Tag Archives: Vegan

Exercise Alone Won’t Make You Lean… and Neither Will Just Cutting Calories

Posted on January 19, 2012 | 2 Comments

When I was younger I always thought that I would be able to exercise my way out of weight gain without changing my diet. Nope. Impossible. It took me a long time to realize this. Far longer than I’d like to admit. Yes, a more muscular physique can burn a lot more calories. But no, even an hour of exercise a day won’t do much in terms of helping you reduce your waist or your butt if you are shoveling processed crap into your mouth on a regular basis. I’ve been there. It wasn’t pretty. In my mid-30s I was working out regularly. I was working a high-stress long-hours job with a lot of travel in a startup company. I was eating a lot of convenience foods and I was self-medicating with glasses of wine. I’ve always been slim, but my mom was obese. It was scary, I started to think that my genes were catching up with me. I kept gaining weight.

It wasn’t my genes, it was my lifestyle that was catching up with me. When I was tired I’d grab a coffee or a sugary snack as a pick me up. When the sugar crash happened, I’d find some salty snacks to fill me up. I could eat an entire bag of Doritos (the BIG bag) in one sitting. Hey, at least I was drinking diet sodas. Urp.

So, I started counting calories. Well, that was a wakeup call. I recommend it for anyone who has never done it before. Weigh and measure your food – it is amazing what can quickly add up to 1,000 calories. I definitely was overeating. I started cutting calories. Somehow, inexplicably I wasn’t getting leaner and the needle on the scale wasn’t really budging either. The problem is that I wasn’t addressing WHAT I was eating.

Over time I became a much better eater. I stopped drinking sodas. I limited salty snacks and sweets. I ate more fruits and vegetables. I got leaner. I didn’t lose much weight, but I definitely became a much smaller person. Since I’ve been in my mid-20s, my max weight swing has been about 25 lbs. In the grand scheme of things, this really isn’t a lot compared to the average American. However, whenever I slid back into my old habits, my weight would start to creep up. I started to become a slave to calorie counting. That wasn’t working either – it really isn’t a fun way to live.

The key here is that staying lean is a lifestyle. It isn’t a part time or some-time thing. It has taken me a long time to figure out what really works long term. Counting calories isn’t it. Starving myself (not that I ever was good at that) isn’t it. Some people may be able to survive on a cup of broth, an apple, some celery and cigarettes to keep a fat percentage around 15%. I can’t. I also don’t like that scrawny, sickly, runway model look. It just isn’t healthy.

It took a lot of trial and error for me to wind up where I am today. Over my next few posts I’ll continue to describe my journey.

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The Trainwreck of Dietary Extremism

Posted on August 15, 2011 | 8 Comments

Yes, I went vegan at the beginning of this year. For me, it was a health related choice and except for a little bit of blogging about it I really try to be low-key about my diet. It gets difficult in some restaurants, but I usually manage to find something to eat. I also really *REALLY* try not to be a wanker about what other people eat. As long as you feel good and are healthy, eat what you want. I’m not going to be a food nazi.

I am still contemplating if this was the right answer for me. I’m not sure. It’s been about 8 months now. During that time I’ve lost weight and I’ve lost some of my strength. Veganism hasn’t been a panacea that has cured all of my ills. I’m better than I was, but I’m still not 100%. I hoped that this would have healed some stomach issues by now.

I continue to do a lot of reading about food and nutritional studies and I am amazed at the vitriol that is being spewed out there. Wow, there is a HUGE amount of dietary extremism on the web. There are lacto-ovo vegetarians, vegans, raw vegans, paleos, low carbs, low fats and what seems to be a dozen other extreme factions out there. Some of these people are rabid! Everyone thinks that all the others are bad and that the salvation of good health can only come through their diet of choice. This is starting to sound a lot like religious fervor to me. I have the one true diet! No, I do! Through all of this I’ve learned:

  • In general, wheat gluten is bad and there are a lot of studies that prove it. Try to avoid bread, flour, and pasta.
  • The fresher the fruit or vegetable the better it will be for you and the more vitamins it will contain.
  • Protein, Vitamin D, B12, and Calcium – you need them.
  • Processed foods that are sweet, salty, fatty are a catalyst for binge eating and they will make you fat. Don’t bring them into your home.
  • Alcohol consumption reduces inhibitions to eating processed foods (pass the chips!)

