The World According to Jennyfur

I’m closing in on the one year mark of my journey into health, fitness and vegetarianism. I started Weight Watchers a week after New Years. Its been an interesting journey to say the least — one which I wish I had embarked on much much sooner.

The journey has not come without its challenges. Modifying my diet and cutting out all meats except for fish and seafood were the easy part. I’ve never once this year felt deprived of the foods I love and enjoy. I don’t feel like I am dieting to the point of not enjoying eating. All that said I’ve managed to make it through the hardest time of the year when it comes to dieting — the dreaded holidays.  My weight has been relatively stable fluctuating throughout the low 160′s.

The majority of my challenges are overcoming my physical limitations and recovering from the damage that being overweight caused to my physical being. I’ve had to spend a lot of time focusing on strengthening target areas. When I first started doing yoga I had to build up my upper body and arm strength because even the simplest of poses left me quavering upon collapse.  Those areas leveled out over time and then I had to work on building up my core muscles, which has been a work in progress. Since I carried a lot of my weight in my abdomen, it has been very hard tightening up the loose skin and rebuilding muscle mass. This also started to help improving my balance issues. I’ve always been somewhat flexible and that wasn’t ever an issue — it all comes down to strength and balance.

My biggest physical issue to date is in my hips — while they are flexible they lack strength, which contributes to balance issues among other things. Basically, the problem I am having is that the bones in my hip joints seem to be grinding together, which is terribly uncomfortable. It used to only bother me when I was working out specifically doing hip flexibility exercises, but it has gotten worse over the past month. I probably am going to make an appointment with an orthopaedist who specializes in sports medicine. I would never consider myself an athelete, but I want to make sure that doing yoga is not aggravating the problem more.

I realized recently that my inability to do yoga inversions (headstands, handstands and forearm balances) stems from these hip issues. I understand the mechanism of the poses and how to do them — its just getting my hips to work right and to do the right things. Hopefully, like the other physical issues I’ve had that this will resolve itself over time.

Aside from the hip issues, I feel great — I feel healthy — I feel younger and I’m in the best shape I’ve been in since highschool. I do have my regrets. I wish I hadn’t waited so long to address these issues. I wish I had the courage to change sooner than later. The moral of the story is that its never too late to start the journey.

Post Meat Consumption Update
I’m two weeks into pescetarian mode and haven’t run into any major obstacles yet. Although, I need to rethink my work lunch strategy, since going pescetarian it eliminated probably about 90% of the frozen lunch/packaged crap options since each brand has a very small amount of vegetarian/fish/seafood options. I’m not saddened to be leaning away from that stuff since even though its low calorie and low fat its still processed to hell and back and loaded down with sugar and sodium. I defaulted to the pre-packaged option since I lack any preparatory wherewithal in the morning hours to make something… heck sometimes I barely have the time to throw a diet soda, frozen lunch, yogurt & muffin into a bag and go. I also am terrible with leftovers so I rarely make anything beyond the meal at hand. Although, I did whip up a pot of vegetarian chili over the weekend, which should be good for a month or so.

I think I need to start planning in advance, which is a complete contradiction to my mood based decisions. If I am not in the mood to eat something no matter how much I love it, it will be a wholly unsatisfying meal. I usually try to balance out my meals into categories. I rarely will sit down and just eat a large quantity of one thing. Trying to pre-plan a significant portion of those options is mind boggling to me.

• Breakfast – usually a diet soda, tea, Weight Watchers muffin, or English Muffin with egg, cheese & vegetarian Canadian Bacon or any kind of cereal or granola, meal bar. I really don’t stray too far beyond those basics.
• Lunch – a beverage (water, soda etc), a main lunch item (sandwich, frozen thing, packaged thing), some sort of side dish, which can vary in combination’s of fruit, yogurt, veggies, cottage cheese and/or occasionally a starch item and some sort of dessert (perhaps a piece of dark chocolate, any of the Weight Watchers desserts, fruit leather, 100 calorie snack packs etc)
• Dinner – a beverage, main dish, side dish(es) and dessert
• Snack – varies, but usually defaults to popcorn, nuts, sorbet, Weight Watchers products, or cereal

Otherwise, the conversion is going well, I haven’t had any major meat cravings or longings. If anything, it is forcing me not to be a lazy ass in the kitchen and to be more creative with my options.

