Hello Sunshine!

The last week or so has been super sunny in Leeds and I have been a busy bee instead of my usual slovenly self, which got me thinking…
Is there a link between sunshine and diet or exercise?

I couldn’t find much about it when I did a little internet research. Sure there are loads of articles about how good vitamin D is for you, but that’s more about boosting muscle strength, preventing muscle weakness and absorbing more Calcium, which is great, but not exactly what I was looking for.

My thoughts are more about motivations and cravings during sunny days. Why it’s so much easier to go for a walk or to attack the gardening and easier to chose the right things for meals when the day is bright and/or warm.

It could be linked to an illness called SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) in a small way. I don’t mean we all suffer from it, just that it could be a similar theory.
SAD sufferers experience a craving for carbs during winter which boosts their mood, for example and doesn’t that sound like comfort eating? They also develop sudden need to be doing things during spring (sunny) months which is referred to as “Over activity” in the symptoms list….. Is that so different from suddenly deciding that you want to go on a spur of the moment family trip because it’s nice weather?

Don’t get me wrong. I am not trying to say that SAD isn’t a real thing that many people suffer from. I personally think that not only is it real, but that it can be very disabling to those who suffer from it. I am, of course, just over simplifying my point by comparing the illness to what almost all people feel when the weather gets better in the spring.

From a personal point of view, I have been almost hibernating this winter and when the sun came out this April, it was as if I had suddenly woken, full of the joys of spring. I have been cleaning almost manically and my garden hasn’t had this kind of attention for a long time! And I’m pretty sure that I’m not the only one either!

So given this amazing anomaly, why is it that we always choose the beginning of the year to embark on a new diet or fitness regime? It might be a whole new year, a whole new you, but given your body’s natural reaction to winter, are we just making it harder and setting ourselves up to fail?

That bargain at the Gym

Last year I joined a gym. It was a great gym with an amazing range of classes and equipment, but it turned out that going to the gym wasn’t really me. I attended for around 2 months.

Now while that is all true, it’s not exactly the whole story. You see, when you sign up with a gym, they offer you several payment packages to choose from and they are incredibly clever at selling these simple packages. I forget the exact amounts and I’m sure that after a year, the prices have changed anyway, but the concept remains the same.

The longer you sign up for, the less you pay – that’s the selling pitch at least and for those people who are “gym people” I’m sure that’s actually true. But for those of us who sign up, attend for a couple of months then lose interest, it’s a real con!

For example:
Month by month contract – very high price… lets say £50 per month
12 month contract – Medium price … lets call it £40 per month
18 month contract – Low price…. £30 ish a month

Now that 18 month contract looks good! It’s a whole £20 a month saving right!?

Wrong!

My 2 month stint at the gym would have cost me £100 on the month by month contract, £480 on the medium and a whopping £540 on that “amazing” low price contract!

This bargain you are getting from your local gym is ONLY A BARGAIN if you are going to be there for the whole contract period! And how many of us do that? Lets face it….. not very many!

Am I saying don’t join a gym? No, I’m not. They can be great places while on the Great Weight Loss Journey. What I am saying though, is stop and think before you sign up. Are you 100% sure you will be attending for the whole contract period? If not, sign up for a rolling, month by month package, you can always change it later, should you discover you’re a closet gym addict or something.

For the ladies!

I wanted to write a post about menstrual cycles and their effect on weight loss but I only really had my own experiences and hear-say to draw from. So I hit the trusty internet!
I was shocked at the wealth of information on this subject and even more shocked at how much sense it made…. not only in relation to periods (known in SW circles as star week) but also in regards to depression and how different hormone and chemical levels drive our food cravings.

The following is taken from an article on medicinenet.com titled “Is PMS sabotaging your Diet?”

Hormones to Blame

The hormonal ebbs and spikes that occur throughout a woman’s cycle are the major culprits in PMS. As levels of estrogen go up and down, so do levels of the stress hormone cortisol, explains Pamela Peeke, MD, MPH, author of Fight Fat After 40 and assistant professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. “It’s a very potent little partnership. The body wants to keep them aligned.”

And when cortisol levels are high enough, the body turns on its fight-or-flight response, a woman becomes more metabolically charged, and her appetite is stimulated. This, in turn, causes a woman to seek out carbs and fat, “the actual fuels of the fight-and-flight response,” Peeke says.

Whether a woman will crave sweets or croissants, though, depends on yet another player: the brain chemical serotonin, she says. Most women with PMS experience a drop in serotonin levels, which triggers cravings for carbs because the body uses carbs to make serotonin.

