If you’ve ever gone on a low/no carb diet and had to give up breads you know exactly what I mean when I talk about withdrawal! It’s possible to give up just about anything else without too much suffering but if you’re like most people it’s the grain-based stuff that drives you nuts – and it’s not just the sugary donuts or cookies (though they’re bad, too!) For me the toughest is giving up good, “healthy” bread.

Well, I just found out why. I’ve been reading a fascinating book called “The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability” and it talks about grains and the fact that grains have pharmacological substances in them called exorphins – which are like endorphins but they come from outside your body instead of from inside your body. These are actually from the opiate family and they affect our brains the same way that opiates do.

Wow.

I did some further research and found the following on a blog called “www.HealingMountainPublishing.com”

Imagine what would happen if a food were consumed that contains low-level heroin-like compounds (exorphins). Assuming that these compounds could be absorbed and reach the brain (which they have in fact been shown to do, at least in animal studies), they could induce a mild euphoria, dull pain sensation slightly, and have a low-grade tendency to cause addiction. This sounds eerily like people’s descriptions of foods they crave: “I feels relaxed and calm when I eat it.” “My emotional pain seems far away.” “I tried to give it up but I just couldn’t.” Imagine what would happen if the food exorphins were as strong as heroin, which some test tube studies suggest they can be.

Sugar can also be addictive, because it also releases opiods into our system that make us feel happy. I’m thinking the combination of the two is a powerful double whammy that we need to look at seriously.

How to get over it? Well, as with any drug addiction, cold-turkey is the quickest way, but it’s tough. People who follow the paleo diet plan suggest:

(Y)ou need to encourage yourself to dig in really aggressively to paleo diet for at least 30 days. Follow the strict NO grain-legume-dairy-sugar diet, get the perfect training for your body needs (never over train), have good well-rested sleep at night, get enough sunlight exposure for vitamin D level issues and get plenty of water for hydration. It would be really hard for the first few days and weeks to fight off the urges for sweets, but you need to control yourself in order to take the challenge.

The thought of giving up my favourite comfort food (“Big 16″ Bread with peanut butter and Nutella) is devastating. I have cut my carbs way back anyway and almost never eat pastas or rice, but bread? Really? Waaaaaaaah!

In this process I’m in, I’m just slowly pushing bread back. I don’t eat much of it anyway, but I will often have a mid-morning or mid-afternoon sandwhich. When I added my lunch menu to my habits, I stopped morning snacking. Once I add dinner (next week) I’ll have pushed it out of my day.

If, over the next couple of weeks, I appear grumpy and morose, just know that it’s the withdrawal and I’ll be my usual cheerful self in a day or two! LOL!

Darlene

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Who is Darlene Hull? Click here: www.darlenehull.com to find out!

Yes, I’m still here! Can hardly believe it’s been over two weeks since I last posted! So unlike me! Tells you just how busy things have been!

So, thought I’d drop in for a quick update!

As my regular readers know, I’ve been doing some serious experimenting over the past few weeks in addition to having my business take off, and keeping up with homeschool and teaching at Gymboree. With all that together, I’ve been busier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs! But I feel like I’ve finally come up for air, and so I thought I’d pop in a catch everyone up!

Sleepless:

As many of you know, for the past couple of months I’ve been following a program of really intensive prayer. It’s an interesting course about spiritual warfare, and battling those strongholds that keep us bound, often without our realization. The goal of the course is to break free of everything from the past so you can walk free into the future. It’s not for the faint of heart. Since the 14th of January I’ve been getting up every night at 11:30 and praying through until 1:30-2:00 am. I have to admit, there has been the odd night (perhaps around 5 in total) where I’ve just been unable to get up, or my alarm didn’t work, but otherwise, I’ve been pretty faithful to this regimen. As morning starts at 5:30, that makes for a very short night. So, in and around the prayer times I’ve been experimenting – mostly unsuccessfully with Polyphasic Sleep. I tried to go “hard core” and jump in with both feet, but unless you have very supportive people around you who are willing to monitor you and drag you out of bed, it’s pretty hard to follow through on. Currently I do a 1.5hr nap from about 10:00-11:30, followed by prayer, followed by a 4-hour “core sleep”. Then, in the afternoon, I take a nap for 30-45 minutes. So far, that’s working well. Once I’m well into that rhythm, I’ll drop the 1.5 hour nap before prayer, and add another 30 minute nap during the day. I would like to eventually work up to a 3 hour core sleep, and 3 short naps. That would give me quite a bit of free time to work on things I can’t get around to now. We’ll see how it goes, but I’m going to give myself several months to work into that schedule gradually. I don’t do well with shock therapy!

