What is a healthy approach to eating during holidays and vacations?

In mid May I spent two, lovely weeks in California. The first, several days were spent in L.A. for an annual industry conference I attend for work. It's always a fun occasion that I anticipate, and one of its highlights this year was an exclusive party at Universal Studios Park with a free concert by Maroon 5 at the Gibson Theater. After the conference ended, my parents met me for a vacation in...

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Inspiration Sunday

Great minds have purposes, others have wishes. ~Washington IrvingI love this quote. It makes me focus my energy on my purposes - on a healthy lifestyle and a writing career. Purpose is action, wishing is inaction. So if I focus on purpose, I'm actively working toward these things instead of just thinking about t...

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Letting Go

At our blog we talk about being healthy and often focus on categories like healthy eating and healthy exercise. Today the most important categories for me are physical and mental health. Mentally, I’ve taken a beating this spring. On the one year anniversary of my mother-in-law’s death I buried my best friend from college. A few weeks later my grandmother passed away. Now, as if that stress weren’t enough, I’ve started a new day job and in another month I’ll be moving.My physical health is better...

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How Willing Are You

Three weeks ago, I talked about the 4 steps toward achieving a goal as outlined in Dr. Wayne Dyer's book, YOU'LL SEE IT WHEN YOU BELIEVE IT. 1. Visualize2. Tell yourself whatever you visualize is already here3. Be willing to do whatever it takes4. and Realize there is no such thing as failure.Two weeks ago we looked at step 1 - Visualization. Last week we discussed step 2- Having Faith. So this week we're on to step 3, Being willing to do whatever it takes.To be honest, its this step...

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And the Winner is...

Michael Ventrella! Yes, the biggest contestant ever to step on a Biggest Loser scale ended up winning the latest season of The Biggest Loser. I have to admit, I wondered if Diane was screaming when he weighed in and it was revealed he'd lost more than 50 percent of his weight, making him the big winner.The thing that struck me about so many of the contestants tonight wasn't so much their weight loss (though that was striking), but their attitudes about themselves. So many went from depressed and...

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Freeze!

Say hello to the newest member of my family...a 7-cubic-foot deep freeze. Now I am no longer dependent on my small refrigerator freezer to store precooked foods and food items that I might get on super sale.Hubby and I inaugurated the freezer by freezing a giant pot of hubby's homemade vegetable soup. He takes it for lunch on some days, and when we're pressed for time or don't feel like cooking much,...

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What I Do to Stop Myself from Emotional Eating

One of the first things I had to learn to do to combat my emotional eating issues was develop the ability to ask myself and answer honestly: Am I experiencing physical hunger or emotional hunger? To do this successfully, you need to learn to recognize the signs of physical hunger, such as a growling stomach, lack of energy, light-headedness, a headache, or grouchiness, and the signs of emotional hunger. Have you eaten enough that day that you should not be hungry yet? Are you eating for reward...

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Inspiration Sunday

Reality check: you can never, ever, use weight loss to solve problems that are not related to your weight. At your goal weight or not, you still have to live with yourself and deal with your problems. You will still have the same husband, the same job, the same kids, and the same life. Losing weight is not a cure for life. ~Phillip C. McGraw, The Ultimate Weight Solution: The 7 Keys to Weight Loss Free...

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A Different Kind of Meatloaf

Part of my journey to becoming a healthy writer is learning how to make healthier choices in terms of my eating habits. That does not mean I can no longer eat the kinds of food I've always loved. I just need to be smarter about it.I love meatloaf and have a favorite recipe that may not be the healthiest choice to make all the time, so I've made it a mission to find healthier alternatives to add to my cooking repertoire. I used to participate a lot in the cooking conversations on the Weight Watchers...

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Do Emergencies Matter?

The rain wept down, not hard enough to justify an umbrella, but somehow hard enough that after the brief walk from my car to my door every inch of my clothes held a frosting of wet. Inside I shook off, wiped my face on a towel, and immediately advanced on the kitchen. The smell of spicy-sweet bar-be-queue, one of my favorite foods, came out of the crock-pot, and while the insides needed a stir or two, dinner was well on its way to ready. Deep in consultation with my kitchen scale and a bag of tator...

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Having Faith

Two weeks ago, I talked about the 4 steps toward achieving a goal as outlined in Dr. Wayne Dyer's book, YOU'LL SEE IT WHEN YOU BELIEVE IT. 1. Visualize2. Tell yourself whatever you visualize is already here3. Be willing to do whatever it takes4. and Realize there is no such thing as failure.Last week I talked about step 1 - Visualization. This week I wanted to talk about having the faith to believe that the goal will happen.One of the toughest things I've discovered is pushing on toward a...

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A Week of Challenges

This week's The Biggest Loser, the last episode before next week's live finale, was filled with challenges for the final four contestants. First, they had to go home for 30 days and face real life with all its distractions and temptations. Though they all knew they would have to weigh in again and run a marathon on the ranch at the end of the month, each admitted to struggling.Koli couldn't focus with all the distractions of friends and family in California, so he left for Las Vegas and some intense...

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It Doesn't Take Much to Inspire

Over this past weekend, I attended the Heart of Dixie Readers' Luncheon, where authors get to meet and mingle with a couple hundred romance readers in Huntsville, Alabama. This was my third year at the event, and it's always fun. But as with all travel, especially to events where there is a set menu, it's difficult to stay on target with the fitness and eating properly. During the event, the president of the Heart of Dixie chapter got up on stage to speak, looking very professional and stylish in...

