Posts Tagged with: "diet"

TBR Clean & Mean Routine is a series of nutrition and wellness tips from for people who wish to start the year right by living cleaner, healthier lives. New tips are posted every Monday from Jan. 13 to Feb. 24.

Tip 4: ANYTHING IN MODERATION

As mentioned, our TBR Clean & Mean Routine is about eating clean food. It’s also about being MEAN. M in Mean is for meals of three and snacks of two. E is for exercise at least 4x a week. A is for ANYTHING IN MODERATION.

We’re on our 4th week of eating clean and exercising regularly. How’re you feeling so far? This week will be short and simple. It’s all about MODERATION.

DIET? WHAT DIET?

Often times you hear people say “Diet? What diet?!!” when they’re about to devour an entire lechon. It’s almost as if they’re saying: “Screw that sad diet I’ve been on for weeks. Today, I will enjoy myself to the hilt and eat all I want!” Then they proceed to consume triple the amount they usually eat because they’re finally free.

That’s what happens when you go on a DIET. You restrict your intake of particular foods (or worse, entire food groups!) and shun all your favorites because you’re trying to be “good.” The thing is, if or when you do fall into temptation, your diet may backfire on you. You may overeat because you’ve been depriving yourself for weeks or months.

LIVE A LITTLE

Like I said, on the TBR Clean & Mean Routine, we’re not going on a diet. We’re aiming for a lifestyle change. We want a life where, in time, we naturally veer towards healthy food and exercise as opposed to artificial food and sedentary living. We do this s-l-o-w-l-y by making small changes every week as we go about our daily activities.

It’s unnatural for anyone to live within a super strict set of regimented rules especially when it comes to food. Don’t eat this. Don’t eat that. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. It’s also very sad!

So, for us, we will allow for ANYTHING IN MODERATION and, please note, ONCE IN A WHILE. If you must have a cookie, then allow yourself to take a bite and quickly give it to someone else. If you must have a soda, then take a few sips and leave it. If you’ve been invited to a big dinner buffet, then make sure that you have a light snack before the meal, make good choices by filling your plate with healthier fare, then stop before you get too full.

I will have to ask you to practice common sense with this tip.  Please don’t come back to me saying that I allowed you to have tons of sugar when you’re a diabetic or you loaded up on spicy food before a marathon and eventually messed up your race.  At the end of the day, you know what you can and cannot have and when. You know what is good and what is bad for your health.  Only you are responsible for what you put in your body.

The point is this: Do not over think things.  Do not make food your enemy.  Just eat when you want to and stop when you’re satisfied.  Good food and healthy active living must be fun and convenient for you if you want it to be forever.

If you want to join me and others on our TBR Clean and Mean Routine for 2014, just do this:

Post a comment on TBR FACEBOOK PAGE that you commit to practicing the tip for the next 7 days. If you don’t have FB, you can post your comment on this blogpost.

Watch out for our weekly TBR Clean & Mean Routine tip every Monday. I will ask you to post a comment on each of those weekly tips until February 24.

Throughout the week, feel free to chat and converse with others in the TBR FACEBOOK PAGE who are trying to apply the weekly tips in their lives.

By the first week of March, I will ask you to submit a story on how this plan worked for you and what changes you saw in your life. The most compelling and interesting submission will win a pair of running shoes from me.

Let me know how this week goes for you! See you next Monday!

Read:
TBR Clean & Mean Routine – Part 1 & Part 2
Tip 1: Eat Clean
Tip 2: Mealtime: Listen to Your Body
Tip 3: Exercise: 4x a Week

TBR Clean & Mean Routine is a series of nutrition and wellness tips for people who wish to start the year right by living cleaner, healthier lives. New tips are posted every Monday from Jan. 13 to Feb. 24.

Tip 1: EAT CLEAN FOOD.

This week, from January 13 to 19, focus on eating clean, wholesome, nutritious food. I know, you’ve heard this many times before. Everyone knows that this is the key to losing weight. It really is! But, for most of us, the difficulty comes in applying it. We can eat healthy for a day, or maybe a week, and then we fall off the healthy eating wagon and feel like a complete failure.

The difference now is in your mindset. Change your mind about healthy eating. Do not even think that you’re going to start a new short-term diet today. You’re not. You are starting a new, better way of living. Ready? Game!

WHAT ARE CLEAN FOODS?

What food should you be eating most of this week? Clean food!

Clean foods are foods that are as close to its natural state as possible. They come from nature. These are fruits and vegetables, whole grains, lean meat, fish, and nuts. They rarely come packaged, but, if they do, they have only one or two ingredients in the label.

Choose a banana over a packaged bar.
Choose tilapia and brown rice over spam and white rice.
Choose fresh buko juice over soda.
Choose a handful of nuts over a bag of chips.

CROWDING OUT

By eating more clean food this week, we will fill our bodies with healthy food that make us feel satisfied so that we don’t even have space for junk. This is what we call CROWDING OUT in my nutrition school.

