Making Peace with the C-Word

So I know what you're thinking, but it's not that C word. It's carbs. And her four mischievous children: chips, cookies, cake and candy. Not to mention their evil cousins pasta and bread.

Seriously, carbs are not the devil, but they don't wear Prada either. We need carbohydrates to survive. Some carbohydrates are better than others, like the ones in vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts and whole grains; but every family has its black sheep; and in the case of carbs it's white flour and sugar (in its many disguises).

The other day at work I was offered some kind of sugary floury confection whipped up from a Pinterest recipe, and I said, "No thanks, I'm allergic to carbs. I break out in fat." I was kidding, but really not.

Doughnut worshiper

Because I have found that avoiding empty carbs, for the most part, is an effective strategy for maintaining my ideal weight since losing 35 pounds on Medifast.

That said, I went to the Spaghetti Factory last night to celebrate my son-in-law's birthday and had a small side of pasta, one slice of bread and a scoop of spumoni with my baked chicken and salad. And I enjoyed every bite and creamy spoonful.

So if I'm up an ounce or two on the scale today, it's no big deal; because eating empty carbs is now the exception, not the rule, for me. They have become the "eat sparingly" triangle in my personal food pyramid, whose base is protein, veggies, fruit and fat.

When I consume empty-carb foods now it is with relish, not regret, because I deliberately choose to eat them  Denying them altogether gives them too much power over me. If I find certain foods are binge triggers -- yeah, I'm talking to you, Doritios -- I do avoid them, but I can eat most empty-carb foods in small amounts and not crave more.

What's up with the sinister face, Jack?

We live in a carb worshipping culture whose every celebration and daily ritual involves some kind of empty carb, whether it's bagels, birthday cake or popcorn at the movies. Before long, we'll all be celebrating the Candy Holiday, a.k.a. Halloween. (How many people do you know who buy their Halloween candy in early October and have to replenish their stock before the 31st rolls around? Oh, your husband does that too?)

The bottom line is not all carbs are bad, and not all bad carbs have to be avoided completely. I had to identify my triggers and allow myself to indulge in those occasional treats which I could eat without losing control.

You can purchase Medifast replacement meals directly from Medifast Centers, the Medifast website or -- for less cost -- through the co-branded website of a Medifast TSFL health coach. Medifast does not recommend purchasing its products from third party vendors, but if you choose to do so, you can find them on both Amazon and eBay.

Medifast Custom Order - You Choose ANY 10 Boxes



More from Diet Skeptic:

Fruck You! Fructose

Can You Drink Alcohol on Medifast

Medifast Centers Vs. Take Shape for Life

Planned Exceptions: What Is Your Pie Policy?

Wabi Sabi Dieting & Renee Zelwegger's New Face
Follow Nancy's board Low Carb Recipes on Pinterest.

Why is 'Hungry Girl' Always So Hungry?

Several years ago my daughters turned me on to Hungry Girl, a website and email subscription service run by a media savvy woman named Lisa Lillien who turned herself into a profitable brand by selling out her site's content to to the highest bidders under the guise of helping American women get slinky.

Hungry Girl founder Lisa Lillien

Buying into the whole low-fat myth as the preferred route to Skinnytown, many of the recipes on Lillien's site use anorexic products that leave her female fans perpetually hungry.

The legion of hungry hounds following their alpha bitch will always be craving their next fix, because the foods they are eating will never satisfy them.

Let's start with one of Hungry Girl's breakfasts, the PB&J Yogurt Parfait, composed of fat-free strawberry yogurt, chopped strawberries, low-fat peanut butter cereal and peanut butter baking chips. With about 2g of fat and 37g of carb, this crazy creation should really be called the crash and burn. When you take the fat out of peanut butter and yogurt, you also remove their satiety factor, virtually guaranteeing an emergency visit to the vending machine the minute you get to work.

Hungry Girl makes a lot of money
hawking products on her website, 
such as this "diet" ice cream 
whose first three ingredients are
skim milk, corn syrup and sugar.

