Shrinking Sisters

Make one change

Matt and Suzy Hoover, season 2 contestants on The Biggest Loser, asked a great question on their Facebook page yesterday:

"What is one change you can make today to get you to your goal?"

Here's what I replied: "I love that it sounds as simple as making one change. OK, here's mine: My one change will be no eating after dinner. That's it -- that one change is going to make a huge difference this week."

I have been flipping PISSED at my results on the scale for the past month. Either I'm staying the same or gaining a pound. My exercise has been good but I've been OUTTA CONTROL at night. Last night, for example, I ate four corn tortillas and a bunch of salsa while watching TV.

Four? Why not one and call it a night?

Because I dragged the bag and the jar of salsa out of the fridge and into the living room where I tore and dipped, tore and dipped, tore and dipped until the tortillas were gone.

I'm a completeist that way.  Everything's a single-serve container to me.

So I'm going to make that one change: Nothing after dinner. Sounds harsh -- why not a piece of fruit or a frozen yogurt bar or something?

Because I need to get out of the habit of heading to the kitchen after dinner. I need to SHUT. IT. DOWN.

And the notion of "one simple change" sounds completely do-able.

Because I know that one thing will make a big difference on the scale.

I started last night and we'll see what happens on the scale Monday morning.

Get Fit Friday: 8 calorie-cutting tips, and one from me

I learned over the summer that if I want to lose weight and not spend hours and hours at the gym every day, I have to cut my calories. The Cleveland Clinic dietitian dialed it down to 1,200 a day, which is darn hard.

I've been shooting for 1,300 a day, which can also be tough. So I've been looking for little ways to shave calories off my day.

First target: Coffee

First I gave up any sort of sugar or agave, which was cool, as long as it was good coffee. The next step was half and half.

Bwahh!

I really didn't use that much half and half, but even that little ounce added up to 40-50 calories a day. I tried fat-free half and half (OMG, so gross. What is it, glue?) I used soy creamer, but it was around the same calories and I've been trying to cut back on soy, so that was scratched off my list.

Coconut creamer sounded like it might be yummy but it seemed kinda thin and tasteless. And don't get me started about skim milk in coffee. Do you enjoy a big, steaming mug of GRAY?

 
Then one day I had a little coffee left in the pot. To it, I added a couple glugs of original Almond Breeze.

Perfect.

(That's my beloved joe at left. Uh oh, Jackie Warner's watching me!)

The coffee turned the right color, there was enough body in the almond milk to add a little creaminess and best of all an entire half cup is only 30 calories.

And a half cup can go a long, long way in a giant mug of coffee.

So there's 20ish calories right there.

Now, where else to turn?

That's when I got this great PR release from the publisher of Pick It, Kick It, a handy newish book from Oxygen magazine. Somewhat similar to Eat This Not That, the book offers 1,000 food substitutions plus recipes, a shopping guide, weight-loss success stories and other handy tips.

Like these 8 calorie-cutting tips:

1. When sautéing vegetables and meat, substitute a couple quick sprays of non-stick spray for oil or butter. You will save 100 calories.
2. Chose low-sodium tuna packed in water rather than oil and save 70 calories per 3 ounces.
3. Slice 100 calories off your lunch by having an open-faced sandwich.
4. Instead of serving raisins, go for a serving of grapes to save 65 calories per ounce.
5. Roll off 100 to 140 calories by turning a wrap into a salad.
6. In shakes, sandwiches or by the spoonful, peanut and almond butters can be energy dense. Save 94 calories by using one rather than two tablespoons per serving.
7. Downsize meat portions by one ounce and you’ll shave off 50 calories.
8. High-fiber whole-grain foods are great for staving off cravings, but go for sprouted grain products and you’ll save even more calories.