I don’t think that I will make a lot of big changes to my diet. I miss fish, so adding that is on the table. Dairy products are definitely NOT coming back, I can’t tolerate them. I probably won’t be eating factory farmed meats anytime soon either. Thank you King Corn and Supersize Me for that. I am too afraid to watch to watch Food, Inc.

I think if a lot more people listened to their bodies and made intelligent choices about what makes them feel good and bad that there would be a lot more healthy people out there. I also think that a healthy freedom of choice should be applauded (sorry, I don’t give fast food addicts a pass here). My dietary extremism might make you feel really sick. Heck, I’ve read enough stories about fanatical Vegans who tolerate brain fog, skin problems, hair that falls out and loose teeth!!?!!?? (thank goodness I don’t have any of those issues – but hey, it’s only been 8 months!) Why would anyone try to impose that on someone else? My food allergies might preclude me from eating what works for you. So what? – to each his own.

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Longevity and Me

Posted on August 13, 2011 | 4 Comments

Lately I’ve been reading a bit on maintaining health and vigor as long as possible. Most of this research is in the field of gerontology and evolutionary biology and it tends to spend a bit of effort categorizing the similarities between different pockets of society around the world who have a lot of centenarians. One of the key findings is that people who live to be that old is that they effectively stop aging at some point in their 70s or 80s. They maintain the same amount of activity and function until they die. They ride their bikes, they work in their gardens, they provide value to their families and society. They also typically die in their sleep or after a very brief illness. This is much different than the typical American scenario.

Frankly, the typical scenario with a decade or more of physical and cognitive decline before death scares the bejeezus out of me. I know what I am talking about here. My mother died in her early 70s after decades of being obese and a year of fighting cancer. My father suffered a major stroke 5 years ago when he was in his mid 70s. Every year he gets weaker and weaker and physical therapy can only bolster his abilities so much. Every year his mental acuity becomes more and more tenuous. These days anything that goes off the script of “Hi Linda, how are you?, how’s <my husband>? How are the kids (he means the cats)… I am sick and tired of myself, I wish I could die.” causes confusion. He usually doesn’t know what day it is. He can’t tell me what he had for lunch or what happened at a doctor’s appointment. The only thing that brings him joy is watching old movies that he took when he was in the prime of his life and I was a small child. He is a very depressed man trapped in a very frail body that is decaying around him. I love him, but I never want to be like him.

I want to be the 105 year old lady that still drives her car (but not one of the ones that drives into houses), lifts weights, and has a bawdy sense of humor. I hope to have the mental ability to learn and master new technologies regardless of where they take me. The question is – how can I do that? I don’t want to resign myself to a fate similar to either of my parents. So, what have I learned?

  • It’s not all genetic – studies have been done on identical twins in the area of longevity and they have determined that about 10% of longevity is due to genes. 90% is due to environment. The good news is that our parents’ destiny does not have to be our own.
  • A healthy and nutritious diet and maintaining a healthy body fat percentage is imperative – if you eat too much and/or don’t get enough exercise, you get too fat (sorry, this is not politically correct, but it is the result). Contrary to popular belief, you can be even appear skinny and have a lot of visceral fat. If you have too much fat you have a much better chance of having heart disease, diabetes, or a stroke. If you also weigh too much you put too much pressure on your joints and you become less and less mobile. Changing to a completely plant based diet has been illuminating for me. I’ve never been overweight, but this change dropped my body fat percentage by about 4 points on my Tanita scale. I love fruits, nuts, and vegetables and I can eat as much of them as I want. I wouldn’t say that I subscribe to a Paleo diet, but the diet of our hunter gatherer ancestors is clearly a lot healthier for most of us. The older I get, the more problems I have with our overly processed industrial/agricultural (grains, dairy) foods.
  • Get enough sleep – I don’t feel like myself if I don’t get 8 hours of sleep every night. I’ve learned to sleep when I am tired, it doesn’t matter what time of day or night. I don’t use caffeinated beverages to overcome my need to sleep. Naps/siestas are a great way to feel reinvigorated later. I listen to my body and sleep when it tells me I need to and I rarely get insomnia.
  • Move enough – This doesn’t mean an exercise program per se. It means not being a couch potato. I’ve always been a complete fidget so this comes naturally for me. It means working in the yard or the garden. It means taking a lot of walks and bike rides. It can even mean less vigorous work like making bread by hand instead of buying it or using a bread machine. I love to hand knead bread. If you don’t use your physical capabilities, you lose them. Sarcopenia starts to set in around age 45, when muscle mass begins to decline at a rate of about 1 percent per year. This gradual loss has been tied to protein deficiency, lack of exercise, and increased frailty among the elderly. In my case I am going to keep on lifting weights. I’m 45 and right now I have more muscle mass than I had in my 20s – let’s hope I can keep most of it. I’d love to honor the memory of Jack LaLanne, who still worked out a few hours every day up until he died after a short illness at the age of 96. Talk about an amazing man!
  • Maintain connections to society and provide value – This is going to be a tough one for me. I’m an introvert with decidedly hermit-like tendencies at times. I also don’t have a big family support structure. It’s really rather sparse. Now that I am retired I interact on a regular basis with far fewer people. I also don’t have a lot of very close friends. I don’t have kids and at my age most people are completely wrapped up in raising their families. I’ve lost touch with a lot of people. At times it is pretty lonely. Clearly, I need to find more hobbies that get me out there and that better develop my social network. Golf league? Maybe. Volunteering for an animal rescue organization? Likely. Consulting part time? Could be. Volleyball? Definitely.