Starving

In addition to letting go of the burden of sleep (ahem) the prayer course also allows me the privilege of giving up food. It often calls for 3 days of dry fasting (an “Esther Fast” where you avoid both food AND water. I’m OK letting go of the food, but I’ve not yet managed a completely dry fast) followed by 1-3 weeks of partial fasting. To make my life easier, I’ve simply adopted the “Fast-5” lifestyle and add in the extra fast when called for. I actually like this way of eating, and, in fact, am rarely, if ever, hungry. Sure saves time! Only one meal to prepare!

Steps

The other thing the prayer course is doing is encouraging my walking. One is supposed to march as one prays, and because our house is so open plan, I need to walk someplace that’s a little soundproofed so as to allow the rest of the family the peace and quiet they need to sleep. The only place that allows that is the basement, and the only place to walk in the basement is on the treadmill. So, in addition to my training that I do in the mornings, I now walk 1.5 – 2 hours in the middle of the night, and, having realized the the treadmill allows me to spend day after day without ever getting outside, I now take an afternoon walk of about 3.5km outside. The sidewalks are still a bit of a mess, but on this walk I’m not worried about training or speed or heart rate, so I don’t mind if I have to slow right down or take a detour or whatever. The combination of all three is keeping me at my step goal of a minimum of 10,000 steps with very little conscious effort – Nice!

Sabbathing

The added stress of all the above has also encouraged me to get serious about sabbathing. Now, at 6:00pm on a Saturday night, I shut off my computer, and don’t turn it on again until Sunday night around the same time. I don’t check e-mail on my iPod, I don’t do business work, and I try and take time for family and reading. I work my prayer time so I can now sleep through on Saturday-Sunday, and I also sleep in on Sunday mornings, don’t worry about fasting, and ignore my normal schedule. This is HUGELY refreshing to my soul. I highly recommend it.

Now our business is in a manageably “steady” place, I will soon be leaving Gymboree except to do the occasional subbing, and I’m in a good rhythm with food/sleep/prayer, so I’m feeling much more myself! I hope you’ll be hearing lots more from me (and I hope you think that’s a GOOD thing, LOL!)

So, enough about me – catch me up with what you’ve been up to, and where you’re headed! I’d love to hear the things you’re experimenting with and testing in your own life!

Happy Walking!

Darlene

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So, we’ve been at this slow carb thing for 4 weeks, with negligible results – or at least not the kinds of results that were typical in Tim Ferriss’ “The 4-Hour Body“ book from which I’ve taken it.

Now, to be fair to the book, let me comment that my original copies, and the ones from which I got my information, were the abridged audio book from Audible, and the unabridged Kindle version which I read on my iPod, before I got my wonderful Kindle. This is not the kind of information that is easily assimilated from an audio book, and reading a 500 page book on an iPod touch is also a bit of a challenge!

SO, I received a box of autographed hard-cover copies of the book (4 of which I’m giving away on my blog here – watch for it) and sat down with the book again, and poured over the finer details of this program.

Tim Ferriss not only presents the basic program in his book in the chapter “The Slow- Carb Diet I: How to Lose 20 Pounds in 30 Days Without Exercise” but he expands on that basic program in the chapter “The Slow-Carb Diet II: The Finer Points and Common Questions”. Taken together, I saw some key elements that were missing from what I was doing in my attempts at the slow carb diet.

There are also two more chapters that have to do with fat loss: “Damage Control: Preventing Fat Gain When You Binge” about coping well with the one day a week that you can eat whatever you want, and “The Four Horsemen of Fat-Loss” which deals with other “fun” ways to increase your fat loss, and I’ll deal with these chapters in later posts.

So, after reading/skimming/extracting information from these chapters, I created a bit of a “cheat sheet” that I’ve put in various places (iPod, Kindle, Fridge) that will help me stay on track a little better.

However, I’m also realizing that there can be too much of a good thing!

