The Ideal Human Diet: It Shouldn't Be So Complicated

The more I read, the more frustrated I become.

Wheat is poison! Avoid whole grains!
Cow milk is for baby cows! Humans are not meant to digest lactose beyond infancy! Stay away from all dairy!
Fruit is too high in sugar and causes cravings!
Corn is bad for you! Avoid all corn!
Sugar causes heart disease and inflammation!
Agave nectar and honey are bad!
Artificial sweeteners are evil!
Soda is bad! Coffee is bad! Anything with caffeine is bad! Therefore, even green tea is bad!
Avocados are high in calories! Avoid them!
Beans are no good! Humans are not meant to eat legumes! This means peanuts, too!
Smoked meats cause cancer! No ham, pepperoni, bacon, or smoked sausage!
Farmed salmon is bad for you! Canned tuna is full of mercury! Red meat is bad for your heart and hard to digest! Commerially processed poultry is just wrong on so many levels!
Egg Beaters are too processed!
All processed food is evil!

I mean really, what's left? Just vegetables? Okay, I know to eat vegetables.

It really SHOULDN'T be so complicated.

I am just logging my food, counting my calories, trying to get all the stuff in that I should for Week 3 of Transition, trusting the program, figuring there is no perfect diet and eventually I will figure out what agrees with my body and what doesn't.

And biking? I hurt my knee. So discouraging. Back to PT for the time being. The therapist told me if I stick with PT until my knee and hip joints are stabilized by the muscles around them, I will have fewer injuries. Right now they are so weak that even moderate exertion ends up pulling something. I can still walk the dog, though, if I am careful.

I just really wish scientists could agree on what the *ideal* human diet is.

Leap of Faith

Wow, I am really struggling.

It is hard when you're not really sure what your rules are. I think I have gotten so used to bending, and then breaking, whatever self-imposed rules I've had that it has become a habit.

I don't eat bread. But wait, wouldn't a piece of toast be great with these eggs? Hey, it's in my calorie budget. I am not in ketosis, it doesn't matter...

I don't eat sweets. Hey! They have sugar free cupcakes in that bakery! I am sure that would be okay, right?

Hmmm, I am too tired to make a "Lean & Green" dinner. Surely some nice "healthy" chili would be fine just  this once.

It is a constant battle. I got so used to just opening a packet at 8 - 10 - 12 - 3 and 9, with the only food 'thinking' being done for dinner at 6. Everything was decided. Now it's not.

So I say no to a lot of things because I just KNOW they will hurt me. If I eat refined sugar I will HURT. I will be in so much pain from arthritis inflammation that I won't be able to function. I say no to potato chips because my gosh, the acid reflux and sick stomach at night is just not worth it. But it is harder to say no to a bag of pistachios, an avocado, fresh pineapple, and "healthy" stuff like the chili I made for the family. Or a homemade chicken pot pie full of chicken breast and fresh vegetables. Yeah there's a crust. But I sort of block it out and pretend it is okay somehow. And honestly, I am not sure WHAT is okay for me!

I didn't eat any pot pie, by the way, but I ate the chili, I ate some cheese, I ate some "low glycemic index" coconut milk ice cream sweetened with agave.

I read something someone said about "diet fatigue" and I think I am there.

I see the scale tick up, up, up as the weeks go by. As tempted as I am to "crack down" and start super-restricting again to get "results," this time is different. This time, I have to work this through with the foods I am going to eat for the rest of my life. I am finding by trial and error what foods work for me and what foods don't. I am trying to eat sugar free, gluten free. I am trying to get in those 5 veggies and 2 fruits and 5-7 ounces of lean protein and healthy fats every day. I am going to continue doing that and working through this with whole, local, nourishing foods and, frankly, hope the scale eventually starts heading down. Because I am not willing to restrictively diet again in order to move the scale.

I am trying to focus on health and fitness and hoping weight loss follows. It is my leap of faith.

Superfoods Challenge: Week 8

Are you ready to add some new Superfoods to your diet this week? It's fun! Join in and get started on our Superfoods Challenge! Every week we add a new Superfood and try to continue the ones from past weeks. You can jump in now if you like, and then go back and do the missed weeks at the end of the challenge.

