Nurturing Confidence

I'm still a long way from many of my goals, including weight loss and fitness goals, but I can already see some changes in myself. This time the changes are more in attitude and emotions than in the physical. It's a bit strange because I've been so focused on the physical but those actually aren't the first changes I notice.

In most of my life I'm a pretty confident person and, when I'm not sure, I usually will take the risk anyway. True, it does take some talking myself into it sometimes, but I often will make the leap. This has definitely shown in my work life.

But there are parts of my life where I'm really not confident and many of these revolve around either how I look or what I can physically do. I was always comparing myself to others and feeling negative about how I looked but because I had no confidence in my physical abilities, I thought I was trapped in the skin I'm in. No, I'm not sure why I thought that - because it's obvious I can make changes (and have). Maybe it's a symptom of feeling if I don't try and I'm negatively judged, I have an excuse for why?

I'm truly not sure.

What I have noticed is that I'm seeing less of these negative comparisons in myself and when I do compare myself to another person and find something lacking, I start thinking about how to get there (if possible) or how it's just the breaks that I won't ever have x attribute. I just don't seem to linger on it past a thought or two.

When something is physically hard, I seem more able to acknowledge it's hard and put aside my almost obsessive need to WIN the first time and recognize that it may take time to get there but I can do it if I both want to do it and I put the necessary work for into it. It's okay to not have things happen overnight. It's okay to have to build up to something.

Hell, it's okay not to be Wonder Woman!

Instead I'm trying to nurture this little seed of confidence in my ability to achieve my long-term goals on this fitness journey. One pound at a time. One step at a time. One new experience at a time.

When Food is no Longer a Comfort - Coping Mechanisms in Flux

Today has involved some interesting insights and revelations about myself and how I cope with stress now versus how I used to.

I used to have a complete reliance on comfort foods. If I was upset, I needed a treat, dammit. If I was stressed out about something, I wanted foods with huge amounts of carbs like, oh, macaroni and cheese or such. I wanted sugar and I wanted lots of it.

Right now things are a bit stressful at my house. My husband has been job hunting for several months, my ten-year-old is having the "summer sillies" and work is going well but I'm very busy. Add in some extraneous other issues as well as my health news and my "remake myself" voyage and it's a lot of concern and stress.

Normally, I'd have dived into some chips-n-dip. Maybe a cheesecake. Oh - grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup! But I realized because of a comment a friend made when she wanted to eat because of stress that things have reached upheaval in my world.

I Don't Want Comfort Food.

Seriously. I just don't care. I'm not hungry. This morning I actually woke up a bit stressed and found myself eager to get to the gym to let go of some of that stress!

I thought about it while driving to the gym and while on the treadmill, including some discussions with one of my BFFs (who valiantly meets me at the gym two days a week - even though I'm not up to her pace but, boy, do I appreciate the encouragement and the sanity checks!).

My coping mechanisms are in a weird state of flux.

Food seems to have come off the table as a comfort/coping item because:

1. When I was diagnosed with celiac disease, some comfort foods went onto the forbidden list right away and others I had to find gluten-free substitutes for. Even more than that, eating was now fraught with suspicion and concern. Very few foods could just be trusted, everything had to be examined in detail. Spontenaity was pretty much GONE.
2. When I then had to go low carb as well, all the substitutes had to be re-examined and most had to be discarded.
3. The biggest thing, though, is that after a month on low carb, my tastes and have changed and I'm just not hungry. I just don't care. In fact, there are days I think I was stalling my own weight loss by not eating enough food. Not because I enjoy or want to feel hungry but because I just don't feel hungry.

I had to stop and think. What is my coping mechanism now? I don't think I'm just leaving stress bottled up inside me or I'd be (a lot more) nuts.

Then it dawned on me - my newly minted coping mechanism seems to be activity of some sort. At work I've been getting up from my desk and walking around the floor/building. This morning I wanted to get to the gym to get over my mad-on with my husband.

I can live with this.

About the Glycemic Index - I Don't Trust It

The Glycemic Index is one of the most touted ways to judge the impact of foods on people's blood glucose. Diabetics, in particular, are told to eat foods "low on the glycemic index" in order to better control their blood sugar.

It sounds, at first, to be an elegant thing. Judge foods not just by how many carbs are in them but by what their actual impact on blood sugar is. How could that be wrong?

Well, in reading Dr. Richard Bernstein's book, Diabetes Solution, I've learned some very interesting things about the glycemic index and how it was developed that make me much less likely to ever rely on it for judging what foods I (as a pre-diabetic) can eat and still maintain good blood sugar control.

The Glycemic Index was pioneered in 1981 by Dr. David Jenkins, a professor of nutrition at the University of Toronto. The scale goes from 0 to 100, with pure glucose being 100. A glycemic index for any given food is determined by:

1. Gather a pool of at least 10 volunteers and have them fast overnight.
2. Feed these volunteers a sample of the food being tested containing 50g of available carbs.
3. Take blood samples at 15 minute intervals for the first hour and 30 minute intervals for the second hour.
4. Measure the blood glucose level in each sample for each volunteer.
5. Average the measurements at each increment between all the volunteers.
6. Map out these averaged measurements over time (this is called an AUC or a glucose response curve).
7. Calculate the area under this AUC curve and divide it by the area achieve with a control (usually white bread or sugar).
8. Multiple this number by 100 to obtain the test food's glycemic index.