    Have you spent the time to think about how you can have an above average life expectancy?

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Hibernating and Updating a Kitchen

Posted on August 7, 2011 | Leave a comment

After months of preparing to sell a house and frantically selling and moving out of said house I’ve shifted into a completely different mode for the time being. For the last two weeks we’ve been living in a fully furnished 2 bedroom condo right on a golf course in Sunset Beach. Have I played golf? No. Have I gone to the beach, just a couple of miles away? No. What have I done? Right now I am partial to 3 hour naps. Heh. The cats LOVE hanging out with me. We’re in a holding pattern, there isn’t much to do and I’m conserving my energy for the next round of craziness. I haven’t even had the energy to do much reading which is very unusual for me. I suspect that the next two weeks we’re here will be more of the same before we move into our home.

We’ve been renting our beach house during the summer for the past 7 years. At the end of every rental season we tear the place apart. We steam clean the carpets and furniture, we wash out every cabinet and everything in the cabinets goes through a sanitize cycle in the dishwasher, we wash all of the comforters, pillows, and mattress pads, we power wash the exterior decking, furniture and clean the windows. Even with all of that maintenance there are things that just *need* to be replaced in order to make this house a home. We’re in the early planning stages right now… and lately the focus has been on the kitchen.

Here’s a picture of the kitchen as it exists today:

In general it’s a decent, functional kitchen. It has custom made solid maple cabinets and a tile floor, but the appliances are pretty low end. We upgraded the countertops to granite a few years ago after the renters burned the formica. When we did that, my husband and I installed the tile backsplash as well. That was a fun project.

This round of improvements will replace the dishwasher that is incredibly loud and is starting to make a strange death rattle at the end of its cycle. I had a Bosch in Raleigh and it was the best dishwasher I have ever owned. It uses a fraction of the water and electricity of a standard dishwasher and it is so quiet that sometimes you don’t even realize it is on. Yep, I am getting another one of those – cost be damned.

I also fancy myself somewhat of a good cook and I do my best work on a gas range. The electric burners are hard to work with. They don’t provide instantaneous adjustments, and they don’t have the heat output to boil water quickly or sear well. In Raleigh I had a 36″ FiveStar commercial range with a gas oven and open burners. It wasn’t self cleaning and the open burners were a bitch to clean and to light… but oh did it cook! I had planned on downgrading somewhat at the beach. Part of the reason is that I’ve only got 30″ to work with – a standard size range. The other reason is the cost of a commercial quality range. Well, so much for that nice thought. This week I ordered a 30″ FiveStar dual fuel convection range. This time I’ve upgraded to sealed gas burners and an electric convection oven. The microwave will also be upgraded to a stainless steel hood. I am so excited!

