CARBO LOADING - A RECIPE!

In an attempt to help Tom with his pre-Century ride nutrition, I was serving more carbohydrate laden meals than I have been in some time.  I found a new recipe that I thought I would share as it was not only very tasty, but low fat for those not concerned with their carbs.

Me, on the other hand, I got a little too involved in the carbo loading and didn't lose any weight last week - so it is back to basics for me - Geez it is amazing how fast I start craving the bread and pasta once I get a taste!

Salmon, Asparagus and Orzo Salad with Lemon Dill Vinaigrette

1 pound asparagus, trimmed and cut into 3 inch pieces

1 cup uncooked orzo pasta

1-1/4 pound salmon filet

1/4 t salt

1/4 t pepper

1/4 cup thinly sliced red onion

Lemon-Dill Vinaigrette

1/3 cup ( 1.3 ounces) crumbled feta cheese

1 T chopped fresh dill

3 T fresh lemon juice

2 t extra virgin olive oil

1/4 t each salt and pepper

 Combine all ingredients.

1.  Bring large pan of water to boil.  Add asparagus and cook until crisp/tender, about 3 minutes.  Remove from water with tongs or a slotted spoon and plunge into iced water to stop cooking.  Drain and set aside.

2.  In remaining boiling water, cook orzo without added salt or fat.  Orzo should remain al dente.  Drain and place in large bowl when done.

3.  While orzo cooks, season salmon with salt and pepper.  Cook under broiler or on grill (using foil to avoid grill marks) until fish flakes easily, about 5 minutes.  Using 2 forks, break fish into large chunks.

4.  Combine fish, orzo, onion, asparagus and dressing in bowl, toss gently to coat.

I served this at room temperature.  I think it would also be good if all the ingredients were made in advance, cooled and tossed together at serving time.  Leftovers the next day were good, but a little bit dry.  A fresh squeeze of lemon brightened them up!

Six servings (1 1/4 cup each)

353 calories

15 fat

25.8 carb

27.4 protein

IT'S JUST ONE DAY

Today I was driving up and down the San Mateo coastline between Moss Beach and Santa Cruz.  My husband and son have been training and preparing for this day for a couple of months - a hundred mile bike ride and I was their support vehicle.

After they came up with the idea, they got together and drove the route, checking out the grades of the hills, the size of the bike lanes and road shoulders, the conditions of the roads.  They have been going to spin classes, going on ever longer training rides (Zac, our son, in Monterey and Tom here in the Pleasanton Tri-Valley area.)  They have been doing a lot of hill climbing and talking about their nutrition and tuning up their bikes.  They checked the weather and the winds and their equipment and their maps and on and on.  It has been quite a project.

We arrived at the meeting place in Santa Cruz at 8am and they were on the road by 8:30.  I hopped in the car and went up the road about 12 miles or so to surprise them at the top of one of the smaller hills by waving a big colorful rainbow flag we have - like it was the Tour de France.

They thought it was pretty funny, but Tom was not looking too happy.  He was cold and he said his legs were feeling dead.  They rested a few minutes and pushed on.  I stayed and had some breakfast and then went on down the road, but after about 6 more miles I saw them on the side of the road again - so I knew something was wrong.  Tom was feeling sick.  We put his bike in the car and he wrapped himself in a blanket and dropped off to sleep as I went down the road to the next rest stop and Zac rode on alone.

The rest of the day, Zac rode alone and Tom just felt terrible.  Terrible because he was sick and also because he had put so much time and energy into training for this and  now Zac was out there alone.

And isn't this how we feel when we fail to live up to our diet and exercise plans?  We feel like everything we have done has been a waste - how silly that is.  Of course it isn't a waste!  Everything we have done hasn't been for just one day.  It is for the many, many days on our bikes and in our lives.  All the training just makes us  ready for more challenges, it doesn't just disappear immediately - we can keep building on it, getting better and stronger.

That's what I told Tom and that's what I keep telling myself every time I skip a few days at the gym or go over on my calories - it is a long term thing,  not about just one day.

