People are always surprised when I tell them I lost 50 lbs. without exercising. Turns out, as a woman, I probably had the best strategy.

Controlling my diet took all of my effort and resolve. Adding on any type of exercise, which I despised, was too much for me. I’d been to Weight Watchers [...]]]>

People are always surprised when I tell them I lost 50 lbs. without exercising. Turns out, as a woman, I probably had the best strategy.

Controlling my diet took all of my effort and resolve. Adding on any type of exercise, which I despised, was too much for me. I’d been to Weight Watchers twice – after college and after my first son’s birth. Now I had to lose the weight from my second pregnancy. Truth is, after giving birth and breastfeeding for a year, I’d gained another ten pounds When I tried to lose it on my own, I gained even more.

After discovering I was officially obese, I dragged myself to Weight Watchers. I sat at meetings for weeks without making any changes in my life. Eventually I beat back the internal conflict and convinced myself to do one thing. Just one diet change. After a while the small steps worked, but it took three years to lose all the weight.

While struggling to control my diet, I never attempted any physical activity. During the weight loss years, I would walk a bit. I tried the 10,000 steps per day with a pedometer but didn’t have the time. Since I had loved prenatal yoga, I would practice yoga with videos at least three times per week to obtain a state of well-being and good mental health. The walking and yoga weren’t really exercise and these activities were never intended for weight loss.

In Gretchen Reynolds recent article, Weighing the Evidence on Exercise, she backs up my method of avoiding strenuous workouts during weight loss. Up until now, scientists weren’t really sure how exercise affects metabolism and appetite but studies are starting to put the pieces together:

Barry Braun, an associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, in the American College of Sports Medicine’s February newsletter: The deficit in calories can result from cutting back your food intake or from increasing your energy output — the amount of exercise you complete — or both.

“The body aims for homeostasis,” Braun says. It likes to remain at whatever weight it’s used to. So even small changes in energy balance can produce rapid changes in certain hormones associated with appetite, particularly acylated ghrelin, which is known to increase the desire for food, as well as insulin and leptin, hormones that affect how the body burns fuel.

So when we change our diet for weight loss, our body signals eating more. We have to fight the urge to eat. It’s worse for women.

Female bodies, inspired almost certainly “by a biological need to maintain energy stores for reproduction,” Braun says, fight hard to hold on to every ounce of fat. Exercise for many women (and for some men) increases the desire to eat.

People end up consuming more calories when they exercise. You shouldn’t set yourself up to have to fight off an even stronger desire to eat. Take it from my experience, it’s better to change your eating habits permanently without burning the calories with exercise.

Tomorrow: Weight And Exercising: Part II – Exercise Is Mandatory To Keep Off  The Weight

A few months ago I started to feel sick at work with a headache. Convinced I was catching my son’s cold, I decided to go out for a run anyway. Miraculously, I felt better.

On a few other occasions this winter I’ve felt terrible. Convinced I’d be sick in [...]]]>

Watch out when the stress blows in

A few months ago I started to feel sick at work with a headache. Convinced I was catching my son’s cold, I decided to go out for a run anyway. Miraculously, I felt better.

On a few other occasions this winter I’ve felt terrible. Convinced I’d be sick in bed within hours, I dragged myself out for my late-night kickboxing class then recovered. I’ve been telling everyone how my exercise must be boosting my immune system because I never wind up getting sick.

With the blizzards, I couldn’t travel to the gym. For six days my stomach was upset. I enjoyed my time with my family while trying to keep the ball rolling for a major fundraiser. With Washington DC snowed in for a full week, the hours were dwindling before the big event. Even though I had been ill for several days, I forced myself to an early-morning kickboxing class as soon as the roads were clear. When I came home I started to research my symptoms in fear of cancer. A short time later I was completely better.

When I was reading the medical book, the first cause of my symptoms was typed in bold letters: stress.

I had spent a week feeling sick because of stress. I still can’t believe I didn’t recognize it. My suffering had me worrying about a major disease. With my conscious effort to stay healthy, I can’t believe I didn’t know what was happening to me.

The realization that I was suffering from stress every time I thought I was sick floored me.

When I interviewed for my nonprofit job, I was asked how I handle stress. Fundraising under tight schedules with part-time hours and a strong desire to succeed is recognized for the stress it creates. Yoga and running on a daily basis had been a strong foundation to staying healthy but with work taking up additional hours, late-night kickboxing had to be added. Apparently, I can’t live without all these stress reducers.