 

Two pounds down this week: What worked

I was going to stick a question mark at the end of the headline, but I know what worked:

Oatmeal: I had it for breakfast most mornings. I used a packet of Quaker Raisin Date & Walnut and a packet of plain mixed with a cup of milk and an ungodly amount of cinnamon. That combination keeps me full (lotsa food), happy (a little sweetness), protein-charged (milk + oatmeal = 15 grams) and blood-sugar stable (all that cinnamon).

Smoothies: I made sure I had a smoothie for one meal or snack every day. It's one of my go-to meals that keeps me full and satiated. I also put around half a teaspoon of cinnamon in my smoothie mixes. So perhaps I should add...

Cinnamon: I don't have diabetes and actually my blood glucose level tests really well whenever I get it checked, but I know that a half teaspoon of the spice can keep blood sugar levels stable, keeping hunger away, so I always keep a bottle of cinnamon on the kitchen counter.

Calories: Looking back over my Fitbook, I stuck around 1,300 calories a day and I wrote everything down. I didn't sorta kinda stop forget after dinner like I used to do.

The Jonas Brothers: Yes, I must credit two thirds of the boy band because I walked with Joe and Nick (well, far behind them and the screaming teenage girls) on Monday in a 5K for the Special Olympics. It was a great way to spend a Labor Day morning (even though it was probably 90 degrees at 8 a.m.). And I knocked 10 minutes off my last 5K results. Aside from that, I really didn't work out all that much. I got in another 5K on the treadmill Saturday and did a couple of workout DVDs during the rest of the week.

This week I'm rereading The CarbLovers Diet because I've been intrigued by resistant starch ever since I heard about it a couple years ago. Bananas and oatmeal are two foods high in resistant starch, which may make weight loss easier. And come to think of it, I had bananas and oatmeal pretty much every day last week. That's not the only new book that features resistant starch. Rodale has its own Skinny Carbs Diet book coming out this week. 

Here's where I first heard about resistant starch:

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Interesting, huh? Who doesn't love potato salad?

Have a food or cooking-related catastrophe?

Check out Shrinking Sisters Reviews for my latest post for The Daily Laugh. I'm part of a dozen bloggers who are writing every month on the foibles of living a healthy life. And check out the Daily Laugh Hub for other bloggers' stories and for a chance to win $150. Just leave a comment below on one of your cooking-related goofs. That'll buy a lot of bananas and oatmeal.

37 weeks, and you're in on the deal

It was my first Monday since the Cleveland Clinic Non-Surgical Weight Loss Program ended. I got on the scale and was up a quarter of a pound. Not bad considering I didn't work out at all last week and I had some major PMS bloat going on.

Why didn't I work out all week? Because in the back of my sneaky, little sabotaging head I knew I wouldn't be weighing in with someone who wasn't me.

Who will I be accountable to now?

Being accountable to myself isn't good enough, so I decided that I'll be accountable to YOU, dear readers. Every Monday I'll let you know what the scale says. (Who knows, someday I may even let you know what the number is.)

But I had a productive summer. I lost 10 pounds and am sneaking up on PRE-BABY WEIGHT (that's right, old skool blinky type), which is only 4 pounds away.

(The, ahem, baby started middle school last week.)

So what's the 37 weeks, you ask?

 That's how many weeks until Fitbloggin' 11, the second annual awesome healthy living blogger conference that will take place in Baltimore, one of my favorite cities in the USA.

And I already promised Roni, the Queen of Fitbloggin', that I will be returning as a weight-loss blogger success story. Or pretty darn near it.

Here's the deal: If all I lose is a measly pound a week, I will be one size away from the Happy Weight by Fitbloggin' time. I also signed up for the 5K run this time. Last time I did the 1-mile walk, which was already too easy for me. I've gotta push myself more and will be training for that goal.

So I have a lot on my plate.

 Or a little.

Or a lot of broccoli. Yeah. I have a lot of broccoli on my plate. I'm going to meet this challenge. Last year I made a grand pronouncement before Fitbloggin' and fell far short of the goal. This time, thanks to my Summer of Success, I know I can do it.

(Oooh, that even motivated me!)

