Resources Ive read: "Skinny Rules"

First off, this is a really unfortunate name for an otherwise great book and resource that has helped me a ton. A part of me wonders if Harper's editor chose this title in order to accommodate an American audience obsessed with appearances more than health. I don't agree with what "skinny" implies. I don't think that skinny equals health. There are many skinny people out there in the world who have awful nutrition habits. And I'd also like to say that this book is vastly different to his other book: "Jumpstart to skinny" which I definitely DON'T LIKE. As a resource as that book encourages severe calorie restrictions for a get skinny in 3 months kind of blah.

That said, I want to share the better points of this book. So lets ignore the title and look at the content.

First of all, some of you may know Mr. Harper as being one of the trainers from "The Biggest Loser." I don't remotely care about that show, but I'm sure my Kiwi friends and family may go "Oh yeah, thats where I know him from.."

Second of all, I disagree with his statement of "non-negotiable." Of course they're negotiable! Now if you are super self controlled and want to lose 20kg like me but in half the amount of time I took (a year), be my guest and treat his rules as non negotiable. But I knew myself. And part of the rule of successful weight loss is that the goals are SMART (Simple, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timed). To me, following his rules rigidly was just not realistic. I found them all helpful, but because I had so many bad habits to break and his book described 20 "rules" I knew it would take me a while. So what I did is, I just started working on 1-3 rules, slowly incorporating them into my meal planning. As I got better or more consistent at one, I would pick another "rule" to work on. And I was NEVER perfect. And Im totally ok with that. 

The rules:

I know what you're thinking right, too many rules!!

But actually, I found that this guideline (I like that phrase better than 'rules') complimented what I was trying to achieve with my MyFitnessPal app. 

In his book he spends a chapter discussing each rule and justifying its use. I'll leave it up to you to read the book to find out more. If you know me personally, you can borrow a copy from me.

A few things I took away from this book:

1. I didn't drink water before every meal. But I did buy a 1L water bottle and drink my way through it throughout my day (plus more if I worked out that day). I typically keep it on me at all times at work and at home so that its the first drink I reach for when Im thirsty rather than tea or coffee which I also love to drink. I think the primary rule should be prioritizing water consumption over other fluids as it is the most hydrating for us and best drink for weightloss.

2. Not drinking my calories. For me, an old habit would be those Starbucks frappecino drinks as well as general soda/fizzy drink consumption. Even a latte has calories. Having worked for Starbucks (a great company fyi), but honestly, most people have no idea the gigantic amount of sugar is in those drinks esp the Christmas/Thanksgiving themed drinks. But I continue to drink coffee incl lattes. Now I just ask only for a tall/small with non fat milk. And I literally measure my sugar. 1 tsp/1packet. I also drink a beer or cocktail if Im out on date night with the hubby. That said, I can probably count on one hand the amount of alcohol beverages Ive had this year so I treat them as a treat. 

3. Eating protein. This was a bit more new to me. Introducing more forms of protein to my diet became rather essential and now I love it. Protein IS what keeps me full way more effectively than carbs. This meant I started eating more beans, egg whites, protein powders, low fat dairy, red meat, white meat, nuts and seeds.  

4. Replacing High GI carbs with Low GI carbs. For example, substituting refined wheat products with other grains like rye, quinoa, brown rice, barley. And even trying out stuff like buckwheat groats and millet. Even so, I still love bread AND continue to eat bread. My Mum never allowed me to eat white bread growing up (or as she called it "sugar bread"). We always ate plain regular ol brown wheat bread (crusts always included). I do this and it seems to work. And I love toast. Maybe its the crunchiness of it..

5. "No carbs after lunch." THIS was probably the newest and craziest change Id ever done to my diet and I rechon its helped with my weightloss a TON. Like I said earlier, Im not perfect at this. And I generally put this rule on the shelf when Im eating at a friends house and I know they've made a lovely meal. The last thing I want to do is hurt peoples feelings, insult the cook, and be that annoying person who makes food demands not because of allergies but just preference. We all hate that person. If I get a ton of mashed potato on my plate put there by someone else, I'll likely only eat half to a quarter of it and just focus on my meat and veg. Not eating carbs after lunch is and continues to be difficult. But its working now. North American/Western dinners are heavily dependant on carbs as the main feature of the meal. Remove it and people tend to scratch their heads. One thing I noticed about not eating carbs after lunch is this - I stopped feeling bloated after dinner AND prior to breakfast. I actually started feeling hungry for a more hearty protein/carb based breakfast. AND, I started sleeping better with (excuse me) less gas at bedtime. My dietitian friend at work pointed out to me this carb fact - its needed and appropriate for consumption for energy. So if we're getting home from work, eating dinner then typically just resting in front of the tv or reading a book or other sedentary activity, why eat carbs? Its not needed. If I do have high physical activity in the evenings as my husband sometimes does in his work then yes, carbs are needed. If Im doing a 3-6 day hiking trip then damn yes you should eat carbs at every meal during that trip what with the huge amount of kilojoules one is expending. Eat the food for your activity level. I work primarily in an office at my desk. I only work out about 3x per week. So for me, cutting out carbs after lunch made sense.