In addition to working through the Slow Carb Diet, I am also finishing up a 3-week partial fast as part of my prayer experiment (and as you may or may not know, fasting slows your metabolism if it’s conducted over a longer period of time) so my results may be hampered by that, as well. The prayer program also requires a 2.5 hour prayer session beginning at midnight every night, so I’m also suffering from pretty serious sleep deprivation, which I’m trying to work through. That being said, I’m putting aside the Slow Carb thing until I finish this fast (Saturday night) and then we’ll start again on Monday. I’m also still in the middle of my experiment with changing my unconscious body-weight set-point. That last one’s been a bit difficult with my iPod having broken this week, and so accessing the goal sheet has been awkward. I have a temporary iPod that I’m using while waiting for mine to be fixed, but it’s taken a couple of days to get it all set up.

So, busy days ahead! Lots of fun keeping me on track, LOL! but I love living an experimental life. Never a dull moment!

How’s life your way?

Darlene

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So, the new year has begun. How are all those resolutions you set? Are you succeeding with any of them?

It’s difficult to succeed in making healthier choices in life. We all know we need to slow down, eat better, exercise more, spend more time with God and our families. Yes, it’s all there in black and white in our heads, but it’s just so hard to walk those choices out.

Over the years as my desperation to change has risen to a fever pitch, I’ve learned a few tricks that have helped me, so I thought I’d share them here in the hopes that they’ll help you, too.

1. One habit at a time – I know your list is long, but choose one habit at a time. If you try to tackle them all, you’ll fail at them all. If you tackle one at a time, you’ll master the ones you work on.
2. Keep it Small – Reduce your goal to the smallest possible steps and tackle one small step per week.

So, here are some ideas you might try:

Getting in shape: Let me suggest that you buy a pedometer instead of a gym membership. Measure your steps normally for a week, find your daily average, and increase that daily average the next week by 100 steps. Continue to increase your daily average week by week. When you’re up to a couple thousand add an easy, refreshing 10-minute walk. Increase the walk by 10 minutes every month. Once you hit 60 minutes, increase your speed.

Eating better: Don’t buy the latest diet book, simply start breakfast with a selection of fresh fruit, begin lunch with a bowl of vegetable soup (broth based) and dinner with a large tossed salad. Each week drink one more glass of water a day until you’ve reached a minimum of 8 glasses. Once you’ve mastered that, start eliminating the bad stuff – but keep one day a week as a splurge day.

Spending more time with my family: Instead of instigating something like a family night out of the blue, make a choice to stop, turn, and look when your child speaks to you – in other words, practice listening. Then start asking questions about things they like to do. Participate wherever you’re invited. Soon the family times take care of themselves.

Improving my relationship with God: I don’t think most of us need another study, a new prayer system, a new Bible, or a program. I would simply recommend a journal, a pen, and some time. As in the above goal, start with listening. It might be pretty quiet for a while, but God is speaking, and if we learn to hear Him, the rest falls into place.

These probably sound ridiculously simple, but I think you’ll find if you start here, doors will open up, and new possibilities will present themselves.

If this is the kind of thing you’re looking for to reach those resolutions, download my free, 8-week “Introduction to Praisewalking” ebook over there on the right, and get started!

Try it and see! Keep me posted on how it works for you!

Darlene

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Wee glitch over Christmas. Tough to stick with any eating plan when no one else is only splurging on Saturdays! I had sisters in from the coast, so a couple of special family dinners, and a cousin who got married on the Tuesday after Christmas, and then because I was eating so much sugar, the cravings hit again, and last weekend we had three splurge days instead of one.

The results aren’t too frightening, though.

I also finally got the book! A box of massive volumes of “The 4-Hour Body” arrived in my office just after Christmas so I’ll be able to peruse the actual book instead of trying to glean info off a small ipod/Kindle screen. This will make things MUCH easier. As much as I love my Kindle – both the e-reader and the iPod app – sometimes you need the physical book in your hands.

The truth is, I have FIVE hardcover versions of these books, all autographed by the author, Tim Ferriss. If you want a copy for free ($31.00 value) – all 550 pages packed with tips for the greatest body results for the least amount of work – check back in with me on Friday, and I’ll show you what you need to do.

Have a great Wednesday, and I’ll see y’all here on Friday with some big news!

Darlene

So this graph is looking MUCH happier these days! Very encouraging!