WEIGHT GAIN AND UNEMPLOYMENT

One of the first things I thought of when I lost my job 16 months ago was that I would have more time to devote to the gym and getting healthy.  I was on my feet much of my work day and I enjoyed that.  I had started to get up early and go to the gym before work a few days a week, but the stresses of the job were hard on me.  And I am an emotional eater - so the pounds stayed put.  At least I wasn't gaining.

But the bright side of unemployment didn't manifest for me - and apparently they don't for many unemployed Americans.  Forbes magazine reports that the unemployment rate may just be a contributing factor to the rising obesity rate.  When the unemployment rate was 6% the obesity rate was 33.8%, by 2009 the unemployment rate climbed to 9.7% and the obesity rate climbed with it to 34%.

One woman interviewed said "It was an easy decision to cancel my (gym) membership," she planned to run outside and do more yoga videos in order to keep in shape. "But almost six months later I've packed on 15 pounds and the running shoes I bought to encourage myself to run are still in the box."  She also admitted to snacking a lot more.  "I probably consumed my weight in Wheat Thins each week."

I didn't quit my gym membership and I continued to go at least a few times a week, but I wasn't working very hard.  I grew more depressed and was eating more and didn't feel my best.  By the end of the year I had reached my all time highest weight.  I kept watching the numbers on the scale climb, almost as if  I was daring myself to go higher and higher.  I finally realized that my feelings were not normal and went to the doctor and asked for a referral for counseling. 

That turned things around.  Admitting that I was depressed and that I wasn't being rational got me on the road to being healthy.  There are so many people out there who are unemployed, depressed, lost in their sad feelings about their situation.  Trying to save money by not eating the healthiest food choices.  Sitting in front the computer all day, not getting out and getting exercise.  Eating "treats" to make themselves feel better.  I know, I was there a year ago. 

I hope that those people get the chance I did to break out of that depression and get moving and get healthy.  Unemployment sucks.  No doubt about it.  Feeling better about yourself, however, rocks!

SCIENTIFIC PROOF LIFE IS NOT FAIR!

I loved the twists in the article I read in the NY Times about diet and exercise.  There has been some question about just how valuable exercise is when dieting.  Mostly because exercise at the level most of us actually participate, we just doesn't burn that many calories.

“In general, exercise by itself is pretty useless for weight loss,” says Eric Ravussin, a professor at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La., and an expert on weight loss. It’s especially useless because people often end up consuming more calories when they exercise.

“The body aims for homeostasis,”wrote Barry Braun, an associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, in the American College of Sports Medicine’s February newsletter. It likes to remain at whatever weight it’s used to. So even small changes in energy balance can produce rapid changes in certain hormones associated with appetite, particularly acylated ghrelin, which is known to increase the desire for food, as well as insulin and leptin, hormones that affect how the body burns fuel."

Here's where it gets unfair:

In physiological terms, the results of one study “are consistent with the paradigm that mechanisms to maintain body fat are more effective in women,” Braun and his colleagues wrote. In practical terms, the results are scientific proof that life is unfair. Female bodies, inspired almost certainly “by a biological need to maintain energy stores for reproduction,” Braun says, fight hard to hold on to every ounce of fat.

On the other hand, if you can somehow pry off the pounds, exercise may be the most important element in keeping the weight off. “When you look at the results in the National Weight Control Registry,” Braun says, “you see over and over that exercise is one constant among people who’ve maintained their weight loss.”


At least the very latest science about exercise and weight loss has a gentler tone and a more achievable goal that the study that came out suggesting women needed vigorous exercise an hour a day, every day to maintain weight. “Emerging evidence suggests that ­unlike bouts of moderate-vigorous activity, low-intensity ambulation, standing, etc., may contribute to daily energy expenditure without triggering the caloric compensation effect,” Braun wrote in the American College of Sports Medicine newsletter.

In a study Braun just completed in his energy/metabolism lab, volunteers spent a day sitting and then a day standing.  The volunteers who stood all day not doing anything in particular, metabolised  a significant number of calories without triggering their appetite hormones.  So you don't necessarily have to get on a treadmill, just get off the chair more!