6. "Go to bed hungry." I admit, this is head scratching. I honestly don't think he means, attempting sleep with a horribly grouchy stomach. If you're eating the correct amount of veg and protein for dinner, a grouchy stomach shouldnt be occurring in the first place. For me I took this to mean, no snacking or eating extra food after 8pm. No midnight desserts either. I know Nigella Lawson does it. She can afford lipo or a personal trainer, you probably can't. A few times I did go to bed with my stomach mildly growling somewhat as an experiment. You know what happened? I fell asleep and forgot about it. My stomach then started promptly waking me up at 6:30am every day for food like a natural alarm clock. And hunger is a great motivator for getting out of bed.

7. The recipes. Frankly, I found them... Boring. Helpful if you need some easy ideas to follow in following the "rules" but with google and some know how, its easy to follow the rules without his meal plans. I found it terribly boring! No spices, no flavours! Enough brown rice and plain chicken to bore anyone to death! I found Middle Eastern and South East Asian recipes were really helpful in maintaining my adherance to those rules as well as enjoying some amazing foods and flavours.

I only went over a couple of these rules. I know some people may or may not like the "rules" but I found it helpful more as a general guideline to tweak where I chose rather than as a rigid system. Am I aiming to lose weight? Yes, definitetly. Am I aiming to get Hollywood's definition of skinny? Not really. The book has a sucky title but I think his advice is very solid and overall very helpful. 

See ya!

Melody

Resources Ive Used: MyFitnessPal

Most people who have at least attempted weight loss have probably heard of this tool/app.
It was designed and run by the fantastic people at Under Armour, a relatively newish sportswear company. 

 

MyFitnessPal primarily works as an app on your apple or android smart phone. It is primarily and essentially a calorie counting tool. In the past, calorie counting was extremely difficult to do without any app involvement. You were pretty dependant on these little but fat books you'd get out of the library that had calorie and nutritional info on foods incl the more common fast food type stuff. But restaurant food? Forget it. 

Calorie counting is drudgery BUT, MyFitnessPal I think has gone to a lot of effort to make it as effortless as possible. The perks:

- The barcode scanner. The app has the ability to scan and input into your meals plan pretty much any food with a barcode. And Im betting most foods in your pantry have a barcode. So this is helpful.

- The search engine is gigantic. Its like google pretty much. So even if it doesn't have a barcode you can get pretty specific on things even if its quite an unknown food item that you can only get in say New Zealand. You can also type in variations of common franchise foods. For example, I love the Bagel BELT sandwiches from Tim Hortons (a Canadian version of Dunkin Donuts). However, I like to frequently ask them to omit the processed cheese from the sandwich (in doing so, I half the sodium content of my breakfast). The app has a "Tim Hortons Bagel BELT w no cheese". Helpful or what?! Without this app I would have had to look up all the individual ingredients, input all of them individually, then manually remove the cheese, IF and only IF, Tim Hortons was kind enough to make the ingredient and quantity list available on their website or nutrition broshures. That is WAY too much work. Luckily I don't have to do it. 

- MyFitnessPal is a tool more than an actual program. Theres no person pointing a finger at you to do this or don't do that. It accomodates YOUR goals, your needs, your dietary pursuits. If you want to go hard core raw vegan food only, the app will help you. Want to go Atkins? Keto? No carb? Paleo? It will help you. What the app does NOT support is fasting or starvation methods. When you join the app, you put in your activity level, your weight, your height, your goals and it will calculate for you your meal/day calorie amounts and not only that but the individual nutritional needs for each meal. So you will be given a set goal amount of protein, fats, carbs/fiber, sugar, sodium, vits/mins to achieve each day. The app will start warning you in red font for example if you input food that is going over your sugar amount for example. If you need accountability to not just be using calories but also filling up on appropriate food, this is quite helpful. Getting back to the fasting thing, if you attempt to fast a meal and then try to save your day's amount, it willl not allow you to save. 

- It provides more than just food calorie counting. Theres online communities to join. Exercise ideas to read about, injury prevention articles, food posts, recipe posts, cool success stories to motivate you. You can 'follow' people and if you are friends you can see other peoples food, exercise and recipe entries. 