I’m settling into a rhythm with the eating plan. There are ways of tweaking it to be more effective, but I currently only have the book on my iPod Touch Kindle, and it’s really hard to use it as a resource there. The actual book should arrive any day now, and then I can work at adding those tweaks and improving my results.

Right now I keep it VERY simple. I eat within 30 minutes of getting up and I stirfry about 2 cups of frozen mixed vegetables, along with about 1/4 cup of legumes (usually black beans or lentils). When they’re ready, I add 2 eggs, cook it all through, and off I go. Takes about 15 minutes.

I’ve learned to make soups by putting a bunch of chopped up leeks into the crock pot with some legumes, and letting them “steep together” for a while. After a few hours of simmering, I blend that all together until smooth, and I add cooked chicken, seasoning and a package of frozen mixed veg, and let it simmer some more. This makes a very easy complete meal that I then use for lunches.

We try to experiment with different ideas for dinner. Mexican is popular and easy, and we’re working with various recipes that enable us to incorporate legumes in an easy way. The current favourite is to cook some meat, and serve it alongside stir-fried fresh vegetables that have legumes mixed in (again, usually black beans or lentils).

So far, so good. I’m looking forward to seeing how much better it works when I can add in some of the finer detail and extra tips from the book.

Well, that’s my update for today! Hope you guys are enjoying the Christmas season! Have a wonderful holiday and warm family celebrations!

Darlene

So, no big change in weight (and I weighed myself after a large glass of water!), but I’ve lost 3.5″ overall, which is a huge encouragement.

I’m VERY excited that Tim Ferriss’ new book “The 4-Hour Body” is finally out. I’ve almost finished reading it, and wow, there’s some GREAT stuff in there. I have his “Kindle” version on my iPod as well as the audiobook, and I’m waiting for my hard copy to arrive in the mail! This is going to be a “text book” for my fitness goals alongside Phil Maffetone’s “The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing”

Tom and I have started with his Slow Carb diet which is just a slight variation of what we’ve been doing now, and to keep the weight loss consistent, we also get to add a binge day every week, which is going to be fun! If you want a very brief overview, check out his article: How to Lose 20 lbs. of Fat in 30 Days… Without Doing Any Exercise The book goes into much more detail, but the article will get you started.

After we’re in a comfortable place with that, I’ll be working through Tim Ferriss’ chapter on body alignment called “Pre-Hab: Injury-Proofing the Body” and then I’ll be working through his endurance chapters: “Ultraendurance I: Going from 5K to 50K in 12 Weeks—Phase I and Phase II”

And then, who knows? The book has LOTS of fun stuff in it and while some of it doesn’t appeal to me, much of it is fascinating! I highly recommend getting yourself a copy if you’re even partially interested in living your best physical self.

In fact, next week I’ll be giving away a signed, hard-cover copy! Watch for news on that!

Otherwise, I’m in a good routine with my exercise, and I’m enjoying the treadmill. Good stuff.

Darlene

So, we’ve heard all kinds of stuff about this lately, and I’ve even seen ads where moms reassure each other that there’s nothing wrong with this High Fructose Corn Syrup, but just to be safe, let’s take a closer look, OK?

First of all, what is High Fructose Corn Syrup? Here’s a great article on HFCS from Wikipedia that gives a lot of detail

There have been mixed results when testing this substance, but a recent study at Princeton University showed that, if nothing else, HFCS contributes pretty clearly to obesity:

“Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn’t true, at least under the conditions of our tests,” said psychology professor Bart Hoebel, who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction. “When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they’re becoming obese — every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don’t see this; they don’t all gain extra weight.”

The article goes on to say:

“These rats aren’t just getting fat; they’re demonstrating characteristics of obesity, including substantial increases in abdominal fat and circulating triglycerides,” said Princeton graduate student Miriam Bocarsly. “In humans, these same characteristics are known risk factors for high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, cancer and diabetes.”

So, if losing weight and keeping trim is on your New Year’s Resolutions list, you might want to rethink products containing High Fructose Corn Syrup. You especially want to rethink this if you have children – let’s not get them started early on the dieting yo-yo!

