With everything in the news lately, I have an important question: What Would The Pope Eat?
Since gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins, I would imagine that the Pope would have a light diet of bland and healthy food. According to this book, it doesn’t seem that way. Cream of Chicken Soup, Paprika Oysters and Eel just don’t seem simple to me. Maybe it’s only a sin if you eat too much.
We’ve been innudated with books about the French way of eating. These books claim that French women don’t get fat. They say that the French have an innovative way to eat that allows them to enjoy bread, cheese, chocolate and wine.
French Women Don’t Get Fat: The Secret of Eating For Pleasure – by Mireille Guiliano
The Fat Fallacy : The French Diet Secrets to Permanent Weight Loss – by Will Clower
The French Diet: Why French Women Don’t Get Fat – by Michel Montignac
I really haven’t known what to say about these diets. I’ve found the way to lose weight and enjoy bread, cheese, chocolate and wine. Don’t eat so much. Do these books really have anything to offer me besides eating smaller portions?
Not according to the authors of four French Food bloggers:
Read this very informative interview with lots of “trucs” (tricks) to keep you slim. Try it out.
There is so much that I don’t understand when I read the running magazines and books. I’ve tried to fathom what they are talking about, but it all sounds like gibberish and numbers to me. It’s not like I’m scared of numbers. I was a math major. If I can wrap my head around Multi-Variate Calculus, I should be able to understand a running magazine, right? Not yet…
My sister suggested that I hire a personal trainer from the gym. I shied away from the idea, mostly because I don’t like the idea of having a personal trainer. A running coach, on the other hand, sounds like someone I could work with. Of course, this article gives some local information on finding a running coach, but only if “local” means Washington D. C. It’s too late for a running coach to make any major improvements on my time for the SLC Marathon on April 23rd, but for my next race, it might be a good idea. Until then, I’ll keep working with my Treadmill Spreadsheet.
I’ve always thought of Raw Food Vegans to be a wayward branch of vegetarianism. They eat only food that is plant-derived that is uncooked. Corn flakes are out. Canned spinach is out. Meat and cheese? WAY OUT. I just couldn’t believe that one could be healthy and eat under such restrictions. This study begs to differ.
Now, you have to remember that this study looked at the health of only eighteen Raw Food Vegans, which isn’t a statistically valid number. Humans are such slipperly test subjects, however, it’s hard to do long term studies on these sorts of things. You just can’t lock them up in cages and only feed them what you want to test like you can with mice and rabbits. Until we are able to see the results of a larger group (double blind, please…) we’ll have to accept that raw fruits, vegetables, whole grains and nuts are a healthy way to eat.
I’ve heard them called a lot of things: trigger foods, red-light foods, but I tend to think of them as my Vulnerability Foods. They are foods that I like to binge with. They are friends when I’m feeling vulnerable. Some of them are old friends (Mother’s brand chocolate cookies or bite size Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups). Others are new additions to my binging vulnerability (pretzels dipped in Nutella). They are foods that I search out when I don’t want to deal with my emotions. They are foods that allow me to consume a huge number of calories within a short amount of time.
Need to know how to deal with your personal vulnerability foods? Here’s a list of strategies, starting with the ones that don’t work for me and moving on to the ones that do work.
Advice That Doesn’t Work:
This series from About.com talks about the benefits that can be had from a daily walking regimen.
This article gets a little metaphysical, but it opens up your mind to an entirely different way to look at your daily exercise.
If you got a Stability Ball for Christmas, you are problably bored with the video that came with it by now. If you didn’t get a video with your new exercise toy, then you might have even blown up the ball and just bounced it around the room after doing a few crunches.
This set of exercises gives you a bunch of fun new moves to try with your Stability Ball. My favorite, the One-Legged Hamstring Roll, is pictured here. Maya on Yourself! Fitness made me do that once and I had no idea how effective it was until the next day when I could barely walk. I do Leg Curls at the gym with as much weight as I can do and I it won’t have that kind of effect on my hamstrings.
Enjoy this lower body workout!
I’ve seen the ads at the gym. They flash on the television while I’m sweating away on the elliptical trainer. Anna Nicole Smith is thin and beautiful again and the words, “Be Envied” burn themselves into my forehead. Isn’t that what we all want? Sure, those bitchy looks from women might sting a bit, but they wouldn’t give you those looks if you didn’t have something to be proud of, right?
Isn’t that what life is about? Survival of the fittest is all about being the Alpha. Anything below Alpha is going to envy me, right?
The only thing that can wipe the slogan for the diet pills off my forehead is the knowledge that I am doing this to be healthy. I am exercising to be healthy. I am eating nutritionally to be healthy. I am limiting my portions to be healthy. Healthy shines through my skin and shows up in my hair and nails. Healthy reveals my firm and toned muscles under my skin. There is no fast forward to healthy. There is no pill that can give me that result.
Plus, when I finally get there, I will Be Envied, and I’ll know I earned it.
Go Ask Alice is a website hosted by Columbia University that provides health information. Fitness and nutrition are a small part of healthy living, but they have dedicated quite a few questions to them.
My hardest obstacle was knowing when I’m hungry. I would let myself get to the point of feeling ravenous before I would eat. I started eating Mini-Meals every two to three hours whether I felt hungry or not. Eventually, I learned what hunger feels like. I used to think hunger was the point when I was shaking and couldn’t think straight. That point is way beyond hunger. Now I am able to feel those first hunger signs and eat before I’m to the point where I will stuff anything in my mouth.
My first mistake was to buy my tennis shoes online. I guess I really had to because all the Lady Footlockers in the city closed down and the regular Footlockers didn’t carry my shoes. I thought it would be great. All I needed to do was to buy the exact same model of my beloved shoes directly from the manufacturer. It worked. They came in the mail and fit like a dream. I’m on my third mail-ordered pair.
Of course, with the shoes came the advertisements for the fancy exercise clothes. You know the really cute outfits where the tops match the stripes on the bottoms. The pants are made of some really cool fabric that magically cools down the athlete in the summer and keeps her warm in the winter. Oh, and by the way, the shorts cost twenty bucks apiece. Are they worth it?
This article from the American Council on Exercise leaves the answer open. While they don’t technically reduce skin temperature, they do allow sweat to evaporate quicker than cotton. I have a couple of tops that are made out of that space age fabric and the only thing that I’ve noticed is that they feel lighter and silkier than the cotton tank tops I usually run in. Mostly, I just like them because the tops match the color of the stripe on the side of the pants.
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