Sweet Enough as I Am

Like most Americans, I eat WAY too much sugar.  Breaking the sugar habit is tough, your body craves the stuff.  Here are a couple things I did to curb the white siren.

1. Swap Dessert -- Even when I was eating my healthiest I always slotted calories for dessert.  Every night.  This time around I am only allowing myself a real sweet treat on the weekend.  On weeknights my after dinner treat is fruit (fresh or dried). It is still sweet and still has sugars, but at least it also has vitamins and fiber.  It also makes the weekend dessert seem like a real splurge.  And those weekend splurges are portion sized (to avoid the fistfuls of Chips Ahoy).

2.  No Fake Outs -- I have almost entirely removed fake sweeteners from my life.  No more diet soda, no more Crystal Light, no more Starbucks skinny syrup, no more artificially sweet yogurt.  Fake sugar may save you calories in the short term, but it tricks your body into wanting more and more of the white stuff.  The last vestige of chemical sweetener in my life is in the occasional piece of gum.  Anyone have a good low sugar all-natural gum?

3. Go Halfsies -- I like Honey Nut Cheerios.  There, I said it, I am a five year old.  I also like real Cheerios, so I buy a small box of each and mix them together.  I enjoy a Pumpkin Spice Latte this time of year, but won't use the fake sugar syrup at Starbucks, so I have them go half on the syrup and it is still plenty sweet. Want a soda? Buy the tiny cans they sell in the grocery store (a friend gave me this idea and it is awesome).

4.  Make Better Choices -- This is my mantra for all things food related.  Want that soda?  Get a ginger ale instead of a Coke and save 10 grams of sugar per 8 oz serving.  Want chocolate?  Buy a single serving of Cadbury or even Godiva, sure it is a splurge but if you are going to eat it make sure it is really good - and portion controlled!

How do you cheat the sugar game?  If you have a good tip please leave a comment, thanks!

The Power of Positive Women

 

 

If I could give one piece of advice to my 20 year old self now that I am 40, it would be to make sure you surround yourself with good women.  I did that any way, but it would have been nice to know it would work out so well for me.  This swirling nostalgia that 40 has brought on, coupled with the great outreach of Social Media has reminded me just how wonderful all the women in my life are.

 

I got off on the right foot, I have a great Mom (my dad ain't half bad either, butt his post is about chicks).  My mother is kind and generous and smart and hard working, she supported my choices (even when they took me very far from home) and she respects the life I have made for myself (even though it is very different from her own).

 

I forged great friendships in school with girls that had ambition and open minds, some of whom I keep in close contact with and some I have rediscovered as wonderful women on Facebook.

 

And there is a special place in my heart for the friends I have made as an adult.  We were not forced together by the rigors of school to unite over chemistry homework or cute boys, we chose each other amidst our busy lives and carved out the time to form bonds.

 

Friendship, at any age, isn't easy; it requires time and commitment and the willingness to listen and share.  Not all friendships succeed and that is another lesson I have come to appreciate.  A failed friendship is not a condemnation, but merely a sign that you were each meant to find a different friend.

 

What I have at 40 is a great group of women who support one another in all things.  We challenge each other to be better, we motivate when needed, we comfort when called upon.  Life isn't always easy, but the hard parts are a little softer with the right kind of support.  Thanks!

 



Stick to the Plan, Ann!

Remember that old adage: "Failing to plan is planning to fail."  Well, it's true - especially in the world of diet and exercise.  Without a plan it is so easy to devolve into take-out and sitting on the couch for hours on end (those things require nearly no planning).

In past forays into a healthy lifestyle I always kept a food journal (and I still am) but the food journal is retroactive to what you ate or how you worked out, a plan is proactive.  Maybe I am just more addle-minded than I used to be (over 40 now!) or maybe I should have been doing it this way to begin with.

The photo above is last week.  I created a simple Excel chart for meals/snacks/workouts and I set it and printed it on Sunday evening.  Throughout the week I marked off those things that went as planned and annotated those that deviated.  Hopefully as I get better at planning the annotations will be fewer.

Life doesn't always go according to plan and if you have partners and kids and pets the weekly plan will likely look a whole lot more complex than mine, but here are some advantages to setting up a plan:

1. Shopping List -- If you know what you are going to eat you can set up a list for the grocery store and then avoid wandering aimlessly throwing Chips Ahoy packages by the fistful into your cart.

2. Identify Danger -- Maybe it is a bunch of social obligations in one week or the opposite and you are facing a whole weekend alone with nothing but you and the thoughts of all those Chips Ahoy, but if you lay out your week in advance you can plan for that instead of finding yourself facing too much temptation.

