I know—no, really…I know!—that I can be a nag about certain things.  I’d be amazed if you did not know that I was a psycho about good fat in your diet or variety in your meal plan.  In fact, I’d think there was something wrong with you if you didn’t know that about me.  But there really are reasons for the broken record lectures that come out of my lap top every week.  This series would rank up there as one in the top 3 reasons I am the psycho I am about the way you diet.  Not just that you diet, but exactly how you do it.  Most folks focus on just your body, others focus on your body and your general health; I would say I focus on your acute symptoms first, general health second, emotional stability third and body fourth because I have seen the damage first hand when the (outside of the) body is the top priority.

Variety is my bat and your menu is my ball and I literally beat the living tar out of it every week.  Occasionally I’ll get a homerun, but for the most part I’m just swinging at it hoping for a line drive (for you to change anything).  Eating the same thing every day, day in and day out is boring, restrictive and will make you manic.  But more importantly, it sets you up for food allergies and intolerances that once they set in, you have most of them for a long time or for life for some others.  Nothing is worse than having a favorite food that you can no longer eat because you ate too much of it and now it either makes you sick or makes you sick when you eat something else with it.  Ok, well I lied.  There is something worse.  And that would be developing an autoimmune disease or condition because of the foods that you are eating such as Crohn’s disease, diverticulitis, gastritis, IBS or Ulcers.

Each one of these conditions have no real known cause as to why you have them but all of them can be triggered by food allergies/sensitivities.  Crohn’s typically runs in families but just because your parents have it does not mean you will.  What really needs to happen is that you provide it with the right environment to thrive and then it will kick in when it’s ready.   Ulcers are very much like that, as well.  They are caused by H. Pylori bacteria that flourish in our stomachs but not everyone who has H. Pylori has ulcers.  This means that we needed to get our bodies in such a rut/mess that we cultivated that condition.  I would hate to know I brought something as painful as ulcers into fruition because I insisted on eating XYZ every day.   We would like to think that because we are eating so “healthy” that we no longer have to worry about these things.  Only people who eat crap get these things.  Wrong!  Oh so wrong!

One of the requirements to work with us is to fill out a health history questionnaire.  In that questionnaire we ask if you have any medical conditions that we need to know about.  Time and time again, form after form you will see someone list a gastrointestinal condition as something they are struggling with.  Shoot down to the section on food and they will say, “Every day I have…”  and proceed to give me their food diary.  Is this their fault?  No.  No one talks about variety the way they should and most of us are happy we eat something never mind trying to mix it up.  But now that you do know, you are responsible for your health and you need to get to mixing it up!

Here are some things that you need to know when it comes to these five conditions:

Do not stack slow metabolizers

I talk about this as ‘caustic combos’.  These are foods that are not bad but should not be eaten close to each other.  Salmon, steak, sword fish, beans and pasta come to mind when I think of these.  They are foods that typically take a long time to move through the colon.  Therefore, eating them on the same day or having them day after day is not a good idea.  Slow motility (the amount of time food spends in your colon) is a major factor in diverticulitis and IBS.  The longer food sits in your colon, the more damage it can do.  And yes, we eat a lot of fiber but that means nothing.  Constipation is out of control among clean eaters (hence this series).

Binge on more than just chocolate

Chocolate is mucus forming and can really do a number on the colon.  Mucus is a primary symptom of IBS which basically says that there is major inflammation somewhere.  Say you work out and do not replenish your water adequately.  Then you come home a little later and have a salmon salad for lunch.  Now you’ve jammed up the highway during a drought season.  Then you lose your tree that night on some chocolate (I know…you’d never do that).  Now you have a chief aggravator waiting its turn for exit in your colon while sitting behind pink stucco.  Great.

Easy on the offenders

Dairy, wheat/gluten, egg whites, nuts, soy, popcorn, chemicals in food, caffeine (yoohoo diet coke lovers), chicken and fructose/sweeteners of any kind are known allergens.  Eating them in large quantities is just asking for trouble.  Back in the day, Walden farms marinades were all the rage.  Then people started cropping up with all kinds of health issues—not because there was something wrong with the marinades, but because they were going through a bottle a week.  It was crazy.  I am sure Walden Farms did not want people eating their product on that level.  But that’s what we do, we KILL foods we love.  KILL them dead!  We eat them until their pouring out of our skin.  So much of what we go through is incredibly preventive.

Listen, if you made it this far….wow.  There is more.  We need to talk symptoms of the above, supplements for everything and thyroid stuff.   This goes much deeper than you think.  Woop woop!

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Waking up every morning to a flat stomach is a great feeling.  Not just because we all want a flat belly, but because it typically means we feel good, too.  But as the day wears on, many of us begin to bloat, become gassy or our stomachs start to complain with this occurring on a near daily basis.  Since our diets tend to be free of the usual suspects (processed food, cheese and excessive sweeteners) we are left to wonder what are we doing wrong and why do we need to burn a hole through our office chair when no one is around?

Aside from the normal issues associated with diarrhea, constipation and persistent gas, I wanted to take you into the land of naturopathic medicine and give you a few more things to think about other than the normal causes and remedies.