So far, our Superfoods list that goes on your fridge to remind you what to eat looks like this:

Broccoli (Brussels sprouts, cabbage, kale, turnips, cauliflower, collards, bok choy, mustard greens, Swiss chard): 1/2 to 1 cup per day
Wild Salmon (Alaskan halibut, canned albacore tuna, sardines, herring, trout, sea bass, oysters, clams): 2 to 4 times per week
Yogurt (kefir): Two 8 ounce servings per day
Walnuts (almonds, pistachios, sesame seeds, peanuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, macadamia nuts, pecans, hazelnuts, cashews): five 1-ounce servings per week
Tea, green or black: 1 cup per day
Turkey Breast (chicken breast): three to four ounces, 3-4 times per week
Spinach (arugula, Romaine lettuce, turnip greens, orange bell peppers, kale, collards, Swiss chard, mustard greens, bok choy): 2 cups almost daily

This week's Superfood is one I added to my diet a couple of weeks ago and eat on a regular basis: pumpkin. If you think this will be boring, think again! There are lots of ways to enjoy pumpkin, and it has some delicious sidekicks as well.

Pumpkin is a winter squash and therefore is rich in many nutrients, especially vitamins A and C as well as many B vitamins. It is high in antioxidants and is anti-inflammatory as well, and has been shown to have "clear potential in the area of cancer prevention and cancer treatment" according to WHF. Studies also show other health benefits of winter squash such as blood sugar regulation, potential for prevention of type 2 diabetes, and prevention of cardiovascular disease. One-half cup of plain canned pumpkin is *very* filling, and provides 380% RDA of vitamin A, 9% RDA of vitamin C, 10% RDA of iron, and 3% RDA of calcium as well as 3.5 g fiber. You get all of this for only 40 calories and half a gram of fat. Pumpkin is a slightly higher carb vegetable with 10 grams per cup, but it does have a low carb sidekick if you prefer to go that route.

My favorite ways to eat pumpkin are: Pumpkin Flax Oatmeal, mixed into protein shakes or yogurt with some pumpkin pie spice, or baked into Pumpkin Custard (a favorite of all my children). If you can get ahold of a fresh pumpkin this time of year, they are awesome roasted or you can scrape out the insides, fill it with meat/rice/vegetables, and bake. To serve, you just scoop out the pumpkin along with the filling and it is so good. I have a recipe for that; I will post it on the BlogFrog Superfoods thread this week.

Pumpkin has a couple of sidekicks, too. They are butternut squash, sweet potatoes, carrots, and orange bell peppers. The peppers are the low carb option for you Medifasters and others who are not eating starchier veggies right now. I love orange peppers sliced up in salads! Here are some other ways to eat your sidekicks:

Baked sweet potatoes, roasted sweet potato "fries" (slice, brush with olive oil, salt and pepper, roast at 400 until crisp and tender, about 15 minutes)
Butternut Squash Soup, Cheesy Squash
Stuffed Peppers
Butternut Macaroni and Cheese (this is fabulous!)
Baby carrots dipped in hummus

SuperFoods Rx recommends eating 1/2 cup of pumpkin or its Sidekicks on most days. I think I will make a pot of Butternut squash soup this week for myself.

How do you enjoy your pumpkin or other Superfood sidekicks? Let me know your favorite way to prepare them. You can leave a comment here or go to my BlogFrog Community and leave a recipe or link on the Superfoods Week 8 thread. I really enjoy all your ideas!

Weigh-In, and Online Food Trackers

Weight today is 207, up 2 pounds from last week.

As I said yesterday, I am adding exercise this week. I did some walking yesterday and will again today. The biking and focused PT will start tomorrow. I introduced milk back into my diet today in the form of 1/2 cup of low fat milk from local grass-fed cows, which I used in my coffee this morning instead of half & half.

I have started tracking calories again but ran into an annoyance. I have always used Sparkpeople.com as my online food tracker, but when I went back, they have changed the layout and tracking tools just enough to make it less smooth. There's ads now between the food lists and the daily menu so you have to scroll down to see everything. I am using it for now, but would like to hear from you food trackers what site you use and what you like about it. I need to switch!