Abs & Core Galore
Seeing as over the course of 2009 that I have lost nearly 40 pounds and have gotten into pretty darned good shape for the first time in my life, my abs & core sorely need more attention. I carried the bulk of my weight from hips to tits. When I lost that weight I ended up with a lot of loose skin and poorly developed abs/core muscles. Looks can be deceiving when I am standing upright I have a relatively flat belly, but as soon as I lean forward the skin just hangs there. Think about it this way try on your regular bra size, then try one on that is a few cup sizes too big, the same principle applies to skin elasticity. Its very common to have to redevelop more extensively certain problem areas. My biggest complaints are the stretch marks on my chest, hips and thighs;  and the loose skin around my waist and chest. All are easily correctable if you have the means to afford plastic surgery. Otherwise, its a daily regiment of skin firming lotion, stretch mark lotion and toning exercises to target those problem areas.

I picked up a copy of Prevention’s Flat Abs special magazine. It is still on the shelves in most of the local supermarkets and booksellers I have seen in the area. I highly recommend it, more for the workouts than anything else. I’ve been doing 3-4 of the workout segments on most nights coupled with some cool down yoga poses and have really been enjoying the workouts. I highly recommend, whether you pick up this guide or not to invest in a stability ball. I picked up one from ACE, which is fine, but the workout DVD it came with was horrible. I swear it looked like it was filmed on a crappy home video camera in 1988 and was transferred poorly to dvd and as if it had been filmed in the lobby of some office. The exercises were pretty basic and some where just stupid… like I really don’t see how dribbling a stability ball does anything other than making you look silly, but I digress.  Otherwise the stability ball is fine.  I’m trying out some various stability ball work out dvd’s.  Balance Ball: Core Cross Train is pretty decent. It has three 20 minute workout segments focusing on upper body, lower body and back/abs. In general, I like the fitness and yoga dvds under Gaiam and Acacia the best.

In one of the recent issues of Yoga Journal, they had a feature on abs & core yoga with a series of  maybe 10 poses for increasing core strength. As much as I love yoga,  its not as core developing as pilates and other workouts. There are some poses that are a fusion of yoga, pilates and other core strengthening exercises. I usually do the sequence of poses from the article in addition to the core work from the Flat Abs workouts.

The main reason I have been focusing on so much core work for the past couple weeks is, not only for physical purposes, but my lack of core strength impacts my yoga practice in terms of balance for certain standing poses and doing any sort of inversions (headstands, handstands, forearm balance) Although, I did manage a forearm balance by leaning off the side of the bed since I have a hard time hoisting my lower half upwards. Even after a couple weeks, my balance has improved dramatically, I can stand effortlessly in Tree pose without looking as if there was a tornado approaching.  I can even glide effortlessly into Warrior 3 and Half Moon Pose and other standing leg balances.  I still have a way to go before my core is strong enough to attempt the full inversions properly. I have the arm & upper body strength and the leg strength, but in between is lacking.

Change can occur over time and sometimes you just wake up and the change is there waiting for you to notice it.

Last Friday, I began a new journey on the road to health and well being, I decided to give up eating red meat, pork and poultry and to become a pescetarian (a vegetarian who eats only fish/seafood) or more aptly put a post-meat consumer. Now seems as good of a time as any to make the transition seeing as my dietary habits have changed remarkably over the past year. I’ve gotten away from so many bad food choices and my palate has changed so much since then.

I’ve given up red meat and pork before. I gave up meat in the mid-90s after getting ill every time I ate it. I did fairly well only consuming poultry and fish for awhile. Eventually, an Italian hoagie called my name and I gave in to temptation. Seeing as I have spent almost a decade living with my vegetarian husband, I never got into the habit of overindulging in meat. Sure, I loved my steaks, bacon and whatnot… but it didn’t bother me one bit to brew up a delicious pot of vegetarian chili or to use veggie substitutes in lieu of meat in other dishes.

I’ve always been in an ethical conundrum when it comes to meat consumption.  Its gotten harder and harder to balance my feelings about factory farming and animal cruelty versus my love of meat. I could justify it in perhaps if I could be guaranteed that any meat I consume was not born of mass produced horror and cruelty via the factory farming industrial complex. In this day and age, one cannot be guaranteed of this and many places that claim things like “free range” and “humane slaughter practices” are often guilty of absolutely horrible shit too.

Amongst friends, we’ve had many conversations about knowing and understanding in no uncertain terms “where your meat comes from”. While I would like to remain woefully ignorant and keep on believing it grows on meat trees in neatly cellophane wrapped packages… its just not the case.  I know and understand and just cannot make excuses for myself anymore. I have no problems with other peoples habits, but I think we should all be knowledgeable to our impact on the world around us.  I’ve never really been adventurous about straying beyond the traditional mainstays of beef, pork,  poultry, fish and seafood. I’m sure bunnies and duckies are tasty, but I would never eat something that I would coo over and want to keep as a pet.