Diarrhea

What is it? Annoying and smelly.  Great combo right there; makes you just want to have it weekly.

Normal Causes: Incomplete digestion, food poisoning, artificial sweeteners

Notable Causes: Emotional stress—I see this a lot.  We must find ways to manage our stress better.  We tend to forget that running, plyos, cardio and lifting are also a form of stress to the body so we heap on more stress on top of good stress.  From here we just become one big leaky gut.  Chron’s or ulcerative colitis—Here is another common one that you would not necessarily think about but many of us suffer from it.  If you are having chronic diarrhea and have just said ‘what the heck about it’, get this checked out!  Vitamin Deficiency—specifically A, B and zinc.  I know we think we eat healthy so we don’t need to supplement, but that’s crap (pardon the pun).  We play hard and eat lite.  Stay on top of your vitamins.

Treatment: The easiest by far is the BRAT diet.  Go here before going to Immodium.  BRAT diet (bananas, rice, apples and toast) starts out with chicken broth first.  Just plain old chicken broth with lots of sodium in it.  Do that for about 2 meals, then add rice at the next meal.  If you can hold all that in, add a piece of dry toast with that soup next meal.  If all goes well, have a banana or an apple/sauce.  Lastly, add in plain chicken for stability and you should be good to go by then.  If it’s really severe, start with  rice water first:  1 cup rice boiled in 5 cups water for 45 min.  Have it throughout the day before venturing into the BRAT diet.

Constipation

What is it? A traffic jam that when released, causes the scale to drop as much as 3 pounds.

Normal Causes: Dehydration!

Notable causes: Not going when you have to—if you have to go, then go.  Don’t hold back for long periods of time because that can have major consequences.  Magnesium deficiency—now do you see why I am psycho about it?  This is just one of the benefits of Mg.  Depression—need I say more?  Very prevalent in the clean eating community.  Hypothyroidism—if you can’t kick start your system, you can’t really kick the colon into action either.  This is a good sign as to whether they have you dialed into the right dose of thyroid med.

Treatment: Start with a fiber product.  Use laxatives only as last resort.  Teas work really well.  But here are some things you may not have thought of:  Guacamole—with or without chips, enough of this stuff can make the meal you at on prom night fall out of you.  It’s called greasin’ the groove.  As a side note…do not have this or salmon or anything high fat the day before a long run.  That’ll be an inconvenient run if ever there was one.  Do NOT have fiber—if you have gone 5 or 6 days without going, fiber at this point is like stuffing cotton into your eardrum.  It doesn’t make sense.  Instead, try a stool softener.  It will work much better.

Gas

What is it? Embarrassing and revealing all at the same time.

Here’s the deal: All of us have gas all the time.  It’s normal.  But when it starts to smell like first days of the Boston Harbor Project at low tide, something is wrong.  If you have adequate variety in your diet, this should not be a huge issue.  But if you insist on eating only 2 veggies and they are broccoli and kale, you may have the ability to clear out a commuter train at 5pm.  Also, I find that because our meals are packed for the day and we tend to either eat them cold or eat them rapidly, that our digestion is typically poor.  Slow down, heat up your food and take time to eat it.  You could be saving yourself some money in the long run with all the candles you won’t have to buy.

Treatment: Digestive enzymes, glutamine and probiotics.  Most of us run out and get the probiotics and we forget about the enzymes.  More on those later.

We have more to delve into over the next few days.  Bloating is caused by much more than what’s here.  I am finding we have stomach issues and liver problems, as well.  More than anything I really want you to reduce your stress.  That includes working out too much.  Ya hear me?  Woop woop!

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There comes a time when an issue is so worth discussing that we have to look past the embarrassment factor that it may cause.  When I first started eating clean, I never thought about anything but the outcome.  All I cared about was what I was going to look like when I reached goal and the methodology behind what I was doing to get there (remember, I started this to do what I do now for a living, not to just look good).  I had no idea that I could crave foods more than a pregnant woman in her 9 month or after a period of dieting hate chicken with a passion reserved for mean people and animal abusers.  But what was the real shocker was the gastric disturbance caused by all of the veggies and artificial sweeteners in my diet.  Even after I cleared out all the sweeteners, I could still level a 4 story building with one shot if I wasn’t careful.  You know it’s clinical, when you are burning so many candles that you change the temperature in the room that you are sitting in.  That’s serious business right there.

This is going to be a TMI series at some points and a great help at others.  What I have found in the clean eating community is an abnormal amount of gastric issues when they should be cleared up with our initial diet change.  IBS, heartburn, constipation, Crohn’s disease, gastritis and so on are rampant amongst the ranks and it seems as if it shouldn’t be.  So I want us to take a look at what we are doing right, what we’re doing wrong and what we don’t even know that we are doing that is furthering these conditions.  Whenever you read a book on these conditions, the first thing that they tell you is to clean up the diet and we have already.  So what gives?

I will be talking about these conditions and how they affect us both physically and emotionally because both play a role in our overall health.  Since we tend to be type A folks, we have to look at what that does to our stress levels and our colons alike.  Most of us at some point in our dieting careers are like wound up balls of yarn waiting to unwind at any moment.  That does a number on us long term and since adrenal fatigue is a concern nowadays, we need to be prudent in the way we relax as much as the way we diet.

