I had what may be the best cupcakes (muffins?) this evening at a friendly non-family thanksgiving get together.
So you ready for your world to be rocked? Ok, go buy some Duncan Hines spice cake mix and a can of pumpkin puree. Mix the two together. You may need to add a splash of ‘milk’. Spoon into cupcake cups and bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes.
These things are pumpkin-licious, moist and simply amazing. You can add some icing (cream cheese works well) or eat them as is. And really, they are ridiculously easy. They will definitely be making an appearance at my family’s thanksgiving meal.
I’ve decided to wear the bodybugg again. It’s an odd time to do it since I’m not planning to diet over the holidays, but I’m curious as to how much i’m moving in my life as a student. Especially since I’m not working a physical job and going to the gym six days a week anymore.
Oddly enough I suspect that the increase in dog walking, walking around campus and increasing my NEAT will add up to something within the range of what I was doing before. We’ll see.
Confession: I am, for the first time ever, watching The Biggest Loser. Before this season I had never seen one single episode due to 1)not usually liking reality tv and 2)not being interested in people going to what I considered to be often unhealthy extremes to lose weight not to mention 3)I was ideologically opposed to weight loss so watching people compete over who could lose the most weight was like me watching a hunting competition or something.
I didn’t start watching TBL because of my own decision to lose weight. After all, I was losing weight this time last year and didn’t watch it. No, I find myself watching a lot more network tv now that I don’t have cable and I just happened to catch the first show.
So let me see, just off the top of my head what’s wrong with the show:
encourages unrealistic ideas of weight loss
uses injury and overtraining as ways to generate drama
uses scale weight as the only metric of success
every contestant is assumed to have a deep psychological root which is the cause behind their weight
the trainers are often bordering on abusive (I say bordering b/c so far I haven’t seen any really personal insults, just general yelling.)
And yet, this show has totally sucked me in. I laugh and cry and root for the people the producers want me to root for. IOW, I am a total tool. And you know, yes, the trainers yell and yes, Jillian Michaels has some weird ideas about how organic foods and safe plastic will fix your ‘broken’ metabolism, but I also really love them. I am really inspired when I watch the show even though I know it’s both manipulative and unrealistic. So shame on me.
ps: Did anyone else see Rebecca on Jay Leno? She is buff!
For endless tips and articles on how to moderate food intake during the holidays. I know that for people trying to lose weight, the holidays often cause a huge amount of stress. The mental energy you use thinking about food, the guilt you feel for indulging, the frustration/bitterness you feel when you don’t indulge and everyone else does can lessen your enjoyment of what should be a mostly good time. So here are my ‘tips.’ The scare quotes are because, as always, I don’t think I know what’s best for anyone else. I just know what helps me meet my goals without going spare.
1)Consider making weight maintenance your goal for the holidays. Restricting calories while everyone feasts is probably not fun. I don’t know because I don’t actively diet during the holidays.
2)Try to avoid extreme behaviors. You don’t need to chew carrots while everyone else enjoys pie, but you don’t have to have fourths when you’re not hungry.
3)Make sure your ‘indulgences’ are foods/drinks that you love. For me I’ll often notice that I’m mindlessly noshing on foods that aren’t all that amazing just because they’re there. When I make it a general guideline to only go for my absolute favorites, I always eat less overall.
4) If holidays are already stressful for you, maybe you should just say fuck it for those couple of weeks. Again, you need to eat 3500 calories *over* what you’re already using in order to gain one single pound. Most people aren’t going to manage to gain more than a pound or two during the holidays when all is said and done. Remember that the scale may show a larger gain due to lots of other issues though so don’t just go by that.
So that’s how I approach things. My plan is to maintain while enjoying the holiday yummies and, if the stresses of the season start to pile up, then I’m not gonna add to the crazy by obsessing over food.
I was having a discussion this past weekend with somebody who insisted that ‘clean eating’ could allow one’s body to magically burn extra calories.
Ok, he didn’t actually say that. What he said was that if he ate lean protein and lots of veggies, then he could eat huge amounts of food and still lose weight, but that if he ate lots of processed foods, he could eat less calories and still gain weight. When I suggested this might be due to having greater satiety and less water retention rather than ‘clean’ calories not fully counting somehow, I was instantly rebuked. No, the same exact number of calories could lead to weight gain or loss depending on the origin of said calories.