Why am I continuing to eat fish, seafood, eggs and dairy? I’ve learned that I process change better over time and can be overwhelmed by too many changes at once. I feel slightly less guilty about eating fish and seafood than I do about mammals.  Factory farming of dairy and eggs is also problematic and I am researching alternatives to it. I actually discovered that Veggie Slices soy-based American cheese is quite good actually. I was expecting it to be horrid and was pleasantly surprised. I’m willing to revisit soy milk. I guess more to the point, I am trying not to delve directly into the vegan extreme. Not that I have a problem with veganism, I think transitioning that quickly would spell out an easy counce bounce back to being a carnivore. As a tried and true Gemini, I often tend towards the “all or nothing” mode of thinking. Some times you have to find the middle ground, which for me is some uncharted territory or mythological place like Atlantis.

Over the past week I started asking myself questions…. do I actually like meat? or do I just eat it because I eat meat and that is what meat eaters do?

Chicken and Turkey are so mild in taste and texture that you can pretty much make anything resemble it.  If I get a hankering for something prepared like that I am perfectly fine using any type of soy, seitan or other style of meat substitute. I can’t say I’ve ever craved Turkey or Chicken. Its just something I ate because I ate meat and things sometimes come made with chicken in them or I bought chicken for variety because that is what you do when you go to the grocery store, you buy meat, poultry and fish.

Pork products…. well now there is a loaded and problematic category. When I think of pork, I tend to think that I don’t like it all that much. I can do the occasional pork chop marinated in honey Dijon sauce, but lately the taste and smell has been grossing me out.  I will say though that losing bacon and lunch meat is tragic, but I’ll live… hopefully. To be fair, the last time I gave up meat and pork, it was an Italian Hoagie that lured me back. This was before there was a decent variety of vegetarian products. I still remember to this day the first time we made tofu hot dogs at my aunt and uncles house, maybe in the late 80s. They were so gross… the dog wouldn’t even eat them…. and dogs eat their own poo!!!

I will mourn the loss of a good steak like the tragic death of a good friend. Other than that I’ve already gotten so far away from using ground beef that it doesn’t really bother me beyond that. I have had the same ground beef in the freezer all year and couldn’t tell you the last time I actually used it at home. Since, I’ve been on Weight Watchers, I’ve probably had maybe 3-4 cheeseburgers this calendar year and am perfectly fine tossing a veggie burger into the mix.

I’m curious to see how this goes… if I stick with it… progress further into vegetarianism… regress to meat eating… or find some happy medium. I’m excited to learn new cooking techniques and recipes. I’m excited to not have to cook two separate dinners every night or fend for myself while my husband eats a plate of veggie sausage. I thrive on change, no matter how scary it is… wish me luck!

A couple of month’s ago I stumbled onto the phenomena of Eat This, Not That features on the Women’s Health Magazine’s website. I picked up one of the books recently and have been reading it diligently ever since. While I am skeptical that you could be on an effective diet just by following the food swaps in this book, the book itself is filled with a wide array of really great advice on the benefits and detriments of different foods you can find at the restaurant or grocery store.

This book has further reinforced my opinion that most mid-level chain restaurants should be avoided at all costs. Your typical fast food restaurants of the McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell ilk get a bad rap, but really they pale in comparison to places like TGIFriday’s, Chili’s or Applebee’s, some of which who refuse to publish their nutritional information.  Its shocking to think that you could sit down at one of these so-called family restaurants and consume upwards of 5000 calories in one sitting between appetizers, salad, bread, dinner and dessert… not to mention the unspeakable amounts of fat, sodium and sugar on top of it all.

I highly recommend this book for anyone and everyone regardless of whether you are dieting or not. It will help you be more informed about the choices you make when out to eat or at the grocery store. It is good to remember no one restaurant, brand, style of preparation or type of food is 100% bad.  You may be able to wade through dozens of gut-busting choices to find one or two not-so-bad choices or dare I say, healthy choices.  We cannot afford to be ignorant to what we are poisoning our bodies with by items cleverly masked as food.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about weight loss and exercise since embarking on the journey to health and wellness in January. It is now June, which takes me through a full six months of the journey. I’ve slowed down the weight loss (31 pounds to date) for the time being and am maintaining my current weight nicely. I still plan on losing another 10-15 pounds, but figured I’d give myself a break and work the fitness angle a little more intensely.

