Is It The Sugar?

While looking up "blood sugar control", I ran across a number of articles that listed either foods to avoid or include in order to help with blood sugar levels. A suprising number of them were on the list in one way or another, e.g:

• herbal tea (Green Tea)
• lots of fiber (whole grains, fruits, veggies)
• limited alcohol intake
• limited pasta
• and on and on

 I do know that when I tried the Atkins diet, sugar intake was limited and that I did loose a bunch of weight on it. Trouble was, I couldn't stay on it and it was harder to get my entire family to buy into it. I wonder if AB's list are an attempt to limit sugar intake? I bet cutting back on sugar intake would be more do-able from a family standpoint than a super restrictive Atkins diet. Adding more fiber (either through supliments and/or natural whole grains) would be easier too. Humm.....

List Progress

I've been trying to introduce AB's "4 lists" into my daily diet. Not all at once mind you but as I discover how they can fit in. The smoothie was pretty easy and fit right in with my eating habits - quick breakfast fare for the work week.

Beyond the smoothie, eating greens every day is pretty easy since I enjoy salads. They are available from a "made to order" shop where I work. I can get them with a variety of add ons - carrots, cucumbers, almonds, etc. and have that for lunch. 

I also decided to tackle the "at least 3 time per week oily fish" item. AB suggested sardines and some web surfing shows them to be good for you. However, I'm not a sardines fan. Still, I figured I'd try adding it to the salad and see how I felt about it. I started off adding 1/2 a can and just today managed to dump in a full can (less the oil) int the salad. Between the lime vinaigrette dressing, the add-ons and the romaine lettuce, I don't notice the fishy taste to much. Truth be told, they are not that bad. I figure at least 3 times per week I can eat a full can in a salad for lunch.

I think I'll tackle the yogurt part next. Since I like to snack in the late evening and like something creamy and sweet perhaps that'll work vs. a bowl of cold cereal or a snack cake.

Smoothie Facts

I've been intrigued by Alton Brown's "4 lists" and how it applies to diet and daily nutrition, in particular his smoothie recipe. I'm sure the entire list works together but I don't think I can digest the entirety of it all at once (if you'll excuse the pun). BTW the liquid measurements in the recipe are by volume not weight.

Right now I'm using a variation on AB's recipe:

• 4 oz (by volume) Soy Milk - the "fat included variety"
• 4 oz (by volume) V8 Fusion Pomegranate and Blueberry Juice
• 3 oz (by weight) mixed berries (blue, raz and strawberry)
• 1 oz (by weight) banana

The FDA food pyramid indicates that as a male I need 2 cups of fruit per day or 4 servings since the FDA considers 0.5 cups to be a single "serving". I measured out 3 oz by weight of the berries and that was nearly 1 cup. Adding in 1 oz by weight of banana and the cup measure looked full. Adding in 4 oz of the juice and that's an additional 0.5 servings of fruit (figuring that a full 8 oz by volume is 1 serving of fruit and veggies each). Doing the math my smoothie contains 1.5 servings of fruit and 0.5 servings of veggies.

The soy milk is new to me (and kinda tasty I might add) and according to the FDA and AHA may have benefits in the cardiovascular and cholesterol areas (soy milk has zero cholesterol). Right now I'm using the "full fat" version but will try the "low fat" kind for comparison.

Adding my variation together for calories I'm at 50 each for the soy and juice, 22 for the 1/4 of a banana, and about 53 for the fruit. Total 175 calories for 12 oz of food. I may try adding another 1/4 of banana to the recipe and perhaps another oz of berries. At that point I think I'm consuming all of my fruit requirements and 0.5 of a veggie at breakfast.

Thanks AB!

AB's Lists

Being that it's cold outside now I've given up walking and I can tell I've put back on some of the weight that allowed me to get into a smaller size. Story of my life - take a little off for a while and then put it back on.

Also being that it's the new year I decided not to make any new years resolutions regarding weight. That said, I was watching one of my favorite cooking shows the other day, Good Eats with Alton Brown, and he looked extremely thin - like he lost about 50 lbs. Amazing! Now I'm not much on diets but this was less about what not to eat than a set of 4 lists about eating. Here they are:

Eat Daily

• Fruits
• Whole Grains
• Leafy Greens
• Nuts
• Carrots
• Green Tea

Eat At Least 3x per week:

• Oily Fish
• Yogurt
• Broccoli
• Sweet Potato
• Avocado

No More than 1x per week:

• Red Meat
• Pasta
• Dessert
• Alcohol

Don't Eat:

• Fast Food
• Soda (soda water is OK)
• Processed meals/frozen dinners
• Canned soup
• "Diet" anything

Primary Rule: Eat Breakfast Every Day!