I'd like a food tracker site that is free, easy to use, has a lot of foods in its database so I don't have to constantly be entering nutrition labels for what I eat, shows a running total of calories, carbs, protein, etc and a summary at the end of the day. If I had my dream software it would also include a way to tick off vegetable servings and fruit servings but that's not totally necessary; I can do that on paper if needed. So what do you guys say? What's your favorite food tracking site?

Medifast Transition: Week 3

I am a few days early, but I am ready to move forward to week 3 of Transition.

This is the week for adding a serving of dairy to my diet. I already added extra veggies (even starchy ones) in week 1, and fruits last week. This week, my daily intake should look like this:

Continue eating:
4 Medifast meals
1 Lean & Green meal I prepare (5-7 oz lean protein, 3 servings low carb veggies, 0-2 healthy fats)
2 extra servings of veggies, including higher carb ones
2 fruit servings (each serving is 1/2 cup or 1 medium sized fruit)

Add:
1 cup of low-fat or fat free dairy (1 serving)

The dairy I will be adding is mainly skim or 1% milk or plain yogurt. Dairy foods such as low fat cheese and cottage cheese is considered a meatless Lean (protein) option and not a dairy. Greek yogurt can count as a Lean (12 oz fat free Chobani or Fage 0%) or as a dairy (1/2 to 1 cup; I will use 6 oz when I use it as a dairy serving).

Calories for this week are supposed to be a total of 1000-1300.

Speaking of calories, let me just update right now on last week. I really enjoyed adding fruits to my diet. However, the scale went UP instead of down. I think there's a couple of things going on here:

1. I ate too many bananas. You can't find a more caloric fruit serving, and eating 2 in a day is probably a bad idea. I think I ate at least 6 bananas last week! I love them. I also love peanut butter on them, which is another calorie-dense food. A tablespoon here and there can really add up. So for the coming week, I am going to cut out the peanut butter completely, and limit myself to ONE banana in a day and also not have them daily. Maybe 2 in a week is a good limit. I enjoy other fruits as well, so I will focus more on things like berries, apples, kiwi fruits, and oranges.

2. I did not count ANYTHING this week except servings, and I may have screwed that up a few times as well since I was trying to keep track in my head. Some nights I'd be heading for bed and realize I did not get all my veggies in. I didn't always weigh my meat. I eyeballed some fruit. You are not supposed to *need* to count calories or anything in Transition, but I am going to need to do this. If I had to guess, I would say I was eating closer to 1500/day. I am going back to Sparkpeople, which is what I used to log my food in the early blogging days. I will log all my foods this week and see what I come up with. Things are getting more complicated and I really do need to keep track to make sure I get in the right amounts of veggies, fruits, dairy, protein, and fat.

3. Time to start the exercise. I was waiting to see how the change in diet affected the scale, and now I know. I have been rather sedentary lately. I HATE going out in the cold, I have been riding the wahhhhmbulance about not wanting to get on my bike, I have been only taking one mile walks with the dog in nice weather and half-assing my PT exercises. This is the week to get back to biking. I will do what I did earlier this year and start with 5 or 6 minutes and then add 1-2 minutes a day as my body adapts. I will take one day off a week. My goal eventually is to do 30-40 minutes/day on the bike as well as a 1-2 mile walk, and doing PT and strength training 3x a week. I am going to build up to that gradually.

Yesterday was so fun. It was Dr. Seuss Day at my daughter's school, so I was up early having green eggs and ham at school for my breakfast (with some fruit) and then staying for story reading, play time, and then helping in the classroom for an hour.

My shoulders are KILLING me, which is a new area for pain. I am guessing it is the arthritis but haven't been to the doctor yet. I am betting they will send me for PT again, this time for upper body. Maybe that will be a good thing.

That's all for now! I am really looking forward to having yogurt and fruit for breakfast or a skim milk latte once in awhile! I am kind of excited about getting back to calorie counting, too. It gives me a nice sense of control and purpose. Enjoy your weekend!

*FTC-required disclosure: Medifast provided me with its products for my personal use for free.*