I won’t be starting this series until Monday.  There will be no blog on Thursday and the Friday audio post will not be posted until Saturday afternoon.  I owe you sweet and savory so I’ll be getting that on the blog this weekend.  If you have anything you want to see covered in this next series, hit me up at Jodi@trans4mationstation.com.  Cool?  Woop woop!

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This is part two of my crazy month of April where I was accosted by some insane folks with some insane questions.

I want you to know how this really happens because when you read these it can almost sound like I’m trying to say that I’m well known or something.  Umm…that is SO far from the case.  BUT, I am well known in my very small circle of influence (that’d be 8 people, 2 dogs, 2 cats and some bunnies in my yard) by what I presently do and what I used to do.  Now those folks never ask me any questions—they know better.  After I’ve told you something 5 times, I begin to put your business out there when you ask me something you know already.  This is a great deterrent for repetitive questions from family.  It looks like this:

Repeat offender: “Jodi?”

Me: “Yayesss?”  If you have ever had me say yes to you this way, you know what this sounds like.

RO: “Do I have to measure my food?”

Me: “Nope.”

RO: “Really?  You told me before that I should?”

Me: “I did?”  Knowing full well that I did and said with a massively incredulous tone.  “Well then why are you asking me again?”  Said with full sincerity.

RO: “Because I was hoping you would say no.  And you did, but I know you’re lying.”

Me: “I’m not lying.  You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.  Like progress (pronounced proe-gress).  Why do what you need to do to progress?  What you’re doing so far is working great for you.  Just keep doing more of that.”  At this point they’re done with me because they realized they’re not going to get anywhere (both in their dieting and the conversation with me) but I swear to you I am neither mean nor snide.  Those days are behind me (kinda;).

So if it’s not all my family and friends asking me these questions and I’m as famous as a homeless guy (although the dude in Boston who walks along Mass Ave, Roxbury, and washes your windows is pretty well known), who is asking me these questions?  Their friends!  Holy suffering survey, Batman!  My family’s friends and my friends’ friends can keep me busy for a long time.  Since I’ve never met most of them before, I do not mind.  It is funny to watch someone who knows me run and hide, though, when they ask me a question they know is a no-no.  But they don’t realize that I just do that to them.  Sillies.

Here’s Part 2.

Do I have to measure my food?

Yes.  Think about it this way.  You’re on a side street doing a good clip.  Not sure how much but a bit on the fast side.  A cop standing on the side of the road for a detail pulls you over.  He didn’t clock you.  He saw you.  He’s been on the force for 25 years, though.  He “knows” speeding when he sees it.  He gives you a ticket and tells you to slow down.  Is he right?  Yes.  But the ticket he gives you is dependent on *exactly* how fast you were going.  He claims 43mph.  Your speedometer said 40.  Three extra mph adds $30 to the ticket in Ma.  When you contest this by going to the judge and say, “I can’t accept this. He didn’t measure this accurately. I should not be stuck with this fine.”  The judge is going to say, “You’re right.”  Think of this when you step on the scale.  You’re using an accurate measuring tool to measure an inaccurate way of dieting.  Must be frustrating to accept those extra 3 pounds.

When can I stop measuring my food?

First time dieting:  after 5 weeks.  Veteran:  after 3 weeks and you are on a roll.

Do I have to have a cheat meal?  I’ve been doing great without one.

Yes.  Because you haven’t gone anywhere yet that has your favorite food.  You’re locked up in a cell known as your house.  As soon as you leave the compound, though, and go to a real function with real food laid out in front you, I have ten dollars that says you’ll forsake utensils and you will defy gravity with some of the eating techniques you will use when you get around that PB/chocolate/ice cream/starchy food/dessert that you’ve been missing.  No snortling please.

Sometimes the things that I get are not actually questions, but declarations.  It’s as if they want me to say to them, “You are so amazing and so on track!  What you’re doing is fabulous.  You’ll be Heidi Klum in no time.”   However, it’s usually something that will send me into a two hour rant.  See below:

• “I don’t eat salt.” Who is scarred from the salt rant?  Don’t make me go here again.  I can only say “huge” so many times.

• “I don’t eat fruit.” Now that’s just sad.  Fruit is nature’s candy and definitely not the reason you haven’t reached goal.

• “I don’t eat starch.” This is a BIG mistake.  There are a ton of Atkins/South Beach sufferers from back in the day who can tell you how much this hurts you as you get older in life.  This is cool if you never ever gain any weight back.  BUT, if you gain even just 5 pounds back, you’re done for.

• “My trainer says…” Good.  Why are you talking to me about this?  Follow what they say and stop fact checking them.  This is some sick game people like to play pitting trainer against trainer like they’ve been hanging out with Michael Vick or something.  Knock it off and go with your trainer.  You’re paying them.

You know there’s more.  I had lock jaw by the end of the month.  Hang tight.  Woop woop!

