I'm not hungry....

I just finished my lunch hour and for the majority of it, I sat on the couch trying to figure out what to eat for lunch. Nothing felt appetizing and really I wasn't feeling very hungry. 

So why do I feel the need to eat. I did not eat breakfast so my brain is telling my body " You need to eat". But I don't. 

In the end, I ended up making a quick protein smoothie and although it tasted fine, it didn't wow me and now about 30 minutes after having it, I feel pretty much the same. Not full, not hungry... just eh. 

I have spent the week, trying to make the conscious effort to not snack between meals. I did give myself Saturday and sunday off but even at that point, I didn't really snack too much, although there was some grazing before and after dinner. 

I don't think it's affected my weight very much as the scale looked to be hovering around the same value as Friday but we will see what tomorrow brings. It is also my TOM (albeit 10 days late) so that might have an effect on weight as well. 

What I do want to see if my blood glucose readings this week. I'm going to fast Wednesday night and take my blood glucose Thursday morning before my coffee (2 hours after I wake up though) to see how it looks. I'm hoping that with a week of no snacking and hopefully better controlling my insulin levels that my blood glucose is better. 

It's not bad... actually, it's great during the day but my fasted blood glucose was 6.1 at my last check up. That's just too high. It should be under 5.5. Last week, before I started the no snacking venture, it was sitting at 5.3 in the morning. So we will see if it's better, worse or the same this week. 

I know that eating a low carb diet will affect blood glucose and some people become glucose sensitive so I want to try to stay on top of that as best I can. 

So not only is the number on the scale important, but so is BP and Glucose... so the goal is to try and keep them all at a healthy range. 

The Book and my takeaways

I finished the book I mentioned in my last post - The obesity code - Unlocking the secrets of weight loss by Jason Fung. 

I took away some very interesting concepts in the book regarding weight loss, the usual gain after the loss and how our bodies work. 

He writes that the key to weight loss and beating obesity is to regulate our insulin levels in our body as  it is insulin that actually makes us fat. Not calories, not carbs - although carbs are basically insulin creators, but it's managing our insulin. 

One key to regulating and managing our insulin is through fasting. I know that when I eat, my insulin levels rise and then has to recover so if I'm eating every 3-5 hours, my body is constantly building up insulin and then recovering, but then before it can stay low long enough, it goes up again because I've eaten again. 

I'm not ready to do a 24-36 hour fast. Yet. I do really want to do one.  But not yet. Soon, hopefully as I know a longer fast helps do a full reset in our bodies which I do believe we need every once and awhile. 

One tip that was mentioned in the book was to eliminate snacking.  It makes sense as it's added calories but the reality is that it's not the added calories that causes the problem, but the constant fluctuations of insulin in our bodies. 

So my first thing I'm going to try is to not snack between meals. I don't eat breakfast but I count my coffee as breakfast so I will try to have my coffee (breakfast), lunch and then dinner. Nothing else. At least Monday to Thursday.  I know on the weekends, it's a bit harder to manage as we are usually out and about or visiting/entertaining. 

I tried this yesterday and let me tell you, snacking is literally a habit. I finish work and I usually go and grab my cheese plate, maybe some meats or veggies with dip and flop in front of the TV and eat. I'm not hungry, I just do it out of habit. 

Typically, I eat lunch at 11:30.  I then grab a handful of nuts at 2. Then I have my "after work" snack at 3:30. Then dinner between 5:30-6:30. Usually, I'm done eating after dinner,  but on some occasions, I might grab a quick snack at 7:30 before bed. I'm in bed at 9. 

So I eat at 11:30, 1:30, 3:30, 5:30, 7:30??? Seriously... I'm eating all day long! 

Yesterday I changed it up. I had my coffee at 7:30, lunch at 11 and then dinner at 5:15. That was it. And I didn't die. I wanted my snacks out of habit. I thought I was hungry but after 10-15 minutes, any hunger feelings were gone. I grabbed a cup of green tea at 3 as my "snack" to hold me over. 

So, I'm going to give this a try. My food tracking sucks but I think I can easily track WHEN I eat. Sometimes my lunches are a bit small, so I might up the food a bit more at lunch or dinner to ensure I'm getting enough calories in the day to sustain life! :) 

Fad Diet vs Way of Eating ?

 I've tried many of them. Probably too many to even remember but yes, I've been a regular visitor of the fad diet. Some have "worked" and many have not. I put "worked" in quotations because even though I lost the weight while I was on the diet, I could not sustain the diet and ended up quitting and thus gaining the weight all back and then some. 

Of all the Fad Diets that I've done, I've only had success with 2 of them. The first was Weight Watchers back in 2003. I started the diet after I had my second son and when I was able to really focus on myself. I had 1 year of maternity leave from work so I could dive deep into books, blogs, community forums and do all the research that I need to be successful. It worked. I lost the weight and felt amazing. However, when I returned to work, the weight started to creep back on. I was back working downtown with an hour commute each way and often too tired to make healthy lunches or even healthy dinners. Working a full day and then having to become "mom" when I got home meant that I didn't make time for myself to go to WW meetings or take care of myself. Little by little the lbs crept back on. 