This week, focus on all the clean food you can have and get excited over it. Try a new fresh and healthy recipe. Think of new restaurants that serve awesome grilled salmon and fresh salads. Look forward to eating. Period.

Since we’re just starting out, you may notice that you still want to eat some not so good food. Go ahead. Don’t stress over it. Just do so in moderation and make sure you are eating the clean food that you should be eating. You’ll notice that, as you go along, you’ll be craving less of the junk and filling yourself with clean food without even thinking about it.

WHAT YOU DON’T WANT TO DO

Two things I don’t want you to do this week:

1) DO NOT think about all the food you will scrap from your diet this week. DO NOT tell yourself that, this week, you will not have red meat, rice, dessert and soda. This will leave you feeling angry and deprived. And, if you mess up, you will feel like a complete failure. Focus on the good food you will be eating and how you are nourishing your body.

2) DO NOT be too hard on yourself. I said we want to eat clean MOST of the time, but SOMETIMES we can allow ourselves to indulge and enjoy not-so-healthy food. So, if you want to have a taste of cake or a sip of soda, go ahead! Life is too short to quit eating cake for a whole year (I have friends who’ve done that. Boo to them!) I say, live your life to the fullest!

ARE YOU READY TO COMMIT?

Come and join me and others on our TBR Clean & Mean Routine!

Here’s how to join:

• Post a comment on TBR FACEBOOK PAGE that you commit to practicing the tip for the next 7 days. If you don’t have FB, you can post your comment on this blogpost.
• Watch out for our weekly TBR Clean & Mean Routine tip every Monday. I will ask you to post a comment on each of those weekly tips until February 24.
• Throughout the week, feel free to chat and converse with others in the TBR FACEBOOK PAGE who are trying to apply the weekly tips in their lives.
• By the first week of March, I will ask you to submit a story on how this plan worked for you and what changes you saw in your life. The most compelling and interesting submission will win a pair of running shoes from me.

Let me know how this week goes for you! See you next Monday!

I am so done with dieting. So done!

For the past couple of months, you were completely unaware—of course, I don’t tell you everything here—that I was frustrated about my ballooning weight. I couldn’t figure out why I was getting heavier when I was working out like a mad woman (double my usual training program since I added swimming) and eating much less, yet the numbers on the scale were going nowhere but up. To make matters worse, I got injured so no running and no gym only meant the numbers would soon get higher if I didn’t get answers to my questions.

Was I just getting old?

Did I have to eat even less than the little food I was eating?

Was I eating more than I actually thought I was? (Uhm, on some days I would say yes but what we don’t know—or admit—won’t hurt us, right?)

Did I have to add even more training hours to my already hectic sched?  (I welcome the idea of training more because I love it and it doesn’t feel like work to me, but I have a life too, you know!)

Was my body so used to running that I needed a new activity to jolt my metabolism?

Did I need to add more intense training?

Was lack of sleep and stress causing havoc in my system?

What do I do?!!!

I bugged so many experts and friends with all my questions. I asked my nutritionist friend Harvie de Baron of Hammer and he told me to eat more to lose more. I bumped into Coach Jim Saret of The Biggest Loser and asked him to reveal his secrets on dropping my extra weight.  He said I should intensify my training.  I even met with friend, nutritionist, and contributor of TBR Magazine, Mitch Felipe-Mendoza. She was so baffled with my weight gain that she even wrote an article about it on Philippine Daily Inquirer to answer all my queries…hah!  (Here’s the LINK)

Last week, I said to myself: enough is enough. One should not spend this much time worrying about the calories and fat, especially not runners like me!   After all, one of the reasons why I fell in love with running was because it gave me freedom from the scale!  It allowed me to focus on my passion for running while fitness and weight loss were simply bonuses for me!  I thought: Life is too short for thinking about numbers on the scale when I should be savoring healthy, wholesome food, enjoying my long runs, and living life to the fullest!

So, last Sunday, I made a pact with myself to quit dieting and stressing over the scale. I made a promise to myself to eat healthy, train wisely, and enjoy life more. I started eating more (oh boy, a lot more!), show up for regular training, and stop weighing myself. I did this all alone and, much to my pleasant surprise (and relief!), I dropped 4 lbs! I’m sure most of it is water weight but allow me to say: Wooohooo!

I still have 4 more to go to reach my regular weight. (Yes, I gained a total of 8 lbs that wouldn’t budge since February)  I’m committed to sticking to my commitment to myself. It’s not a diet. It’s not a training or nutrition program.  I didn’t use a new product.  It’s simply a promise to myself to nourish my body and subsequently nurture my mind and soul.

So, yes, I started this alone and did it on my own. But, I thought, it could be so much more fun (and perhaps a whole lot easier) if we all did it together virtually. Just a group of us promising to each other that we’ve committed to living better.

Are you game?  I’m thinking we can try a 30-day Challenge to ourselves to simply eat better.  I’ll work out the details and post it tomorrow.  We can start on JULY 1, 2011, the start of the month. Use the time from now until then to let the idea sink in and let me know if you’re up to it!  How exciting!