- You can connect up your pedometer/exercise wristbands (and that includes ANY brand) but most people use nike watches or fitbits.

The down side:

- Its not the app, but you. Like anything that requires effort, it must all come from you. Don't worry, its quite common to fall off the wagon, but get back on as quickly as possible! It took me two goes to be a consistent, regular user of the app. The key to using MyFitnessPal well and with success is if you are consistent and most of all honest. Don't lie on your food diary!! Just put it in, view the nutrition of those burgers and fries, learn a lesson and move on! Lastly, you HAVE to get organised with your planning. Its tricky at the beginning but eventually you'll become a person of habit and you'll notice that you have these favorite meal recipes you go back to and if you use the 'saved recipe' component on the app, meal times will soon be super easy.

- People who don't use the app will think you've become obsessive. I know I got a few concerned comments from the hubby about all the weighing of food I was doing that hinted to me that he was concerned. I just reassured him of my intentions for healthy living and ensured him his concern was appreciated but not necessary. You're the one doing all the effort, not them. Just don't get all preachy about what other people are cooking or eating. Keep your head down and focus on just YOUR habits not those of others or you'll get retaliation from family and friends and no one will want to eat around you. Please don't be that person. Be humble, be quiet about what you're doing and preferably keep what you're doing to yourself unless someone is genuinely curious. Let your actions speak louder than your words. Hubby used to roll his eyes at me as I calorie counted our date night food at whatever restaurant we were eating. Eight months later, now he occasionally does it. Ha!

Tips:

- Start off by weighing everything either in grams or ounces. One of the biggest things about this program that helped me was that it helped me realise how my portions were WAY to big. Sticking to your recommended nutrition goals by weighing your food will help with this. Don't use measuring cup to measure as it doesnt take into consideration the type of food. Preferably use weight not size as it is more truthful. I have a small glass scale I keep within reach in my kitchen to help me with this. After a while, if you're at a friends house for example and you're wondering how to input the food that they made, you can just eyeball the meat/carb/veg portion given to you and make a good guess. Its better to input something rather than nothing!

For me, this app has helped me majorly in seeing how much and what kinds of innappropriate foods I was eating. I was brutally honest in my food inputting at the beginning and I learned very quickly I had developed a horrible habit of eating fast food too frequently for breakfast, I was consuming quadruple the amount of sugar I should have been eating, I was then overeating at dinners and lunches and church functions and failing to listen to the responses of my own body. And just so you know, one year on, I still use the app. My user name (if you want to add me as a friend): kiwiOT.

Before I end this post let me provide some links below that you can visit that show you tips, tricks and hacks to use the app to the fullest that I found super helpful. And just so you know, I have no affiliations with the app, nor do I get money for typing this post. Im just a fan and a user thats all.

Give it a go!

Melody 

10 insider tips for MyFitnessPal newbies
9 Habits successful MyFitnessPal users swear by
5 features you didnt know about MyFitnessPal

About Me

Hi, Im Melody!

Im 29 years old, I’m from Christchurch, New Zealand. I currently live in Vancouver, Canada with my husband. On November 24^th 2016 I was on holiday with my Mum at the most gorgeous beach in New Zealand (Kaiteriteri). We took pics of each other and at the time I was happy, I had a pretty good self-esteem, I was with one of my most favourite people in the world.  Then I took a good look at the same picture later that day and quietly my jaw dropped and I felt deeply saddened.

What on earth had happened to my body???

I was 95.5 kg (210.3lb) and 27 years old. I was deliberately buying bigger and baggier clothes in order to disguise my increasing size. I was honestly quite apathetic about my weight. Generally assuming that what I was eating and how much was perfectly fine. I thought I led a pretty ‘active’ life. I preferred stairs to elevators and I loved to eat fruit and vegetables. I was also incredibly blessed in that my husband was the least shallow person on the planet and had fallen in love in with me and continued to love and respect me even as I gained more weight.

The wake up call(s).

-       - THAT picture.

-       - My husband and I can’t get pregnant due to infertility (low sperm count and thyroid issues).

-       - People frequently coming up to me and either commenting or patting my stomach and asking when my ‘baby’ was due.

-       - Hubby and I at that time had applied for international adoption. I was told I was on “the cusp of the failing” the BMI test of the country we were seeking to apply to. My weight had officially become a barrier to being a Mum.

-       - While getting a physical done at my Doctors office, looking at his stern but kind face and being told simply “You’re overweight. You shouldn’t be this size at 27.” 

