Thursday, January 20, 2011

Been quite awhile since I've updated my blog. Not a good start to my New Years resolution. Anyways, I'll use the excuse that my parents are away on vacation and I'm babysitting my brother. But of course, that's not the reason - I'm just being lazy.

So this last week has not been good, diet wise. I haven't weighed myself since my last post. It's almost been like a "diet vacation", although I haven't been eating that bad. Had fast food 2 or 3 times this week, which is never good.

I was at a friend's house today and saw a book there called The Belly Fat Cure by Jorge Cruise. I had never heard of him, but apparently he's famous, even been on Oprah's The View and the Dr. Oz show. So I started reading it and it doesn't sound half bad. I didn't know this, but apparently excess abdominal fat is linked to increased levels of daytime sleepiness and overall fatigue - something I very often experience. Belly fat is also linked to causing sleep apnea, and I was diagnosed with having mild sleep apnea in 2009. I was supposed to go back for another test in December 2010, but haven't yet. For all I know, it could be worse. Excess belly fat is linked to heart disease, type 2 diabetes, certain types of cancer, chronic fatigue, sexual dysfunction, adrenal burnout, sleep apnea, premature aging and immune disorders. That's enough bad things to make you think twice about what you're eating. It's amazing how having extra belly fat can cause all these things.

According to the American Heart Association and the National Institutes of Health, if you're a woman, your waist circumference should be 35 inches or less. And if you're a man, it should be 40 inches or less. To be more specific, you take your height in inches and divide it by two - this will be your ideal waist circumference. For example, I'm 5'4", which is 64 inches, so my ideal waist circumference is 32. In the book it says that you should measure the waist circumference by sucking in your belly as much as you can, then measuring around your belly button. So according to that measurement, my waist is 44.5 inches. I am clearly carrying around excessive fat, although I didn't have to measure that to know it. This also means that I measured my waist incorrectly in my first post.

In the book, Cruise presents us with a type of diet, one where sugar intake is very limited. According to him, "you can't get fat or stay overweight without insulin", which has been proven to push fat into fat cells. His diet is called the Carb Swap Diet. He's come up with a diet that is supposed to keep you away from foods full of sweeteners and processed carbs, which keep our insulin levels high. The daily foods that are in his diet will amount to no more than 15g of sugar and 6 servings of carbs (about 120g). He also explains the science behind the Belly Fat Cure, breaking it down to two parts: How Too Much Sugar Leads to Belly Fat, and How Too Few Carbs Lead to "False" Belly Fat. He explains earlier that "false" belly fat is trapped waste matter in the intestines, the result of a lack of good carbohydrates in a daily diet. So when you lose 4 to 9 pounds from your waist, only about 2 to 3 pounds is from true belly fat. When you think about it, that sounds pretty disgusting knowing what's in there.

Anyways, so I wrote all of this as an introduction to my next attempt at some sort of diet. In the book, there is a One Week Challenge where for 7 days you eat what is in the menu for that day. At the end of the day, you will have consumed only 15g of sugar and 6 servings of carbs. Depending on how religiously you follow the menu, you should lose 4 to 9 pounds every week. Listed are five different one-week meal plans: Carb Lover, Meat Madness, Chicken & Seafood, Quick & Easy, and Sweet Bites. They allow you to pick a menu that best fits your tastes and lifestyle, while still following the 15/6 rule.

He also has a "No-Excuses Day" menu, something a lot simpler than the other plans. This one is meant for days where you don't want what's listed in your meal plan, but you can also use it on a daily basis. It consists of:

Breakfast

Three whole eggs, sunny-side up

Two pieces of toast with butter

Snack

Small handful of walnuts

Lunch

Tuna salad on one piece of pita bread

Snack

One cup of cottage cheese sprinkled with an approved sweetener

Dinner

Grilled chicken or steak with sauteed vegetables

Half a cup of brown rice

*Also requires that you drink 8 to 10 glasses of water a day. For sweet cravings, chew a stick of gum.

The book consists mainly of recipes for the meal plans, including the lunch and dinner portions of the above plan.

So starting Monday, I will start this diet. Test it out for a week, and see if it actually works.Until then, I'll try not to eat too much junk food.

Hmmmm I think I have some chocolate cake somewhere in the kitchen... LOL