“If cortisol is high and serotonin is low, you’ll seek carbs and fats, but really heavy duty on the simple carbs — sugar-based sweets like chocolate bars,” Peeke says. The reason: Simple sugars are metabolized more quickly than complex carbs, so they offer a quick serotonin fix.

If cortisol is way up but serotonin is relatively normal, a woman is more likely to crave a fat-carb combo without a huge sweet component, such as a bagel laden with cream cheese, Peeke says.

 

Understanding this, of course, doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. Fighting your body’s natural cravings is possibly one of the biggest challenges during weight loss, but it can be done.
Experts say that a craving actually only lasts a few minutes, although it’s likely to be repeated over the course of the day and this means it can be ignored or redirected. If you are craving high fat/sugar based foods, try replacing your impending binge with snacks or meals including complex carbs.  Whole-grain breads, pasta, cereal and even baked potatoes will help keep those cravings at bay.

Progress. Week 27

Trying to live your life and lose weight at the same time is a hard thing to do. Over the last couple of months, I have lost and gained and lost. Overall, I’m still on my way down (32lbs as of this weeks weigh in) but it’s slow going because I refuse to give up my newly acquired life.

The weather has been helping me recently, but I feel as though it’s cheating… It’s too hot to eat much and working in a place with no air con means you work up quite a sweat! Still, 3lbs this week is not to be sniffed at.
I am still determined to reach a weight that I am happy with and that is a long way off, so I will plod on, 1lb at a time until I get there!

 

Since this post is pretty short, I’d like to add a shameless plug to my brothers blog on a similar topic. He is getting himself in shape to help him in his journey into pro wrestling reffing and I think it’s a really good read.
http://www.leedswrestlingref.com/random-musings/start-of-something-new/

It’s all about me!

I realised I’ve been up on my high horse recently (ok, maybe its more of  a Shetland Pony) with posts about scales and clothes and things, but I haven’t said much about how I’m doing… Not good for a blog about my journey!

So here I am, catching you all up on my progress.

I hit the 2 stone mark a couple of weeks ago – that’s a huge 10% of my body weight gone – and I’m starting to notice the change. My clothes are looser and I’m fitting in smaller sizes, my friends are commenting on it and I can see my shape is different. My feelings on this are split however. I’m happy to be rid of such a big chunk of fat, but I’m very aware that I’m still huge. (18 stone 1 pound at last official weigh in) and that dampens my happiness. Heard the term “a drop in the ocean”? Well that’s how I feel. 2 stone on most slimmers is their whole loss target, where as for me, it’s not even 1/4 of it!

Not to worry though, it’s not putting me off. I’ll never get rid of it if I stop now and, although slow, it IS shifting!

The problem I am having at the moment is getting to my weigh ins. I love my Wed night group, they are super supportive and laugh at my crazy outbursts while not judging me for my off weeks, but my shifts at work seem to be settling down into a regular pattern and it seems Wed night is now a work night. I’m going to have to try out some other groups to see which is better for me, but after having to visit a Thursday night one on past occasions, I’m not looking forward to this….. it’s just not the same!

I’ll leave you with my mantra for the last couple of weeks…

“I will not give up!”

The easy way vs the hard way

Surgery vs diet and exercise is tonight’s topic and is of interest to me because I know people who are doing it each of the possible ways.

What surgeries are we talking about? Well the 2 main ones at the moment are Gastric band and Gastric bypass and while the bypass is MUCH more dangerous, the band has its own list of problems…. as you will soon see.

Gastric Band/Lap band
Gastric banding consists of surgically inserting a band around the top section of your stomach, and cinching it into a small pouch. This is often touted as a simpler, less invasive procedure to gastric bypass, and whereas gastric banding is at least reversible, while gastric bypass is not, the complications are often so debilitating that patients opt to have the bands removed completely. Here’s the explaination for how it works….

Following band placement, in conjuction with band adjustment, inflation or fill,  after the band is adjusted or filled,  the resulting constriction of the stomach is achieved at the level of band placement. This constriction slows the passage of food to the stomach below – in the same way as sand flows through an hourglass.
When wound around the top of the stomach to create a small pouch, the band exerts very mild pressure after it has been inflated, or adjusted with saline.

Above the area of band placement a small ‘pouch’ is formed, and it is thought that for this reason the person with a well adjusted gastric band, is less likely to experience the sensation of hunger. Band adjustment allows the diameter through which the food passes to be widened or narrowed as clinically indicated.

