If It's in the HOuse... I'll Eat It!

Not a good week. On my quest to lose at least one pound a week even the best of us have some set backs. A hectic schedule, lots of activities where "bad for you" food is prevalent and a good deal of stress has caused me to GAIN 2 pounds this week. Yecht!


So I tried to do an analysis of where I went wrong and here is what I’ve come up with:

If given the opportunity, I’ll eat whatever is easy to get. For instance, we went to a baseball game on Saturday where they had hotdogs for a dollar each (which is a great deal at a ball game). So, even though I knew they were full of fat and salt, and that I would probably “pay for it” the next day, I had two of them plus some of Jocalyn’s cotton candy and a lemonade. Oh, I forgot to tell you, this was after attending the Knight’s dinner right before the game where I had two pulled pork sandwiches, chips, a diet Pepsi, and a cookie.

Then came Sunday. I hadn’t gone to the store for a few days so I had to see what was available in the kitchen until we could go later in the day. Back to my old habits, I found some Honey-Nut Cheerios (large bowl) and some toast. I told myself I would just “work it off” in the backyard later. HA!

Later in the day I found myself scrounging in the cupboards for a snack and found some fat-free chocolate pudding. Good thing because the only other thing I saw was a jar of peanut butter and I probably would have made a big ol’ PB&J sandwich.

To my credit, I did work like a mad man in the back yard and I’m sure that saved me a bit from logging even a bigger weight gain. And I have (to a great extent) removed most of the usual temptations in the kitchen. If there were any Oreos, donuts, or Chocolate Chip cookies, I would have eaten them. Same thing with any sort of cake or ice cream. If they are NOT in the house, you can’t eat them.

So I’m (hopefully) back on track this week. The lesson to learn from this weeks blog is to remove any temptations in the house. Know that a busy or hectic personal life causes greater challenges to make healthy food choices, and know that you will “slip” in your weight loss quest from time to time. Just promise yourself NOT to give up and to get back on track when it happens.

Water – A Key to Your Weight Loss Success

For those of you, like me, who have tried several different weight loss programs, you probably have noticed some similarities in all of them. Their diet program, exercise, and some sort of regiment. Some worked, some only worked for awhile, some only work if you stayed on them, and some were a complete waste of time. Whatever program you were on, there was ALWAYS a common element in each of them. Water.

When you think about it, water makes up about 70% of your body and, in fact, your blood is 92% water. This is your body's way of distributing nutrients around your body. It helps you digest your food and absorb the nutrients your body needs. It helps the body to excrete its waste from your bowel and kidneys and If you don't drink enough water you get constipated and not drinking enough water can cause kidney problems. When it comes to weight loss, Water is a natural appetite suppressant.

The average person needs around 6-8 large glasses every day. I make it easy on myself and get those 16.9 oz plastic bottles. (It’s OK to reuse them and fill them with tap water) I drink at least 5-6 of them each day. I start off by drinking one bottle when I wake up in the morning as your body loses water while you are sleeping through breathing and perspiration, and that first “pee” in the morning. IN ADDITION to my 2 cups of coffee, (caffeinated drinks are diuretics which cause the body to lose water so you have to drink more to even keep up) I drink another bottle before I have breakfast. A neat “trick” that some people use to kick start their weight loss is to squeeze ½ a lemon into their water which will help flush unwanted salt out of your system and make you lose a couple of pounds in just a day or so. (this is not permanent weight loss, but it’s exciting to see fast results). It doesn’t taste that great, but it works.

I always have bottled water or a plastic water bottle with me during the day. You need to “pace yourself” through out the day so that your body doesn’t just flush it all out at once. I’ll have another bottle just before lunch (which helps me from eating too much), then at least one more in the mid afternoon. (More if it’s hot outside, water regulates your body temperature and helps keep you cool). I drink one more before dinner, and then finally my last bottle about an hour or two before I go to bed.

It’s interesting what getting into the habit of drinking water does. At first, you will obviously need to make sure there is a bathroom around. This is normal. About a week after you start drinking water on a regular basis you will start to notice some of the benefits. You may notice your skin become smoother and any acne you have improve. You will have more energy and your muscles will not seem as tired at the end of the day. Many people find their constipation and headaches are reduced, as well as hunger pains. As the toxins in your body begin “flush out” now that there is a constant flow of water, you may notice better concentration and less fatigue. You will also notice that your urine becomes clearer as your kidneys have more water to filter out all of the junk in your system. Then, of course, there is the benefit that we are all looking for; any help we can get in achieving our “One pound a week weight loss”.

So, start today. Buy a case of water or get a plastic water bottle and have at it. It’s NOT going to be easy at first, but the benefits are worth it. Let me know how it does for you.


