Ways to combat stress and weight gain

Life and stress have a well established courtship - and it's a proven fact that stress can lead to weight gain! Daily we are bombarded with new stressors and no matter how hard we strive to develop and maintain a low stress lifestyle something stressful always seems to pop up unexpectedly!   

When I am dealing with life's stressors I can choose to manage it in a healthy manner or I can choose to let it extract it's painful toll on my overall health and wellbeing.

For the vast majority of my life I let stress win!  I would self sooth during stressful situations by eating high sugar and fatty foods and unsurprisingly I am not alone with my response.  According to a Prevention article entitled "7 Ways to Beat Stress Fat," Elissa Epel, PhD, a researcher on stress eating at the University of California, San Francisco noted, "we crave sweet, salty, and high-fat foods because they stimulate the brain to release pleasure chemicals that reduce tension."   

This explains why when faced with stressful situations my knee jerk response is to bury my face in a pint of ice cream or a bag of crunchy snacks.  However, while the stress might seem to abate while eating the unhealthy foods it is really only gaining momentum as I gain extra pounds, which in turn causes more stress!  

Thankfully I am learning new ways to cope with stress. I am learning ways to change my overall lifestyle (not just my eating habits).   As I become healthier as a whole I am developing the right tools to adequately cope with stress.   A good friend of mine once gently reminded me that "I can't give what I don't have!"  Keeping that sage piece of advice in mind I am striving to set healthy boundaries in my life.  

I have chosen to start being kinder to myself! I am learning to step back and leave stressful situations in God's hands.  I ask for help when needed and call on friends to pray with me when I am struggling.   I am finding healthy ways to increase my activity levels.  

I am taking time to incorporate more fresh air and sunshine in my life.  And most importantly, I am learning to give myself grace when I stumble eating wise.  As soon as I become aware that I am starting to slip back into old unhealthy eating habits I choose not to wait until the next day to get back on track, instead I seize the next moment and start a fresh right then and there!

If I am longing for something sweet a few dates or figs will usually still my sweet tooth.  If I am yearning for something crunchy and salty I enjoy a bowl of air popped popcorn tossed with a scant teaspoon of olive oil and a generous coating of nutritional yeast, along with a sprinkle of sea salt.  These flavor filled healthy treats will help to chases away the junk food cravings and the extra pounds! 

Wishing you prosperity in your journey!

Sharon

Weight and The Power of Friendship

Recently I was fondly reflecting on how fortunate I am to have such a wonderful network of friends who live and promote a healthy plant based lifestyle! Throughout the past seven years these friends, despite my chronic struggle with morbid obesity and increasing weight gain, never gave up on me!  Even when I had given up on myself and was increasingly becoming more and more disabled from psoriatic arthritis and weight gain, these friends continued to love me unconditionally and encouraged me to in turn love myself enough to change my unhealthy eating habits and avoid an early demise.    

After spending a wonderful afternoon with some of my vegan/plant based friends I was fondly recalling the many acts of kindness that they have showered on me during my pursuit to regain health and mobility and I decided to Google the role friends play in our weight loss and weight gain. 

After a brief Internet search I stumbled up on a JULY 2007 issue of Time magazine entitled "Obesity Is Contagious, Study Finds."  The article noted the following quote, "Your close friends can influence your weight even more than genes or your family members, according to new research appearing in the July 26 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. The study's authors suggest that obesity isn't just spreading; rather, it may be contagious between people, like a common cold."

Wow!! I know all of my friends play a powerful role in my life, but I had no idea that they play a greater role in my weight loss and/or weight gain than my genetics and family! And I must admit while I was reading the article I was hoping that others reading it would not draw the false conclusion that they should "lose" their fat friends before they caught a few "pounds/stones" from them!  Because I for one, as a fat friend, for sure did not want to lose any of my friends - thin or chubby! :)

As I further pondered the article, I realized there are so many ways, both big and small, that we can make a difference health wise in the lives of our friends and loved ones.  In fact, just the other day we had a vegetarian fellowship meal at church and while the vast majority of the food was healthy....there were still ingredients that I was choosing to avoid.  As a vegan, who is also eating gluten free (to decrease inflammation)....I knew one stroll down the smorgasbord, even with the best intentions to avoid wheat and dairy, would set me up to inadvertently ingest non-vegan and wheat based items. 

However, it was my lucky day!  My good friend Kathy, an avid athlete and fellow plant based diet enthusiast, with a well toned physique, emailed me the day before the fellowship dinner to let me know that she would be preparing a special low fat vegan and gluten free meal for us to share.  And boy was I in for a treat!  She had prepared a flavorful quinoa salad and a side of delicious homemade roasted beet hummus with fresh carrot and celery sticks for dipping.  Her act of kindness allowed me to fully enjoy my meal with friends without feeling deprived, plus it encouraged me to continue my new healthy lifestyle. 