But not all stress is bad. The American Institute of Stress describes it this way:

Increased stress increases productivity – up to a point, after which things rapidly deteriorate, and that level also differs for each of us. It’s much like the stress or tension on a violin string. Not enough produces a dull raspy sound and too much an irritating screech or snaps the string – but just the correct degree of stress creates a beautiful tone.

There are many signs of stress.  HelpGuide.org lists the physical ones as aches and pains, diarrhea or constipation, nausea, dizziness, and loss of sex drive. Keep a look out for these in your daily life.

Without intervention, my situation is making me physically ill. With this awareness, I need to make sure I find the ways to keep a good balance and stay healthy. Hopefully the weather or injuries won’t prevent me again.

I’m feeling a need to run right now.

Another student and I had been training with [...]]]> “I didn’t expect for you all to become my friends … and give me a dinner like this.” My kickboxing instructor was leaving for a year. We came together with our spouses to say goodbye. After hearing so much about our families, we wanted to meet each other.

Another student and I had been training with her for about eight months. Her class grew by word of mouth. We were all out-of-shape folks who weren’t used to being fit. A community grew as we struggled along, barely able to complete each night’s training.

When I look around and see communities sprout, often there’s a negative element. People find complaints to rally around. They join together to stop an affordable apartment building or petition to close their street to their neighbors. They are fighting for themselves and blocking a better life for others.

In local politics, it’s a rare occasion to rally around something positive. Most of the time, people turn out when they want to stop something. If everything’s okay, you just keep going about your business with work, kids, and activities. Most people aren’t thinking about dedicating themselves to change the world for someone else.

In kickboxing we are learning how to physically fight, but we were also learning how to fight for each other. Our lifetimes of sloth left us unhealthy and overweight. None of us would workout as hard as we do without the others. When we sign up each month, it means everyone can continue and we don’t want to let the group down.

We’re all fighting our busy schedules, illnesses, and laziness to keep coming back. We’ve already proven we can’t do it on our own. If we lose even one person, we wouldn’t be able to continue.

We have a new trainer at a different gym, but we’re all still in it together. It’s wonderfully rare to fight for something good.

I hate them.

I fight them back. Do the right thing. Realize I have no right to feel the [...]]]> The first time I heard Joni Mitchell’s Good Friends , I loved the line “No blame for what we can and cannot feel”.  I felt relief. The song allowed me to forgive myself for those sometimes inappropriate emotional responses to situations.

I hate them.

I fight them back. Do the right thing. Realize I have no right to feel the way I do, then see the situation from another perspective. My mind puts a stop to my emotions, usually at a pretty quick pace. We’d all like to think we’re perfect and never react with anger, jealousy, or hate, but we do. We may immediately stop ourselves or struggle for a while, but the emotions exist.

The people in our lives can help or hinder the process. Friends can support inappropriate reactions or help you work toward more balanced responses. People who surround themselves with others in a certain mindset tend to react in the same way.

This is why support groups often go off on crazy tangents.

When I was breast feeding, friends warned me away from La Leche League because they said they were extreme. I never went but should have. I did have some difficulties and could have used their help. Other people’s impressions stopped me.

A support group was extremely helpful when I had a child with extensive allergies to food, medicines and the environment. However, I disagree with the elimination of certain foods from public places such as the bins of peanuts in stores. I also don’t agree with hand wipes to every child after lunch because it is unnecessary, damaging to the environment, against best practices from the leading doctors, and a waste of money. I would attend and feel the need to speak against these advocacy efforts. I don’t enjoy conflict, so I stopped attending. My 12 years of experience is lost to all the newcomers who need to figure out how to survive each day.

Since like-minded people tend to stay together, formal groups often don’t recognize other people’s realities. They become very centered on their own concerns. This is helpful when first dealing with a new situation in your life but eventually, you are ready to progress.

Support groups need to support. When the group veers off to change the world, someone needs to take a step back and stop them. Other organizations can handle the protesting, letter writing, and campaign organizing. A support group needs to help people deal with the world on a daily basis and not change the world. Otherwise, the care and encouragement are lost in the midst of the protests.

What have your support group experiences been like?