Month: April 2011

Categories
Weight Loss Exercise

Crash Diets: Are They Good For Losing Weight?


Crash diets are any diets that are designed to make you lose weight in a very short period of time. Mostly, crash diets do not advertise themselves under that name, but are more likely to give themselves a more original name. They usually promise that you can lose “20 pounds in 2 weeks” or something similar. They often revolve around a gimmick, like the “Chocolate Bar Diet,” where you eat one chocolate bar every day and little else (I’m not sure if that’s even a real diet or not; it was just meant as an example).

Crash Diets: Are They Good For Losing Weight?

Do Crash Diets Work?

Do Crash Diets Work?

There are two main problems with any kind of crash diet. The first is that they pose health risks. Your body has certain nutritional requirements. If you have a weight problem, that means you are probably overeating. That is, you are taking in more calories than your body needs for optimum functioning. A crash diet takes you to the other extreme, forcing you to take in fewer calories than your body needs. This may sound like a balance -undereating to make up for overeating, but your body is not meant to go to such extremes.

Problems with Crash Diets

The other problem with crash diets is that, even when they work, the results are usually temporary. You can only undernourish your body for so long. Once you take off the weight you wanted to lose, you will have to go off the diet. At this point, you will most likely start to overeat once again, causing you to gain back the weight you lost. In fact, in many cases people actually end up gaining back more weight, putting them in a worse position than they were in before the crash diet.

Watch Out for Appeal of Crash Diets?

Crash diets can be appealing, because the promise fast results. However, you have to realize that losing weight in the long run requires some long term lifestyle changes. After all, you want to lose weight to be healthier. You may also want to look better, but hopefully you also care about your health. For this, your goal should not be to lose an unrealistic amount of weight in a short time, but to gradually lose weight in a healthy and natural way. This involves regular exercise and a diet that may involve cutting back on calories, but also includes enough nutrition to keep your body working at its best.

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Categories
General Weight Loss Tips

Muffin Head

For Tuesdays breakfast I had a blueberry nut muffin with 1/2 cup whole organic yogurt, 1 T all-fruit strawberry jam and 1 T cashew honey butter. 445 calories

Later on in the day I had another muffin: 200 calories

For lunch I made Jamie Olivers/The Pioneer Woman’s Asian Noodle Salad (300 calories per serving)

Isn’t it beautiful?

I added almonds slivers and peanuts to mine.

I had two servings at lunch for a total of 600 calories.

Dinner was a shared frozen pizza. Appetizing eh?

Nothing like a greasy pizza photo taken with the flash. Total calories: 600

Total calories for the day: 1,845

Exercise: 45 minutes of Insanity, burned 400-500 calories

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Categories
General Weight Loss Tips

April Continues

Last week I was swamped. Catching up on projects, sending out jewelry, and doing a lot of cooking. I took photos of my food, but before I knew it I was going to bed. I just didn’t have the time and energy to post last week, but there was another issue going on.

This could have been preventable as it was a pattern and I see it now, but at the time I was annoyed and I let it get the best of me. The week before last when I was posting photos of my food everyday, I was also doing something else secretly: I was weighing myself everyday. This is a bad habit and it doesn’t consider the big picture. Logically I know this. But, I was losing. Every day the scale was lower and I was like a moth to a flame.

So Saturday in DC came and we ended up walking close to nine miles. I don’t walk a lot and it just about did me in. The next day I got on my friends scale and noticed that my weight was up. Water retention. And then the next day we walked some more and I ate a very salty Thai meal. And on Monday we drove home. Which caused another spike in my weight. When I travel, I blow up. I KNOW this about myself.

But when I got home and stepped on the scale all I saw was work undone and I was upset and annoyed. I know the lesson of this is: I retain water and that is the stage I’m in: losing water. I also know that exercise and travel always causes my weight to fluctuate.

Instead of being healthy about it, continue doing what I was doing (which was working) I just said “f this” and stopped. Everything. We ate out almost everyday last week and didn’t exercise until this past Sunday. If that wasn’t sabotage I don’t know what is.

Looking back, I wish I would have just shrugged it off, stopped weighing myself, exercise and watch what I was eating, and drink lots of water. It would have gone away and things would have evened out again. So this is my calling myself out on destructive behavior.

This is also me continuing what I set out to do this month: kick ass. And so it continues. Fluctuations are not the big picture. Five pounds up or down is not the big picture. Doing good consistently is.

And now I bring you my eats from yesterday (monday):

I was not hungry until about noon yesterday. Instead I drank lots and lots of water. I came home for lunch where I prepared a plate of rice, onions in masala sauce (trader joe’s), spinach (with dressing and a little feta), and half a slice of tandoori naan. Total calories: 535

Later on in the afternoon I was hit with the baking bug. I purchased a bag of Sucanat over the weekend and was itching to try it. You can read more about it here. What I miss most about being sweet-free is baking. I also miss having a muffin for breakfast and so I’ve decided to add natural sugars into my diet (I’ve been eating honey for awhile).

I loved getting in the kitchen and figuring out a new, healthier recipe for muffins. I can’t describe the satisfaction really, but these are quite good. I used whole wheat white flour, sucanat and my own apple sauce. They are a bit higher in calories than I had hoped, I used vegetable oil and filled the muffin cups pretty full- I like muffin tops, what can I say?

I followed Krissie’s advice and froze the rest for reheating throughout the week and to avoid eating too many. I ate two at 166 calories each.

For dinner I made a pepper, onion and spinach stir fry in a Chinese sauce over rice. This was surprisingly filling and low in calories. I actually calculated it several times to make sure I was correct. Calories: 300 (maybe a little less)

And for a night snack I made smoothies with bananas, milk, frozen mango, frozen cherries, a splash of vanilla and walnuts. About 250 calories

Total calories for the day: 1,417

Exercise: 45 minutes of Insanity, burned about 400-500 calories

Earned my sticker for the day!

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