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[personal profile] keryx
This sounds much too much like a diet, and I'm really conflicted about my subtextual weightloss desires, but I've been doing this "healthy life plan" for awhile. A couple of months.

Basically, the focus is on balancing the amount of type of energy I take in to the energy I put out. The daily exercise part is really the highlight - I've gotten so I very much enjoy exercising, and I can't function in the morning without it.

The Overcoming Overeating people talk about carrying around a bag of food to help retrain yourself to recognize and eat in response to hunger. Aside from the wild impracticality of doing that for most of us (doesn't the food get all room temperatureish?), I think it is possible to manage meal times and amounts around your energy and need for food. Too much food makes me sluggish, too little makes me monstrous, so I had to find the right amount.

So, prior to healthy food lifestyle parti deux, I just tried to figure out the right amount to eat when. More breakfast? Yes, but not that much. Less lunch? No, more than that? Less? When should we have dinner? Should I eat this entire plate of pasta? Et cetera.

Parti deux is a bit more complex. Unlike, it seems, everyone else, I'm not eating less carboness but more (proportionally to the total amount I eat). Parti deux includes an asthma/allergy-sensitive diet, which basically means much less dairy, no eggs, and very very little red meat for me; all those things are big phlegm producers. I'm vegan at breakfast, pesco-vegan at lunch, and try to go non-dairy as often as possible at dinner. The red meat is almost never an issue, the dairy is frustrating, but the eggs are an outright asspain. I don't even like eggs, but they're in damn near everything.

The problem is breakfast. The first effort I made was acquiring some tasty Kashi cereal with strawberries in it (vegan), which I put almond milk on (the only vegan milk I can tolerate - soy and rice are so nastily sweet, and soy is kindof phlegmy sometimes). This is a fine breakfast, but I like eating something hot sometimes. It used to be ham and cheese Lean Pockets, but those are right out. So I got vegetarian bacon and waffles. Turns out, the veggie bacon is basically bacon-flavored EGGS, which are worse for the phlegm than plain old bacon. Why are all the fake meats made of eggs? Currently, I'm working on vegan waffles, which are okay, and vegan canadian bacon. This is not my ideal breakfast, but it's better than the same milk and cereal routine every day and doesn't take any longer to make.

Vegan lunchs are pretty easy to begin with, but I also eat fish sometimes (mostly tuna). I find I have to bring my lunch to work every day, which makes me seem antisocial, but it's better than eating salad every day. It takes a lot of salad to equal even a reasonable (for me) 300-calorie-ish lunch.

I'm more lenient at dinner, eating cheese and stuff sometimes. What I've found that contradicted a lot of nutritional advice is that the larger dinner makes sense for me. I exercise after dinner, and sometimes find I'm starving again by bedtime, despite the fact that I eat 2-3 times as much for dinner as for lunch/breakfast (starving is not a goal - I think I've cut portions too much and need to correct that). I don't know if it's because we eat early (almost always before 7) or what, but I don't feel like a lazy American who eats too much late in the evening; I feel hungry.

So, that's the strangely complicated food regimen. The exercise program is much simpler. My partner is gradually becoming an expert at physical training & is certified as a circular strength trainer. He helped put my plan together. It goes something like this:

Monday AM: 10 min belly dance aerobics; PM: 20 min clubbells
Tuesday AM: 10-20 min joint health stuff; PM: 30-45 min self defense (the boy teaches me in our living room) and usually 30-45 min DDR
Wednesday AM: 10 min something random (free dance, warmup, or even Tae Bo); PM: clubbells again
Thursday AM: back to the joint health; PM: 30-60 min DDR or free dance
Friday - repeat of Wednesday
Saturday AM: 30 min full joint health routine; PM: some unspecified amount of time on dance instruction videos
Sunday AM: 20-30 min belly dance fitness; PM: either theatre training or some competitive DDR

This all will shift somewhat when my belly dance class starts up on Wednesday nights, and in the spring when we add running, and again in the summer when we insert swimming. The nice thing about this regimen is that, with the possible exception of all the Warrior Wellness stuff, it's all work I really enjoy doing. And absolutely none of it happens in a gym.

When I first set out on this plan, I had the hardest time motivating myself to move around at all. Now I'm getting to a point where the exercise isn't as much of a struggle to get started with. I think the key was finding things that would be fun once I was doing them, then forcing myself to do them daily until it became habit.

(no subject)

Date: 2004-01-13 05:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] snidegrrl.livejournal.com
When you say phlegm, what exactly do you mean? Because it looks like I am phlegm-tastic.

(no subject)

Date: 2004-01-13 07:12 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] keryx.livejournal.com
The theory is that, physiologically, certain foods make you make more snot either in order to digest them or just cause they're mean. This seems true to me, since I always feel snottier/more asthma-ish a couple hours after eating but have less snot if I eat less meat/dairy. Of course, some of us could just QUIT SMOKING in order to breathe better, but if we don't do that, we could eat less cheese and get similar results. It's one of those try-out and see if it works for ya things.

(no subject)

Date: 2004-01-13 07:20 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] snidegrrl.livejournal.com
Huh. I kind of thought that might be true but I have been working on the idea that the fats and carbs are what are making me more phlegm-y but I had been thinking of phlegm in more of a Jungian sense... :)

Oy. The quitting smoking. If I am serious I should very much consider doing that. Here's what it says in the book I'm using (Hypoglycemia for Dummies):

"If you continue to smoke, even if you follow the correct diet, you may not notice an improvement in symptoms because adrenal stimluation from nicotine is constantly triggering the release of glucose into the blood - and the sugar spike is rapidly followed by a crash."

(no subject)

Date: 2004-01-13 08:04 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] keryx.livejournal.com
Flat-out sugar is bad for your energy no matter what, but eating fruits throughout the day has made me feel a gazillion times better. Drink more water, too. I drink 3-5 1/2 liter bottles a day. I used to think I was hypoglycemic, but it turns out I was just thirsty. Might be different for you, though.

The energy thing with smoking makes sense - nicotine is like caffeine, right? So it's reasonable that you'd have the same excite-then-crash response. I cut back awhile ago and barely do it anymore, but it's way harder to finally give up smoking than cheese. Addiction and all that.

(no subject)

Date: 2004-01-13 06:00 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] emmapirate.livejournal.com
well done you- I know how hard it is to facilitate such big changes in your lifestyle; you should be really proud of yourself ;)

(no subject)

Date: 2004-01-14 12:56 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kerriana.livejournal.com
I don't think I could ever do any real planned meals, but good for you if you can. I wish I had veggie breakfast things to pass along to you, but since I'm content with cereal, I never bother making hot foods in the morning. I'll look through my cookbooks some time and see if there are any veggie options that look good.

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