My Diet, Health and Fitness

So I’ve been trying to figure out what my major roadblock to eating healthier was and if you’re interested, I think I’ve found it.

Nope wasn’t money, though of course it is more expensive to eat healthy foods.

Nope, wasn’t time - well not specifically.

Turns out it was my cluttered kitchen. I spent most of today throwing out old gadgets and gizmos, putting away old cookbooks and generally straightening up and guess what? It was no big deal any more to find and fix something yummy and healthy. It wasn’t “Well crap, first I have to find the scale - now wait, where are the knives? Yeah I think I had some lettuce (rummage rummage)…”

So my new advice is - gonna start a diet? Begin by cleaning your kitchen and shining your sink!

I got up this morning and all I could think about was cake. Chocolate cake. Like the one I have sitting in my refrigerator.

Yea, making that cake was a HUGE error in judgement. The thing is, when you’re the only one in the house on a diet it’s really REALLY easy to say, well THEY can have it. But I won’t. Honest. It can sit there being yummy and delicious in the fridge while I have some decaf coffee and cereal for breakfast.

But you know what? It just haunts me. All I can think about is having a piece of cake. Now I’ve been good so far… but I can see that even having the stuff in the house was a huge mistake. So, no mroe cake and everyone will just have to deal with a dessert-free house for a while.

Ran into this article which really sums it up. When you get right down to it, weight loss boils down to four simple principles.

- Fad diets don’t work
- Eat nutritious food
- Exercise
- Stick to it!

I’m thinking this would make a great poster for over my desk. Because from everything I’ve read, from everything I’ve tried, it really does seem to boil down to those four principles. No special soup, no miracle juice or unbalanced food regimen with strange and mysterious restrictions will melt the weight away.

No matter how much you wish it would If only I COULD lose weight while eating ice cream! Ah well, it will be that much sweeter when I have it occasionally, instead of as one of my four food groups.

The original article: http://www.weightlosswand.com/blog/96/the-4-principles-of-weight-loss/

read more | digg story

That’s what University of Washington researchers found when they compared the prices of 370 foods. Calorie for calorie, junk foods not only cost less than fruits and vegetables. Energy-dense munchies cost on average $1.76 per 1,000 kcal, compared with $18.16 per 1,000 kcal for low-energy but nutritious foods. See my post below, and don’t forget to visit the Digg article!

read more | digg story

One thing that I never hear about (well, ALMOST never) is the hidden cost of getting healthy.

Cost, you say? Yup. Having been, and continuing to be, a person living at what I’d call a lower middle class level, I can vouch that in the past the one of the biggest barriers to getting healthy has been financial.

Let’s put that in perspective. Let’s assume that, like me, you’re trying to feed yourself and your family on $80 a week. Yes, you read that right - my food budget is between $80 and $100 a week. For three meals a day, seven days a week. As soon as you begin to try and get healthy you discover that your food budget starts rising. All those yummy fruits and veggies? That lean meat, and those boneless skinless chicken breasts? Whoops - those aren’t cheap folks.

What IS cheap, on the other hand, is prepared foods. Mmmm, those Encore frozen dinners - $3.99 for a pound of starchy, saucy goodness. Or for about $3, a McDonalds value meal. I am not picking on them - you could go to almost any fast food joint and find something approximately the same price, with tons of tummy filling fatty goodness and a never ending fountain of refillable pop.

Is it wrong that my mouth is watering right now? Call me Pavlov’s blogger.

Spaghetti and ramen noodles, or Kraft mac-n-cheese? Also super cheap. And sure, you CAN do everything from scratch to save a few bucks, but that’s where the catch 22 kicks in. If you’re as broke as I am, you’re working 12 hour days or more. You get home exhausted, maybe you haven’t seen the sun in days, and then you have to de-bone a chicken, chop veggies, and make low-carb biscuits from scratch? How many of us succeed beyond the first week - soon we’re so damn tired and hungry that we throw up our hands and reach for some frozen dinner goodness. Is it any wonder that a hundred years ago, the poor were super thin - but NOW, the American poor are heavy? The cheapest, easiest way to feed ourselves is one designed to make us overweight!

So one of my goals as I work on finding fitness (because I refuse to believe that this is impossible!) is to find meals in the”sweet spot” - inexpensive and healthy alternatives that don’t take more than 30 minutes to prepare. That’s going to be a real challenge but I’m going to try. If you know of any - pipe up and send me a link!

**EDIT** And sure enough, I found another article just today talking about the same topic. You can see it at “A High Price for Healthy Food“.

I’ve been meaning to do a blog about diet and exercise for a while. Not because I’m some sort of guru, but because, well, I’m NOT. I’m an overweight, low self confidence woman in her 30’s who needs desperately to get her body back into shape. not to look good (my fella thinks I look great, thankyouverymuch) but because I want to feel better.

I got a wake up call about 3 weeks ago when my father died suddenly and unexpectedly. Everyone thought he was healthy (he was only 68) because he walked everywhere and seemed fine. Turns out he wasn’t fine at all. Between diabetes and high blood pressure, it all came to a head and he suffered a massive coronary and died at home in his recliner. He never knew what hit him, so at least he didn’t suffer. But it was needless - he could have had another ten years if he’d taken better care of himself.

Fact is, I’m on the same path he was. I eat the wrong things - too much sugar and starch, not enough veggies and protein. I don’t exercise enough. I had already “kinda” started dieting about a month ago and ta-da! I’ve lost ten pounds so far. But I have so much farther to go. That’s where this site comes in.

I want this blog to accomplish several things. I want it to be the place I hold myself accountable - for those mochas I shouldn’t drink, the chocolate chip cookies, and so forth. I want to have something I do every day that encourages me to get up and exercise. And also I want to share anything I learn as I go through this process. Maybe we can get healthy together, you and I. Because if I can find a way to do it, anyone can.