I have to admit it. As a stay at home mom I am always close to my kitchen and feeding hungry kids. I am around food all the time. I love food! But I don’t like what food does to my waistline.

It seems that all the diet and fitness websites are recommending people to eat frequent meals in order to lose weight. Eating 5- 6 times a day is the best way to eat if you want to shed those extra pounds they say. The thing is… I hate this! I like to spend as little time in the kitchen as possible. I like to eat till I am full and eat when I am hungry. Eating three times suits me just fine.

If I was to snack I would be eating way too much food. For some reason it just encourages the munchies and grazing. I end up eating more food and calories.

Reasons for Increasing Meal Frequency

1.    The reason behind eating smaller but more frequent meals is that you will be less likely to overeat during your main meals if you have a snack.

-    This is great if it works for you but if you are like me and it backfires on you and you end up eating more than the benefits of snacking is not doing you any good.

2.    Eating small meals will boost metabolism.

-    That is actually not true and it only helps boost sales of high sugar shakes and protein bars. The fitness magazines all contain precious advertising that keep them going. So they will obviously want to promote the “eating frequent meal myth”. Here is a great article that dispels all the baloney regarding meal frequency and regarding metabolism Lyle McDonald writes:

“Quite in fact, it takes at least 3-4 days of fairly strict dieting to impact on metabolic rate (and some work on fasting shows that metabolic rate goes UP acutely during the first 72 hours of fasting); a single meal means nothing. You will not go into ’starvation mode’ because you went more than 3 hours without a meal. Nor will your muscles fall off as an average sized food meal takes 5-6 hours to fully digest, as I discuss in The Protein Book.”

It is a relief to know that if you are not hungry that you don’t need to eat more.  Now I don’t have to worry about bringing food along with me if I go out and that even fasting can be beneficial.

If you feel better eating more frequently and it helps you reduce your overall calories than do it.  But if you are like me and snacking stimulates your hunger and you end up eating more you don’t have to worry about it and enjoy solid meals less frequently.

To your health and wellness,

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I started to follow the Low Carb diet when I read an article that recommended the Atkins diet for Candida Yeast. My initial reaction was rejection but the more I learned and saw positive results in other people the more I warmed up to actually trying the diet. The first week of eating low carb was great. Digestion and bloating improved and I lost weight. Hunger and cravings disappeared and so on. The Candida Yeast symptoms gradually reduced and I did experience a yeast die off. And the best thing was is that I got to eat yummy food.

My main reason for sticking to the Low Carb diet is to get rid of yeast. It is not the weight loss or the other benefits that I described above. It is a physical discomfort and a constant reminder when I cheat. The foods that I am cheating with are small amounts of fruit and mostly berries. Fruit like berries, grapefruit, lemons, limes and cantaloupe are allowed while low carbing. But they still cause a Candida reaction in me. They may not cause my eating to get out of control but they are still sugar and my body is telling me that it does not like it. The reason I allow myself to eat these foods is because they are allowed even though it is not good for me.

Our minds desire things that create pleasure for us and stay away from things that cause us pain. Candida causes me pain so I stick to the diet. I don’t want Candida anymore. I will have to get my mind around the fact that even low sugar fruit causes me pain.

The immediate pleasure that we get from eating junk food is often much more powerful than the pain that we feel after we eat it. But if the food makes us physically sick after we eat it we are more likely to stay away from it.

Remorse, guilt, bloating, just overall bad feelings are not enough to stop us from raiding the cupboards. There has to be something more. On the weight loss show “The Bulging Bride” and “The Last Ten Pounds” they have the personal trainers come early in the morning and whip the poor participants out of bed and give them an extra gruelling workout to ensure that they will feel the pain for days to come. And this workout also involves the participant’s friends that allowed them to cheat. They also utilize the pleasure principle: at the end of the show they get to fit into their gorgeous wedding dress or in the case of The Last Ten Pounds they get to fit into a snazzy new outfit.

I am also creating more pain by setting exercise fitness goals for April 25. If I fail, then I fail publicly. I will have to find a nice new outfit that I can hang on my bedroom door to motivate me every morning when I get up.

Is there a way that you can implement these principles in your life?

What can you use for your pain and pain motivators?

To your health and wellness,

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Have you ever looked at the ingredient list on the bottled salad dressings and dips? All I can say is Yuck!

Here is a versatile dip that can be used for veggies and meat. A tablespoon of olive oil will also convert it into a salad dressing. It is great with celery, and I eat it on my hamburgers instead of using high sugar ketchup. This dip can be whipped up in two minutes and is a healthy alternative to the regular salad dressings that have icky gross chemical ingredients.

Garlicky Dill Veggie Dip

Fantastic Garlicky Dill Veggie Dip Recipe

1 cup Yogurt
2 tablespoons Mayonnaise
2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese
0.5 teaspoon garlic powder
0.5 teaspoon dill
0.25 teaspoon thyme
salt and pepper to taste

Combine all the ingredients into a bowl and let sit in the fridge for about an hour till all flavors are blended.

Enjoy!

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Let me tell you about the time when my daughter Aliena was a year and a half. She had a really hard time eating vegetables.  We were vegetarian at the time and I thought that a balanced diet should include veggies!