Hungry Girl does no better with desserts like her Freezy-Tart Peach Cobbler Squares. These misguided pretenders contain canned peach slices, Cool Whip Free, cinnamon, Splenda, and low-fat cinnamon graham crackers. Again, the macros are skewed, with only 1 g of fat and 20 g of carbs, half of which are from sugar.

The point is, Hungry Girl still clings to an old paradigm of weight loss, which posits fat = bad and butter is the devil. This view was popular for many years but is quickly being replaced by growing scientific data and anecdotal evidence that sugar and most processed carbs could be more threatening than fat to our body weight and physical health. In fact, without enough fat, we may be doomed to always be Hungry Girls.

Satisfied Girl eats (gasp!) the whole egg.
Did you think the yolk was there for decoration?

I suggest we send Hungry Girl home and replace her with Satisfied Girl, a healthy and happy woman who eats real eggs, avocados, full-fat yogurt and almond butter.





More from Diet Skeptic:

Why I'm Addicted to Chia Seeds

Why Fat Head Pizza Is the Holy Grail of Low Carb Pizzas 

The Shocking Truth About Imported Olive Oil 

Making Cauliflower Rice in the Vitamix 

Follow Nancy's board Low Carb Recipes on Pinterest.

What If You're the Elephant in the Room?

Yes, there's hope. But first you have to say "hello" to the elephant....

Fat has a way of creeping on so gradually you wake up one day and you're 50 pounds heavier. Or, in my case, 35.

I'm not really sure how I gained all that weight, although cheesy quesadillas for breakfast every morning and a generally permissive attitude toward food probably had something to do with it. "I like food," I'd tell myself; and since I didn't believe in diets, I wasn't about to restrict myself.

Who let you in?

Plus, I was in my 50s, and menopause made a nice, convenient scapegoat. "It's really impossible to lose weight," I'd tell my friends, who nodded their heads knowingly.

We were all in the same sinking boat; and it was easier to cast blame and pretend the problem was out of our hands.

Only it was our hands that bought and prepared the food. And our minds that made the choices of what to eat and drink.

My previous blog post on permitters and restrictors has stuck with me the last few days. I am a permitter by nature and like to reward myself. As do many women. We have been told by L'Oréal we deserve to indulge ourselves because we're worth it, and apparently this applies to everything from hair color to haute cuisine.

But don't we also deserve to fit into our jeans? And not take pills for blood pressure or diabetes?

One of my sister's ex-boyfriends liked to joke that he drank because it was the only vacation he could afford; and for many women, just substitute food for alcohol and time for money. Eating a fun food is one of the fastest ways to escape from monotony and have a party in your mouth.

But the party's over soon enough, and we're left feeling simultaneously emptier and heavier. 

The problem is, no one can tell us we need to lose weight. When they try, we build a fence so high that even we can't climb over it. We're like cats -- it has to be out idea.

Most husbands and boyfriends
won't tell you that you look fat
after the first time

But first we have to acknowledge not only that there's a problem, but also that there's a solution.

In my case it was Medifast. It was an easy way to shed pounds quickly and prove to myself that my extra 35 pounds of fat were not super-glued to my bones as I had fantasized.

There are many other diet programs that also work, but the best ones combine permanent habit change with diet modification and lean toward low carb versus low fat.

If you are reading this and it resonates with you, just know that it is possible to lose weight if you want to. Sure 80% of the people who lose weight gain it back, and then some. But one of the women in a Facebook group to which I belong lost 348 pounds on Medifast and has kept it off for five years. And there are many more like her.

The important thing is to find a program you can stick with, and pretty soon the only elephant in the room will be the porcelain figurine you impulse bought at Pottery Barn.

You can purchase Medifast replacement meals directly from Medifast Centers, the Medifast website or -- for less cost -- through the co-branded website of a Medifast TSFL health coach. Medifast does not recommend purchasing its products from third party vendors, but if you choose to do so, you can find them on both Amazon and eBay.

