Women 10

Yes, I'm still reading "skinny girl" fluff. Is She Naturally Thin or Disciplined? profiles 101 fit women of all ages. It includes a color photo, height, weight, age, clothing size, and details about what they do to stay fit. Spoiler alert: they're all disciplined. As the author points out, "Maintaining one's weight is very similar to money management–building wealth does not happen by accident, and people who are 'born rich' will become poor if they are careless."

This book was actually mind-numbingly boring because they all do the same thing. They exercise regularly, eat real food, control portions, avoid processed food, fast food, sugar, white flour, high-fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners, and industrial oils. Most of them eat 5-6 meals per day but they don't know why. One woman said, "To keep my body from storing fat cells, I eat every two and a half hours." That made me LOL. There were a few amusing anecdotes. One woman tries on her prom dress every 3 months to make sure it still fits. A model points out that measurements are everything, a low number on the scale doesn't necessarily eliminate bulges. Another woman, struggling with weight gain for the first time in her life, came to the horrifying realization that her daily Starbucks "snack" was over 900 calories.

There were a couple of vegans and at least one paleo person, but the profiles are almost indistinguishable. The author seems to have weeded out or gently modified the words of any meal-skippers or non-snackers to support her "lots of small meals" belief. Certainly that approach can work but nobody questions it. The book would have been more interesting if she'd included some rebels and outliers instead of only those who read Shape and Oxygen.

I liked the photos and stats. I loved that it included women in their 50s and 60s. I didn't like that all the profiles blurred into one generic narrative. However, maybe that's because what it takes to be lean and fit is pretty universal–exercise, real food, and portion control.

Be warned that if you're getting the Kindle version (which was only $1.99!!!), the 101 color photographs make this an enormous freaking file. I had to jump on WiFi and it still took quite a few minutes to download. It's not the normal zippy-zip and have your new book in a couple of seconds experience. Also, there are some comically bad typos. Like mixing up "fat" and "flat." One of the women says, "I like a fat stomach so I avoid wheat." I don't think that's what she meant. The Kindle version could have used some proofreading. 

This book has some real flaws but if you're a sucker for photos, stats, and success stories (as I am), it's still moderately entertaining in a fluffy sort of way. It's also mega-reinforcement that there are no shortcuts. Whether these women claim they are naturally thin or working really hard, they're all engaged in the same behaviors with the same level of discipline. Nobody is lounging around eating junk food, not exercising, and somehow still a size 2. So, it's a bit of a motivating reality check.

Here's another fascinating book that Amazon recommended for me, The Secrets of Skinny Chicks by Karen Bridson. Sometimes I find it hilariously perfect that all of my recommendations are like kettlebells, chocolate chips, and books about weight. A couple of months ago, my main page was filled with suggestions for cardio DVDs and ice cream machines. Do they know me or what?!

I have mixed feelings about this one because it goes back and forth between brilliant examples of naturally thin  happy-eatering, and straight up diet ninny lore. Here is the premise. The author, a personal trainer and health journalist, interviews 21 thin women, not naturally thin women, but women who work at it. In most cases, they need to stay lean professionally – athletes, runway models, actresses, fitness competitors, dancers, showgirls, and body doubles. For each of the 21 women, she lists:

- a full sample day of food with calorie totals

- an overview of their weekly exercise routine with calorie expenditures

- their height, weight, body fat percentage, BMI, measurements, and clothing size

- an interview about their food and workout philosophy

- an evaluation of their approach by a Ph.D from a health and weight loss research center, a personal trainer, and a dietitian

(At this point in the description, I'm buying the book. I don't even care what the rest of it is, I just want to know what body doubles eat and how big they are!)

So, that's the first part of the book. Throughout these interviews she highlights "Skinny Secrets" that the women use, such as – lift weights, stop dieting, work in the yummy stuff, get a portion size wake-up call, learn what your metabolic rate will allow. The second part of the book explains each one of these 50 secrets in more detail and then gives you suggestions and examples for making them happen in your own life. The third part is an action plan that I haven't even looked at yet.

All of this sounds good right? But just because you're thin doesn't mean you have any clue what you're doing! One of the models had a granola bar and a Dr Pepper for breakfast every morning. One didn't drink any water, only tea and Gatorade. One spent 40 minutes a day, 7 days per week on the elliptical trainer. The author talked about running 10 miles on Christmas Eve and another 10 on Christmas Day as a preemptive measure?!?!? Or calculating how many minutes of cardio you would have to do to burn off various foods. In the part about lifting weights, she suggests you start by putting 2, 5, and 10 pound "hand weights" near the television. She didn't even use the word dumbbells.

