Mine your Mind!

My alternate title for this post was going to be Mind your Mind or Mind your Mindset. Our pastor has taught on the battle of the mind several times recently and it applies as much to your spiritual life as it does your natural life. I have “dieted” in the past, albeit non-fad diet changes that I participated in, I was doing something to achieve a goal. You may say that is exactly what you should do, but I disagree. Let me explain before you travel to the next blogger!

I don’t think a change in diet should be made to experience a short-term goal. I believe that a diet change should be long term in nature to benefit you for the rest of your life. When you view things through a long-term lens you are no longer “giving up carbonated beverages”, you instead are choosing not to drink them for your health. Do you see the difference in the Mindset? When you are “giving it up” you are telling yourself you are loosing out on a beneficial thing. When you are choosing not to, you are in control of putting away something that is harmful. I hope you can see where I am coming from on this issue, I believe it to be critical to my success as well as anyone else that is reading.

Think of it this way, speaking from a sweet toothed person, if I “have to give up candy bars”, I am constantly fighting myself and my desires to eat one. If I am the one in control here, and I should be, then I make the choice and I decide it is not good for my body or health. The proper term here is, SELF-CONTROL. Which implies that you are in charge of what you do, not some hormone/chemical/desire/etc. I know there are real addictions and issues that overtake us, I believe I am dealing with a food addiction myself. However, I was blessed with an active metabolism, apparently, that has kept me from being well over 300 lbs. Honestly, I should way over 300 lbs with the diet I have allowed myself to have over the past 10 years.

Ok, I won’t belabor the point of self-control any longer. I must divulge the weigh-in information from this past Monday. I dropped .4 pounds, and before any snickers or comments about stagnant weight loss, I have already thought those things myself. I have chosen to take it as a positive since it did not go up! So, to further encourage myself, I weighed again today and posted an impressive 243! So, I have lost 16 lbs since starting this journey and I can’t wait for my goal weight of 210. I have not started any type of exercise yet, but I plan to add walking with my Beautiful Wife in the very near, warmer, future. Be encouraged and find the small wins to focus on, anyone can focus on the negative, winners focus on wins.

 

For Now,

Steven

Energy Density: Why Some “Healthy” Foods Aren’t Good Dieting Foods

What Matters Nutrition

What makes you feel like you’ve eaten enough at a meal? Is it the Calories? Unless you have a magical stomach, then it’s probably not that. If we felt full after a certain amount of Calories, then we wouldn’t struggle as much with our weight! Well what is it then? One of the answers to this question is simply the amount or volume of the food we eat. Think of it as the space the food takes up in our stomach. You are probably thinking “Well duh David” we eat until we are full. But maybe you haven’t thought about this: we can eat the same amount or even more food (by volume), but lose weight by paying attention to the energy density of the foods that we eat! You may have had a time in the past when you ate healthy foods, but still don’t lose weight. It may…

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Dump Your Weight!

This should be the weight loss mantra for the “Daniel Fast”. From January 2nd through January 21st I ate, almost exclusively, fruits and vegetables. This, as you may imagine, leads to very productive bowels!!! Not to mention weight loss with no exercise at all, below is a picture of my most recent weigh in as proof. From November 28th when I weighed in at 259 lbs at the doctor’s office until this past monday January 20th when I weighed in at 244.6 lbs, that incredible!!

For the sake of my self-esteem and overall morale we will call this 15 lbs in 53 days. So, you ask, what was my typical diet like during the fast? Here are a couple of meal plans for breakfast, lunch, and dinner:

Breakfast:  Typical breakfast consisted of a banana, an Orange or two depending on how hungry I was, and apple. Now I did not eat as soon as I was awake or even all at one time. I would eat these items as I felt hungry throughout the morning. I plan on continuing this version of breakfast.

Lunch: Typical lunch consisted of either a salad with grilled chicken or a baked potato.

              1) Salad with Grilled chicken: Lettuce, Spinach, brocoli (if available), mushrooms, carrots (if available), peanuts (optional), pecans(optional), tomato, brussels sprouts (optional), cucumbers, olives, salt, pepper, oil and vinegar. Obviously not every salad had all of these items on it and a vinaigrette was not always an option. So, if I ordered a McDonald’s Southwest Chicken salad i would take off the cheese and chips and use only half a packet of the dressing.