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First, let me just say I love that saying.  There’s something about that phrase that makes me feel like I’m saying a naughty word when I am really not.  I love it—and that’s sad that something like that makes my day.  Wow…  Second, there really is something that’s sticking in my craw (mind you, craw means the stomach of an animal.  Ewww).  I am in the middle of doing research for a new series coming up (and a few other things that I am writing that you’ll know about soon enough) and it has forced me to have to have to read a bunch of studies.  If you have never done this, let me help you through wondering whether this is a good thing or a really mundane and awful thing:

• Studies are crap. Very few studies are done now as truly sanctioned studies.  Back in the day they used to segregate people from the world and force them to do maniacal acts all for the sake of science.  Ok.  Sorry.  That’s not true…but they did follow them very closely and more often than not, provide them with the food necessary for the study.  Nowadays, you’re on your own and instead they “ask” you how felt or what you ate and when and how much and etc.  That’s about as factual as me calling you up right now and asking you what you ate last Tuesday for lunch, what you wore 2 weeks ago to the gym and then drawing a conclusion from that.  What the…??
• They are all rigged. Now, truth be told, that’s an exaggeration.  But for the sake of this post and the fact that I am now annoyed from going through as many as I have, they are all rigged.  What I mean by this statement is there are very few government grants out there for studies of things that matter.  The people who are paying for studies are typically the people who will benefit from the information coming out of the study.  If they won’t benefit from the information, you won’t see the study.  Ask Monsanto.  They’re sitting on a stock pile of studies you will never see.
• They are misleading. The conclusions that come from studies are dangerous simply because they are interpreting them from shady data.  See number 1 and then think about some of the bad things that can come from that.  If I ask you if your headache medication made you feel better a week after you took it, you could say anything in response to that and I will then use that info to *rate* the headache medication.  What happens when you don’t remember all that well?  Or, if you forgot you took something else right after because it didn’t work great.  Now I go and post that info that that medicine wasn’t good or that it was great and it really wasn’t.  This is what many people are using nowadays as their litmus for decisions.  Frightening.  Think of how many butter vs. margarine studies there are and then shudder.
• They are suppressed. There are a whole bunch of studies out there you will never see.  That stresses me out the more I think about it.  Big industries like dairy and beef or megalomaniacs like Monsanto suppress so much information that would benefit the public it is awful.  They either distort it or suppress it.  Either way, it’s terrible.

I do want to say that the ones done like the good ole days are very valuable to us and those are the ones that I am trying to sift through and save.  As much as I love a good study, I love experience even more.  If I can round up some good pics for you, I have a good series coming on body types.  Y’alls need to know what your potential is.  As always, hang tight for more!  And put down that chocolate! Woop woop!:o)

Have you ever woken up in the morning and just knew that was the day “it” was going down?  I mean everything, not just food.  So if your co-worker was going to try to throw you under the bus again, she was getting an earful; if your man wanted to voice his opinion on what you were wearing that day, he was in for a beat down; if your kids thought that they were going to sass you that morning, they were in for the longest punishment given this side of the Mississippi; and when you went out to lunch that day with the office, you were having a piece of bread AND you were splitting a dessert.  Have you ever had one of those days?  Did you ever wonder where it came from in the first place?  What made you all “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” at 6:30 in the morning before you even got dressed? Serotonin.

Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that regulates our mood, increases our pain tolerance, helps us sleep and curbs our food cravings.  When this little guy is in line, all is well.  When he isn’t, you start at one end of the kitchen and don’t stop until you make it to the other side eating anything with starch, fat and salt.  I’m sure your first question is going to be, “What makes him fall out of line?”  And my answer, plain and simple, for us is dieting.  Food restriction wears him down until he is at such low levels that he demands to be raised again by any means necessary and that means carbohydrate, lots and lots of carbohydrate.   When these cravings kick in, the only thing that is keeping you from blowing through a big bag of lays potato chips by yourself is the fact that they are not yours.  You just happen to be at your girlfriend’s house and those are her kids’ chips.  You don’t want her to think you really eat that stuff so you’re going to behave, but as soon as you get home it is on.

Here are some things to think about serotonin:

Symptoms when low: insomnia, depression, strong food cravings, aggressive behavior (pushing your cart into the woman in front of you at the grocery store was not cool), and poor body temp regulation.

Three things raise the level: carbohydrates, vitamins and estrogen.

When our period comes around: estrogen begins to drop dramatically which in turn drops serotonin.  Suddenly, we have the desire to eat 4 pounds of chocolate as a midmorning snack with a tablespoon of nuts to make sure it’s healthy.

At the end of a dieting phase: we are the lowest in terms of estrogen, carbs and vitamins.  It’s no wonder we walked into the neighborhood bakery with a can of pepper spray demanding that all half moons be placed in a brown paper bag while we slipped out the back.

How do we keep in check? High protein, vitamin B6 and fish oil.

Who Are Serotonin’s Aiders and Abettors?