Medifast Custom Order - You Choose ANY 10 Boxes



More from Diet Skeptic:

Fruck You! Fructose

Can You Drink Alcohol on Medifast

Medifast Centers Vs. Take Shape for Life

Planned Exceptions: What Is Your Pie Policy?

Wabi Sabi Dieting & Renee Zelwegger's New Face
Follow Nancy's board Low Carb Recipes on Pinterest.

Diet Psychology: Are You a Permitter or a Restrictor?

I belong to a Facebook study group for Geneen Roth's Women, Food and God book, and the weight release coach who runs the group -- Joy Bufalini -- recently posted the question:

Permitters use food as an escape

Are you a permitter or a restrictor? 

If you're a restrictor:
You like to be in control
Things need to be fixed "now"
You yo-yo diet and have tried every diet you can think of
You like to have a rules and lists to follow
You feel more comfortable with measuring, weighing, or counting
You have a hard time listening to what your body truly needs

If you're a permitter:
You rebel against diets and haven't been very successful
You numb out feelings
You deny that there is a problem
You use food to leave your body
You follow the impulse of the moment
You avoid feeling a lack of anything

Are you more soldier or
flower child?

Or maybe you could just ask yourself, in the 60s were you more likely to be a soldier or flower child?

Based on the name of my blog, I am obviously a permitter. I have always rebelled against diets, even though they worked for me in the past. I am great at denying anything is wrong (Da Nile is just a river in Egypt, right?). I stayed in a marriage several years after I knew it was over. I allowed myself to gain 35 pounds without taking action.

And if I'm stressed, overwhelmed or just consumed with ennui, my first instinct is to eat something. Or was.

Almost exactly one year ago today I started Medifast and went into restriction mode. I liked having lists of foods and rules to follow. I felt like I was in control -- though I must admit I still rebelled a bit, as do all self-respecting permitters, and pushed the envelope as much as I could. Yet I still lost 35 pounds in less than four months.

If you enjoy counting calories,
chances are you a restrictor.

Now that I have shed my excess pounds and no longer have an externally imposed diet, I've had to transcend the limitations of both restriction and permission. I've had to find a middle ground that doesn't use food as a coping mechanism or happiness pill. I've had to find foods that nourish me and become hypersensitive to the ultimately unsatisfying feeling of eating food to fill emotional holes and ultimately feeling emptier.

Whether you're a permitter or a restrictor -- or someone who vacillates between the two -- the labels can be helpful in understanding what drives your behavior around food. And if you're on the Medifast Take Shape for Life Program, it is important to choose a health coach who understands your psyche and can motivate you to be successful.

You can purchase Medifast replacement meals directly from Medifast Centers, the Medifast website or -- for less cost -- through the co-branded website of a Medifast TSFL health coach. Medifast does not recommend purchasing its products from third party vendors, but if you choose to do so, you can find them on both Amazon and eBay.

Medifast Custom Order - You Choose ANY 10 Boxes



More from Diet Skeptic:

Fruck You! Fructose

Can You Drink Alcohol on Medifast

Medifast Centers Vs. Take Shape for Life

Planned Exceptions: What Is Your Pie Policy?

Wabi Sabi Dieting & Renee Zelwegger's New Face
Follow Nancy's board Low Carb Recipes on Pinterest.

Muffins Are Just Bald Cupcakes: Comedian Jim Gaffigan Puts Cake in Perspective

Jim Gaffigan riffs funnier on food than any comedian I've ever heard, and his bit on cake has to be one of his all time best.

Just the idea of cake makes people happy and willing to pretend they're friends with a jerk at work just to score some free birthday cake.

It's Phil's birthday.

I hate that guy.

There's cake in the conference room.

Maybe I should just go say "hello."

You can see Jim Gaffigan's
cake routine on You Tube

Of course, most people would never eat cake at breakfast -- except if it's pancakes. Or muffins, which are really just bald cupcakes.

And while they might brag about having four margaritas while partying the night before, they would never boast they had four slices of cake. Partying with alcohol is cool (at least in some circles). Pigging out is never cool, something better kept secret.