Have a food or cooking-related catastrophe?

Check out Shrinking Sisters Reviews  for my latest post for The Daily Laugh. I'm part of a dozen bloggers who are writing every month on the foibles of living a healthy life. And check out the Daily Laugh Hub for other bloggers' stories and for a chance to win $150. Just leave a comment below on one of your cooking-related goofs. That'll buy a lot of broccoli.

'If you fail to plan, you plan to fail'

Way back in 1991, Delta Burke hosted Saturday Night Live and was featured in a hilarious sketch about a Weight Watchers meeting. (Can't find the video, darn it! It was great if you've ever been a Weight Watchers member.)

That phrase "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail" was one of the mantras that the Weight Watchers leader would chant repeatedly.

But, y'know? It's a great thing to keep in mind.

I've kept it in mind when food journaling. If I plan out the food at the start of the day I won't get a rude surprise at dinner. You know that surprise:

"Congratulations, you have no calories left!"

I also feel more in control when I have the day laid out before me.

It's one of the tools I'm using to battle my self sabotage, something I'm really getting a handle on. Another little trick is physically closing the kitchen doors at night.

Object permanence: Otherwise known as the "Peek-a-Boo" effect. Playing Peek-a-Boo with a baby is far more fun than playing with an adult, because babies haven't learned object permanence. When those hands go in front of your face you are really gone in their eyes.

So I'm playing Peek-a-Boo with the kitchen at night. Hey, don't laugh. The weight-loss psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic thought it was a great idea (and was impressed that I remember object permanence from college psych class). 

(Blogging tip: Holy crap, don't search for the phrase "peek-a-boo" on Google Images!)

But my stupid human tricks are working because I lost 1 percent body fat and gained a pound of muscle this week. Yay for muscles!

What tricks do you play with yourself to keep yourself on track?

Looking for more laughs?

Check out Shrinking Sisters Reviews for The Daily Laugh. I'm part of a dozen bloggers who are writing every month on the foibles of living a healthy life. And check out the Daily Laugh Hub for other bloggers' stories.

Shrinking Sisters 2.0: Now with actual shrinking!

"What a stinking fraud I am. I have a blog called Shrinking Sisters, and I'm not losing any weight!"

(I'm not going to comment on my sister's weight loss; I'll leave that up to her.)

That's what I was thinking a couple weeks ago leading up to last week's Fitbloggin' convention in Baltimore.

So I took that weekend to recommit myself to do some actual shrinking because by next year's convention I want jaws to drop -- or to at least go slack a little bit.

So I'm happy to say that from the Monday after I got home to this past Monday, I dropped 4 pounds.

And I'm keeping track of my weight by stepping on the scale every morning.

Scales drive some people crazy and evoke all sorts of hatred but after not weighing and weighing once a week, I find that stepping on the scale every morning keeps me aware of the little fluctuations and serves as a signal to keep going.

I decided to weigh every day because I'm the kind of person who can step on the scale once a week and see it swing wildly up and down 3 or 4 pounds at a time. I want to be able to see where things start going south (north, really). 

I'm really not eating any differently, but this past Sunday's episode of Ruby had me thinking about that. Ruby's scale has been stuck and she wants to get below 300 in the worst way, so she decided to make five changes in her life -- things like taking the stairs, changing her workout and dumping the diet soda.

So I thought about what five changes I could incorporate. Here are mine (cue the trumpets):

1. Cereal will only be eaten with a bowl and a spoon, not by the handful out of the Tupperware container.
2. If I'm eating for recreation (yes, it happens sometimes), I'll do it with raw vegetables. My trip to the new green market in town will keep the fridge stocked with good-tasting produce.
3. Exercise will not be negotiable. Something will be done every day, even if it's as small as the 12-minute strength-training DVD workout I did on Monday. That little bugger still has my butt sore from the squats and lunges.
4. Coffee, tea and water will be my liquids of choice. I don't have a diet soda issue (I can quit anytime!). Seriously, I drink maybe two a week, but that carbonated science project has been shown to trigger sweet cravings in people so when I'm out and about (because it's easy to control at home), it'll be an unsweetened iced tea or water for me.