Dopamine

You can thank dopamine any time you want a coffee first thing in the morning or a sweet after dinner.  Dopamine drives our desire for familiar foods that seem like rewards to us.  If we did all the right things in a given day by eating all of our veggies and not nibbling on foods in between, we want to be rewarded.  This means we want something sweet or yummy that feels naughty on our palette.  Or if we had a bad day and want to be comforted, hot chocolate or warm chocolate chip cookies seem to fill the gap.  What we desire on these bad days or at the end of the week when we feel like we’ve worked hard and deserve something good, is guided primarily by dopamine.

Galanin

This dude is no joke.  He has a bad attitude and the only thing that makes him happy is fat.  High levels of galanin make us crave fatty foods and desserts.  Why is he an aider and abettor?   Galanin increases with our estrogen levels just like serotonin does.  So once a month when our inhibitions are low (i.e. high serotonin means good mood all around) due to high estrogen therefore high serotonin and galanin, we feel like we can indulge ourselves with some high fat yummy food.  When we do that, though, our levels then drop with our blood sugar and carbohydrate cravings are there to lift our spirits once again.  This is a horrible see saw ride to be on and we do it all the time!

Endorphins

Ahhh…yes, endorphins.  We love these guys because they tell us that the beat down workout we just did earlier in the day was A-Ok.  They give us a natural high or what most folks know as a runner’s high.  They also like to make tasty food seem more fun than normal.  They literally encourage us to eat junk.  This means if you accidently listen to galanin or serotonin and eat something sinful, endorphins tell you to keep on going!  This is why you can’t stop eating the box of chocolates until they are gone.  WHOSE IDEA WAS THIS?  Jeez louise!

If you have ever wondered why you cannot stop eating chocolate, why you want a sweet right after dinner or why you can be a beast every so often for no apparent reason, there you go.  These guys are out to get us and it’s not nice.

Oh there’s more self sabotage on the way!  Wait til we talk about sodium, sugar and fat.  Honestly, it’s a wonder we all don’t weigh 1000 pounds knowing all this stuff.  Hang tight!  Woop woop!

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I have seen some jacked food combos in my time that’ll make your hair stand on end, all in the name of “variety”.  I am a huge proponent of variety in one’s diet and when folks try to put this into practice, it sometimes translates into a nightmarish situation.   But there is a reason I harp on variety and it bears repeating in this post:  severe, hard core, no-joke, serious BOREDOM.  So much so, that you may find yourself chewing on grass just for a different feel and flavor on the palette.  This is where the crazy combos come in—and trust me, they are crazy.  It behooves us then to talk about what variety really is so we can avoid the pitfalls of every day eating that allow us to fall into the mundane dieting some of us are doing today.

There are three major things that come to mind when I think of variety in our diet:  different types of food, different food flavors and different textures of food.  If you have enough diversity in the types of foods that you choose, then you will do well in all three categories.  If not, you could be chewing on your blanket by the morning and that’s not a very pleasant thought.

Different Types of Food

I have this incredible talent for taking things that are simple and defined and making them confusing and complicated all in a matter of seconds.  I know this simply because when people tell me what they’re doing with their food choices all week long, they are nothing close to what I suggested.  When it’s one person, it’s them.  When it’s a bunch—it’s me.  Therefore, I own this and I get it and I am here to try to make it better by being more clear when explaining what your week should look like.

What it isn’t:

• A different food everyday that never repeats in the week. I don’t know where this came from but man am I impressed if you can get this done.  There has to be a food that repeats in a week.
• A different protein at every single meal. Again, no, you cannot have chicken at every meal but you can have it at 2 meals in a day.
• Thai food today, Mediterranean tomorrow, Italian on Thursday. You are not obligated to become Chef Boyardee.  Please avoid the temptation.

What it is:

Variety is varying the foods in your diet in such a way that your Monday does not look *exactly* like your Tuesday and that you sufficiently switch up your fruits, veggies and starches throughout the week.

• If you have chicken for lunch on Monday, have it for supper on Tuesday and have something different for lunch on Tuesday so you are not eating the same grilled chicken salad everyday for the next 2 years.
• If you have oatmeal on Wednesday, have cereal or oatbran on Thursday.  Go back to oatmeal on Friday.
• Have 3 favorite breakfasts, lunches and snacks each so you can rotate them around and keep it fresh.
• Change your fruit daily.  It’s the easiest thing to do since you do not have to cook it.

Different Types of Flavors

For some reason, this is the hardest of all the things to get folks to fool around with.  There is more to life than BBQ sauce, lemon/pepper, garlic salt/powder and grated parmesan cheese.  If you continuously eat the same 1 dimensional food flavor, you will have no defense against a meal that smells like Heaven and tastes like a motley of spices and sauces.  You’ll be dead in the water.  Most neglected flavors:

• Citrus (other than lemon)—Orange chicken is lovely.  I don’t mean the one you get at a Chinese food restaurant.  I mean one made from a reduction of orange juice.  YUM.
• Tropical—Mangoes, coconuts, passion fruit and so on can be very fun.  Get to know them.
• Polarizing—Cloves, mint, licorice (anise) and other dominating flavors

Check this site out and go crazy:  Khymos

Different Types of Textures

Protein powder is not a food, it is a supplement.  It is wonderful post workout to make sure you get in all your nutrients fast, but it is not a meal.  We are meant to chew our food and when you do not, you are not satisfied. When two or more of your meals are shakes, the odds of you being happy while having them are low.  Can you stay on it?  Sure.  We are happy to be unhappy for long periods of time so staying on it is not necessarily an issue.  Is it a good thing for you?  Nope.  Why?  Texture is more important than variety and flavor combined.  Any time I ask a woman why she ate such and such, the number 1 reason she broke her diet, she’ll say because she loved the way it crunched.  This is a major message for all of my non-starchers out there.  At some point, you could be taken down by an Ak-Mak cracker.