The 2nd "fad" diet that I have had success with was the Keto diet. At first, my goal with this diet was to remove the sugars and white foods from my diet (rice, flour, bread etc) in hopes that it might kick start some sort of lb droppage. I started the Keto diet on my birthday in 2018.  There were ups and downs and I've fallen off so to speak a few times as well, but for the most part, I have kept the weight off with this diet and not only that, it's honestly been the easiest diet that I have ever done. I'm not even going to call it a diet anymore, it's a way of eating for me. 

The issue for me now is that I've stalled. I've been at the same weight for almost a year. It wavers up and down a few lbs but pretty much the same weight. 

I do have a few lbs that I want to lose, mainly for health reasons in that I do believe I can get off my bp meds if my weight drops by another 10-15 lbs. That's all I want!!! 10-15 lbs!!! It's so hard though. 

On the weekend I started reading the book " The Obesity Code - unlocking the secrets of weight loss " by Dr. Jason Fung. Yes, Jason Fung is a supporter of intermittent fasting and keto, which was likely why I chose to read his book. I'm only a little ways into it but it's opening up my eyes about weight, weight loss and how our bodies function.  After dieting for the majority of my life, I do believe I'm an expert on the subject. I believe I know how to diet, it's just putting the plan into motion that is often the tricky part.  The main focus on this book is how insulin works in our bodies which I have NEVER really paid attention to. I have to admit, I've always only thought of insulin as an issue for diabetics, but that is not the case. It's opening my eyes a bit. 

Maybe this book will help provide me with the answers or at least some hints on what I can do to drop the last few lbs and even if I can't drop the last lbs, maybe I'll learn other things to help me lead a healthier life. 

Being A Mom

It was Mother's Day yesterday and I had a lovely day. The boys spent the day at home and we hung out in the backyard and just chatted and shared stories. 

My eldest made me breakfast in the morning and then we went for a walk with the dog. My youngest did the grocery shopping with hubby and I absolutely loathe grocery shopping so that was amazing!!  

Being a mom has been the greatest gift I could have ever received. I love my boys more than anything in this world and cannot imagine a day without them. I hope and pray for the day that they have families of their own and I can be a grandma to babies. 

Being a mom has not always been easy though. Growing up my boys were easy and I was so thankful for that. If anyone had warned me before I had kids, that when they hurt, you hurt 10x as much, I wouldn't have believed them. If they told me that when they leave in their car or with their friends, there is a pit in my stomach that worries about them until they are back home safely under my roof, I would have thought they were crazy.  Knowing that I cannot do everything for them, to make life easier and that they have to learn to succeed and fail on their own, is very hard to do. 

Although my boys are both just starting their adult lives I hope I have given them the tools to function on their own and be good humans. I hope I have taught them the following:

• respect everyone
• it's ok to not always win (succeed) 
• successes and failures in life are just lessons
• keep close to family 
• appreciate what you have and not what you don't have
• never compare your life to someone else's
• you never know what someone else is going through so it's not fair to judge them
• make good choices 

 My mom died when I was young - only 24, but every single day of my life I try my best to do and act the way that she expected me to. 

If I'm a fraction of the mom that she was to me, I think I'm doing a pretty good job. 

Monday Musings in May

Welp, my plan to not focus on the number on the scale, seems to have back fired slightly. I'm not off the rails just yet, but I do see a familiar downward spiral in motion that I need to get control of right away. 

A few weeks ago, or maybe even longer than that, I decided that I was not going to worry about the number on the scale anymore. It can be an obsession of mine and I know that I need to be happy with myself, regardless of the weight or the number. Things started off well. I was moving more, loving my body and how my clothes fit. Not worrying about the number so much. I still weighed almost daily but I honestly did not care if the number fluctuated. I just accepted it going up or down. Funny enough that it stayed within a 2 lb range. 

But as history has shown, if I don't worry about the number, my pea brain seems to think that I can just let stuff slide. I stopped tracking my food intake and then started allowing snacks and treats and SUGAR back into my life.  It all went down hill a few weeks ago when we took a few days off of work and went out for lunch, then dinner, then it was hubby's birthday..... 

I need to reign it in cause the number on the scale was something scary!! 

May is typically a good month for me but also can be very challenging with son's birthday, mother's day and my birthday to wrap things up at the end of the month. For these reasons, I am going to pull out the old food tracker and get back the control of my eating and drinking. 

I don't want to set a goal of X number of lbs to lose because that is just a disaster for me typically and if I don't lose X, then I'm a failure even though I know well enough that I cannot control the number on the scale. 

So my goal for this month is to continue my home work outs and to go back to tracking food. I know there will be a few slip ups with the upcoming celebrations this month but that's ok. As long as I'm in control for the rest of the days, I should be fine. 

One day I might be able to not care about the number on the scale, but for now, I need it for accountability and that's ok.