As hard as I tried and searched ways to be creative, nothing really worked. I blended veggies in sauces, made dips, pretended that broccoli were trees, made carrot muffins and zucchini bread. Veggies were not foreign in our house and were served on a regular basis. These were the foods that we would eat and that  she was growing up with and nothing new and unusual. I was determined to find a way to get my daughter to like them.

One thing that I did notice that was bothering me is that she loved carbohydrates. She craved her cereals and oatmeal, devoured her crackers, ate the bread instead of her whole sandwich, inhaled her pasta and rice. She just loved those carbs.

As it turned out she ended up having some health problems and we had to severely restrict her grain consumption. Taking away her favourite foods was very much like going through a withdrawal period when you are addicted to something. Not only was she a toddler and going through normal toddler phases and sickness but she was going through a carb addiction withdrawal. Who new that this could even happen? But she just screamed at the cupboards were here food normally was. It took her a while to get over it.

After a few weeks of this she started to experiment with veggies. To my surprise she started liking them. She started eating them without being prompted to and she was even eating salads and other green stuff! I no longer had to disguise them for her.

Since realizing how detrimental excessive carbs can be to children, I also restricted my second daughters carb intake. From the moment she tried solid food she was enjoying her veggies. She is more of a picky eater when it comes to dark green salads, I can still get them in her with a little bit of creative play.

I try not to give my kids more than one serving of sprouted or soaked grains a day. The sprouting and soaking of grain is necessary to neutralize anti-nutrients. So they enjoy Ezekiel Bread and on occasion soaked oatmeal. As side effect of limiting carbs my kids enjoy their greens in green smoothies, and Aliena eats kale salads and collard green wraps.

Having kids means that you enjoy the company of their friends. It is a shame to observe today’s children say stuff like “I hate veggies and I never eat them”, Or that when you serve veggies for snack that it does not get eaten. Children are becoming malnourished even though they are eating plenty of food. It is just not the right kind of food.

This has been my experience.

I would love to hear yours! How do you get your picky eater to eat their veggies and green salad?

To your health and wellness,

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I am going to share with you a video that has touched my heart. This is a powerful story of a hero in the German concentration camps. This story touched me because my father is a holocaust survivor. At the time he was only a teenager and was enslaved by the Nazi German Army. I visited Germany after college with my dad. He gave me a tour of the village where he was held captive.

The tour involved the places where my father had worked as coal carrier. This coal was carried on his back day after day. He had to walk the town delivering coal wearing “homemade shoes” made out of scraps. He showed me the homes that would sneak food to him, the butcher who would hide meat for him in the alley (who was later beaten), the rail road tracks that seemed like an escape to freedom that brought more prisoners and more coal, the barn were he slept with the horses, and the view he had when the bombs went off and where my father had lost his hearing.

Growing up hearing these war time stories and reliving it with my dad some fifty years later I still can only imagine the pain and suffering.

The Nazi concentration camp prisoners were understandably miserable and some on the brink of suicide. They were stripped of everything that they had – their families, homes, possessions, clothes. They were left with nothing and became slaves. There was one hero – Victor Frankl – among them that was able to bring the prisoners from suicide with only one question.

You can change your state of mind with one question!

Find that question and write it down and read it when you get up, before bed and whenever necessary.

What does life still have to expect from you?

To your health and wellness,

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I have had a bit of trouble losing my last ten pounds. It is incredibly frustrating to exercise and eat well and still not see results. I know the reason why…

It is the lack of sleep. Sleeping five-six hours a night creates unnecessary physical and emotional stresses. Cortisol levels are increased and that can have a negative impact on insulin. Drinking caffeinated beverages like coffee and tea throughout the day also have a negative impact on insulin. I have been on a low carb diet to regulate my insulin and yet these bad habits are contributing to elevated insulin.

How To Get Better Sleep

To fix this I am going to establish a regular bedtime routines. That means going to sleep every single day at the same time and waking up every single day at the same time. I will also take valerian root to help fall asleep. Valerian root works really well for me and I can fall asleep very quickly and sleep deeply.

I would love to hear if you have had any experiences with sleep and weight loss/gain.

To your health and wellness,

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My husband Jonas joined me for the first time for a workout. We had so much fun together. It was kinda weird bonding for the first time in this way but overall a great experience. He has decided to join me in a commitment for 2009 to get fit/healthy and get sexy six pack abs. I am very happy to have an exercise partner.

You see since starting low carb cooking I personally have been able to lose 23lbs. But since my cooking was high fat my husband has gained 20lbs. He is not restricting his carbs so the extra fat is adding to extra pounds around his waist. He does love my food that I cook!

When we met in college he was doing weight training but nothing like High Intensity Interval Training. Back then he had six pack abs so it will be no time till he gets them back. Our goal will be a sixteen week challenge. On April 25th we will show his before and after pictures (he is a bit shy about them). I will post mine as soon as I get them done.

Benefits of Exercising with a Partner

• It is motivating and encouraging.
• It holds both participants accountable.
• You can spot problems with exercise form.
• It is more fun (the more fun it is the better chance you are going to stick with it).
• It pushes you harder because it creates a slightly competitive mood.

Posting this publicly encourages accountability. I am excited for the results. I welcome everyone to join in this six pack abs journey. I will be adding some exercise videos of exercises that we have been doing.

Many Blessings,

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