Eeek! I've only come up with four!

What should be my fifth change? Is there a "rule" you incorporate for weight-loss success?

Fitbloggin' 10 recap

Daffodils -- one thing we don't see in Florida. All photos by me

The second I got back into town I promptly caught a cold (thank you old coughing man on plane!), so it's taken a few days to get my head clear enough to do anything (except Twitter, of course).

Anyway...

Fitbloggin' 10 was fantastic! And to think, Roni Noone of Roni's Weigh had never organized a blog convention before this. We certainly couldn't tell.

Baltimore is one of my all-time fave cities, so deciding to go was a no-brainer. Even better was getting to finally meet in person some of my favorite healthy-living bloggers.

Icing on the (rice)cake?

• The New Balance walking shoes, socks and shorts. Walking that predawn mile was great fun, and it wasn't as cold as I thought it would be.
• My groovy new Gruve device, which tracks my movements and gooses me when I need to move my butt (it's doing it now).
• The Fitbloggin' commemorative T-shirt from thriv, made from a comfy blend of bamboo and cotton.
• All the other samples, coupons, bags, bowls and whatnot that made my suitcase fall over in exhaustion on Sunday.

More highlights:

• The Friday cocktail party was a blast, and that one Pomtini went straight to my head (the only time I can refer to myself as a lightweight in anything).
• Roni put together a great list of speakers for Saturday, and every last seminar was thought-provoking and useful.
• I finally got to meet Melissa McNeese in person, someone who I've e-mailed and tweeted for years. (She was the person responsible for the 10-Minute Solution DVD table.) I said to more than a few people that Fitbloggin' was like 100 blind dates.
•  A group of us went to dinner with Lyndsay and Nicole from Weight Watchers and had a great discussion about everything under the sun. The poor waiter couldn't get a word in edgewise.
• I also got in a lot of exercise -- a Friday hotel gym workout, Saturday morning's 1-mile walk and another mile walk in the afternoon, Sunday morning's yoga class and a final 3-mile walk to Camden Yards and back. My Gruve was very happy.

I was inspired to exercise, eat healthy foods, and rethink what I've been writing and who I've been hanging out with online.

I decided to devote more time to Shrinking Sisters (this place) and to keep the focus on writing meaningful stuff for Examiner (the other place). I decided long ago that I wasn't going to chase down pageviews by writing garbage about various Kardashians and Snookies.

I friended and followed lots of great, like-minded bloggers when I got back. Conversely I pared down my Facebook and Twitter lists of people who I just don't have time for anymore. I met so many writers with a healthy, balanced attitude toward food and fitness that I don't need to waste my time with people who think certain food groups are evil.

I switched my food tracking back to Weight Watchers, and realized that having a finite number of Points works better for me than having an open-ended calorie count. Counting down the Points seems to work better for me than adding up the calories. And in the months that I've been away from the Weight Watchers site it's gotten a lot better and faster.

I'm also not going to stress about working out. I'm taking the theory of "diet for weight loss, exercise for health" and running walking with it. I have a crappy cold right now and I'm fighting off the guilt of not exercising. But it's OK -- when I can breathe again, I'll workout.

I'm making my online life and my real life less toxic, and I can't wait until next year's Fitbloggin!

The road to hell is paved with barbecue sauce

I threw out a little stack of barbecue sauce containers that my mom insisted I have.

That smoky, sweet, sticky, syrupy stuff can be my undoing.

Sure it's just a chicken breast, but add a hundred calories of hickory-smoked goo and it becomes dinner and dessert.

Crap like barbecue sauce is what gets me into big trouble. Barbecue sauce, salad dressing, ketchup,  marmalade, Thai sweet chili sauce (oh, how I love it).  All those blasted condiments.