• Salad is great for a crunch but it rarely does the trick.  We eat it way too much.  However, croutons will light up your life alongside craisins, sunflower seeds, al dente beans and
• Mixing cold and hot foods together is another way to explore texture.  Hot rice on a cold salad or cold, crunchy veggies in a warm wheat pasta salad—yum.
• Next in line to crunch:  creaminess.  Melted cottage cheese on a potato or cold greek yogurt mixed with salsa, lime and pineapple on a piece of warm chicken come to mind.

Keep in mind you will refuse to eat a food first because of feel on the palette before taste ever becomes an issue.  This means if you are at work with your packed lunch of mushy chicken and slimy asparagus and someone shows up with warm Asian chicken covered in an orangey/citrusy sauce with crunchy wonton strips and cold green beans marinated in a hoisin sauce, you could beat her down in the office.  Please let me know so I may be there.  I need the entertainment. Woop woop!

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…may make or keep you fat.

Meet Fat Fox.  He’s my daughter’s stuffed animal who has turned my house upside down.  We have arguments over whose turn it is to hang out with Fat Fox.  He’s the man.  However, when you think you *look* like Fat Fox, that’s not cool.  Especially if you’re orange.  That’s a bronzer issue.

You would be amazed at how much you really do not know about losing weight or being lean.  The whole ‘cals in vs cals out’ thing?  Nonsense.  The no starch but ‘healthy veggie carb’ thing—only a matter of time before you find a bunch of insulin resistant folks out there because of this misinformation.  The ‘lean’ craze that hit everyone who eats meat about 10 years or so ago—holy helpless hormones, Batman, we’re beginning to see the effects of that surface now.  Our girl is no different in what she thought about dieting.  What she thought to be fact is actually fallacy and now the struggle begins.

Back in the Battle

About a month after Armageddon, our girl is ready to get back to dieting.  She’s officially disgusted with herself.  Mirrors?  Thing of the past.  No, our girl is not dressing up anymore or wearing her cute gym clothes, she’s in a baseball cap, black baggie sweatpants and a too big T shirt.  She’s switched gyms because there is no way she can go back to her old gym and face anybody a month after her glorious goal date.  It’s too fresh and raw for her.  So she joined a gym on the other side of town and got back into the swing of things.

Failing forward: You will never rebound with the same magnitude again.  You may rebound again, but it will not be as great as the first time.  Changing gyms is extreme and really speaks to the severity of insecurity our girl had.  However, some of us wished we had changed gyms but stuck it out anyways.   What our girl is really suffering from is the fall from the top.  I’ve alluded to this here.  I will tackle it for real some day in a longer post, just know it’s coming.

Watching Grass Grow

The second time around is nothing like the first.  Nothing.  First, it’s hard to get that fight in your spirit again.  You know how hard it’s going to be.  You know how much you’re going to have to give up for it again and you’re not sure you want to.  There’s also no romance left to this battle:  the little nuances of seeing the body change, the cool reaction of all your friends when they would see you and not knowing what all the phases of dieting would be like so you looked forward to each one.  Second, it is WAAAAAAAYYYYYYY harder to lose weight each and every time you diet.  If you lost 2 pounds per week the first time around, you’ll lose 2 pounds per 2 weeks and possibly 3 weeks the second time around.  It’s hard.  It’s laborious.  It’s like watching grass grow.  So here’s our girl…miserable, heavier than her initial weight and profoundly disillusioned.

Myth: Many girls believe they have “metabolic damage” at this point and that’s why they cannot lose weight.  That’s not exactly true although they have jacked up their hormones which is what’s causing the delay in weight loss.

Fact: This is going to sound insane, but if you want to try and lose weight right after a rebound, you need to at least start with a re-feed of some sort and then s-l-o-w-l-y start to diet again.

Failing forward: At this point, patience is a virtue and we seasoned dieters tend to understand this.  We do not look for progress the first 4 weeks or so and instead, give our bodies time to get back into the groove.  Learning to separate our emotions from the task at hand is not easy and takes a good amount of practice and emotional fortitude.  But going for the gusto here would do more harm than good so she has to ride out this storm in slow motion.

Stalemate

Eight weeks in and our girl weighs 2 pounds less than when she started.  She picked up right where she left off and can’t understand why the scale isn’t moving.  Yes, she’s had a few breakdowns here and there.  A whole pint of ice cream, a few days of endless nibbles, some cookies and a few other indiscretions not worth mentioning but that shouldn’t be enough to stop her progress, right?  She’s missed the gym a few times, too, and she doesn’t keep track as well as before but she’s still in the gym 7 days a week so what gives?  She also doesn’t measure what she’s eating and she has the meal plan memorized so she knows what she’s eating every day so whatever.  She’s on it…yes?