Dave Tracewell

Looking at what I put into my Body - Breakfast

If you are like most people, you get into somewhat of a eating pattern every day. You have your favorite cereal or breakfast in the morning, you either make or buy pretty much the same thing for lunch everyday, and you have a dinner routine. Casserole Mondays, Taco Tuesdays, Fried Chicken another day, maybe eat out on Friday's, you get the picture.

So For me breakfast was Total Cereal in the morning and toast. Looking at the box, it said 100% of your daily value of at least 11 vitamins’ and minerals in one serving. That sounded good. And wheat toast and margarine (not butter), that sounded healthy. I use skim milk so I knew I was going to start loosing weight with this breakfast… sounded good anyways.

My 1st mistake was NOT understanding what a “serving size” was. For Total cereal it is .75 cups (that’s ¾ of ONE CUP). I, of course, never measured my cereal and just poured it into my favorite big bowl. SO… when I finally started looking at these things, I found out that I was, in fact, pouring about FOUR servings into that bowl. Sure I was getting a whole bunch of vitamins and minerals, but your body can only take so much and you pretty much pee out the rest (makes your urine a pretty bright yellow). What I also failed to realize was the amount of CARBS I was putting into my body. Each serving is 22 grams of CARBS, so I was getting around 88 grams of CARBS just in the cereal I was eating. Add to that the two pieces of toast (22 g each slice), and the 2 cups of milk (11 g each cup) … jeeze, now I was up to over 154 g of carbs just in the morning. Generally speaking, you should “shoot” for about 30 – 60 carbs per meal depending on your age, gender, activity level, and a host of other stuff. Needless to say, 154 grams of carbs was NOT going to help me lose weight. But that doesn't mean carbs are bad for you. Read on…

Just a quick note on carbohydrates: Carbs are generally what your body uses to give you energy so you must eat foods with carbohydrates to even function. It’s just that any excess carbs are stored as fat. You need to keep a better watch how many grams of carbohydrates you eat each day.

Everyone has different carb needs. Reducing the amount of carbs you eat will help you lose weight because with a low amount of carbohydrate intake, your body uses all of the carbs instead of storing them and starts to burn what stored fat you already have for the energy it needs.

So I figured I should start with reducing the amount of carbs I eat each day and replace the big bowl of cereal with someone else. My current “favorite breakfast” is ½ large cantaloupe with a ½ cup of blueberries and coffee. ½ cantaloupe is about 7 grams of carbs and one ½ cup fresh blueberries is 9 grams carbs. That’s only 16 grams of carbs and it is all I can do to eat it all. I will also use ½ of a papaya from time to time instead of cantaloupe with about the same results. (But I add a little lime juice; it’s the only way to eat papaya). This also allows me to have a higher carb meal later in the day without bad results (but, I don’t go crazy with this)

So: Look at the number of carbs on the labels of the things you eat. See what foods you can substitute to help reduce the amount of carbs you eat without starving yourself, and look at your portion sizes on the labels. This will be a great start (and probably an “eye opener”) for a lot of people.

Of course just reducing carbs is NOT the only thing I am doing to reach my “one pound a week” weight loss goal, but is sure has helped. Nuff said today… enjoy breakfast….

The Adventure Begins (Again)

Attention FAT People of the World,

OK, for those of you who have been on every diet known to man and have tried all of the pills, liquids, gadgets, & schemes to loose weight only to fail, or worse yet, to actually lose weight only to have it come back with a vengeance, I offer the following:

YOU CANNOT GO ON A DIET!

Yeah, I know there are a few of you who have gone on the Atkins Diet, or Weight Watchers, or Acai Berry, or "Slim for Life", or any number of other so called "fad diets" out there and have lost some weight. We all have. Unfortunately for just about all of us, we wind up gaining it all back, and in many cases the "FAT" we lost has invited a few of their FAT buddies to join them when they come back and we wind up gaining more than we lost. So what am I selling?

ABSOLUTLY NOTHING!

I have, however, stumbled on to a way to actually lose weight and keep it off. The picture above
with my beautiful daughter Jessica was taken in 2002 when I weighed 326#. I now weight 253# (I've lost 73#) and I intend on being 24 pounds lighter by New Years. My weight loss has, like many of us, been like a roller coaster ride until this last year. I've now found a way to lose my weight and keep it off. As I do this I will BLOG about how I am doing it (without surgery or being "on" a diet) and how you can learn from the MANY mistakes I've made before I actually started loosing this weight.

Like I said before, you cannot "go" on a diet.The secret I will leave you with today is that all you need to do is CHANGE your diet. (And do a few more things I will tell you about). I will share recipes’, my "one pound a week" philosophy, some secrets that EVERY weight loss program has, and tidbits of how hard it can get and what I do to cope with it. (grin :-). So tune in again, there will be more good stuff coming soon!



David Tracewell
Parkville, MO