It's all mostly sugar, with a little fat thrown in for bad measure. It's not food, per se, right?

Those invisible calories have got to go. Because I don't do a little dab of barbecue sauce or ketchup -- I drown food in it.

To make up for the sauce sabbatical, I'm breaking out the Mrs. Dash and balsamic vinegar. No syrups, no salt but lots of flavor -- especially the Mrs. Dash chipotle flavor. 

Yet another thing I'm doing differently in 2010.

How much weight can I lose blowing my nose?

Yay, vegetables!

Some odds 'n' ends as I empty another box of tissues:

I've only had this cold since Saturday night but I'm thoroughly ready for it to go away. I've got a bunch of new workout DVDs that I'd love to try but when putting laundry away leaves me winded I figure I'll just chill on that until my breathing's better.

One task I did enjoy was compiling a list of 10 wonderful healthy blogs, in a guest post I did for Blogs.com. You can find that list HERE.  I'm pretty sure I have let everyone on the list know that they're included.

It's only 35 days until Fitbloggin' 10 begins and I can't wait! It'll be great to finally meet some of the bloggers who I've tweeted with and e-mailed in the past. So what happened to that 20 pounds in 20 weeks grand pronouncement? Eh ... so far it's only 5 but hey, there's still a month left.

Which leads me to calories -- I need to cut back on them, so my new plan is to load up on fresh fruits and veggies when I head to the kitchen. It'll give me more fiber and antioxidants for fewer calories than other snacky things.

Speaking of fiber and antioxidants, I've been reading The O2 Diet and the The F-Factor Diet, two great books by two of my Twitter favorites. And they're not gimmicky "diet books" -- they point the way to foods high in antioxidants and in fiber.

Keri Glassman's 02 Diet touts foods high on the ORAC scale, or Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity. It's a food's antioxidant capacity. Blueberries, cranberries, black beans and artichoke hearts are all high ORAC-scale foods. Herbs and spices, such as cinnamon, cloves and oregano are also high on the ORAC scale.

And many of the high-ORAC foods are high in fiber. I knew beans and berries were excellent sources of fiber but I was surprised to learn that artichoke hearts were also fiber superstars. I learned this in Tanya Zuckerbrot's F-Factor Diet book. The "F" of course is for fiber.

The book also reintroduced me to an old favorite -- GG Bran Crispbread. When I mean "favorite" I don't mean "mmm-mmm good" favorite. These crackers are hard-core high-fiber roofing shingles. But as a crunchy carb fix, they can't be beat. Each oversized cracker has only 12 calories but 5 grams of dietary fiber. A little smear of peanut butter or guacamole or a smooshed Laughing Cow Light on top makes them much tastier and only adds a few calories. A great little snack.

So it's superfoods and fiber as my primary foods -- clean, real food. You can't help but eat fewer calories with all that goin' on, right?

I'll keep this my dirty little secret...

As we all know, tracking food consumption and exercise is a key to successful weight loss.  SparkPeople  is a free Web site that is chock full of tools to help achieve your weight loss goals.

But one of my favorite things to do is to lurk on people's profiles and see what they're eating and how much exercise they do.  I came across one of my favorite members' logs and was shocked at what was consumed.

Below is a typical lunch for this person:

Lunch	Cal.	Carbs	Fat	Prot.
Burger King, BK VEGGIE Burger, 1 serving	420	46	15	23
Burger King Medium French Fries (salted), 1 serving	480	61	23	5
Burger King Medium Coca Cola Classic, 1 serving	230	56	0	0
Kraft Singles White American Cheese, 1 serving	60	2	5	4

So although I may snicker at a fast-food lunch at nearly 1,200 calories, I must acknowledge that this person AT LEAST logs all that is consumed. The good, the bad and the fattening.

I dare you to track me on SparkPeople.  My user name: I_AM_CAROL.  You will never see one meal that is nearly my entire day's worth of calories.

Now to start tracking ...