Kisses

I love this cute little video I took of my best friend's little girl with my dog Bexley. She loves him so much and he was so gentle with her. SO cute!

Bed Time Snack

So lately I have been really bothered by a new commercial on TV for Kellogg's Rice Crispy's.

All shot in black and white with only the cereal box in bright, brilliant colour:

A little girl sits on the couch all dressed for bed in her jammies and slippers when her Mom comes over and says, "How about a bed time snack?" The little girl's face lights up and she yells, "YEAH!" Mom comes back with the bright coloured box, a spoon, bowl and the milk and makes the cereal.

She lovingly puts her arm around her daughter and the both of them listen to the snap, crackle, pop together, oh how touching and sweet, what a special bonding moment that you just must have with your child if you want to be a good parent.

The little girl happily eats her bed time snack and they both go up the stairs arm in arm with love in their eyes for each other and off to bed.

Voice-over: At the end of the day, a bowl of Rice Krispies sounds pretty good. Childhood is calling.

This upsets me. We already have the food companies pushing for us to have 6 meals a day, or three huge meals with "healthy snacks", breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and so on and so on...

The food companies now start brainstorming: 

How can we sell even more food? Hmmmm, I know lets get people eating yet ANOTHER meal in the day. Lets sell the "bedtime snack" meal! 

But, how do we get around what people have been taught that eating before bed is bad? 

Oh, I know lets target a new generation and teach them something different. 

But how will we get past the parents, they know that eating for bed isn't good for you...

Hmmmmm, I know, lets play on their insecurities of not being a good parent because they are all working so hard to buy all this stuff and afford all the food and other crap they don't need. They are mostly only home in the evenings anyway, lets play on this weakness and they won't even notice that we are marketing obesity to their children! 

Good idea! Wow, we are really going to increase profits this year!

We don't need ANOTHER meal! No more snacks! Go to sleep!

Same old myths

Every time I talk to someone new about Intermittent Fasting who hasn't heard of it before I get the EXACT same questions:

Doesn't your body go into starvation mode though if you don't eat?

Isn't that really hard, aren't you really hungry all the time?

Don't you feel light headed and tired though?

I calmly listen to their questions with a smile and expertly inform them that they those common questions are based on MYTHS that the diet industry has drilled into our heads.

No, you will not go into "STARVATION" mode if you don't eat for a few hours. You are not "STARVING". People in our society have no idea what "STARVING" is, not the slightest clue.

There are convenience stores, Starbucks, McDonalds, restaurants, grocery stores, cafe's, buffets, kitchen cupboards and refrigerators in all of our lives, how in the world would it be possible for us to have the slightest idea what starving would feel like?

No, I am not hungry all the time. My body has adjusted and has better things to do that whine for food all the time. I don't give it a constant stream of food and so it doesn't "crave" the constant calories. That is what gives you the "hunger" pains. The more you eat the hungrier you will feel (the food companies know this and they play on it). Besides, my body is having a feast when I don't eat. It is eating what it has saved for a special occasion; my stomach fat! My body is very satisfied, no need to scream for food when you are already eating is there?

No, I am not tired or light headed. I feel FANTASTIC! NEVER BETTER! Fasting has opened up a whole new world of energy for me that I never knew was possible. I just thought it was normal to be exhausted all the time. Now I realize that it was because my body was working SO hard trying to digest all the excess food I was consuming every day. Now it is much more efficient and can focus its energies on other things.

Bottom line, don't believe everything they tell you...Remember they just want you to buy more food and then get the diet book to help you lose the weight you gained from all the food. The diet book will sell a plan that is almost impossible to follow because they want you to gain all the weight back so that you will have to buy more diet books and so on...Money is king in these industries people!

Do what works for you and do what you can maintain for LIFE and you will be successful.

PLATEAU

PLATEAU! Since May 10th when I saw a loss of 4Lbs in one week, the scale each Monday has shown:  


179.5 
182.5 
179.1 
178.3 
177.8 
177.7  


Sticking hard to the 178 average for QUITE a while now. I am not discouraged though even though for 6 weeks I have been on this plateau. I BELIEVE in Fast 5 and KNOW that with patience and persistence that my body will reorganize and I will continue on the downward movement.

Here is my weight loss chart so far. A definite downward moving chart (with a little straight line at the bottom. But, notice that there are a couple other straight lines along the way). 

When I look at my overall results though, there is no mistaking my downward movement. OVERALL I have continued to move down and it is only normal that the progress would slow. I have made a few changes though to try to speed things up. I have added in one more long fast per week (starting last week), I have decided to give up my afternoon snack, or at least cut it back to veggies and fruit only. I have added in weight training to my weekly routine. I want to have a body like this girl someday!

All of these little changes MUST have an effect eventually and so I will patiently get on the scale every week and wait for results that are sure to come.


On a happier note, I did have a non-scale victory this week when I tried on a little jacket that I purchased a few months ago. It was too small when I bought it but I was hopeful that I would eventually fit into it and so got it anyway.

