you spend your time.

One qualification to that is please don't complain though either! You can't say your decision to compete is not affecting anyone else if you pick on them for their 'normal' eating habits/won't let them eat in front of you etc etc.

I was pretty happy with my focus during comp prep though while the daily monotony of routine and crazy business stressed me out at times I never worried about whether or not I'd actually get there. I never saw cheating or bailing as options. I know some people feel safer with an exit strategy but I think it just makes the daily motivation more difficult. It also makes it dangerous for excuses to emerge post comp about why you weren't in the best condition possible.

Do the work and everything else will take care of itself.

So although I'm not competing again in the near future, I feel I have learnt a lot that I could put to use next time and have identified lots of things to work on in the meantime.

Came across a great quote from Ronnie Coleman about competing that I thought I'd share, it was in a 2002 Flex mag i was reading on our treadmill this morning so at this point he had won Mr Olympia 4 times:

"Work hard, improve, stay calm and keep quiet. There's no reason to go around complaining and worrying about where you place. You've got to train as hard as you can and leave all that other stuff up to a higher power. Put in the work and everything will come out alright.

Look at me. I'm the best example of that!"

time to slow down

I don’t know why but I’m just in the mood for some funny pictures today- tributes to the two best clean eating foods in my opinion! ;) The baby one is cute but grosses me out a little! haha, stole it from this awesome competitor's blog. I found the oatmeal one at this great foodie's blog. These are the only two blogs written by gals from the States that I regularly read- Ali and I love all things American, I highly recommend both!

I haven’t blogged in ages and everytime I get a good idea for a post I can’t get onto blogger dammit. Ah well so its just a random hello and ramble from me today J

Have just ticked over the four weeks post comp mark and have hit that point I’ve been waiting for where I (really) don’t want to get any softer :S Ali and I got our callipers in the mail and took our skin folds over 9 sites on Saturday and I was sitting at 53mm which I was pretty happy with. I said I would like to ideally maintain in the 50-60 range. Even though I’m feeling quite soft and missing the super lean “only near comp look” I remember when I got down in this range during prep and I started to really like how I was looking in clothes etc … for the first time in my life! The other night when we went to bed I was lying on my side and I said to Ali, wow I feel so much more comfortable in bed than I have in ages…. Yay for seeing all the upsides of extra padding- Lol!

Still doing a realistic amount of cardio most mornings which I really enjoy now (…now that is optional?) I either get out for some fresh air or make good use of our treadmill + plasma + foxtel J I’ve become the hugest fan of cooking shows and watch lifestyle food a fair bit. I used to worry that I was ‘obsessed’ with food but I now think, if its something positive in your life that brings you joy, then who cares? Better than the love/hate relationship with food that I used to have!

So many questions but the same answers

Photo courtesy of Dallas Olsen

If we know diets don’t work, why do we keep doing them?

Because we (particularly us girls) are very emotional creatures and I am yet to meet someone who doesn’t have some kind of emotional attachment to food/eating. That is, whether positive or negative emotions no one (in developed countries where food is freely available) eats purely for fuel/survival 100% of the time.

We’re also really, really impatient :P I remembering feeling overweight and uncomfortable and getting to the point where I would think “I just want this weight off NOW” which led to, thoughts such as ‘well what can I do to jumpstart this weight loss?’…. ‘I know, I won’t eat much this week and do heaps of cardio!” Does this sound familiar?

It seems that these days whenever someone (having noticed my weight loss) engages me in conversation about what I'm eating or asks me for some advice, I’m bound to hear similar things:

Firstly, the question – “what exactly do you eat in a day”? (Or, they might say “tell me what to eat”).

PLEASE use some common sense. You know that you should eat more vegetables drink more water and eat crap less often - if you concentrated only on these you would probably do quite well! Don’t pretend that this is news to you or rocket science.

Sometimes I make the mistake of going into too much detail about my own eating habits eg, even as far as I eat six small meals a day, protein at each meal. Which leads me to my second pet peeve comment – “Oh I could never be that disciplined and/or I love food too much/ I go out too much” etc.

Somehow the notions of discipline, consistency, gradual weight loss and self-control don’t seem as attractive as saying that “I drank three chocolate milkshakes a day and the weight fell off in two weeks”. I could get very sarcastic here about how much I hate tasty food and love bland fish and broccoli but there’s really no need! As for discipline, its not like you either are or you aren’t- its a case of whether you are willing to keep at it. Do you want this badly enough? If so you will find a way, even if you do go out a lot. Its not any easier for me than it is for you. Right now I would really like to dive into a jar of peanut butter or walk outside my building and into any one of the dozens of fast food outlets that are within 50m… but I choose not to, LOL. Most people aren’t wiling to do what it takes to stay in good shape and that is fine, just don’t deny it!

Lastly, there always seems to be a deadline, 10-12 weeks at most to get in the best shape of your life. I know that it can be very motivating to be working toward a specific event and its conducive to setting goals to have timeframes, be accountable etc but how is that for pressure?! And the fact that it seems to imply that you only have to eat well up until this point.. what then? Temporary changes = temporary results!

Yes, you need to have a rough plan of what you’ll eat in a typical day, be prepared and keep an eye on the amount of dining out/extras that creep in. But you don’t need to count calories and get all obsessive about everything. This just leads to a sense of failure as soon as you don’t comply with your own rules.

So when people wanting to lose weight yesterday are very interested in my calorie input, macronutrient split or how much cardio I do, I would rather advise them:

Don’t start any more diets or 12 week challenges

Don’t ask someone else what they eat and try to copy it - trying to change too many things at once doesn’t work.

Create a logical plan that reforms eating behaviours sensibly and progressively over time. Start with breakfast!

Get support/help with planning meals, staying accountable- whatever you require.

Be as positive as you can and accept that you are in this for the long haul!