I'm sure some of my facial expressions as I read were fascinating. I'd be nodding in agreement one minute and rolling my eyeballs all the way out of my head the next. However, I still recommend this book because it is fascinating, I mean, FASCINATING! If you're carrying any delusions about what it takes to be a size 2 swimsuit model – how little you have to eat and how much you have to move – this book will cure you of your delusions. Most of these women eat between 1200 and 1600 calories per day and exercise as much as 2-3 hours per day 6-7 days per week. Not all of them. Some exercise much less and eat 2,000+ calories. Some of the women who exercise the most actually do eat the cookies in the break room at work every day, drink sugared soda, and eat bread with dinner. They're all different and they're all human with cravings that must be satisfied. What they have in common is the consistency. Nobody diets in the sense that they do something crazy for a few weeks and then go "back to normal." What they do every day IS normal. They all talk about how you can be dedicated and work hard, but it has to be in a way that you genuinely enjoy and can live with. You need your treats, your favorite foods, your holiday meals, your restaurant outings. They all have various ways of accomplishing that.

The Secrets of Skinny Chicks is an incredibly interesting book. You just have to read it with your brain on, collect all the ideas that resonate with you, and disregard everything that seems cuckoo. The reviews on Amazon seem to be split between 5 stars from people who loved the skinny chick interviews and got something out of it they could use, and 1 stars from the sour grapes crowd who aren't interested in eating that little or moving that much. I don't think blindly imitating a runway model's routine was the point though. It was more like, what could I learn from the way she does things and how could I apply it to my own situation and goals?

Once again, I am hopping up and down waiting for someone else to read this and comment. Let me know what you think!

I've been reading a book called Skinny Thinking: Five Revolutionary Steps to Heal Your Relationship with Food, Weight, and Your Body by Laura Katleman-Prue. There is a section in the book called Letting Go of Romanticizing Food. This part really stood out:

"Part of our healing requires us to stop glamorizing food by withdrawing some of our false projections onto it and false meanings we've given to it. A balanced relationship with food would be more like your own relationship with toilet paper. Okay, I admit this is a crude analogy, but with both food and toilet paper, quality is important. They both fill a need (when you need it, you need it!), the experience of using them is quick, and most importantly, there's no need to think about them when you're not using them. It's not like you're going to create an overblown fantasy anticipating the velvety softness of two-ply Cottonelle!"

What do you think of that? I agree that food problems often spring from romanticizing it. It's great to enjoy good food when you're hungry and it's time to eat. It's probably not great to fantasize about food constantly. When you turn it into your friend, your enemy, your comfort, your partner in crime, your Friday night, your emotional boost, the highlight of your week, that's when the relationship starts getting dysfunctional. Actually, just entertaining the idea that you have a "relationship" with food is probably dysfunctional, but a lot of us have treated it that way. You turn to it in hard times. You sneak and "cheat" to spend time with it. You feel guilty afterward. You break up. "Never again," you say and you kick the cookies to the curb. But then next thing you know, you're back together! And it's a blissful reunion, perhaps because it's forbidden. LOL

I mean, wow! That's a role that food was never meant to play. Imagine projecting all of that importance onto any other inanimate object? It's weird, right?!  Like that woman on TLC's "My Strange Addiction" with the Teddy bear babies. Thinking about a random object in such an overblown, almost romantic way, giving it that much significance, can only cause problems and suffering.

I know that food is more than food. It has cultural and social significance. I don't think it has to be completely utilitarian, like toilet paper. But I think it's really important to keep it in context. There's a time and a place to celebrate with food. If it's not that time or place, your mind should be elsewhere. I guess that's sort of what I've done with creating a routine with my meals and a schedule for certain treats. When it's time to eat pizza and ice cream, I totally enjoy the experience. When it's not time, I don't even think about it. That has been insanely freeing. I used to battle every day with food decisions, temptation, excitement, guilt, anticipation, remorse, vows to change,  all these strong emotions that shouldn't have a single thing to do with lunch.

It's much easier when everything has a time and a place, "I'll eat that on Tuesday." Or, "I'll have two bites." Then my thoughts are onto something else. I don't like to spend all day every day dwelling on what I will or won't eat. I've put food back into a proper context. Only, I hadn't realized I'd done that until I read the toilet paper analogy.

What do you think? Have there been times in your life when you've romanticized food? Do you still do it? Do you think you could or should stop? If  you have stopped, how? 

I also have a sneaking suspicion that processed, engineered, highly-palatable, "too-good" junk/snack/fast/convenience/restaurant foods have played a part in people's brains forming inappropriate romantic relationships with fatty, crispy, sugar-coated type things. The more I've reduced my consumption of those, the saner the whole thing has become!

This is one of my recent posts from Happy Eaters. If you haven't been over there lately, check it out! That's where I am these days. 

Here is one of my recent posts from Happy Eaters. If you haven't been over there lately, check it out! That's where I am these days.

Ok, so you know those words I said about how I was only going to weigh myself once a week? Those were silly words.