3. Retrospective -- Like a food journal you can keep these printed plans (I have a binder just calling out for them) and look back on weeks that you succeeded or struggled and see what you did well or could have done better.  If you stick to this for an extended period you can look back year on year and see how you handled the holidays or vacation and tweak your plans as you progress.

Obviously, you do not need to be trying to lose weight to utilize a meal and exercise plan.  This is actually as much a part of #40DaysOfOrganizing as it is anything else, but anyone who has struggled with weight loss knows that one of the biggest issues for many is control.  By having a good plan you are taking control of your week from the beginning and starting off on a good foot.

Anyone else have a good life organization technique they use and would like to share?  Please leave a comment!

40 Days of Veggies Wrap-Up

So 40 Days of Veggies is technically over and I feel it was a worthwhile challenge.  I didn't eat as many different types of veggies as I would have liked, but I did consistently eat more locally grown vegetables than I had been prior to the challenge.

Since it was the height of summer harvest during the challenge I ate a lot of:  tomatoes, corn, zucchini, summer squash, eggplant, peppers, potatoes and carrots from the Farmer's Market in Copley Square.  I also found a lot of herbs and garlic with which to experiment.

A few things I learned during 40 Days of Veggies:

1.  If the vegetable can handle it, chop it and store it chopped.  Zucchini, summer squash and even eggplant would hold up to 5 days pre-chopped in a big Ziploc bag.  Then I could just toss a handful or two into tomato sauce or a stir-fry for those late dinners after the gym.  Pre-cut carrots easily lasted a week for snacking.

2.  The Farmer's Market is a great place to try things.  Most stalls will let you try a vegetable if it can be eaten raw.  And with everything out open to the air you can really smell things and get a feel for them.

3.  Lots of yummy things are still yummy without meat. I had a lot of veggie omelets, pizza and pasta dishes that felt worse for me than they were because I usually had them with meat.  I used meat sparingly over the 40 days, mostly chicken and fish and I never used any fake meat to supplement the veggies.

I have gotten into a routine of visiting the Farmer's Market on Tuesday, it is a nice walk and convenient to the library which I usually visit weekly any way.  It will run into late November, the veggies shifting over to fall, so I am still eager for any veggie recipes out there, especially if they involve root vegetables!

The Joys of Swimming

It has been a month now since I joined the new gym and you may remember I was very excited that it had a pool.  I have always loved to swim.  I remember going through all the fish-named levels of swimming lessons at summer camp, with that goal of diving off the 3 meter board to reach Shark.  I have loved the water my whole life and have always considered myself a good swimmer.

Swimming for exercise instead of fun is a fish of a different color though and I quickly learned that paddling around the ocean is not really exercise.  On my first day in the pool I was barely able to do 10 lengths of the pool in 30 minutes (and it is a short pool).  I was winded easily and had a hard time coordinating my limbs and my breathing to be more efficient.

A month later I can do 40 lengths in that same 30 minutes and I have mixed up my strokes to work different muscle groups.  I can feel improvement to endurance at the cardiac, respiratory and muscle levels and I feel really good.

Swimming works your whole body, especially your core, which I didn't realize is part of what is keeping me from sinking.  By changing up strokes I feel it in different muscles, but I never feel it in my joints.  In fact, if I do a swimming workout the day after a really tough class or gym workout I find my knees, hips and back (the middle-age trifecta) feel better.

After a few weeks of swimming and making the above discoveries I decided to research swimming as exercise and found this article which told me everything I had already figured out.  It made me feel really good about my experience in the pool.

Do you swim for exercise?  Any tips?  Please share in the comments, thanks!

Perspective

I was going to write about vegetables today, but it seemed kind of silly.  Part of being 40 has been this endless loop of nostalgia and gratitude for a happy healthy life and it is hard to go through a September 11th anniversary without some retrospect.

My morning today started with a phone call from a friend and former co-worker who shared a part of that horrific day with me, we always think of each other on the anniversary and I will always remember her mom who was the one who called and told me what was going on in New York.

There are several moments in my life that I remember clearly.  I remember singing Happy Birthday to a classmate in 7th Grade English in January of 1986 when the Principal announced that the Challenger had exploded.  I remember standing in the living room watching the Berlin Wall come down in November of 1989 after having just visited it the previous April.  I can still feel the pain of the day in December 2003 when my mom told me she had cancer.

September 11th was different.  I can see it so clearly, I can remember the whole day minute by minute.  I can see myself in my office before the news had reached me, as if I can see a different me.  We changed that day.  I can see my outfit, jeans and a long sleeve purple tee shirt, comfortable shoes that proved a smart choice as I walked home unsure what was safe and what wasn't.  The blue of the sky in Boston that day was stunning, the air clean and just starting to hint towards Fall.