It will also be evident, that swallowing insufficiently chewed food will lead to difficulties, and patients with a gastric band in place will need to carefully chew their food very well, and also eat smaller portions of food.
When the pouch is full, the patient also will have the feeling that their whole stomach is full- they feel satiated

Gastric Bypass
Gastric bypass involves stapling your stomach into a pouch that’s only a half-ounce in size, so it literally cannot hold much. The idea is that you’ll feel full faster, since your stomach will be unnaturally tiny, but this also means you’ll often be eating meals that are sorely lacking in nutritional requirements.

A small opening is also created to allow food to empty slowly from the pouch. Because the opening is so small (made this way deliberately to keep the small amount of food you’ve eaten in your stomach longer, making you feel “full”), food must be chewed very thoroughly or it won’t be able to fit through the opening, leading to vomiting.

You’ll also be instructed to eat the protein portion of your meal first, because you very well may get too full to fit in a vegetable or anything else. Even liquids must be restricted for up to 45 minutes before and after a meal, lest they take up what little space you have to consume actual food. As you might suspect, because bariatric surgery patients can consume very little roughage, constipation is often a problem. It is even described as “normal” to have a bowel movement only once every two or three days!

Snacking is also expressly forbidden after gastric bypass, as you’re only allowed three small meals a day, and you may have to write off certain foods entirely because your body just can’t digest them anymore. This includes red meats, skins of fruits and vegetables (where the bulk of the antioxidants are) and fibrous vegetables. This is simply NOT a healthy way of eating, and the long-term implications are just as severe as the short-term risks. Hair loss and muscle loss are common after the surgery — both signs that your body is not receiving proper nutrition.

The main thing I have learnt about this is that there is no such thing as an easy way to loose weight. It’s hard work, plain and simple, no matter which way you do it.
Here’s some facts about the so called easy ways out….

• Nearly half of weight loss surgeries result in MAJOR complications.
  This includes: Band erosion, kidney stones, black-outs, malnutrition, bowel and gallbladder problems, infection, liver failure, abnormal band expansion and even death!
• 88% of weight loss surgeries result in minor complications.
  This includes: Gastroesophageal reflux, Esophageal dilation, Leaking or twisted access port into the stomach, Band slippage and/or pouch dilation, Reduced esophageal function, Difficulty swallowing, Stomach obstruction and the band eroding into the stomach.
• The chance of dying from the procedure in the first 30 days is 1 in 50… the odds go up 4.7 times if the doctor has performed the surgery less than 20 times – due to inexperience.
• Half of patient need their band removing due to the complications
• 1 in 3 patients suffer from band erosion
• 60% of patients need to have further surgery

So tell me….. does it still seem like the easy way?

Clothing for a fat chick

This may turn into a bit of a rant and I’m sorry in advance if that happens, but I have several issues with clothes shopping these days and I’m jumping right in!

Sizing – Why cant a size 20 be the same measurements everywhere or even in the same shop?! I’m getting really fed up of finding something I like the fit of and going back to get another, only to find the size isn’t the same fit as the previous one or getting something in my size in 2 shops and finding that one fits and the other doesn’t! Seriously, is it so hard?

Sizing pt 2 – How many of each size do shops get? When you’re looking through the racks and see plenty of skinny girl sizes (8s and 10s and even 12s) but few or none of the bigger ones… well it p****s me off! And sale clothes? no chance!
The average woman in England is a size 14 these days which means there are as many people over that as there are under it… so why are clothes manufacturers and shops not providing for this fact? If the sale rack is full of skinny sizes and no bigger ones, that says to me that they screwed up. If they had offered less in smaller sizes and more in the bigger ones, they would likely have sold every item before they had to go on sale… that means more money to the shop and happier customers! I cant be the only one who sees this?!

Style – Just because I’m a fat chick, it doesn’t mean I want to wear the clothing equivalent of a tent! Don’t get me wrong, I realise that not all clothes are suitable for big girls, but I’m not talking bikinis and mini skirts here, I’m talking normal, everyday clothes in a wide range of styles that stop in some shops at size 16 and 18 in most others. You are then forced to hit the “whale” section… which I’d like to point out usually starts at size 16!…and have to choose from tent shaped tops and leggings or elastic waisted jeans.

Price – Yes I know bigger clothes means more material and that’s not a problem. Some stores don’t charge more for the bigger clothes, some do the same as with kids and just increase it a little to account for the extra fabric as the size goes up and those places are great, but some…. usually the ones who cater for fat people only, well they charge you twice as much as anywhere else!

What does all that leave us with? Ill fitting, expensive, unstylish clothing! Is this some kind of conspiracy to encourage us to shed some pounds?!