I say this without irony or sarcasm for a change.

I like what Andrea the Gastronaut has to say about the Pepsi contract renewal by the Toronto District School Board:

What the…? As a healthy living advocate and someone who reads the books (I’ve been working through Marion Nestle’s Food Politics for about a month and its always at the front of my consciousness) and watches the films, this really gets me going. The approval of aspartame by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was followed by a retraction based on demonstrated public concern over the fact that it produced brain tumors in rats!Andrea the Gastronaut, Jun 2009

This week the Globe and Mail has been running a feature on sodium. The premise is that Canadians eat way too much salt and that there is sodium in foods we wouldn’t expect to have any at all.

I’ve never really worried about sodium because my blood pressure is fine. That’s my logic anyway. High cholesterol has always been my concern and my regular gym regime has been enough to get that under control.

The real question I have is who decides what our recommended intake of anything is and how do they decide? News articles allude to “recommended intake” of all sorts of things all of the time – calories, fat, sugar caffeine and sodium. The recommendation for the latter is 1,500 mg. Why? If so many people struggle to meet that target maybe it’s because we can handle more sodium. Or it’s because we rely on it too much. I’m no expert.

I only ever salt water when I boil it. I never salt food above and beyond what’s already in it.

Wired has a series of articles titled “How to Live by the Numbers.” The nutrition article has a nice summary of how the Weight Watchers points system works.

Regardless of what diet or fitness program you pursue, there’s one ingredient that’s essential to your ultimate success: Discipline.

And I suck at it.

My lack of discipline is a character flaw that has had an a profound negative impact on my weight loss efforts over the years as well as on the adoption of a more active lifestyle. I’m very good at understanding the problem and coming up with plans to solve the problem. What I struggle with is maintaining the discipline to adhere to those plans.

Although, even as I write this, I might be confusing discipline with patience. Patience is just as critical because in anything worth doing, it’s important to be patient because you will not likely see the results of your efforts right away.

Supposedly you can cultivate discipline. It takes effort. Perhaps it even takes discipline! One thing I know for sure is my lack of discipline and patience affects my efforts to reach a variety personal goals:

- I need discipline to maintain this blog regularly
- I need discipline to complete the novel I feel I have in me
- I need discipline to achieve my goals at work
- I need discipline to spend less time watching TV and reading more

Discipline on the diet front since Friday has been sorely lacking. I ended up at the pub Friday night for a few hours that included several pints of Guinness and a couple of slices of pizza on the way home. Saturday included Tim Hortons for breakfast, pub fare and a pint for lunch and pizza for dinner. Sunday was not much better and Monday afternoon found me at the pub after work – I will spare you the gory details.

The only reason I was at the gym this morning was I had an appointment – I had not made it there on my own since Friday for my last appointment.

Discipline, where art thou?

Based on discussions with my trainer, I’m fairly certain that Weight Watchers is not sufficiently accounting for the intensity of my workouts and as a result, my body feels as though it has to conserve rather than burn calories.

The Weight Watchers exercise template estimates I am burning roughly 250 calories during a one-hour free weight session with my trainer and thus awarding me with the appropriate additional points for the day. With the Weight Watchers system it is recommended that you use all of your points. However, my trainer says I am burning at least twice that given the nature of my exercises and the intensity, in part because I keep burning calories after the workout as my body rebuilds.

If Weight Watchers is underestimating how much I am burning during exercise, then it means I may not be consuming enough food on the days I am working out. Having been doing this consistently for months, it could provide an explanation as to why my weight loss keeps hitting a plateau.

From now on, I am going to assume that I am burning at least 500 calories during my workout and eat accordingly. In the meantime, my trainer is preparing a meal plan for me. I won’t give up on Weight Watchers, but this will help make sure I get the right mix of protein, carbs and fat.

Hopefully my body won’t make the mistake of conserving when it can afford to burn from now on. I’ll keep you posted.

… get a nasty chest cold.

Tuesday afternoon I had a cough which I hoped was allergies, but by Tuesday night I knew I had a cold coming on.

I ended up taking Wednesday off work, loading up on Cold FX and sleeping all day in the hopes I could move it out of my system quickly.

It wasn’t until yesterday that I felt it was almost gone. I did lurch into work Thursday and Friday, but I felt lousy. I sat on the couch like a lump most of the weekend.

This morning I was back at the gym for the first time in more than a week. Surprisingly, I had the energy to work out. But when my trainer suggested we do a weigh-in, I was certain that my weight would be up since I’d felt like a big fat blob all week.

Instead (Insert Drumroll Here) I’d lost 10 lbs! 10 freakin’ pounds!

I’m getting sick more often – one week a month for the next few months and I’ll be exactly where I want to be.

I think this is ironic, but let Alanis decide for sure.

I’m sick with a head / chest cold the same week I decided to do a better job at remembering to take my vitamins and trying out different fruit smoothie options.

And now my blender is busted – busted in that it leaks from the bottom. Granted, it’s a 30-year-old blender that my mother let me have because she never used it, but I just started using it and now it leaks.

I’ve not been to the gym this week and it looks like Saturday will be soonest I will get together with my trainer. I’m hoping this little break might jump start my weight loss.

And for one last irony, I don’t seem to be hungry at all when I’m sick like this.

Low fat alternatives to our favorite foods are everywhere. For every frozen dinner there’s a low fat, calorie reduced equivalent. Snacks such as granola bars and cookies, traditionally considered treats and desserts, now have twin products that are marketed as healthy snacks between meals.

And yet, despite the advent of these low fat alternatives, obesity is now an epidemic.

Reduced fat foods can lull people into thinking they are eating healthy, when in fact they are just trading fat and calories for chemicals and processes. These low fat alternatives do not necessarily make you lose weight.

