So as many of you might have noticed, I’ve stopped my one pound per week project. I hope to get back into losing weight, but I’m super frustrated with the idea of eating healthy. It looks like everything I enjoy is bad for me. Every diet/no-sugar/low-fat product comes with its own side effects, and I’m here, still heavier than I ever have been, wondering what I am supposed to do.
I got rid of my car, and walk at least an hour every day. I use dumb bells to work out in my computer chair at home at least twenty minutes every day and I try my best to eat healthy, but how can I eat healthy when there is so much conflicting information, and so many limitations in my own ability to stick to any “diet”.
A great example of the conflict of food are the two documentaries, Super Size Me and Fat Head. Both star film makers eating nothing but McDonald’s for a month. In one movie, the star gained weight, and in the other, he lost weight. While they both ate fast food, the maker of Fat Head was careful about what he put into his body, and never “super sized” his meals.
If you can lose weight by eating properly at McDonald’s for a month, what does that mean? How can someone find ways to eat in a way that promotes weight loss at a fast food restaurant? Well, he focused heavily on calories and carbohydrates saying two things: calories in/calories out calculations don’t work, and carbohydrates over a certain amount is only stored as fat.
These two things got me scratching my head, as I had been lead to believe that knowing the calories I use and the calories I put into my body would lead to easy weight loss. I watched as weeks where I knew I burned more than I ate lead to very little movement on the scale.
Next, I found out my scale has some problems. I don’t know what’s going on, but sometimes it fixates on what appears like a random number. I reset the darn thing, try again, and then it gives me a “true” look at my weight. I had to do this numerous times in my two months running my OPPW challenge, and so my numbers are all suspect to me now. How can you trust a glitchy scale?
Then, I read some interesting information about what is really in “Health” food. Things like cellulose, or what is pretty much wood pulp, as a filler in various health cereals. How about “Fresh Squeezed Orange Juice”? What if I told you it sometimes sits in vats for a year before having colour and flavour added back into it before packaging? You know those blueberries in your cereal, muffins and bread? Well, that’s corn syrup, food colouring, and other chemicals. All of the flavour, none of the health benefits.
How can you eat healthy when everything is stuffed with carbohydrates, sugar, fake substances, and more? I was walking around the grocery store yesterday, reading labels. Usually I would look at the sugar content, trying not to eat or drink too much of it, but if you move up the label to carbohydrates, you might be surprised. On Fat Head, the filmmaker tried to stay around 100 grams of carbohydrate per day. Half of each gram of chips is carbohydrate, and the stuff is everywhere. I did a simple calculation on my “average” carb intake, and it is as much as 500 per day and almost all of that is from simple sugars.
Add low protein and fat meals to the mix, and you have someone who is almost always hungry, over eats, and only gains weight. How can I get a good balance of protein, fat and carbs? How can I eat well without spending all my time on food? Lastly, how do I avoid sugars if I can’t drink diet beverages, but just can’t bring myself to be a water only drinker?
I’m definitely re-committed to my goal of losing weight, feeling healthier. As the weather gets cooler, I hope to walk even more. I just hope I can get my weight under control before I’m too big to really make a change, or just too unhealthy to care.
Malcolm's Ramblings 
9 responses to “Eating Healthy: Frustration and Reaction”
It’s a tough battle, that I know. There’s no really easy answers, either. I’ve been working out pretty steadily and losing weight weekly now, but it’s really damn slow. I am blessed by a few helpful things though – one, I can’t eat processed food, it makes me ill. So I pretty much make everything including bread from scratch with fresh local ingredients. I spend about $90 a week on groceries for me and the other half, and more then half of that goes towards fruit and veggies. If I want something sweet, I let myself. I don’t have lists of what I can’t eat. I gave that up because really it just makes me feel bad. I make sure to buy fruit and veggies and then cut them and place them into containers for the week because when it comes to snack time I don’t want to have to make something at the time, I want something quick and easy. Plain popcorn is nice too. I also don’t drink pop or anything but water and 1 coffee a day, so I guess I’m lucky in that regard.
Even if you have to re-start a hundred times, I wouldn’t give up. It doesn’t matter how much (or how little) progress you make so long as you keep trying. Eventually you’ll kick it. I know you can. 🙂
I guess the issue really is that I don’t know “which way is the good way”. I want to maximize my potential for success, and that’s been really difficult for me. All I ever want is some Doritos and Coke… They don’t easily spoil, are relatively cheap, no cooking time and satisfying…
I’ve been doing lots of research and the more I learn, the more conflicting details I run across. I just want to feel satiated, healthy and lose a bit of weight! Why is that so hard? lol…
Keep at it. Have you tried making the soup from the video I put up a while back – you know there’ plenty of variation there. It’s low-calorie *and* healthy.
While I don’t religiously track calories, I am keenly aware that if calories in exceeds calories out (used during the day), I gain weight. Fortunately, the opposite is also true.
It could be that you’re gaining muscle from the workouts. That’s good too!
I haven’t tried making the soup yet. I don’t have access to a blender of any sorts, nor a reasonable sized pot… (Don’t ask…) I really should do more soups, I’ve done lots of research on them, and it always turns out as “good news” as long as they aren’t stuffed with tons of fat, salt, or carbs from white, heavily processed noodles.
I agree than an excess of deficit of calories can contribute to weight gain or loss, but I know I don’t have the ability to truly keep track of such information. I just keep hoping the law of averages will save me… but that hasn’t worked so far.
Well, we have two ways that we do it; we have an app on our iPhone/iPod Touch (LoseIt) and we have a wipe board on the fridge. For example today, I’ve had 100 calories of soup, 500 of pizza, and 50 of honey (for my tea), which means that I have *about* 850 calories left for the day. I’ll have some pears and soup later on, and then.. badminton!
Don’t forget that the more “whole” foods (veg, fruit) you eat the better. 🙂
Mom~
I e-mailed you saying that you need to find the documentary Forks Over Knives. I watched it last night and it was interesting, to say the least.
I hear ya, glad that you are taking care of yourself though!
Note… if you eat too much McD’s you may not gain weight but you may still have a heart attack.
I always say Broccoli saved my life after have a minor TIA when I was 20.
Good luck and great pics.
d.
Thanks for the comment. Hopefully, I can figure this out before I give myself a heart attack or something…