              2) Baked Potato: Wash the spud, salt the outside of the spud, poke with fork, bake in microwave (inside plastic bad) or in oven, break open and put Brummel and Brown spread on it, salt and butter. I would eat the skin and all and I would eat as many as I needed to be full. If you have grilled chicken or any other fruit or vegetable you can top with that also. Occasionally, I will sprinkle a very small amount of ranch on my plain potato for some added flavor.

Dinner: This vary’s greatly so I will just list a couple of meals with main ingredients.

             1) Baked potato: See above

             2) Salad: See above

             3) Quesadilla on Cripsy Corn Tortilla: Pan fry vegetables with fajita seasoning, grilled chicken with fajita seasoning, salsa, avocado, jalapeno, tomato, etc. (My Favorite)

             4) Chicken and white bean soup: Grilled/Boiled Chicken, white beans, chicken stock, corn starch (for thicker broth), season to taste

We did not get board or go hungry eating this way. When I would get hungry between meals I would eat peanuts, cashews, pistachios, dried fruit, oranges, banana, apple, grapes, etc. I think you get the point, we did not go hungry, it is different but the physical results as well as my spiritual awareness through the fast was worth it. I believe I will try to continue many of these eating habits as I endeavour toward my goal weight of 210 lbs. Journey with me, lets make it happen together!

For now,

Steven

Weigh-In, Weigh-Down, Way Down…..

Greetings!!

I could not decide on a title for this post, so I went with all three! I have been steadfastly following the Daniel Fast (refer to my info section) and I am slowly loosing weight. On November 28, 2013, yes that was Thanksgiving Day, I made a visit to the doctor for Pneumonia. During that visit I had to perform the usual weight ritual and discovered I was a whopping 259 pounds!!!! I was mortified, but too sick to care at that moment.

Fast forward a few weeks to Christmas, I was finally feeling better and determined to eat everything I wanted until January 2. Soooo, I proceeded to eat cakes, pies, dressing, turkey, fruit (mostly covered in chocolate or douced in sugar), and anything else that looked good. Then came the Friday after Christmas….. the stomach bug hit….. I will spare the details. However, I was given a forceable kick-start to my weightloss plan and ate practically nothing for a full seven days.

Now we pickup with my first weigh-in of the new year on January 2, 2014. I weighed in at a slender 252.4 pounds.

My next weigh-in was on my Birthday January 13, 2014. I weighed in at an even more slender 249.2 pounds.

This may not seem revolutionary or even like a major breakthrough, but I want you to know I am celebrating. This is the right direction, a good first step, and any other clitche’ you want to lable it with. I will take a 10 pound loss over two months any day, the hard part will be keeping up the willpower and desire. Help me anyone that is reading, please post your comments and suggestions on how to keep it up, all are welcome!!

For Now,

Steven

A Place to Start

Greetings Friends!

My name is Steven and this is my first real dive into blogging. My reason, to lose weight. I need all the help I can get, because I am just an average American dad. You say that is a terrible reason, but statistics are on my side with this one. I am not going throw stats at you or even make any further excuse for myself. I just need help and I hope to find a few friends on here that can help me.

My goal, to lose approximately 50 pounds or obtain my goal weight of 210 pounds. I have not weighed 210 since I was about 20, about four years before I married my beautiful wife. I am now 35 years old and have four children and a full time job. As you can tell I have steadily gained weight over the last 15 years and now I want to steadily lose that weight over the next year and maintain thereafter.

I am not doing “gimmick” plans, “fanatical” diets, “paid” support groups. My plan is a simple three step plan that I have developed over several months of no research and very little prior planning (sounds like a real winner huh).

1) Take my lunch as often as possible from home.

2) Do not buy any “food”, “snacks” or, candy from a convenience store

3) Do not eat food from any “fast-food” restaurants

I am sure that over time this plan will have to be amended, elaborated upon, and generally tweaked as I learn more along the way. I know enough about myself, however, to know I have to KISS in order to win at just about anything (Keep It Simple Stupid). So, this is where we will start. I encourage anyone that may see this to please stop back in occasionally and offer encouragement or advice.

For now,

Steven