Also, the Diabeties Health website shares the following concerns about ingesting HFCS:

Problems Caused by Too Much HFCS

• It can lead to higher caloric intake
• It can lead to an increase in bodyweight
• It fools your body into thinking it’s hungry
• It increases the amount of processed foods you eat, thereby decreasing your intake of nutrient-dense foods
• It may increase insulin resistance and triglycerides

They also state that:

To make matters worse, fructose consumption is tied to insulin resistance in rodents and increased triglyceride secretion (suggesting that it may have the same effect on humans, too). Considering that type 2 is a common co-morbidity of overweight and obesity, insulin resistance is common. Therefore, if fructose does, in fact, have the same insulin-resistant effect in humans as it does in rodents, individuals would be exacerbating the issue by consuming too much of it.

Want more info? Check out this podcast: Diet Science – High Fructose Corn Syrup is now Corn Sugar? Don’t be Fooled! or this article: High Fructose Corn Syrup: What You Need to Know | MommyB Knows Best

Want some help avoiding it? Check out this article: How to Avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup: 7 steps (with pictures) – wikiHow

So, we completed the Two Week Test.

It was hard to do. I can’t believe how addicted I am to carbs!! Obviously there was a problem, because Tom and I both lost about 8 pounds!

We are now slowly adding in carbs. One particluar carb at a time, two meals a day on alternate meals. So far we’ve tested chocolate chip cookies (LOL! THAT was a disaster – sugar buzz, major crash, useless for the rest of the evening…) fruit (I see I need to be careful here, too) and today I’m trying plain yogurt. We’re keeping an eye on how we feel, and what’s happening with our weight.

We also purchased a treadmill (but got a smoking deal on it!) The sidewalks are in such bad shape after our major dump a snow a couple of weeks back, that you can’t really train. You go from clear, to black ice, to iced-over snow, to deep snow – mostly you’re just trying to not fall down. We’ve decided that while there’s snow on the ground we’ll be training with a treadmill. We also need to use it for our MAF tests once a month to get a consistent reading on how we’re doing fitness wise. I’ll share more on those tests later.

So, we move on! Things are looking good!

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Normally I post my weight loss results here on Mondays, but I’ve decided to move that to Wednesdays as that’s when I’m talking about my 50th birthday Challenge, so if you want to see how I’m progressing there, check back on Wednesday!

Today’s Nasty Additive is Monosodium Glutamate

Ok, this additive is no big surprise. We’ve been hearing about it for ages, and most of us try to avoid it. However, avoiding it is difficult because they no longer list it as MSG. It goes under a number of seemingly harmless names.   Here is a list of MSG’s “hidden names” – if you see these on a package, you’re ingesting MSG.

The debate is still ongoing regarding the dangers of ingesting MSG. There’s an excellent article on Wikipedia entitled “Glutamic acid (flavor)” that lists some of the research and the findings that have occurred over the past several years. Some people are quite sensitive to it, and others find that it causes weight gain that is stubborn to get rid of.

While the debate is ongoing, I believe that it’s always better to be safe than sorry! I’ve listed some findings here that may be of interest to you. Note that the symptoms described below may well be more anecdotal than research based, but if you experience them, it might be wise to simply remove MSG from your diet and see if your symptoms improve.

According to SixWise.com, and BecomeHealthyNow.com

According to NaturalHealthRestored.com Monosodium glutamate is known to cause a long list of side effects and health problems. Here are some to watch out for:

• Allergic reactions
• Alzheimer’s disease
• Asthma attacks
• Burning, numbness, or tingling in or around your mouth
• Brain damage
• Cancer
• Chest pain
• Confusion
• Damage to your unborn child
• Death due to an MSG reaction
• Diarrhea
• Eye inflammation
• Flushing
• Free radical damage to your blood vessels (this can lead to a heart attack or a stroke)
• Headaches (including migraine headaches)
• Heart disease
• Memory loss
• Nausea
• Pressure or tightness in the muscles in your face
• Fertility problems (for both men and women)
• Rapid, fluttering heartbeats
• Seizures
• Shortness of breath
• Stuttering or speech problems
• Sweating
• Swelling of the brain (brain edema)
• Type 2 diabetes
• Weakness
• Weight gain (the weight you gain from eating MSG is very difficult to lose)

This is a particularly difficult additive to avoid. For the most part, the only way to do it is to eat fresh, unprocessed food.

If you have any comments about MSG and your own experience, research, etc., please share in the comments section below.

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