I went to the grocery store and can remember everything I bought: a roasting chicken, potatoes, Stove Top and cranberry sauce -- I was making myself Thanksgiving dinner without realizing it.  I lived in a  studio apartment and could see the television from my bed across the room, but instead slept folded onto the loveseat afraid of missing something.

I find all the anniversary postings that say "Never Forget"  strange, as I can't imagine I could, even if I wanted to.

Reward for Lost....Pounds

People who struggle with their weight often feel very alone. It is ironic since the majority of people in the United States fight this battle, but it is true, even amongst my closest friends sometimes it is hard to articulate how I feel.  That is why I was so relieved when I brought up the topic for this blog post and found that I really am not alone, lots of people reward themselves with calories.

It can range from a big celebratory dinner, to after work drinks, to ice cream or a fancy coffee drink, but most of the treats we allow ourselves are full of calories.  So I have come up with a reward plan for myself that will support my good habits and not derail them.

Here are some of the keys to the plan:

1. Set reasonable benchmarks:  If you only have a reward planned for your end goal, and that goal is a long ways off, it will not be suitable motivation.  Have a few check points along the way every month or so where there are smaller rewards in place to provide bursts of motivation.

2.  Choose rewards that will propel you forward:  My first goal was 40 Days of Fitness and my reward was to invest in the new gym.  If I could prove to myself that I was dedicated to fitness this time, I was willing to spend the money.  Other rewards have included a subscription to a fitness magazine, some new music from last week's post and the next is a couple new workout tops (mine are getting big!).

3. Pampering isn't bad either, as long as it doesn't involve food:  A pedicure is on my list, my feet hurt from all this working out! My ultimate goal reward is a vacation, your soul needs to be rewarded too.

4.  Budget for your rewards:  Nothing sends me running to the Ben & Jerry's more than worrying about money, so don't bankrupt yourself.  Losing weight and getting fit takes time so plan the money for your rewards accordingly. (stay tuned for 40 Days of Savings coming up in October!)

5. A reward is different than a bribe: While the reward can certainly be a motivation, it should not be your sole motivation, the ultimate reward is how much better you can feel.


Have you found ways to reward yourself with something other than food?  Please share them in the comments, always looking for new ideas!

Soundtrack for Success

The evolution of portable music over my lifetime is staggering.  From my pre-teen days of taking the boom box down to the beach with 30 pounds of D batteries not lasting until sunset to my original Sony Walkman and Discman through an original MP3 Player the size of my thumb that only held 100 songs to one the size of a postage stamp that held 1,000 and now to my phone where all manner of distractions live.  Whew!  It's been an interesting 40 years for walking around and listening to music.

I LOVE music.  All kinds.  It is with this in mind that I am stumped by the fact that I cannot stand any of the 900 songs currently on my phone.  I spend most of my walk/workout fast-forwarding to find the perfect song only to end up listening to Josh Groban sing O Holy Night because I am tired of fast-forwarding..

I need music, not to set my pace for a workout, but rather to distract me long enough to get the workout in or extend it to a decent length.  I get bored easily on a treadmill or distracted by bunnies on a real walk.  I need the focus of good solid song lyrics to keep me on task.

So this is a call for your favorite workout tunes.  Don't be shy, I like the silly pop songs right alongside the deep songwriter pieces.  My favorite music combines great lyrics with unique instrumentation (currently LOVE ZZ Ward) but I am open to anything at this point.  Help me restock my IPod, leave some suggestions in the comments.  Thanks!

Where's My...?: 40 Days of Organizing

Up to now this blog has really focused on exercise and food (and subsequently so has my life), but it is Back to School time and I thought that would be a great time to start organizing.

The above quote spoke to me as I recently spent hours looking for a couple of things in my rather small one-bedroom city apartment.  If I had been more organized I could have used that wasted time on a workout or several episodes of Game of Thrones.

So today I launch 40 Days of Organizing.  Ironically I had to organize the organizing to have any hope of success.  I compiled a list of 40 things that need organizing.  They range in workload from something I could do in half an hour (a singular messy junk drawer) to longer weekend projects like closets.

I also added some life org to the list, things like organizing my recipes and making a gift idea list for Christmas will help ease me into fall/holiday time.

I don't have kids and I haven't been a full time student since Grad School over a decade ago, but early September always brings with it the desire to buy pencil cases and clean notebooks.  I am going to try and funnel that Back to School spirit into an organized apartment!

Please leave a comment with any great organizing tips, especially for small spaces.  Thanks!