The "eat breakfast" thing was something I've been told before by a nutritionist I saw for a while. AB suggested a fruit smoothy for breakfast, except he made this huge "by volume/weight" thingie that I'd be consuming all day! I pared it back to what I would consider to be a single serving and used V8 Fusion juice instead of Acai juice. It wasn't bad even with the soy milk. I actually enjoy liquid breakfasts so I may try this for a while. If nothing else I can get more fruit into my diet and not have to eat it as a separate item at meals. It have 4oz of fruit in it plus the V8 Fusion Juice so I may be getting close to my daily fruit servings. That's been a struggle for me.

It might be interesting to see how many of those can be combined into a delicious meal. Certainly the leafy greens, nuts and carrots could be used in salads. Yogurt could be had in a smoothy too. Sweet potatoes and broccoli I am not wild about so I'll have to investigate those for alternatives. Oily fish - meh.. not to wild on that either, but I may give it a shot. Does tuna qualify?

Eating Habits

I'm still trying to eat when hungry, where hunger has physical manifestation (nausea, headache, etc). I'm usually able to skip breakfast and get though most of the work day with out eating anything substantial other than chewing gum and coffee. If I do that, then by the time I get home I'm ready to eat dinner (or anything I can get my hands on). And I will eat. I don't know that I eat any less, but if feels better knowing that I haven't consumed the calories for breakfast and lunch.

Dinner is a social thing. Family time to some extent, where as breakfast and lunch are more solitary pursuits. Also dinner is a creative outlet - I like to cook, bake, etc. If I'm extremely hungry after skipping breakfast and lunch I may snack on peanuts while I'm preparing dinner - not all the time, but in the first 15-30 minutes.

If I've eaten a lot the night before, I may be able to go all of the work day without feeling physically hungry. If not, I've noticed that a light lunch, cup of soup, or a small serving of left-overs, helps get me to dinner. This is instead of a large lunch.

All in all my eating largely revolves around what I eat at home as opposed to being at work or out and about. I've noticed that my late evening snacking has crept back into my routine despite my "desire" to eliminate it. I've started eating breakfast on the weekend, but usually only on 1 of the 2 days.

I still can't see myself on the scale but I have noticed that my pants no longer feel as tight as they did, I have a bit more energy and my belly area isn't protruding so much. I feel better about this route since it matches more of how my life actually is and not how it should be. Trying to stop eating when physically full (basically learning what "full" is) and snacking when not physically hungry (why am I eating then?) are the items I feel I need to work on next.

What's Hunger?

I've been fasting for good chunks of the last several days to better understand hunger, both mentally and physiologically. I found the following to be true for me:

• I can go more than 24 hours between eating solid foods without hunger becoming physically painful (a "stage 2" full)
• Being busy, physically and/or mentally, keeps me from thinking about being hungry/eating
• I'm amazed by how conditioned I am to eat at certain times (8, noon, 6)
• Feeling the need to eat is driven more by a state of being, e.g. boredom, anticipation, than actual physical hunger.
• I get to a point of being physically uncomfortable from being hungry after about 13 hours.
• Taking in fluids produces a full feeling that can last several hours
• Chewing gum has a hunger abating effect
• Extreme hunger involves feelings of nausea, a tightness in the throat area and a slight headache.

I'm trying to continue this experiment for a couple more days to see what happens.

Getting Hungry

I've learned a few things lately that I'd like to put down so I don't forget:

• At best, I can sustain about 4 months of the same weight loss activity/diet/program. After that, I give up and I can't get motivated to continue with the same activity
• Eating when hungry assumes that one knows what hunger actually feels like
• Exercising and eating more doesn't help with weight loss
• Weight gain may be the hardest habit I've tried to break - I've always though it was smoking

I'm sure there are more pearls I've learned over the summer but those are the ones that come to mind. I've managed to get away from my 10,000 steps a day, my food log, calorie counting and all the other activities I've been trying to do in order to keep the pounds at bay. As a result I'm sure I've gained back whatever progress I made (if I made any at all - I'm still on "E").

In reviewing my initial posts from when I started this last round of weigh loss I see I had an initial focus - understand hunger. Somewhere along the way I seem to have gotten off track amid the technique/activity distractions. All that activity (walking, counting, logging, etc) didn't help me understand why I eat what and when I do. If weigh fluctuation is a factor of calorie intake and exercise, then it stands to reason that understanding why I eat and in response to what makes the most sense. After all, limiting what I eat in the extreme (i.e. fasting) with no activity will result in weight loss - although that's not the most attractive way to go about it.

With that in mind I returned to a book I purchased on emotional eating. Since I never actually finished reading it, I decided to start over. In my (re)reading, it's obvious that I didn't take the critical step of understanding my (*gasp*) hunger. Right there in the first chapter is an entire discussion on why we eat when we do and what drives it.

Turns out that I eat because I'm board, restless, wanting a break from what I'm doing, socializing, and many other reasons that I've not discovered yet. At some point I guess I eat because I'm physically hungry, but I don't know that I have a good idea of what that feels like mentally and physiologically.

So, in the nature of experimenting, I'll find out what hunger feels like by not eating until I reach a point of physical uncomfortableness. Let my mind scream at me, but I'll eat only when I get, well hungry.