Myth: Picking up where you left off will give you the results you had before.  Somehow you think your body should just snap back in place because you’re back to eating the same boring chicken and tasteless green beans.

Fact: You didn’t start off your first plan at 7 days a week and no condiments, why would you start there now?  Torturing yourself does not make your body conform faster.

Failing forward: We begin to discover the tricks of the trade and what really produces change in our bodies.  We do not lose weight because we exercise and eat right, we lose weight when we cause a *change* in the body great enough to elicit a response from it.  If you’re used to running 5 miles a day, you will not all of a sudden start losing weight doing so just because you declared yourself on a diet.  You must do something different or more to elicit that weight loss response from your body.  As we mature as dieters, we begin to realize this by actually backing off from dieting when we really do not need to.  This keeps us from having to go on 10 calorie diets and run a ½ marathon every day for cardio.

We’ll pick her saga up tomorrow when she finally gets to where she wants to go but now finds maintenance about as fun as getting a colonic with a central vacuum attachment.  More to come! Woop woop!!:o)

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I began this series by pointing out the four phases of dieting which are success, rebound, dieting after rebound and maintenance.  Each phase has a unique characteristic of struggle associated with it that is present with almost all dieters when they are in that particular phase.  As we mature as dieters through experience (both positive and negative), we slowly but surely learn to fail forward.  These phases and their quirks no longer bring us down and we begin to make it through the obstacles faster.  Some of us do it by learning and some of us do it by adapting.  The latter is not healthy and if I remember, I will talk about this at the end of the series.  If not, it’ll come up again I’m sure and I’ll make you aware of it then.  Today, however, is dedicated to the characteristics of the rebound phase and how detrimental it can be.   Our girl did go on vaca and gain a few pounds, but it didn’t end there.  She came home and really sealed the deal.

Ok…so this is a hobby horse but you get the point.

Unpacking

It’s been 3 days since she’s landed back home and to say things have gotten worse is an understatement.  At first it was all about ‘just feeling better’:  you know…stop the bloat, eat healthy and feel ‘clean’ again.  But no matter how much she wanted that, she couldn’t stop eating junk.  Lots. And lots. Of junk.  Suddenly she hates chicken and the way it feels on her teeth when she chews.  And she loathes the smell of tuna fish from a can although she’ll eat it from a packet.  And don’t even mention cottage cheese! OY!  Amid all this repulsion of good food, is this strong desire to eat ANY kind of bad food.  Chips in any form, chocolate, bread, ice cream and peanut butter is all she had on hand when she first came home and that wasn’t enough to stop the onslaught.  She went out to dinner with friends and killed a bottle of wine by herself AFTER she ate the bread basket, all the oil that came with it and the dessert she ordered.  And this was all in the first three days!!  As she unpacked her clothes, she sat in shock of how much she’s packed in her mouth in 72 hours and the pounds keep adding up.

Myth: We have control over our eating and when we don’t it’s a lack of will power.  This is true if you’re talking about turning down dessert not when your dessert starts on one end of the kitchen cabinets and ends on the other.

Fact: If she does not intervene, this will not “just end”.  This will go on for a good amount of time.  For some it’s weeks, for others it’s months.

Failing Forward: Our girl will soon learn that when the sugar monster shows up, he must be tamed by the FAT guy.  Good fat silences the sugar demon.  It’s not perfect, but it’s better than this.

Stressing

When the initial smoke cleared from her free-for-all, our girl mistakenly thought it was ‘safe to go back in the water’ and 2 days after the first eating spree ended, the second one began.  This one was less fervent and far more insidious because instead of her eating a ton of junk endlessly, now she ate really well all day but then lost it at night.  Or she would have a crappy breakfast, great lunch, no dinner and a box of junior mints to top off the day.  She didn’t know how to eat and she didn’t know how to stop the onslaught.  She feels bigger than she ever did before she even started dieting and now she’s out of control.  What the????????

Myth: Now that I eat healthy, I’ll never go back to eating crap again.

Fact: We are driven by emotion, not by health.  If you think you eat the way that you do because of health, you have another thing coming in way of revelation.

Failing forward: Stick to eating small meals often even if they are not super clean.  When this goes down, give up the rigidity of rules or you’ll hold yourself down longer than need be.

Lamenting

Now what?  Why go through all that dieting only to end up here?  Our girl feels trapped.  Who can she tell?  Who would understand?  Better yet, who would care?  She has never felt so lonely before in her life.  This has got to stop.  This weekend is it, she decides.  I’m getting back on plan and I’m going to get this all off.

Myth: You can just get back on plan.  Good luck with that.  You’ll probably take a hostage by meal 2 and demand a ransom of a gallon of ice cream and some fudge sauce or you’re fleeing with your hostages.

Fact: Your issues at this point are out of your “will’s” control.  They are hormonal and emotional, there is no will in that.