There are many reasons for this. As I mentioned in a past post, I have found low fat frozen dinners to be ultimately unsatisfying. That’s because foods with a higher fat content leave you feeling fuller and more satisfied for longer. As a result, those who avoid low fat products tend to eat less in one meal and snack less.

If you’re frequently opting for the low fat food over the regular food, you often end up eating more of the low fat alternative than you would of the traditional meal. In fact, some research shows that people eating lower fat foods can end up eating up to 28 per cent more than they normally would have. In our minds, we think it’s okay to have a bigger portion because the meal is lower in fat.

Low fat doesn’t necessarily mean healthy, low carb, or low calorie. Most low fat foods are full of high GI carbs, high calories, flavor enhancers, sugars and other artificial ingredients to make the food taste better. Low-fat yogurt, for example, is loaded with sugar to counteract the loss of taste that is the result of the removal of the fat. Another excellent example is cream cheese. Often the low fat versions of cream cheese have twice as many ingredients as the regular version. Emulsifiers and thickeners account for most of the rest of those extra ingredients. Emulsifiers help ingredients stick together. This role is usually accomplished by fat – it adds flavor and texture to foods. When you take out the fat, the food needs to be tweaked artificially with other ingredients to make it tasty, while ingredients such as carrageenan, xanthan gum, locust bean gum, guar gum, sodium alginate, among many others, are added to thicken a product or hold it together.

Sounds yummy, yes?

The reality is healthy fats, in small amounts, are essential for good health and serve a purpose in your body. You’re better off have a smidgen of butter on your toast then generously applying so-called heart healthy margarine. Low fat foods are not necessarily healthy, low calorie or low in sugars and people who rely in them to control weight often end up eating more calories and struggle to slim down.

Personally, my new approach is to avoid these low fat food alternatives. Rather than eating a new cookie snack that’s only 100 calories, I’m going to eat an apple or a pint of berries. I’m also exploring the benefits of eating more organic products, but that’s a whole other post.

As I mentioned earlier this week, I scheduled a doctor’s appointment this morning to start the investigation into why I’m so tired and lethargic despite an improved diet and exercise regime.

I had a physical just over two months ago, and the good news is my doctor was thorough with the tests she ordered. Not only is my thyroid fine, but she defined some of my results as “gorgeous.” My cholesterol is within reason now, and that is definitely thanks to the exercise.

Since there’s nothing there to indicate a cause for my malaise, we’re going to investigate my sleep habits. I mentioned that even when I get to bed at a reasonable hour and sleep through the night for eight hours I still feel lousy – not just as I adjust to being awake but for the whole day.  So I’ll be heading off to a sleep clinic in the near future.

In the meantime, I’m going to consult my trainer at tomorrow morning’s session to further explore a food plan and whether I might need more calories rather than less.

One potential cause for my fatigue and lack of energy my trainer is exploring is whether or not I’m eating enough. I realize this is somewhat contrary to yesterday’s post about giving up foods and empty calories such as beer, but you can in fact make the mistake of not eating enough when you diet.

Calories, whether they come from protein, carbs or fat, are all fuel for the body and work in different ways. Your body automatically burns so many calories a day just by being alive. Everyone has a resting calorie burn rate, aka resting metabolic rate (RMR). I burn about 2,200 calories a day without doing anything, based on my gender, age, weight and height. That means if I want to maintain that weight, I want eat that same amount of calories.

When you cut calories to below your RMR, your body fights back. It actually decreases your metabolic rate. If you are eating an insufficient amount of food to meet your RMR, you will not be eating enough to maintain your body’s functions properly. You can get away with this for a day or two, but while repeatedly restricting your calories below your RMR is not unusual among dieters, it can have a negative impact on your health.

If your restriction of calories is too severe, your body will do everything it can to conserve calories and at the very least, you won’t lose weight if you’re working out three days a week intensely, as I am. Other symptoms of going below your RMR are fatigure and listlessness. My trainer and I haven’t confirmed this, but when I look at my Weight Watchers plan, it’s essentially saying allowable daily caloric intake is 1,950. That’s already a 200 calorie deficit, plus what I burn in exercise at the gym as well as anything else I do such as brisk walks home from work, although exercise does become earned points, e.g. caloric intake.

The recommended deficit is about 500 calories a day if you want to safely shave off the pounds, and that assumes I eating healthly. If you try shave off 750 calories a day and put crap such as diet soda and frozen dinners in your system, you’re not going to feel great and probably will end up being unable to maintain any kind of exercise regime at the gym. The quality of calories is important – it’s a mix of protein, carbs and fat. Cutting carbs out completely is not the answer and neither is cutting out all fat. There are some carbs and some fats your bodies needs. They all work together (a whole other post).

There is no magic pixie dust, but a few rules of thumb for making sure you can get the right mix of calories into your system to maintain your RMR and healthly create the proper deficit for weight loss:

• Plenty of veggies, especially dark, leafy greens and other highly colored vegetables each day
• Aim for whole grain breads, pasta, cereals and other products in very small portions
• Aim for 2 or 3 servings of fruit each day
• For protein, choose fish, poultry, eggs, lean meats, beans, and legumes
• Avoid packaged, processed foods, even those aimed the weight-conscious; they may be low in calories but often offer little nutrition

Remember that even before you start vigorous exercise, you are already burning calories beyond your RMR through daily activities – doing four loads of laundry that you have to haul down to the laundry room counts as does rearranging furniture or working on your feet all day as a pharmacist.

What I have to figure for myself is what my real deficit is, whether it is healthy and making sure I have a correct mix of fuel.

Ultimately, if you limit fuel to extreme, you will sputter and conk out like any car.