      Its been a year now. A lot of things have happened. We pursued adoption passionately, vigorously, seriously. Much like being pregnant I suppose, we were giddy with excitement, longing and expectation. I discovered an untapped never-ending source of motivation to eat better and exercise – hopeful motherhood. It was agonising to not have the blessing of pregnancy happen to me. I wanted people to ask me if I was pregnant and actually BE pregnant. I had to grieve and hopefully get over that desire in a way and my way of doing it was telling myself – “Well if I can’t gain baby weight I can sure as hell lose weight for this living child. That child deserves a healthy Mum.” My friends who have adopted warned me that the worst part of the process was the waiting. Best to give myself something productive to do while we wait.
     
     So I started losing weight.
   
      It wasn’t that easy or that straight forward, but honestly I eventually got there. Im now 73 kg (160lb) and I definitely feel it and can tell the difference in more ways than just the number on the scale. Its taken me a year to get that number and I’m hoping to continue losing more weight or toning up more (either or Im not fussed).
     
      Ive used and continue to use a number of resources and strategies as well as avoided a ton of unhealthy fads out there that I thought perhaps others might want to know about. In the past 2 months in particular, Ive noticed people looking at me and giving me lovely compliments but most of all asking me “What are you doing? What are you eating? How are you exercising? How are you maintaining/sticking with this?”

      I felt over time that I was repeating myself quite a bit in my answers and honestly I was becoming a bit worried that people would only listen to a portion of what I was saying, accidentally take something out of context then go dive into the crazy pool of diet/exercise legalism.

      Despite what people might say, you can’t avoid the issue of motivation and good ol’ fashioned self-control. Shopping and cooking and eating healthy foods can only get you so far. This past June, I  lost it.

      Our adoption agency decided to stop the home study we were doing and cancel their contract with us. For reasons I don’t want to touch on here, other than it had nothing to do with our personalities, background, beliefs or abilities as potential parents. This was absolutely the worst thing that had happened to me in over ten years. The day that happened I understood the term “stabbed in the back.”  I couldn’t breathe properly. I couldn’t smile or laugh or think straight for months. I was in a constant state of grief for an entire month and I emotionally, mentally and spiritually checked out. I wanted no part of my family, friends or work. I wanted to find a hole in the ground and die. Ive never said this out aloud but at one point, I contemplated if my life was even worth living at one point for a few hours, then changed my mind after a conversation with my Mum and she told me “Don’t make any big decisions right now.”

      Interestingly, instead of taking my grief out in a tub of ice cream, I grabbed my hiking boots and continued my passion of hiking trails (except with no passion just morose depressing anger and the need to scream with no one around). This time, deliberately picking and trekking 5-8 hours over steep terrain. On my own. In bear and cougar infested forests of British Columbia ( don't worry I kept pepper spray and a whistle on me). The amount I was exercising had decreased but it was thankfully still occurring. I also continued to run, swim at the local pool or do weight training 1-2 days per week. I discovered, feeling achy bones and muscles, feeling the dribble of sweat down my back and tears down my face while being surrounded by trees, water, dirt, clean air and rock and being alone in it all made me feel… Nothing.

      Feeling nothing felt good.

      Then I’d go home and sleep for nine hours, and that also was good.

      That was five months ago. Im much better now. Still dealing with it but not as severely. Hubby and I are still figuring out things but are doing ok. We grieved in our own way but luckily we remembered to cling to each other in support. We felt like we were the only two people in the world who understood each other. We both eventually reintegrated ourselves back into our community. This topic still hurts. That wound is still there. But Im doing ok so far.

      I don’t want to sound self-pitying or turn this into a big thing on infertility. But losing weight and maintaining weight loss and a pursuing a healthy lifestyle is impacted so much more by the pains in our lives than our joys. During this grief period, my weight graph looked more like a rollercoaster. Lately its started becoming more progressively downward again.

      It’s never simple.

      The last thing I want to mention is this: I did this journey for me and me only. I went into it fully knowing that my husband would likely continue to eat cinnamon buns and fizzy drinks and fast food around me or away from me during work. Of course I am the biggest influence in my husband’s life and I hoped some of what I was doing would rub off and it did in a way but as the saying goes – You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. Some of my eating and healthy habits have slowly but surely made their way into his routine as well but it has been his decision, his doing, not mine. And hes doing it in his own way. We’ve only been married for six years but I already know full well, nagging, controlling and manipulating does not work in the long term. The temptation to be holier than thou with one’s spouse is ever present and occasionally I falter. But as Ive learned also, saying sorry never goes out of style.

      For readers, I want to make this blog honest, straight forward, imperfect, non-photo shopped, encouraging and most of all,
     Hope giving.
    
     Much love,
    
     Melody.