Now I often feel I come across as kinda sorta maybe completely obnoxious know-it-all on this blog. But if that’s the case, it’s only because I often feel at a total loss as to how to respond to this stuff in my real life. Generally, I make some suggestion as to another explanation, but I never tend to push. But it continues to annoy me in the same way that I have a friend who took airborne once, felt as if her cold (which she still got) was a little shorter and less severe than other ones and now decries ‘big pharma’ for getting it taken off the shelves*. When I pointed out that the problem was that it was making claims it couldn’t back up with any actual science, she just points to herself. Case closed, I guess.
What I really want to ask is are these people just completely ignorant of how science works or if they believe that they’re so damn special that their experience overshadows all other data. But I don’t, cuz I’m super nice and tactful. I just say it here instead.
At the same time, I do try to keep in mind all the crap I’ve bought over the years and how, at times, I even became really invested in said crap to the point where I wouldn’t listen to anything said against it. Then I remember how much I love super long sentences. Still do.
Anyway, I suppose I just wish I could find the perfect balance of sincerity and firmness that allows for better communication in these types of discussions.
*Afaik it’s still on the shelves, it just had to tone down it’s claims. Boo hoo.
I once wore a wide size 10 shoe. I now wear a size 9.
I mean, the fact that my feet would be a little less wide makes sense, but to lose a whole shoe size seems excessive.
In other news, I’m working on a big post that I hope to finish soon. Right now it doesn’t quite say what I want and I suspect it doesn’t always make sense. I’m loosely thinking of it as my ‘manifesto’ but not in a ‘from my cabin in the woods’ manifesto. More tongue-in-cheek manifesto.
Stupid wordpress app lost my frackin post.
To sum up: I feel gross. I pretty much snacked all day, never even giving my body the chance to really want food. I’m frustrated that this still feels like a default setting I return to when I’m tired or stressed. But I’m also tellingyself that I ate this way for years and it’s no surprise that I find it a bit comforting. At the very least I no longer try to force a healthy meal on top of the crap snacking like I used to.
Off to get some real sleep. Stupid app.
Why does hanging out with people and having a good time often lead to my eating more than I want to? I don’t mean the lowering of inhibitions that might lead to my making food choices I usually wouldn’t make on my own (yes, I’ll have the large fries!), but actually eating when I’m not even hungry.
I don’t think anyone is pressuring me so why do I feel the need to do this? Weird.
Homemade brownies.
You know what makes those brownies even better?
Vanilla ‘ice cream’.
You know what makes those brownies and ice cream so awesome that the sheer density of awesome threatens to collapse and form a singularity whose pull will be so strong that even light cannot escape?
Rainbow Sprinkles.
So just be warned, if you’re suddenly pulled into a black hole, you’ll know who to blame. But it’ll be too late cuz you’ll be pulled into spaghetti and then your atoms will be pulled apart.
It would still be worth it though.
The NY Times has an article comparing two studies done on the effect New York City’s calorie-labeling law has had on people’s food choices. You can read the whole article, but long story short, it hasn’t had a big effect so far.
Really. Color me surprised.
The article points out that in poor communities (where one of the studies focused) people tend to be more concerned with price that calories. Hence the finding that people were getting *more* calories from subway since the law went into effect – a consequence of the five dollar footlong deal, they guess. Otherwise, they note that a lot of people don’t notice the information, but even among those who do, only a small percentage use this information.
Why is this? I don’t know, but since this is the internet I can definitely make random guesses.
1) Not everyone is concerned with some aspect of their weight. If you’re not, then who cares if one latte has 70 more calories than another?
2) As I said in this post, lots of people have absolutely no clue as to the amount of energy they’re using or eating. Calorie counts are meaningless if not in context.
3) People are constantly bombarded with the message that calories don’t matter. It’s the carbs, the chemicals, the blocked chi etc… I would honestly not be shocked to find out that among people who would say they want to change their weight, more than half would think that calories don’t matter.
4) People already have favorites at their regular restaurants/coffee shops. It could be that rather than give up that pumpkin scone, people are trying to compensate elsewhere.
Does this mean that posting calorie information is a bad thing? I don’t think so. Any more than we should stop building sidewalks or cleaning up parks if some studies find that people don’t instantly start walking an extra five miles a day when a new sidewalk is put in.