Now, I'm an admitted geek and, especially after reading Diabetes Solution, I have issues with this system as the "holy grail" it's often treated as:

1. These tests are carried out on "normal" subjects. By definition, the insuline and glucose-regulating systems of a diabetic or even someone who is insulin resistant are NOT normal.
2. A pool of 10 individuals is a damned small pool and the results are averaged, which further casts doubt.
3. Measurements are only carried out for two hours and the glucose response can last longer than two hours, depending on the person and the other factors involved.
4. Each food is tested in isolation. While this is an attempt to not allow other factors to interfere, we don't tend to EAT these foods in isolation.

What I do (and strongly advocate) is test foods on myself to determine my own, individual, reaction to them. There are already foods that raise my blood sugar a lot but barely affect my husband and vice versa. What I do is fast for four hours, take a blood surgar measurement, then eat the food and start taking measurements at 15 minute intervals for two hours, then 30 minute intervals for two more hours.

Doing this means I can compare what a particular food does TO ME and make my own decision about what actions to take.

Patience is Not My Forte

I'm not sure if my personality is just strange to me when I try to examine it or if it's truly unusual. Maybe there are other people out there who are quite similar to me but I've not really discovered one yet.

I'm a mix of very type-A and driven with a good dash of really lazy thrown in. If I decide to tackle something, I'm very gung ho and want to fix/resolve/decide immediately but if I don't want to do something or decide it's not worth my full efforts, I can be an ostrich with my head firmly underground. This often means that I will put off little things until they become big things and I get fed up enough to make them a focus. I can't say it's particulary healthy or the best way to deal with things but it's a part of my personality.

Being driven is a key part of my success at work but the ostrich part of me is why I got so fat. Now I'm driven to FIX the fat and get fit again. Be a runner again. The hinderance is that little thing called "patience" - not something I have in much of any quantity and certainly something I'm going to need on this journey.

Today I got to the gym and got on the treadmill. I started out at (for me) a brisk walk of 3.0 mph (20 min/mile) but after about ten to fifteen minutes, my shins started to complain. I dialed the treadmill back to 2.8 (22 min/mile) and walked but kept catching myself reaching for the button to speed up the treadmill. I really had to force myself to not go faster. The shin splints need time to heal and complaining does not equal healing.

I'm going to try to make myself complete this week only walking and reassess how my shins are doing on Sunday. Right now they have some lumps and are tender to the touch.

This is suprisingly hard for me. I'm used to "work really hard, solve the problem quickly and move on" but I can't do that with my weight or my fitness. Add in the fact that although I've been eating to plan since I started, this month has been a series of up and down the same two lbs. I'm really hoping it's just because my body is adjusting but we'll see - again, the patience cames in. I can't tell any changes in clothing fit, either, so that adds to my angst.

But I want gratification NOW, dammit!

Gluten-Free Meets Low-Carb

I was diagnosed with celiac disease (also called celiac sprue disease) in late 2009. This is a genetic auto-immune disease where my immune system reacts to the gluten in wheat, barley, rye and spelt and, as a result, destroys the lining of the small intestine. This leads to a whole host of miseries and has been linked to cancer as well.

This diagnosis changed my relationship with food quite a bit. No longer was food something I could just indulge in a quick sugar fix without care or concern. Gluten is in an incredible number of foods and most fast food was right out if it wasn't a salad. The penalty for not being careful was swift and severe - I would react within about twenty minutes with nausea, chills, then vomiting. It takes me about three days to get over being "glutened". I very quickly became very careful.

In a strange way, this really started my voyage. I was forced to change my eating habits if I didn't want to be miserable all the time. When I realized how much better I felt, like a new woman, I was easily able to resist gluten foods.

I thought I was doing so well. In retrospect, not so well, actually.

The growing number of people on gluten-free diets means that food manufacturers have quickly come out with a whole host of gluten-free substitutes. You can get cake, bread, pasta, etc. All sorts of things you would have otherwise never been able to have. And I did just that - substituted the gluten-free equivalents for the gluten-containing favorites. All seemed right in the world -- for a while.

In about June of 2011, I started to become concerned. Though I initially lost some weight after going gluten-free - probably because my edema or swelling went down throughout my system - I was gaining weight again and it was all in my belly. I was normally prone to gaining mostly in my hips, thighs and butt. Not this time. As is typical for me, I did a bunch of research and started to worry that I had the precursors to diabetes - metabolic syndrome.

After some home blood testing, then a visit to my doctor, it was confirmed. What I needed to do was to not only lose weight - a lot of weight - but to go on a low-carb diet.

I have issues, by the way, with the standard Diabetes Diet. I'll save that rant for another time but I devoured Dr. Bernstein's book, Diabetes Solution. In it he talks a lot about the difference it can make to get your glucose as close to normal as possible instead of within the wide (and generally too high) numbers touted by the medical establishment and how the prescribed Diabetes Diet is just plain wrong. But I digress....

I sat down and took a long look at what I'd been eating - and winced. A lot of my gluten-free substitute foods were extremely high carb and the carbs were highly digestible. Sugar was off my list, too. So it was time to make drastic changes to my diet. Good changes, in retrospect. With only 30g of carbs a day as my maximum limit, I don't eat many prepared foods anymore. Most gluten-free prepared foods are too high in carbs. Most low-carb specific things like pasta, etc., contain wheat.

Instead I eat a lot of meat, cheese, eggs and such and a ton of vegetable. I am almost completely grain-free. Thankfully, I like meat, eggs and cheese and I'm broadening my vegetable horizons regularly.

It does make me a bit of a drag as a companion for an impromptu meal out but, thankfully, my husband has also gone low-carb because of his own pre-diabetes (though he still eats some gluten) and he's a darned good cook.

Gluten-Free can co-exist with Low-Carb but you do have to do some careful reading and assess what will work for you. The biggest fear with a lot of low carb diets is kidney damage or cholesterol problems. I had blood work done for both and I'm doing extremely well.