I THINK I CAN DANCE

No matter how much I change up my exercise routine, I get bored sometimes.  I really enjoy it more when I have new music and I frequently change my playlists.  I am always switching around the music so it always seems fresh, adding new tunes in here and here.  I recently added a whole playlist of old Stevie Wonder tunes, they are really compatible with rowing.

Even so.  There I am, day after day at the gym.  On the equipment.  Yes, sometimes I go for a walk or ride my bike outside, but when I am at the gym.  I am at the gym...again.  So it is up to me to take myself somewhere else -  in my head. 

My favorite thing to do when I am on the Nu Step is to close my eyes and just get lost in the music.  I can really shut out all the sounds of the gym and transport myself back in time to the many places where I danced and danced through the nights.  I am no longer a big, old woman in the gym, I am young, graceful and rocking out to the Eagles or Fleetwood Mac.  In those days we didn't go to "clubs."  We went to bars.  Bars with music. 

In my head, that's where I go while I am working out in the gym.  And the time just flies away.

NOT WHAT YOU EAT BUT WHAT YOU ABSORB

We have all known those people who eat the same things we eat, sometimes a lot more, and never gain weight. So that must mean they are expending more calories, right? If you stick with the old calories in, calories out theory that would be the case. However, new research shows that calories that count are those extracted by your digestive enzymes and the trillions of bacteria in your intestine.

People whose gut bacteria are better at digesting fats and carbs than their neighbor’s will absorb all 1,500 calories in a Friendly’s Ultimate Grilled Cheese BurgerMelt, while the neighbor will absorb fewer.

A study done at Washington University showed that obese mice and slim mice have different populations of gut bacteria. Crucially, they showed that the bacteria caused obesity, rather than obesity producing a specific mix of bacteria. When the scientists plucked bacteria called Firmicutes from obese mice, then put them in the bacteria-free guts of mice raised in a sterile environment, the latter bulked up within 10 to 14 days—even though they ate less.

Why? Firmicutes, it seems, are more adept at liberating calories from food than are bacteria from the other common lineage, Bacteroidetes. Firmicutes can digest complex sugars that neither the mice’s own enzymes nor Bacteroidetes can, breaking them into simple sugars and fatty acids that the mice’s intestines then absorb and turn into more mouse. People harbor bacteria from these same two lineages, with the obese among us having more Firmicutes and fewer Bacteroidetes than slim people, exactly as in fat and lean mice.

The study then had 12 obese people follow either a low-fat or a low-carb diet to lose weight, the result was more Bacteroidetes and fewer Firmicutes—the profile of slim people. The more Bacteroidetes, the more weight the volunteers lost.

Although the diet experiment shows that losing weight can tip the bacterial balance away from bugs that extract the maximum calories from what we eat, what’s needed is a way to tip that balance and thereby lose weight, rather than lose weight and thereby tip the balance of gut bacteria.

So the next big push is to determine if there is another way to alter the bacteria (in a safe way) before making the dietary changes. There will certainly be those questionable marketers who will rush out with claims they can change your intestinal bacteria with their product However, at this time, there is no support for that approach.

In fact, it is possible that one component of the obesity epidemic is actually the widespread use of antibiotics which have changed the bacterial make-up of millions of Americans. This may even explain the upsurge of diabetes on the theory that the bacteria changes are altering the immune system. “I think the idea that foods, drugs, or other things in our environment might contribute to the epidemic by changing gut microbes is a distinct possibility" says Randy Seeley, an obesity researcher at the University of Cincinnati.

So all those years you though your metabolism was shot? Or that you were just so different from other people when it came to calories? You just might have been right!

BAGGY CLOTHES

I have always loved clothes and fashion. One of the most frustrating things about being overweight is the shopping. the clothes are so limited and ugly and poorly made. I have long felt that the dregs of the fabric industry are saved for the plus size manufacturers because it is so rare to find an attractive print.

Anyhow, I look forward to the day when I can shop the whole store and not one tiny "department." I really look forward to the day when shopping online for clothes is something I choose to do instead of the only option. Right now I am in a strange clothes phase. I have posted before about taking in my pants. I have done it a lot...the front pockets are starting to migrate toward the back! But that's OK.

