Caught Red Handed - 6 pounds of water weight

This weekend, I made some bad choices.  Oh, how the mighty have fallen! 



On Saturday, I made a lower carb chocolate chip cookie, substituting coconut flour for regular flour and erithritol and sugar free pancake syrup for white and brown sugar.  The result was a delicious little cookie (2 dozen of them, in fact) that weighed in at about 2.5 net carbs each.  The recipe was an amazing success.  However, I ate the entire batch by myself - 1 dozen on Saturday and 1 dozen on Sunday. 

 

These cookies are totally induction friendly, as long as you limit yourself to a reasonable serving size.  Learn a lesson from me, though, and avoid this treat if you can't stop at just one or two.  We all have a diet "kryptonite" that is bound to sabotage us if we have it in the house and think to indulge.  My kryptonite appears to be chocolate chip cookies.  This splurge accounted for approximately 62.5 net grams of carbs, spread out over two days.  Not good. 

This mass cookie consumption coincided with "date night in", which we celebrated at home on Saturday evening.  My husband and I split a bottle of prosecco, which resulted in me drinking four flutes of prosecco.  Ouch.  Figure that is another 12-15 grams of carbs added into Saturday's carb count.



Not mine.  Mine was more "rustic".

The next day, I woke up and made 8 pounds of royal icing for my family's annual Gingerbread House Contest, a tradition whereby old and young gather, decorate gingerbread, eat and smack talk for 4 hours.  It is a load of fun.  However, when you consider how much icing I licked off my fingers during that period... eesh. 



I didn't even have the will to do Fitday calculations for Saturday and Sunday.  I could tell by yesterday evening that I was completely bloated by the way that my jeans felt around my middle.  Not so hot.  Recognizing this, I had a cobb salad with chicken for dinner.  A good choice that did nothing to rectify the sins of the weekend.  Oh well, here's to not making things worse!  Hurrah.

Low Carb Diet for Breast Cancer Prevention

Women with a family history of breast cancer found less likely to have a recurrence of breast cancer if they limited carbohydrate in their diet - particularly "starch". 

Check out these study results recently published by the American Association of Cancer Researchers:

Intermittent, Low-Carbohydrate Diets More Successful Than Standard Dieting, Present Possible Intervention for Breast Cancer Prevention

Starch Intake May Influence Risk for Breast Cancer Recurrence

Fitness for Dummies - Holiday Edition

Would you rather start the New Year off with regret over your December glut, or begin 2012 admiring the work you did in December to help trim your big ol' November butt? 

Everyone always talks about New Year's resolutions, and starting afresh in the New Year.  You can see evidence of this everywhere you look, but especially at your local gym.  In December, the place is dead. 

Come January 2nd or 3rd, however, and you can't get a parking space outside, you have to wait 15 minutes to get on an elliptical machine, and the dumbbells are being occupied by, well, dumbbells who don't know how valuable your time is!  It is ridiculously frustrating, and, if you're like me, it gives you just one more excuse to slack off and stay at home, munching and watching the tube like a zombie. 

Here are some thoughts. 

First, you can do what I did, and hit the gym hard THIS month.  That's right.  Live in the present, and kick some tush NOW, not later.  While everyone else is out at Christmas parties, drinking and noshing their waistlines away, or vying for a parking space at the local shops, you can do the smart thing and hit that deserted wasteland that is your gym in December.  (Not that you can't go to Christmas parties or shop... just don't forget fitness while you gleefully prepare for your favorite holiday). 

There are a lot of benefits to hitting the gym right now.  Because it is not crowded, you don't have to wait in line for machines or weights, you can feel comfortable trying out a new routine or technique because you won't have an audience to observe if you mess up/fall off, and the likelihood is that you may actually get to have some quality time with knowledgeable gym staff who can teach you some cool tricks, or show you how to use a particularly daunting weight machine. 

As well, because you are being mindful of your fitness, you are less likely to treat yourself with the carby delights and alcohol abondanza that are pressed upon you this season.  So, the likelihood is that you will maintain your weight or even lose weight during the holiday season, instead of digging yourself into a nutritional and fitness hole that will be hard to climb out of next month. 

Second, you can start learning fitness techniques that you can do outside of the gym NOW, so that when the inevitable January gym rush hits, you can supplement your gym routine with activities that you can do in and around your home.  

Here's my recommendation: Check out these videos on body weight exercises by Mark Sisson of marksdailyapple.com and the Primal Blueprint fame, and give them a try.  In my life, I've never been able to do a single pullup.  Mark Sisson's videos show techniques that fitness neophytes like me (and maybe you) can use to work our way up to doing pullups, increasing the intensity of the exercise as we develop in upper body strength.  There are also videos for doing squats, pushups and the plank.  Best of all, these are exercises that you can do in the privacy of your own home, whenever the feeling strikes you.  To my family's amusement, I've popped a couple of wall squats (they look a little bizarre) while watching cartoons with my kid, and done some pushups off the kitchen counter while waiting for water to boil. 

Making the commitment to fitness, whether at home or at the gym, is something that you can absolutely do.  In my experience, taking control of my diet and my activity level has been an empowering experience.  

My LCHF 1 year anniversary arrives on January 24, 2011.  I have come a long way since then.  Today, I weighed in at 197 pounds.  I started this way of life at 231.5 pounds.  That's is a total loss of 34.5 pounds to date. 

Thanks to the changes I've made in my diet and fitness over the past year, I've said goodbye to heartburn, IBS, recurrent back pain, feeling dizzy when I bend over to tie my shoes, and wearing size 20W clothing.  I have said hello to being healthy, being able to run around with my kid, looking better (in clothes which are a size 14 regular now), and feeling more confident and accomplished.  Most of all, I have a hope for the future that I will never be fat and sick again, and I can see myself trim and healthy.

My interim personal goal is to hit my 40 pound weightloss milestone by January 24, 2012. 

What's your goal?