Within each layer of cake lies frosting and shame.

Which is too bad. Because there is a place for cake at the table to celebrate a birthday or wedding or even the end of the soccer season. If you're on a diet, you can always have a sliver, which I am certain has zero calories.

Of course, if cake is a trigger food for you or you're on a ketogenic diet like Medifast, you're better off smuggling in some kind of substitute snack and munching on that while everyone else scarfs down their socially acceptable serving of sugar and white flour.

Maybe in a hundred years people will celebrate special events with a bowl of fruit or cauldron of minestrone, but I doubt it. Cake is fun and festive and reminds us of being carefree children -- when calories were something only the moms talked about, typically in wistful tones.

You should not make too much of cake or give it too much power. It is a community food not meant to be eaten daily or in massive amounts.

Most importantly, if you decide to have a piece of cake, by all means enjoy it! Eat it consciously and intentionally without shame or regret.

Then pop a piece of sugar-free gum in your mouth so you won't be tempted to go back for seconds or thirds.

You can purchase Medifast replacement meals directly from Medifast Centers, the Medifast website or -- for less cost -- through the co-branded website of a Medifast TSFL health coach. Medifast does not recommend purchasing its products from third party vendors, but if you choose to do so, you can find them on both Amazon and eBay.

Medifast Bars - ALL FLAVORS - You Choose ANY 20 Boxes



More from Diet Skeptic:

Fruck You! Fructose

Can You Drink Alcohol on Medifast

Medifast Centers Vs. Take Shape for Life

Planned Exceptions: What Is Your Pie Policy?

Wabi Sabi Dieting & Renee Zelwegger's New Face
Follow Nancy's board Low Carb Recipes on Pinterest.

The Kick in the Tush Club: Lightening Up by Lightening Up

One of the advantages of being a Google queen is you find weird s#$@ on the Internet that normal people never discover. Since I am always looking for unique insights and angles on dieting, melting fat and achieving optimal health, my randomly methodical searching today led me to an adorable website called Our Lady of Weight Loss. Which is how I found out about the Kick in the Tush Club.

Looks more fun than a Weight Watchers meeting, right?

Courtesy of Our Lady of Weight Loss

The Kick in the Tush Club is the brainstorm of artist and anti-gravity coach Janice Taylor who has kept 50 pounds off for more than five years by not taking herself too seriously. She is the ring leader of a band of losers called Tushkateers who take the following oath:

I _____(your name here)_____,
pledge that I will do my best
to say no to the devil’s food,
to shop green markets,
to embrace my quirky, clever and creative side, and
to be ME in all my glory!

So despite the photo above, there is nothing really kinky about this club. It's a place where people (mainly women, I suspect) can let their hair down and relax about this whole weight loss thing. You've got to love a group whose slogan is "Spread the Word, NOT the icing!"

I've already subscribed to Janice's newsletter and I can't wait to start digging into some of the blog posts. Here's an excerpt from her August 13, 2014, entry on dealing with cravings:

Cravings are Thoughts.  Instead of experiencing cravings as cravings, see them for what they really are. They are just thoughts.

Cravings are just one of the many thousands of thoughts that we have each day. They are not “concrete” in nature. They are like the clouds rolling in and out.  They are simply suggestions.  A thought is a suggestion, which means that not every thought needs to be acted upon.

Wave hello to the “craving thought,” and say, “Hi Craving … Nice to see you.  Here’s your hat.  What’s your hurry?!” Send the craving thought on its way!

Make “I do not have to act on my thoughts. I have a choice!” your mantra.

I love the image of handing Mr. Craving his hat and telling him to be on his merry way, especially since I tend to anthropomorphise everything from my cats to my feelings.

I truly believe that diet and exercise are only half the battle to shedding pounds. To win the war, you must have a mindset that can sustain you through difficult times and powerful mental tricks to defeat temptation.

And when all else fails, sometimes you just need a good kick in the tush. Subscribe to Janice's newsletter here.