The power of friendship is invaluable health wise in all of our lives and the influence of friendship works both ways - it can motivate friends to lose weight  or gain weight. So my friends, if you are someone that enjoys optimal health from a healthy lifestyle than you are in the perfect position to influence, unconditionally love and encourage someone who is struggling with obesity. By showing them small and simple acts of kindness, such as packing an extra apple to share with them, we may encourage them to fully love themselves enough to make the lifestyle changes necessary to avoid suffering painful health problems down the road. 

Wishing you prosperity in your journey!

Sharon

Deceptive Eating - Staying Clean and Coming Clean

Honesty is a trait society values, however, I would venture to say that 99.9% of morbidly obese individuals are dishonest at times about their food intake and I am no different!  

Like my fellow extreme chunky monkeys I struggle with keeping it honest about my eats.   And even to this very day, despite successfully losing almost 50 pounds since December, I still want to keep my slips a secret!

 So, since I am blogging about honesty, I must admit I would greatly prefer to keep my pride intact and my poor eating choices to myself, however, I believe it is more important for my overall recovery to keep it honest.  After all we are all human and we are all going to occasionally, during a new eating plan, make some unhealthy choices. 

Recently I spent some amazing time with my family in Kansas and Missouri and throughly enjoyed it!  While I technically I stuck to my vegan and gluten-free diet I am thinking there is a good chance I might have inadvertently had wheat in the soy sauce that was used to make the Szechuan green beans with rice that I had at a Chinese Restaurant while on vacation.   

Also, with this trip came exposure to some of my old favorite food items, such as soda!  It was a warm sunny afternoon and we were at the park - everyone was off playing and enjoying the unseasonably warm March weather.    I was hanging out at the picnic table with a bottle of water and entertaining myself with a mindless game on my phone while soaking up the sunshine.   Off to my right was a 12 pack of Dr. Pepper that keep calling my name.  At first I resisted, but as the minutes ticked by "my old happy being fat self" started to whisper in my ear....."You know Sharon, Dr Pepper is vegan and it is gluten free!" and "You don't have to tell anyone....as technically you will not have broken your commitment to eat vegan/gluten free."   

I am sorry to say that I caved and ended up pouring half of a can of Dr. Pepper into a glass and downing it!  But the most surprising thing happened - it tasted sickeningly sweet and rather unpleasant.  Wow!! My taste buds had changed and I was shocked when I realized that I no longer liked the taste of soda.  Hallelujah, my body had actually learned to not enjoy the taste of sugary soda and I for one was not going to try it drinking it again in the hopes of reconditioning my taste buds to enjoy it again!  

Despite the slip, I am happy to say that I did not feel compiled to throw in the towel, as I would of in the past, and have a proper binge.  I now realize it is just not worth undoing the weight loss and the health benefits that I have achieved to date - I DO NOT WANT TO START OVER! 

The secret I am now trying is to learn is to not let the occasional unhealthy food choice define who I am going forward!

Wishing you prosperity in your journey!

Sharon

You Can Vacation Without Vacating Your Healthy Eating Plan!

Recently I enjoyed a long weekend relaxing in the the pristine snow capped Colorado Rocky Mountains.  This was my first time vacationing since starting my new healthy eating lifestyle.  


In the past whenever I went on vacation I was salivating before I even hit the open road at the endless variety of new foods I was going to try in each city I visited. However, with a determined spirit I made a concerted effort to maintain my new healthy eating lifestyle on this trip!  

Two years ago I was diagnosed with Psoriatic Arthritis (PsA), a debilitating auto-immune arthritis that affects the joints and tendons throughout the body. Everyday is a struggle to move with PsA and not even the wearing of a weekly prescription pain patch abated my pain.  However, in December when I started eating vegan and wheat free I noticed a decrease in my inflammation and pain. On this trip, I knew for the sake of my health I could no longer afford to go into vacation eating mode! 

Eating vegan and wheat free while traveling is not without its challenges.  You must plan ahead and for someone like me who is the polar opposite of a planner I had to adjust my fly by the night way of thinking.   Before leaving home I researched the best grocery stores enroute to the mountains and stopped at a Trader Joe's in Boulder to stock up on healthy provisions. Fortunately the friend I was meeting up with for the weekend mountain vacation was also eating vegan, so the two of us decided to rent a condo with a kitchen so we could prepare most of our meals in house. 

We also had the the good fortune of finding an amazing vegan restaurant in Denver.   This lovely vegan restaurant called Watercourse foods offered mouth watering vegan comfort foods with a plethora of gluten free options!  While we were in the mountains we enjoyed spicy tofu scrambled breakfast tacos in corn tortillas and homemade vegan cream of potato chowder!  We also found a yummy pizza shop that served a vegan gluten free pizza on a vegan/gluten free zucchini crust with your favorite toppings and soy cheese.  

Just because you are eating vegan and gluten free and striving to lose weight does not mean you can't enjoy your eats too!   So if you are struggling with a chronic illness, especially an auto-immune one, and have not tried vegan and/or gluten free yet I would truly encourage you to do so! I think you will be pleasantly surprised at how easy it can be to maintain and how much better you will feel in the long run!

Wishing you prosperity in your journey!

Sharon