On Monday this week I tried it on and it FIT! YEAH! (although, I must admit that after my break-fast it was a bit snug) I was so excited that I dressed up for work with a skirt and high heels and the cute little frilly jacket and the compliments started flying. Everyone at work mentioned how I looked and some people who had never mentioned my weight loss were stopping me in the halls saying, WOW, you have really lost weight, how did you do it? You look amazing!


It felt really good and made this recent plateau much easier to swallow.

Eat, Eat, Eat and EAT, STOP, EAT

I am eating way too much in my eating window lately. Fortunately it hasn't showed up on the scale, YET. But I am not getting the big movements like before, 2Lbs down, 4Lbs down etc...I need to cut back. Maybe taking more of my regular fruit and veggies to work for lunch and smaller main meal portions?

I usually eat dinner meals like spaghetti, chicken and rice, etc. I could cut back the size of those and increase the size of my salad and my fruit snacks etc...That way I still feel like I am eating a lot but not eating the high calorie stuff...? I don't want to count calories...I don't want to "diet". I am going to try to do some little changes to my eating and see if that helps...

I am loving the philosophy of EAT, STOP, EAT lately. Maybe this can be one of the changes I make? I want to lift more weights and increase my muscular body that is under all this fat. I am going to start a workout routine that consists of more weights. I have been doing pretty good at incorporating walking into my routine. My goal is to walk for one hour after work every day Mon - Fri. I usually do at least 4 of those 5 days and sometimes hit the 5 day mark. After that I come home and do some weights for about 20 minutes but I want to isolate the best weight exercises for me, so I am going to do more research on the EAT, STOP, EAT way of exercising.

Excerpt from Brad Pilon's "The Elimination Experiment Workout"

It’s completely true that activity burns calories, and that some exercises burn more calories than others, but the truth is (as the old cliché goes) you can’t out exercise a bad diet. Exercising to lose fat is a futile practice for a couple of reasons. First and foremost it is not nearly as effective as it’s made out to be.

Using running as an example, for me to ‘burn’ and extra 500 Calories every day I would have to run (or walk) roughly 7 kilometers (a little under 4.5 miles) EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

Now, the idea of running 4.5 miles doesn’t bother me. The idea of running 4.5 miles EVERY SINGLE DAY scares the heck out of me. If we look back at the idea of efficiency and the fact that the body can only do so much work before it begins to breaks down, this is simply not an ideal use of my time. 

And one of my favourite things he said in "The Elimination Experiment Workout"

The bottom line is the absolute most efficient way to get amazing results is to workout for muscle growth and change your eating habits for fat loss. When it comes to weight loss, it is the total CALORIE DEFICIT that matters, not the way the deficit was created. Trying to use your diet for muscle growth and exercise for weight loss is a recipe for failure. 

He says that you can work out as little as 20 minutes a day just lifting weights (doing the right amount for you in the right way and the right frequency) and follow his program of EAT, STOP, EAT (which is just a variation of what we all do with Fast-5 or other variations of Intermittent Fasting) and you can have that body you have always wanted. The six pack is there on all of us just under the surface of the fat.



All we need to do is melt away the fat with IF while we work on building the muscles under the surface and eventually they will meet in the middle and our best body will be revealed. It makes complete sense to me. I KNOW that exercise only works to burn body fat if it is EXCESSIVE and the amount that I am able or want to do is in NO WAY excessive and will not get me to my weight loss goal. So far, ALL my progress has been through WHAT and HOW I EAT, so I see the powerful results of eating for weight loss. Now I want to see the powerful results of working out for muscle growth!

A MUST hear interview with Brad Pilon can be heard here. My favourite quote from that interview is:

"That's where the magic lies, you can adapt intermittent fasting to fit your life and that puts you in a really good spot because most diets ask you to adapt your life to fit the diet."

Check out Brad Pilon's website here and blog here. And I will keep you posted on my muscle growth progress! Wish me luck!

TOM PETTY!

Tom Petty was AMAZING! We were 2nd Row! I took the above photos from my seat and you can see how close I was to Tommy! The show was so great and the audience was awesome. The crowd had great energy and was really loud and happy but there were no problems and no one pushing and shoving which was nice. There was every walk of life at the show from the 10 year old boy in front of us in the front row with his parents to the 90 year old grandma who was front row center and danced the entire two hours! It was such a great night.

I have been doing well with my fasting schedule, I can do it in my sleep now, never think about it. The only struggle I am having is cutting back on the amount of food I am eating during my eating window. I really love food and find it difficult to cut back on the portions I have. I am still doing well on the scale but haven't seen the big drops that I saw in previous months, 2Lbs, 4Lbs and so on. Now I average about half a pound or a pound per week. Some weeks I stay the same.

I know that now that I am smaller I need to reduce my food intake to get to the next level. I will do my best to cut out little bits at a time.