I made it 5 days and I've weighed myself 3 times since. Here's the deal. (I'm sure you can hardly wait for this logic.) Until I stopped doing it, I hadn't realized how much I was using my daily weigh-in to determine what and how much to eat. And it wasn't the weight I was looking at necessarily. That little ritual of shedding my layers of winter clothes, seeing my condition in the mirror, and stepping up for weight, body fat, and hydration readings gave me all kinds of information to work with. If I were: 

bloated – more protein and plants

dehydrated – more water

muscles flat – more carbs

abs gone – less carbs

light and lean – more food

heavy and fluffy – less food

Trying to be a carefree "I don't weigh myself" person blew up my finely tuned feedback loop…that I didn't know existed. It's not so much about the scale weight. It's about looking at myself and the data and saying – I need crackers today, or I need salt, or noooo more salt, or lowish carb, or a bigger lunch, or no lunch, or definitely a steak tonight. Those little adjustments each day keep me looking and feeling great. There can be zero denial going on, but if I hid in my baggy sweats and avoided the scale all week, I might be in for a surprise or have something that actually needed fixing. 

Do you know what I'm saying? Am I nuts? No, don't answer. LOL

Anyway, so here is my latest thought. There are certain days when it's ridiculous to weigh myself. On my weekends it's not like I'm going to consider weight, sodium and hydration and say, "No, I'm sorry, I can't go to the Italian buffet tonight." I may be a little weird but I'm not an alien life form. I need bread. But there's no real reason to weigh myself on my weekend, or the day after. So, perhaps I will go from mirror / weight / body fat / hydration check-ins 7 days per week to 4. We'll see. Maybe.

Love, 

The Crazy Person  

I kept seeing The Happiness Diet mentioned in the media so I had to check it out. The message is a good one, which is that the modern American diet (MAD, they call it) of sugar, processed carbs, chemicals, and industrial fats is making people fat, sick, and depressed. It says:

You're probably well aware that our food is responsible for our epidemic levels of obesity and diabetes, but you might be surprised to learn that it's also largely responsible for skyrocketing levels of brain disorders. We all want to be happy, but every day most of us consume what amounts to a series of "Unhappy Meals."

The solution, of course, is to back away from the packaged crap and focus on eating more nutrient dense real foods. It talks about the perils of corn, cottonseed, safflower, sunflower, and soybean oils. Some of this I'd heard before but plenty of it was new. For example, I'd never heard of the Israeli paradox, where people have relied on vegetable oils to stay kosher. With the high consumption of polyunsaturated omega-6 fats, Israelis have some of the lowest cholesterol levels of any Western country yet some of the highest rates of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and obesity. I've found it interesting that since I'm all onboard with natural fats like butter, coconut oil, olive oil, chicken skin, bacon, and full-fat dairy, my total cholesterol has gone up but the ratios are amazing compared to when my levels were below 150. Last time I had it checked, I want to say the total was right around 200, HDL was 86, and triglycerides were quite low, like 50-something. The guy who handed me the results said, "Whatever you're eating, keep eating it." LOL Yes, sir! Bacon, cheese, avocados, and steaks. I'm on it!

The book talks about what's wrong with the modern American diet (MAD), how it affects your health, brain, and mood, what you can do to shift to a more traditional whole foods diet, and the brain/mood benefits of all kinds of different foods. Part 1 is called "This Is Your Brain on Food." Part 2 is "The Happiness Diet: The Foods, Menu Plans and Recipes." It stresses that you can ease into the new foods and not to overwhelm yourself or engage in catastrophic thinking. If you have a fast food bender, no big. Just get up and eat a happy breakfast. One such breakfast that I highlighted because it's one of my favorites is whole wheat toast topped with almond or peanut butter, sliced banana, and honey. There is at least one meatless day included in the menu plan. There is no "grains will kill you" spiel as long as you're eating actual grains and not Wonder Bread. Some other recipes that I highlighted to try are Humble Hummus, Brussels Sprouts with Bacon, and Roasted Chicken and Vegetables. I still haven't attempted the roasting a whole chicken thing and this looks like a really easy and delicious way to do it.

Throughout the book there are little sidebar snippets called The Top 100 Reasons to Avoid Processed Foods. Some of them were thought provoking and some were unsubstantiated drivel. They did entertain me though. One example:

Reason #3 – A Dunkin' Donuts glazed chocolate cake stick contains more than forty ingredients, including five different types of gums and TBHQ, a form of butane (lighter fluid) that's used as a preservative.

I don't think The Happiness Diet was quite as strong overall as Deep Nutrition or Real Food but it was thought provoking and entertaining. It reads much more like a mainstream diet book. That's not necessarily a bad thing. People who wouldn't go anywhere near Deep Nutrition's discussion of epigenetics might be very inclined to pick up a diet book with a hamburger on the cover, and they need this information desperately.