The first step in the chain of progress was joining Weight Watcher’s after seeing the success one of my closest friends had on the program I decided to give it a whirl. I highly recommend the online version of the Momentum Plan. It has worked well for me seeing as I lack the motivation and general interest in attending local public meetings and it also works well with my Web 2.0 geekery given the set of online tracking tools and their overall performance. I can easily look up various foods, recipes and figure out the points, chart my food intake, activity levels, weight loss & measurements. I wish I had done the measurements early on because I am curious to see how they have changed in the past six months.

As far as diet goes, I’ve learned to modify and balance my eating habits for the most part.

- While I love breakfast food, I’ve never been a big breakfast eater, which always led to snacking throughout the day. I usually have something from the grain family whether it be a fat free or low fat muffin, cereal bar, granola bar etc. Weight Watcher’s has delicious Blueberry and Double Chocolate Muffins. I really like the Special K Strawberry Cereal Bars. If you happen to live near a Genuardi’s, they carry a brand called Eating Right and they have awesome Cranberry Citrus Bars. Kashi also makes a yummy pumpkin pie granola bar. Odwalla makes some decent “superfood” bars, which are quite tasty and replete with omega fatty acids and are all natural.

- I had never been a big fan of diet soda and always loved my dark carbonated beverages like Dr. Pepper. I still limit my intake, because I don’t want to overdo it on aspartame. I wish more sodas would be made with Splenda or other natural sweeteners. For the most part, I drink Coke Zero (or Cherry Coke Zero). I like other diet sodas now Diet Sunkist, Diet Dr. Pepper and Diet Pepsi, however Diet Coke is just gross. I also drink about 2-4 cups of tea per day. I tend to prefer herbal blends, florals and fruity ones. Other than that I drink a lot of water. Thank the foods gods and goddesses for Crystal Light on the go packets. I was also happy to see that Ocean Spray makes some on the go packets as well. I really love the White-Cran-Peach. If you can find them the Mixed Berry Water Sensations are pretty good. The grape one is okay, but the lemon and orange ones are surprisingly gross.

- The next big food modification was bringing my lunch to work. I realized I had fooled myself into thinking I was eating relatively healthy getting fresh sandwiches, salads and whatnot from local eateries and the cafeteria at work. I love Italian Hoagies, but for all intents and purposes I may well have been scrafing down a McDonald’s Big Mac and French Fries. There really isn’t much difference when you breal down the caloric intake and fat content. That is setting aside processed foods versus unprocessed foods. Granted I have slipped a little bit away from the organic/natural foods in the process, but losing weight came first. Anyways, normally I pick up something I can easily reheat in the microwave, which tend to be frozen lunches from Smart Ones, Eating Right, Lean Cuisine or Healthy Choice. I tend to balance out the lunch with random combination’s fresh fruit, yogurt, cottage cheese with pineapples, rice cakes, dried fruit, carrots, rice cakes, pretzel sticks and some sort of low fat dessert. Weight Watcher’s desserts are awesome. I love their cookies and cakes. Also, No Pudge brand makes an awesome fat free organic brownie mix. You just add fat free yogurt instead of eggs, oil and water.

- While on the subject of work. I have a desk drawer totally dedicated to healthy snacks. I highly recommend this because it prevents me from heading down to a vending machine and getting unhealthy stuff. I usually keep the kind of stuff I would crave that would also be filling. So I have an array of 100 calorie snack packs and candy, the aforementioned granola and cereal bars, raisins, and sometimes rice cakes.

- Vitamins are also helpful. I usually stick to a regiment during the week, sometimes I forget though. I find having a healthy dose of vitamins reduces the appetite and gives you energy. In general I take, a multivitamin, Vitamin D, Vitamin C (sometimes I up the dosage with Emergen-C if I am under the weather), Fish Oil, Flax Seed Oil and Alphalipoic Acid (its good for hair and nails). I only take Iron as needed, same with things like Ginseng, Mothers Wort and some dietary aids.

- I used to be really bad about making dinner and would almost always stop and pick something up along the way (or having Tim do so) thus falling into the same patten I did with lunch. I tend to be somewhat lazy when it comes to cooking after working 9-5 and commuting. I’ve learned to keep things on hand that can be combined and prepared quickly and easily. The George Foreman Grill is your friend. I prepare most of my meats on it unless for some reason they need to be baked another way. I find having various marinades and sauces on hand to be an easy solution and most (when used in correct proportions are not bad at all calorie/fat wise. Sometimes I cheat and make a frozen pizza or something from my lunch stache. I’m not a big fan of frozen food, but I have grown to love frozen french fries. Normal french fries are pretty unhealthy given the whole fried in oil scenario, but baked french fries are less than half the amount of points for a decent sized serving.

Stay Tuned for the Fitness & Exercise Installment….