So I’ve been eating relatively well since the end of July.  I can’t believe that I’ve gone this long on low-sodium, low simple sugar, and as little processed food as possible.  What I thought would be a killer diet turned out to be a lifestyle change I can actually live with.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’ve had my little slip ups.  Quite a number of them, actually.  Harvie, my friendly nutritionist and food conscience, once told me that I’m one of his most difficult students. While I manage to eat proper wholesome mini meals every 2.5 to 3 hours, I also succumb to the temptation of stealing a handful of treats from my kids’ lunchbox or tasting a spoonful of ice cream. But, that’s about it.

Only twice did I mess up BIG time.

1) The first was when I overdosed on Bee Cheng Hiang one Sunday. Being half-Chinese,  I have fond memories of devouring loads of cured pork from my lola’s cabinet almost every Sunday.  Yummy and, at that time, completely guiltless and harmless…or so I thought!  The last time I feasted on these was every single day we were in Hong Kong for the Hong Kong Marathon last February.  Since then, I had been craving for it.  Then, one Sunday, we were in for a treat: they had the Chinese food bazaar at Powerplant Mall and there was Bee Cheng Hiang right before my eyes. I thought I died and went to Chinese food heaven! For a moment, time stood still, tears started flowing from my eyes, and I ran (in slowmo) towards the stall reunited with my beloved.  I spent P800 on cured pork, chili pork, and golden chicken coins.  Gone in a couple of hours.

2) Then, a few days ago, I chanced upon the new Shakin’ Shots of KFC while ordering the kids’ lunch.  We bought one box.  I tasted it.  Liked it.  Tried another one.  Liked it even more.  And, you can probably guess what happened next.  Needless to say, it was finger lickin’ good!

What happened hours after both instances was something I never used to experience in the past.  I had major migraine attacks probably from the sodium and whatever else they put in that food.  Harvie would probably say “Those things come from the devil,” which is exactly what he said about fries this morning.

For half the day after eating those “evil food” my head was pounding.  I could barely work or focus on anything. I didn’t feel like working out.  I couldn’t sleep.  I could barely get out of bed!  In short, I felt like total crap.  I thought: Is this the price I have to pay for eating healthy all these months?  Why not continue to eat the same way as before and remain completely oblivious to the junk I was ingesting?!

But, of course, I was ranting. And feeling awfully guilty about cheating on my diet, too.

Looking back, the migraine is really the only downside to healthy eating (I know, I know, it wouldn’t even have happened if I didn’t cheat at all!)  I continue to reap the benefits of a more nutritious diet: more energy throughout the day, faster recovery after long runs, less cravings for unhealthy food, slightly smaller belly (I wonder if it’ll ever fully shrink to pre-preggy size?!) and last but not the least, enhanced performance during runs.  It is completely amazing and I have no intentions of heading back to my bad eating days.

As for Bee Cheng Hiang and KFC, can I be honest with you? I know I cannot bid them goodbye forever.  Life is too short for that.  I will indulge in them once in a while and in moderation.  Maybe just P400 worth of Bee Cheng Hiang at the next encounter.

I do.  Definitely.

Some eat more after a long run, or after a race, or after speedwork.  Not me.  I eat more when I’m not running at all.  When I’m training properly, I feel healthier so I naturally lean towards better food choices.  

When I can’t run, it seems like my hands are compelled to grab unto something, anything (e.g., Cheetos jalapeno flavor) to make up for the lack of movement in the legs.  The hands and fingers then coordinate—as my feet and legs would do the same when I run—to plop that digestible form of matter unto my mouth for quick consumption.

What’s most worrisome is that, due to my sheer depression from the lack of runs, I don’t even notice the food sliding down my throat and building a home in the comfort of my own tummy.  Usually, I’m watching a DVD, surfing the web, or dining with family when I suddenly have that overstuffed, bloated, I-want-to-vomit feeling and I think Uh oh, I’ve had more than enough again.  Then, panic creeps in, with the next thought: Shoot, how will I burn this if I can’t run?

Needless to say, that is exactly what I was telling myself last night as I stood on the dreaded weighing scale: Shoot, how do I lose the weight I gained over the holidays?  Why did I have to impose that 7-day running ban on myself? Maybe it’s time to break the ban?!!

Fortunately, I paid my favorite PT a visit at Moro Lorenzo this morning. (He’s my favorite because he’s the only guy who cured me of my shin splints and this he did literally overnight.)  After teaching me new drills to strengthen my quads and pull my kneecap inward, and as he poked at my ITB with long, scary needles, he nonchalantly told me that I should just continue with my training.  What?  No need for my 7-day ban?  It was music to my ears.  Woohoo!

I tried my best to keep my composure, even under so much pain, but deep inside I was already thinking of where I should run next, with whom, and what healthy meal I should be having for dinner.  Goodbye leftover Christmas treats.  It’s time for some salad!