Yes, there was some rationale behind this decision. My last FiveStar was 14 years old and it was going to last for another 30 years. Quality. Period. The main reason behind this shift from a cheaper product is the fact that with my new diet cooking is an integral part of my life now. I gain a great deal of satisfaction from preparing most everything from scratch from fresh ingredients. This range is a tool that will provide me a lot of benefit and a lot of joy. It’s also a boatload cheaper than a Thermador or a Viking and it has very similar capabilities. It has a lot more burner output than a Kitchenaid, LG, Bosch and GE that I looked at – though it costs a bit more than those. C’est la vie. I don’t usually buy things to make me happy, but I buy things that I know are good quality and that will last as long as I need them to.

For now, the refrigerator will have to wait. I left a nice stainless steel counter depth fridge in Raleigh. I learned I don’t like side by sides in general and I don’t like GE appliances, specifically how they are laid out. When this fridge starts to act up I’ll get a nice french door model. Unfortunately we’ll probably need a crane to deliver it to the house… another reason to wait. Yes, a crane. The small model we have now barely made it up the staircase and our home has a reverse floor plan and it is on stilts. That means the kitchen is on the equivalent of the 3rd floor. Delivery men hate us. :-)

For now I sit and wait and plan. There are going to be a lot of before and after pictures coming over the next few months as we reconfigure the house from a “rental” layout to a “home”. I can’t wait to see how it turns out.

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Am I Crazy?

Posted on July 26, 2011 | Leave a comment

Now that I’m finally coming up for air after moving my entire world into a storage unit for the next month I’ve started to reflect on what I am doing. Holy shit. Sometimes I wonder if I have gone mad. In the last year I’ve:

  1. Been diagnosed with a serious medical condition
  2. Changed my diet completely
  3. Basically quit drinking alcohol
  4. Quit my comfortable job amidst 10% unemployment
  5. Convinced my husband to quit his job too
  6. Gave away/sold a large portion of our possessions
  7. Personally moved the rest of our possessions – no moving company, just two able bodied adults carrying heavy furniture and appliances.
  8. Sold (well almost, that’s tomorrow) our family home
  9. Accepted that a month of homelessness is ok

I’m 45 years old. Most people at my age would be thankful for my old six figure income and my old lifestyle. Heck, in today’s economy there are people who would do unspeakable things to have what I had. What was I thinking?

The weird thing is that I am ok with all of this. I haven’t felt better in years. For once I have a sense of calm about my life. I feel like maybe I should be concerned, but I am not. Over my life I’ve found that worrying about things doesn’t help. Stuff will always work out one way or another. I’ve made stupid mistakes, I’ve been laid off from my job, I’ve been unemployed for a year, I’ve gotten really sick. All of that stuff sucked, but it wasn’t the end of the world. In fact, those occurrences have led to new possibilities and ideas.

Here is to a new set of adventures!

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Three Months of Vegan

Posted on April 12, 2011 | 2 Comments

Well, I think this lifestyle change is going to stick. It has now officially been three months since we made the switch in our household. I never in my wildest dreams thought that I would go vegan. I always had some issues with eating meat, but it never stopped me. I *loved* milk products and eggs. (can you say scrambled eggs and cheese?) Going vegan was a totally foreign concept to me. Then I got sick and I also learned I couldn’t tolerate milk products. I started to read more about food. I read The China Study and watched Supersize Me. I know a lot of people have issues with some of the studies in The China Study, but it profoundly impacted how I think about food and how food can impact cancer risk.

I had no idea what a difference it would make. Here are some examples – my cholesterol was a health 186 when I started. I recently had it checked again. Wow, down to 142. My husband’s blood pressure and cholesterol have taken similar nose dives as well. Both of us have lost weight. I dropped 13lbs and he’s down 25lbs. All of these changes happened before I retired, so that clearly wasn’t the cause.

The beautiful thing about all those wonderful changes is that they didn’t come at the cost of typical dieting. I am never hungry. I no longer track every morsel I eat in order to count calories (that plus exercise was my secret to staying slim). I don’t need to do these things anymore – ok I do exercise, but I don’t think that will ever stop – I love to feel strong and healthy. I eat as much as I want of the healthy things in our house and I’m now at the weight I was at in my early 20s. The last time I got down to this weight I was really trying hard to get there. This time, not so much. I even have dessert most nights. I’ve learned how to bake tasty cupcakes and breads without any eggs or milk.

The switch wasn’t easy, but I think that anyone can do it with a little bit of attitude adjustment toward the food industry.

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