So far I have managed to tick off everyone at work today.

[RweTHEREyet]

I don't usually post on this Board. I am not a die-hard work out person or anything like that.

But hubbies heart issues last fall have required us to make major lifestyle changes.

So, I have joined Curves and have been going 3 times a week, the same days he goes and works out at his heart rehab facility. On the days we don't do that, we go walk at the mall. So, we do some form of exercise 7 days a week.

We have also give up everything we love to eat. My main issue is bread and real butter, his is burgers.

So far he has lost close to 50 lbs. and I have lost a total of 15. :sosad: I cannot get the scale below a certain point and it is killing me. It is so frustrating to give up what you enjoy eating and to be doing exercise you never did before and not see results. Disclaimer: 15 lbs is good, but not good enough when you have another 40 to go.

My challenge, we have a lot of meetings and classes where I work. So, we have a lot of food brought in. So far this week, there have been donuts, sandwiches on two days, chinese today, popcorn from our popcorn machine and this morning someone brought in bagels and cream cheese. :Pokepoke: I have managed to avoid all of it, but I am crabby as hell and snapping at everyone. :sosad: I have very little will power and this week has been extremely tough for me.

I also have the challenge that I don't like most vegetables. I can eat a salad, but that is about it.

I just had to vent. Right now my fingers are hitting this keyboard like I am trying to pound a nail in a piece of wood.

I know this board is mostly about exercise, but I sure could use some tips and pointers from those of you that eat healthy too. My hubbies nutritionist says that we should be eating low-fat.

I have started shopping at what I call "the hippie store", some organic fruits, even bought a free-range chicken and some all-natural yogurt. The hippie store is getting expensive :Paranoid: .

So, I am wondering, can we add some eating healthy threads along with the exercise ones, here. I can use all the help I can get.

[nono]

Hey Rwe, I prefer to call myself granola-ish, but hippie is cool too! I'm sitting here in my yoga outfit (granted the top is from Harrah's Las Vegas, so I'm like a Capitalist hippie), drinking an organic beer. :tongue:

When I was working, I know what you mean about the "working lunches" and all that. We were fortunate in that a lot of folks were health conscious where I worked, so salads, fruit salads and wraps accompanied the other "less desirable" foods. Maybe you can work with whomever orders the food to include some more desirable things. Or just bring your own stuff...

As for the plateaus, that definitely happens. I gained about 35 extra pounds total by the time I decided to drop weight 2 years ago. However, I decided to approach this time differently. What I did was lose 10 and then stabilize for a year, and I recently lost another 10 and am now in "stabilization" mode again...and will probably look to drop another 10 -15 by next year. I decided to enjoy my plateaus and give my body time to adjust and me as well. Took a lot of the mental pressure off.

I basically read a whole lot of books about health and healthy eating, and my "plan" if you will, is a combination of South Beach Phase III, Perricone's superfoods, and Braverman's "prescription" (The Edge Effect).

I think it is such an exciting time to be alive as medicine, hunches and traditional ethnic cures come together!!! I'll be glad to participate in the eating threads, as I LOVE LOVE LOVE food, and don't feel like I'm "sacrificing" anything by eating well to fuel my body. :woohoo:

[RweTHEREyet]

O.K., so I am here to be educated, since all this is new to me. In my search to find comfortable things to wear when working out and that I won't be embarassed to be seen out in public while travelling to and from, I have seen "yoga pants". What makes them "yoga pants" versus Curves pants or "walking pants" or whatever.

[nono]

That's a great question. In general, real work out wear is actually designed to work in the specific activity you are doing. So, while yoga pants are great for walking, and hanging out in, too, they also are designed so not to get in your way while doing yoga. They don't ride up or fall off :jawdroppi while practicing (which would be esp. embarassing in mixed classes!) A few years back, they were the only work out pants that I could find that were more "hipsters" than up on the waist. So, there's kind of a style, too...each sport/fitness activity has styles that come and go too (think of Men's basketball and the shorty-shorts they used to wear to play!). Of course, sometimes I go with the "anti-fashion" look and wear my oldest, holiest, and mismatched clothes when I go to the gym, kind of to be clear I'm not just hitting my mid-life crisis, but I've been doing this for years darn it! :laughing:

We can have a blast with this! You're gonna have fun!!!!!

[chimera]

We get food at work all the time, too. It can be so hard to walk away, but that's what I started doing. If there's bagels or donuts, I don't even bother. I decided that my daily calorie budget isn't worth spending on those items, especially when you consider the number of calories in each.

When lunches are brought in, I start with a half a sandwich. I take that back to my office and eat it, then do some other things. Usually by that time, lunch is over or I've moved onto something else. If I'm still hungry 15 or 20 min later, I'll go back for another half sandwich, but may avoid the bread on it.

If it's a hot lunch, I load half the plate with veggies. And no, I don't actually like most veggies, but I'm learning to eat them (they're an acquired taste ;) ) One quarter of the plate gets a meat or protein. I often add more veggies to the other quarter of the plate...rice and potatoes are often too bland and not worth my calorie budget either.