I find the evenings are now so easy for me. I never think of food. The mornings are the only time that I have any struggle as I am usually hungry at about 10 am. But I just tell myself that in two more hours I can eat my lunch and then I usually just put my mind to something else and the time goes by.

Today I broke my fast with a BIG salad consisting of: Spinach, Lettuce, carrot shavings, cabbage, corn, feta cheese, egg, cucumber, tuna, sesame seeds, croutons and penne pasta topped with balsamic vinaigrette dressing. I also had a small whole wheat bun and some onion rings. For a snack I had plain almonds, a bran bar, a banana and some gummy bears. Later I had some chocolate.

Happy Fasting!

Living the High Life

On Saturday it was my husband's birthday. He turned 39 and so we had a great celebration with dinner at our favourite restaurant. I made a cake that was ridiculously big, three layers like a wedding cake of chocolate cake with cream cheese icing. There were 6 of us at dinner and after eating our fill of cake there were still two layers left!

On Monday we checked into the newest hotel in Downtown Vancouver, the Fairmont Pacific Rim. Because of where I work I get great deals on hotels and this one was two nights in the hotel plus a $50 spa credit for $99! We decided to take the deal and stay in the hotel for two nights because we have tickets to the Tom Petty Concert tonight (tuesday) 2nd ROW by the way, and thought it would be great to stay downtown rather than driving back home, an hour away, after the concert.

Through all of this I have managed to keep my lifestyle of intermittent fasting nicely on track. The beauty of IF is that you can live your life and enjoy food without any difficulty. I packed three days worth of lunches and snacks on Sunday night in preparation for this little stay downtown so that I wouldn't have to spend too much money on eating out and have just enjoyed my evenings downtown with walks in the park, window shopping and people watching.

It has been great. I now believe that intermittent fasting is just a part of my life and so it comes naturally. I rarely have to think about what I am doing or meticulously plan out all these special foods to eat etc. I just live and enjoy. Last night I even sat in a restaurant with my husband while he ate some pizza and had some beer. It didn't faze me at all! I had no problem watching him eat and in fact felt quite full until around 10pm from my snack at 4pm.

The scale has been moving down, slowly lately but I have noticed that I am feeling smaller. I could be losing inches without losing pounds right now. I will measure myself in a couple of days to see. But I am feeling wonderful and really looking forward to reaching my goal. I am almost half way there and I don't see any end in sight to my weight loss as of yet.

Intermittent fasting is now my way of life and I am loving every minute of it!

HAPPY FASTING!

113 Year Old Man

Walter Breuning who is 113 years old attributes his long healthy life in part to intermittent fasting...He is healthy (other than degraded sight) and only takes one aspirin a day, no other medicines. He has skipped dinner every day for the past 35 years.

Check out this article. Amazing.

I can't do that because...

I CAN'T DO THAT BECAUSE...

That is one of the most common phrases I hear in reaction to me telling people about my lifestyle and the way I eat incorporating intermittent fasting into my life.

"I can't do that because...I get WAY too hungry if I skip a meal. I would be starving all the time."

Well, I also used to think this way and I also had INTENSE hunger pains when I didn't eat for a few hours. That goes away when you incorporate fasting into your routine. For me, hunger a NON ISSUE with intermittent fasting. It is a distant, mild sensation that is easily forgotten and easily quenched with a cup of tea or glass of water. I NEVER think of breaking my fast because of hunger, if I ever think of eating when I should be fasting, the want for food is usually in my head, not my stomach. In fact, the intense hunger pains that I used to get were not hunger at all. They were withdrawal.

From: http://www.enotalone.com/article/3249.html

It is our unhealthy tendency to eat without experiencing true hunger that contributed to our becoming overweight to begin with. In other words, to have become overweight in the first place, appetite, food cravings, and other addictive drives that induce eating have come into play. Poor nutrition induces these cravings (addictive drives), and nutritional excellence helps normalize or remove them. My experience with thousands of patients following my healthful, high-nutrient eating plan is that most of these people no longer get the discomfort that they formerly mistook for hunger. Even when they delay eating and get very hungry, they no longer experience stomach cramps, headaches, or fatigue accompanying their falling blood sugar. They merely get hungry and they enjoy this new sensation of hunger in the mouth and throat, which makes food taste better than ever. Many of my patients have told me they enjoy this new sensation; they like being able to be in touch with true hunger and the pleasure of satisfying it.

"I can't do that because...It isn't healthy."

Oh yeah? Well tell this guy that!

"I can't do that because...I NEED food in the morning."

My mom always told me that even as a baby I would SCREAM until I was fed in the morning. I have always been that way. My eyes would open and I would be STARVING! If you asked me a  year ago if I could do a diet where I didn't eat breakfast I would have said the same thing, I can't do that because... Well, look at me now. If I can do it...

My advice to anyone who is reading this and thinking, "Well, I can't do that because..." just try it. How do you know you can't do something that you have never tried?