Thoughts for the week: Skin, fat loss, salt and more

If you're eating mostly food from whole sources, the individual food selection isn't as important.  It's why we offer rice on our menu: mixed meals with protein, fiber and fats slow digestion and absorption making glycemic index moot.  So choosing to have rice, beans, oats, potatoes, or even pasta and bread won't make as much of an impact as you think.  The difference is you are eating those foods in isolation.  It helps breathe some life into boring diets where anything other than oats and sweet potatoes are "bad carbs".

Don't forget that your psychology has to come along for the ride when losing weight.  Most people want extremely fast results and sometimes even achieve them!  But was that person's emotional and mental state ready for the extreme change?  Most people give NO time to how they feel and what the real reason they struggle with food is.  If you haven't dealt with that, you know the story - the weight comes back on.  Deal with your emotional baggage while leaning out, if food is an emotionally charged subject for you.

While on the topic of fast fat loss, here's another argument for slow and more consistent results if you are looking at 30, 40 or more pounds of weight loss...your skin.  Slower weight loss comes with more chance for the skin to regain it's elastiicity and for the body to reabsorb the extra skin. It won't completely be restored but slower weight loss can help curb that.  From my own personal experience with extreme weight lost quickly when I was younger is the skin on the inside of my arms. It is much less elastic than the rest of my arm.  

It's good to take progress pictures.  I told someone today about my extreme weight loss above and remarking how I didn't realize how skinny I had gotten: 165lbs at 6'4" tall.  I literally, and am using the work literally correctly, did not see that skinny kid staring back at me.  The image I had  created for myself overrode the image reflecting in the mirror. Remember that you filter your self view through all parts of your personality, positive and negative alike.  Sometimes we need something objective to help steer us through our own subject negativity.

If you like the way something tastes in a restaurant, you like salt. Some people complain of not liking "salty" food and that is usually because of their extreme sensitivity to it or lack of using it.  If you never use salt, then properly seasoned food will taste salty to you.  But salt enhances ALL flavors, both savory and sweet.  It's in baked goods and bread for a reason.  It also helps balance bitterness and rounds out fat like in beef or peanut butter.  It's truly amazing, it's delicious, we used to trade it as currency, mine it, war over it.  Salt is vital for flavor.

I am amazed more people won't eat savory food for breakfast.  I regularly eat burgers, a sandwich, some chicken at 8am.  We can do eggs, bacon and sausage but no chicken? Oats but not sweet potatoes? Butter but not avocado?  Open yourself up to starting your day off with a MEAL.  If you struggle to find breakfast foods or snacks you like, just stick a meal in there, even if it's early. You might be surprised at how good you feel and it opens up the opportunity for a lot more flavors.  Ground beef, brussels sprouts and roasted sweet potatoes are amazing for breakfast!

Sometimes I am the only one at work who drinks coffee and I feel like it is my responsibility to drink all the coffee they won't.

You can't judge if a nutrition program is good if your aren't educated a little on the subject.  If you flip from program to program but still can't accurate say what a calorie is, what fiber does or think fruit is bad then it's a cycle doomed to repeat itself. While this may sound harsh, it's true: people who follow diets and make claims including words like "always, never, best, worst" tend to be easily led astray.  If you think eating apples is the reason so many people are overweight, you are misinformed. The goal should be to learn enough to apply a critical eye to any claim or program and judge if it's worth your time. Most of these extreme and definitive statements leave a lot of disordered eating in their wake.

Make sure you get about 8,000-10,000 steps per day as a everyday minimum.  Get a Fitbit, ( not the expensive one) and just find out a few day average.  If you fallt way below that, one of the easiest and best things you can do for your health is hit that range. 

Tell yourself something positive that you did at the end of each week, everyone needs purpose and reinforcement. I used to make clients tell me something positive they did each week in their check in so people were  forced to look back at themselves and find something good in all the negative things they think about themselves. You'd be surprised at how many struggled with this.