Chinese is much harder to work around since everything's mixed in, so I usually try to just do smaller portions. If the rice and entree are separate, I try to use only the steamed rice and only one spoonful or sometimes, no rice at all. I have a serious weakness for crab rangoons, though...with those, I break off the chunks that don't have any filling in them and hope that somehow minimizes the damage ;)

I weighed 180lbs on Nov 1, 2004. This morning was 156.2...I'd like to lose another 20 to 25lbs. Plateaus are the worst! I hit plateaus at 170 and 160. Tightening up my diet helped get over both those humps! I still have binge days...right now, the Easter candy is my worst enemy! When I overindulge one day, I try to tighten it up for the next few days to compensate. I thought with training for a half marathon, the weight would just magically melt away, but it didn't. For me, it takes a serious commitment to both diet and exercise to lose weight...I'm still struggling a bit with the dietary commitments!

Good luck to you, Rwe! You have done a great job so far losing 15lbs. Try not to get discouraged. Losing weight is hard work!

[cobbler]

UGH! Food is a hard one, that is totally me nemesis (provided I spelled it correctly).

But on the exercise front, if you hit a plateau you have to do 1 of two things: increase the duration or increase the intensity.

Since you do some form of exercising 7 days a week I would suggest you cut out one of those days for a little bit. Your body does need one full day to rest and repair. I know it sounds nuts but if you did take off that one day for about 2-3 weeks you would see some changes, and when you pick it back up again you would do better.

It's totally weird but if I workout 6 days a week my body doesn't like me, if I work out 5 I get more results then if I push it for 6.

[RweTHEREyet]

So, Cobbler, would you think that doing Curves 3 days a week and the other 4 are strictly walking would be too much? I would love to take a day off--leaves more time for laundry and stuff :blech:

I am also trying to build up my stamina for our next Disney trip in May, is the reason for so much walking. I don't want to be so tired at the end of each day.

[Rozzie]

I am living with guilt.

I know we need to do more organic things, but to be honest, the lack of selection in our area is pathetic. We had a "hippie" store in Pensacola, but no dedicated stores here. I am thinking about instead of doing ALL organic all at once, that I will sub in 1 thing at a time. First thing is the milk, since I tend to drink that everyday, and it has all types of funk in it. Horizon's Organic milk caught my eye, a Doc at work was talking about how good it was. Any other experiences??

I need to find some free range chicken, steriod free also. The WinnDixie chicks are 100% "natural", and I asked the meat guy if that meant it was not hormone/steriod added, and he scratched and said "yeah". Granted he was wearing a Dale Earnhardt tee, so I think that immediatley disqualifies him on hippie health issues. (no offense to Dale fans)

work is bad. Patient's families think they are thanking us by giving us carbsugar loaded crap. I fall for the trap everytime. If I am in a controlled enviro, I do great. (home) Out in the real world, I am a gonner.:headache:

so to make a long story short, I could use some tips from the pros also. TIA!

[RweTHEREyet]

Rozzie, I bought and baked my first free-range chicken last weekend. I had seen a recipe in the newspaper for roasting a whole free-range chicken and then went to the store and found one, I decided to try it. I can honestly say that it was a more tender, juicy chicken. I can't say if the taste was actually any different or not. But golly gee they are expensive.

My organic purchasing has been limited so far. Everytime I go into the hippie store, I feel over-whelmed and under-educated. I have gotten organic fat-free yogurt, organic apples, grapefruit, blueberries, oranges, and milk. The grapefruit was juicier, and I can say that the organic stuff lasts longer than the stuff I normally get at the grocery store. I didn't eat the grapefruit for almost 10 days and it was still good as new. I also got some all-natural Almond Butter and have been eating that on apple cinnamon rice cakes. Oh, I also got some bourbon-marinated salmon that we had Thursday night, and it was good. I am not a big salmon fan, but am giving it a try.

Each trip I make to the hippie store, I find something new to try. So far I have not bought any of the organic cleaners and toilet paper and so forth. So, I am not a true tree-hugger, just want to eat a little healthier and have it be good for me.

Good luck in your quest for organic and natural food items.

[PoohsPal]

Hey rwe! Glad you started this! Healthy eating is sooo hard, but has such great results.

Just wanted to answer your question a bout work outs. It is good to have 1 or 2 days a week to let your muscles recover. Even in the full marthon training, they give you 1 to 2 days off a week to do that. Also, it helps me not to feel overwhelmed with having to work out. There are some, though, who work out every day and do fine. Just find what works best for you.

[nono]

PoohsPal is so right! I think the hardest thing about weight maintenance/healthy living is the sheer volume of variables. What works for one person may not work for another, for physiological, emotional or situational reasons.

I think we should all offer suggestions with the understanding that any given one might not work for everyone...because one size certainly doesn't fit all. :slyasafox

[nono]

Made some fun rice last night -- thought I'd pass it along...it was our side dish....

Used Lundberg's Brown rice, made according to package directions...and then just before the last 10 minutes the rice needs to sit before serving, I stir fried some organic frozen peas (in olive oil spray) and them mixed them into the rice just before serving. I topped each serving of the rice with a sprinkling of flaxseed.

It was really a easy side dish with some things I don't normally like using (flax seed is always a challenge for me, and peas aren't my favorite).

[RweTHEREyet]

Well, this week I didn't work out on Monday, had another commitment, and when I went walking on Tuesday, it felt that I had not exercised in forever. This is so funny for someone that a month ago was sedentary.

I think I am going to try taking one day off a week. Life might seem a little more sane that way. After all, I could get some laundry done or pay some bills or any number of other things.