Just completed day 12!

Just wanted to check in. I'm still going strong and feeling good. I have one pair of pants I am wanting to get back down in to. These are my before-Christmas-surgery-eating like a fool pants! They are still not as loose as I like so I will try them again in a few days.

I have been making my Cambridge Oats pancakes each morning and they really stick with me clear through 2pm when I have my lunch shake. If you would like the recipe you can find it on my Support Board on my website, cambridgediet.org . I have been using some unsweetened vanilla almond milk instead of just water, just about 1/4 cup, about 15 calories. With that and the egg white it is only about 32 additional calories for anywhere from 5 to 8, 5" pancakes! The number will depend on the size. This plate shows 4" pancakes. Looks good, right? This morning I added some Watkins Maple flavoring to the batter too. Really good!

Fat Time Of Day? Really?

I read an article this morning on Yahoo News that had these advertisements from 1970. I found it amazing how aggressively manipulative the food and advertising industries have been in the past, as well as they still are today. All they have to do is present their pseudo science "facts" and fill in with a few technical sounding words or theories and they can mislead the public. The fact is that we humans were not designed to consume vast amounts of sugar, natural or otherwise. We evolved on a seasonal diet of fruits and other plant life as our main source of sugar as well as things like honey when available. The abundance of processed sugar is relatively new and the effects have been devastating to our health. It was only a few years ago that the corn industry was making a huge public push to convince us that high fructose corn syrup was perfectly natural and safe..."just like regular sugar". Well..I guess they are right because they are both equally unhealthy. What are you thoughts about these advertisements? Do you see any similarities to products being promoted and sold to us today?

Progress

Just checking in. It's late and I'm actually on my way to bed, but it was time for a progress report. I'm back on track with SSing and I'm feeling so much better then I did a couple of weeks ago when I was caving in to holiday food temptations. My capacity for eating is a fraction of what it once was. Even with that, my body REALLY let me know it was not happy with my choices. I guess I am pretty sensitive now to things that slow down my digestion and leave me feeling bloated and lethargic. Anything with sugar is not my friend. Same for breads and any simple carbs. I learned my lesson!

So other then a few minor additions to my Cambridge, such as an occasional egg white or some coffee creamer, I am on track. I'm not weighing. I'm going to give it a solid month and then maybe I might take a peek. The process of losing weight is not something that moves in a predictable pattern and seeing numbers on a scale can play with emotions like nothing else I know.

Hope that everyone here will catch the energy that flows when we are in the beginning of a new year! So much motivation and determination! it all quickly slips away if not acted on.

Calling In Sick

I rarely ever get sick. Even when I was running a day care in my home and was surrounded by constantly sick kids, I seemed to be immune, or I would get a very mild version and be over it in a few hours. Well...for some reason I got slammed 2 days ago with a virus that seems to want to make up for all those times I didn't catch anything. I feel like my head is in a bucket of mud and my body is dragging hundred pound weights from every limb. I've had zero sleep for 2 nights and frankly, I'm not taking it too well. I much more prefer my previous superhero powers of immunity.

One interesting thing I wanted to share before going back to my sick bed, or in this case sick couch (my hubby is still sleeping and all my coughing and snuffling is probably pretty annoying), I hardly ever get food cravings anymore. Occasionally I'll get an urge for sushi, but sugar and all those things that used to rule my life just have no effect on me anymore. Last night was Halloween and we didn't participate in the candy craze. Being sick, we just put a note on the door and no one egged our house. In my dark sugar addicted past I would have already consumed POUNDS of candy by the morning after and I wouldn't have stopped until it was all gone...and the stores were cleared out of their 50% discounted leftovers. I'm completely free from that, but  for some reason, 2 sleepless nights have made me crave bread like my life depends on it! I hardly ever eat bread! Honestly, if my arm was made of bread, I'd eat it off.

I know there is a connection to insomnia and carbohydrate cravings. I've just never experienced it before. Probably because I was already eating a pretty carb loaded lifestyle. I struggled with chronic insomnia and day time sleepiness all the time back in my garbage eating days.  Now, I am healthy and usually sleep like a baby. Being made aware that sleep deprivation can have such a dramatic affect on resurrecting food cravings is quit alarming! The urge to self medicate my fatigue with an insulin stimulating bread binge is natural, but like most things we use food for improperly, it is a temporary fix at best with long term consequences. Resist!