It's the tops I am troubled with. I have a lot of polo shirts and short sleeved cotton blouses which are not suited to being taken in. But when I shop for new ones, they feel skimpy. I know the shirts I am wearing are really baggy and unattractive, but I can't seem to find anything that fits right. I must be between sizes, or the shirts are just not cut with the right proportions for me. I agree with Stacy and Clinton of What Not to Wear that oversize clothes make you look bigger, but I also don't want my clothes to be tight. Skimming the body, maybe. Some space between me and the fabric, definitely!

I have a few tops that I save for going out because they still fit pretty well. Not quite so baggy, yet. And I have some old ones boxed away that I still don't quite fit back into - I tried some on this morning just to see.

Maybe by fall my weight loss and the clothes in the stores will make for a better fit!

FOOD FANTASIES

I bought a 2 pound container of blueberries at a great price the other day. They are that perfect sweet/tart and juicy and I am enjoying them for breakfast with my low carb cereal.

My fantasy is to take that big container of blueberries and make a delicious blueberry crisp. Every time I open the refrigerator and see that nice big container I think of a blueberry crisp. Something about the abundance of blueberries gets my mind going...so from now on, I am only buying blueberries in smaller containers because that does not seem to stir up the same desires. It is so odd the way the mind works.

I was thinking about this when I was grocery shopping. As I walked the aisles I thought What would I buy if I could eat anything I wanted with no repercussions, no guilt? I thought of sweet things. And chocolate things. I looked at the breads. I considered chips and crackers and the things I could dip and spread on them. I looked into the bakery and through the freezer cases. And, yes, some of my old friends beckoned. I saw those Hagen Daaz bars and gave some thought to polenta.

Weird thing is? Nothing stood out. There was nothing that seemed to be that one perfect thing. Here I was giving myself permission (in my mind) to pick the "ultimate cheat" - and there was nothing I especially wanted.

Like I said - so odd.

Or is it just me?

BACK TO BASICS IT IS

I just posted a comment on Karen's blog say that we are all looking for something great and it isn't going to be found in food. Now why is it that I have that great insight when I am commenting on some one's blog but not when I am in the middle of my own grazing forays in my kitchen?!

I know, I know. None of us do, and that is why we band together in tribes and therapy groups and blogospheres! It takes a village to get healthy.

So my shipment of my program product came yesterday and I am back on with the small addition of 2 fruits a day. I will not miss out on my beloved summer fruit.

Thanks all for your comments and support!

I FLOPPED THE FOURTH

I don't know what has gotten into me this weekend - oh! Yes I do - too much food!

I just don't know why I suddenly started eating so much. And not even particularly special food. Just so much of it. I even had a stomach ache last night. It has been a very long time since I have had so much to eat that I caused myself pain.

It didn't make me feel better. I wasn't feeling bad. Just sort of bored and at loose ends. I made Tom his special cookies from his sports nutrition book - they are for him to take on bike rides for energy. I tasted the batter. I ate some of the cookies. It just got me going. A taste of this and that. Grazing around. Nothing satisfying because, of course, I wasn't hungry and food wasn't really what I was looking for. I kept telling myself that and then half an hour later I would be wandering into the kitchen again.

It didn't help that I was watching a movie with lots of good food in it, I suppose. (I finally watched "It's Complicated.") And yes, I made that connection, too. But I kept wandering into the kitchen tasting this and that until I went to bed.

Then this morning I was dressed and ready for the gym when I decided to work in the yard first while it was still cool. So I changed and worked in the yard for an hour or so and just when I was about finished, I got a call that Tom's bike had broken down and he needed me to go pick him up. I changed out of my dirty gardening clothes and drove off to get him. By the time we were back I made his lunch and then I made myself a sandwich, too. A whole sandwich on a ciabatta roll. I have not had that in over 8 months.

So was that a expression of my frustration? I suppose so. I couldn't say what I was feeling. I think I am very closed off from my feelings right now. Maybe I am eating to try to stir up some feelings.

I don't know if this is a publish worthy post. No insight. I am wondering If I need to go back on my program for a few weeks to get myself back on track. I have been so on and off this past month and now this.