Failing forward: If this ever happens to you, lose all structure.  Stop trying to conform to something and just accept that you are a hot mess and no amount of planning is going to fix that.  As soon as you let go, you’ll be more in control.

There’s more to this craziness.  Pull up a chair and stay tuned.  We need to talk about when she starts dieting again.

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Last week I was a nudge, this week I am a nag.  Sorry, but she’s climbing out through the afro please make room for her.

This is the last post in this series and I have a few things to say but my mind is everywhere right now.  Have you ever suffered from, “…and another thing”?  I am suffering from that right now.  I have a bunch of little things to add in but not enough to make it a coherent post so I’m going to do the Tourette’s thing right now and just blurt a bunch of stuff at you.  Bear with me while I do this.

Starch vs. No starch

Not everyone should be zero starch.  I know folks like to tell you that it’s the best way to lose body fat and yadda yadda yadda but I have been in the business for 15 years and from all that I know and have seen I can absolutely tell you that that’s not true.  What I have noticed though is that some do better with lower starch than others.  Here’s a very simplified overview for you (shamefully simple):

Bubble—Starch is not going to make a huge impact on you in terms of having it in your diet until you want lines.  Try not to live without it every day because you limit the effectiveness of it as an aesthetic tool later on.

Butter—Starch must, I repeat, must stay in your diet.  Not a ton.  At least a serving a day should be in there.  You will never be rock hard so there is absolutely zero point in going starch free.  What it really does is set you up for a midnight carb binge that rivals anything the food network could conjure up and that’s saying a lot.

Befuddled—you are like the bubbles.  Dowhatchalike.

Dairy

Nice and easy and always portable, dairy is a great protein option…if you like carrying a gallon of water under your skin and 2 pounds of mucous in your sinuses.  But some of us are addicted so I’m not going to go on an anti-dairy rant.  I’ll save that for another post but…

Butters—avoid dairy like a moldy dish of food lodged in the back of your refrigerator.   Especially cheese which is the anti-butt food.

Supplementation

My audio post for Butters spoke about high dose fish oil and how it can help you reduce the effects of cellulite on the bum.  Done correctly and with supervision, you can really make some great changes in the appearance of your back side and also lighten up any stretch marks.  I am a lover of Omega 3.  Here are some more of my thoughts:

Magnesium—is a must in any physique athlete’s diet.  If you’re taking it as a cal/mag—stop.  You have plenty of calcium in your diet and do not need more.  However, you do not have enough Mg.  Try it as Mg glycinate, taurate or malate because they are easily digested and will give you less rumbly tumbly.  Mg can wreak havoc on your tummy and make you feel like you are going to release your colon in public without any notice—oh the thought!  Why Mg?  Great for the metabolism and insulin sensitivity and helps with anxiety/depression which is common among us athletes.

B Complex—add this in if you’re not taking more pills than a 70 year old man.  Honestly, it can be overwhelming.  Great for metabolism and your skin.

BCAA’s–Here’s another one that’s good for everyone.  Add them in prudently.  If money is an issue, have them on training days only and do it in 3 month stints.  If it’s not an issue, call me so we can have lunch and talk about angel investing–just throwing that out there.  But then have it daily and your dosage will change based on your workouts and rest time.

This is not my official supplementation post, this is only in context of making a smooth but plump rump so if something is missing that you think should be here let me help you with that by saying, “No it’s not.”

Cautionary Note

You can get on the web now and see amazing pictures of butts everywhere.  They will be smooth, perky, strong, super human and most of all naked so you can see every detail and feel bad about every dimple you don’t see, as well.  Let me remind you of something you may already know but maybe think you’re exaggerating or are not quite sure of:  very few people are natural anymore.  If you aspire to do this without the aid of anything besides food, vitamins and minerals then you have to be careful of what you use as a pin-up for success.  At the very least, they will be taking a fat burner, at the very most it can be scary.  You cannot be in this industry (clean eating) long term and have to be lean time and time again without some kind of “help”.  With that being said, you may not be able to achieve naturally what others have done with chemical assistance and it helps to know that when you’re in the middle of picking yourself apart for the 3^rd time that day.  If being natural matters (and it does to Jodiojo & Co.) then tuck this away in your mind for safe keeping or you may find yourself compromising your beliefs further down the road in pursuit of something that’s not attainable naturally.

For My Jammers

I said in a previous post that I would give you a place to go for help with your butt training.  If you want get specific with the information I provided about weaknesses and technique, go here.  He is great.  I ran into his site a while ago from Nick T.’s site (he’s another guy I really like) and instantly fell in love.  Not because of his training info, although that’s great too, but because he is humble and he gets it.  Both Nick and Brett are a breath of fresh air in a crowded industry of shouters.  Get on their sites and absorb.

If you are signed up for extra info from my blog, then you received the email with my 3 favorite exercises.  Let me know yours when you can.

This has been a great series and I’m really glad y’alls like it, as well.  Hit me up below with any thoughts.  I’d love to hear them.  The next series is Failing Forward.  Let’s make the best of all the mistakes we do while dieting.  How do you salvage your diet when everything seems to be going wrong?  If you have anything in particular that you want me to cover in this, let me know!  Woop woop!

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