Food Addiction: Why Move-More-Eat-Less Does Not Work for Everyone

If you've ever read the comments section of a blog post about diets, you've noticed there are always a few smugsters who write, "You don't need to diet. Just move more and eat less. Works for me."

That's nice. You probably floss your teeth every day and clean behind your refrigerator, too.

But if moving more and eating less worked for everyone, we would not have a multi-billion-dollar diet industry and enough diet books published each year to fill a motor home.

What these wise guys fail to realize is that some people are food addicts, or more specifically, they are addicted to certain types of foods. Some people call them junk foods. Some people call them bad foods. Some people call them trigger foods. Some people call them addictive foods. Some people just call them crap (as in "I can't believe how much crap I ate today").

No matter what you call them, these foods are different for different people.

To its credit, Frito-Lay
was totally overt about its
serpentine marketing strategy

You can put a package of Oreos in every room of my house and I would never be tempted to rip open the plastic, but lock up fresh-baked cookies in a metal safe and I'd turn into the Cookie Monster trying to figure out how to get inside. Ditto for chips with guacamole or cheese dip. Which explains why Lay's Potato Chips' "Betcha can't eat just one" advertising slogan resonated so strongly with chip junkies.

In recent years several books, such as Michael Moss's "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us," have revealed that food processors purposely add just the right amount of salt, sugar and fat to our foods to make them addictive.

What chance do we have against a conspiracy designed to pad food companies' bottom lines while padding our bottoms with extra pounds?



As with all addictive behaviors, there are chemicals involved that turn us into invertebrates in the presence of certain foods. Just the thought of eating an addictive food activates our brain's pleasure center (a.k.a. nucleus accumbens), which causes it to release dopamine. This in turn creates a strong compulsion to find and consume that food.

Our bodies further betray us big time by releasing the hunger hormone ghrelin, which makes us think we're famished even if we just ate a perfectly filling meal.

Adding to this perfect storm, the more we eat the bad foods, the fewer dopamine receptors we have, and the more of that food we need to eat to attain the same level of pleasure. It's a wonder we don't all weigh three hundred pounds.

Trigger foods, such as sandwich buns,
activate the pleasure center in our brain

For me, the best weapon for battling my addiction to junk food was finding a diet plan that helped me sublimate my cravings by eating something similar that did not trigger me to eat crap. A year ago I started the Take Shape for Life program and lost 35 pounds in less than four months by substituting Medifast bars, soft bakes and cheesy puffs for analogous snacky foods.

Of course, I couldn't subsist on space food forever; so what happened when I stopped doing the Medifast 5&1 Plan and had to maintain my weight? Why didn't I just balloon right back up like most yo-yo dieters who no longer have the crutch of their diet program to keep the bad foods at bay?

That is a question I have asked myself many times in these past eight months. I've had a few instances of quasi-binge-eating trigger foods, but overall these instances have been rare. It's possible that by doing Medifast I have found permanent substitute snacks that satisfy me and make my trigger foods less compelling. The fruit and vegetable green blast I drink mid-day, for instance, makes me forget about eating again for many hours.

I will probably always be a food addict. And if I were to stock my cupboards with trigger foods, I would likely indulge my cravings and get back on the diet merry-go-round.

Instead, I focus on finding healthier foods I enjoy that will not make me over-consume empty calorie foods and regain all the weight I have lost. So far it is working.


You can purchase Medifast replacement meals directly from Medifast Centers, the Medifast website or -- for no extra cost -- through the co-branded website of a Medifast TSFL health coach. Medifast does not recommend purchasing its products from third party vendors, but if you choose to do so, you can find them on both Amazon and eBay.

Medifast replacement meals on Amazon


Similar posts:

Can You Drink Alcohol on Medifast?

How Medifast Helped Me Develop Better Habits

Medifast Centers Vs. DIY Medifast

Irrational Numbers: Doing the Math on Medifast Popcorn

Medifast Vs. Lean Cuisine Diet

Visit my other blogs:

Fit Kitty

Food Trends 

Bookish

Dictionary Woman

Follow Nancy's board Medifast on Pinterest.