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How I Started to Combat My Emotional Eating

A few years ago, I walked into my condo after a hard day of work and was completely stressed out, frustrated and upset with how the day had gone, and I wanted to stuff my face. Ironically, I can’t remember what happened that day at work, but I can clearly remember how the rest of the night went. I heated up an individual serving of whatever meal I had cooked for supper that week and sat down to eat it in front of the news.When I finished eating supper, I wasn’t even close to feeling satisfied. I...

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Inspiration Sunday

'Albert Einstein, who discovered that a tiny amount of mass is equal to a huge amount of energy, which explains why, as Einstein himself so eloquently put it in a famous 1939 speech to the Physics Department at Princeton, "You have to exercise for a week to work off the thigh fat from a single Snickers."' ~Dave Ba...

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Green beans with garlic

Spring brings with it an explosion of flavor in fresh produce. Farmers’ markets stock a dizzying array in nearly every color in the rainbow. Suddenly, eating your vegetables doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. One of my favorite veggies is the lovely green bean, or if you’re a little bit Southern you know them as snap beans. Low in calories and packed with vitamins and nutrients, green beans add a...

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The Idiot Box

Earlier this week I sat at a wide boardroom table making small talk with a woman I didn’t know. She’s going to become a co-worker, and maybe a friend, but in those first getting-to-know-you minutes I didn’t have anything to say. She bravely took up the conversational mantel and asked if I watched Lost. No, I replied, I don’t watch much TV. Silence covered us for a few seconds, until someone else at the table volunteered that they watched Lost. As the conversation moved ahead without me, I stopped...

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Vizualization

Last week, I talked about the 4 steps toward achieving a goal as outlined in Dr. Wayne Dyer's book, YOU'LL SEE IT WHEN YOU BELIEVE IT. 1. Visualize 2. Tell yourself whatever you visualize is already here 3. Be willing to do whatever it takes 4. and Realize there is no such thing as failure.Today I wanted to look at the first of those steps a little closer.Visualizing – what is it? In its simplest form, it’s the ability to imagine. Hey, we’re writers, we imagine GREAT. So – how do we apply...

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Final Four

The finish line for the latest season of The Biggest Loser is growing ever closer with last night's episode revealing the final four contestants. And all through the episode, there was a feeling of pressure, tenseness, nervousness and a bit more competitiveness. Koli, who was pretty laid back in the beginning, was even cocky. I'm all for believing in yourself, but I have to say I wasn't a fan of the cockiness. But again, editing has everything to do with perception in this show.The contestants got...

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I Don't Know Why

I've seriously been backsliding the past week, and I really can't pinpoint a reason why. I could blame hormones and cravings. I could point to having a lot on my to-do list. The fact that I'm two weeks away from my 40th birthday and not even halfway to my weight loss goal. Or maybe I'm just lazy when it comes right down to it. Maybe it's a little of all of those things that had me eating sweets, fast food, Cokes and all manner of things I shouldn't have been and not exercising nearly enough.Whatever...

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Plan and Prepare for Success

When I resolved once again at the beginning of 2009 to try to lose weight, I spent a lot of time thinking about how my past attempts at weight loss had gone, what I had done well, where I had failed, and how I could plan my next attempt in a way that would succeed. It was such a helpful exercise that I try to ask myself these questions on a regular basis: What do I need to do to succeed in my weight...

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Inspiration Sunday

A diet is the penalty we pay for exceeding the feed limit. ~Author Unkn...

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Fast Food

One of my biggest challenges is finding something good and healthy to eat that I can whip together in a short time. Also, as the weather gets warmer, even here on the east coast of Canada, I’m looking for something easy that doesn’t keep me in a hot kitchen.  I always tell myself I’m going to make that vegetarian lasagna or that homemade soup but more often then not the ingredients I’ve paid dearly for end up thrown out because I never find the time or energy to make it. This chicken salad...

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It won’t kill you.

My father’s feet turned to clay when I was ten years old. Before then, he stood as a giant who protected me from everything. At 6’3” and 250 pounds, Dad held us up so we could reach the stars. But the year I turned ten Dad was diagnosed with diabetes. My invincible hero turned into a man with cautions attached to his life. The strongest caution accompanied food. I learned early in my Dad’s diagnosis that if he didn’t eat he would die. Being hungry would kill him. I internalized this message a bit...

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Seeing Is Believing

I'm currently re-reading Dr. Wayne Dyer's YOU'LL SEE IT WHEN YOU BELIEVE IT. I'm a huge fan of Dr. Dyers and have pretty much read all his works. Oftentimes, when I'm feeling frustrated and stuck, I stand in front of my bookcase (which bookcase depends on what area of life I'm feeling stuck and frustrated with *g*). I let my eyes cruise the titles, and grab the one that jumps out at me as having whatever info I need to get unstuck.My current source of frustration is with my weight journey and...

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Don't underestimate the pink ninja

It was makeover week on The Biggest Loser last night. Woot! I love makeover week, when the contestants get fab makeovers and we get to see them wearing something besides their Biggest Loser T-shirts and copious amounts of sweat. The six remaining contestants had lost an amazing total of 805 pounds. That's four whole grown men!I got tickled by Sam's reaction, saying he loved clothes and fashion. But Daris' story of buying his pants at the farm and ranch store, right next to the tarps, made me want...

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Dealing with the Unexpected

We've talked here many times about how much easier it is to stick with our fitness and dietary plans when we're living our normal routine and how hard it is when those routines are interrupted. I want to find ways to learn to be focused and extra dedicated when those routines go out the window. I'll admit that over the past three days, I've not exercised or watched what I've eaten. I could use the excuse that these are extraordinary times as we deal with massive flooding here in Nashville. But there's...

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I Still Struggle at Times...And That's OK

About a year ago, I noticed how one particular woman only came to the Tuesday night Weight Watchers meetings when she was really struggling. I think she attended another meeting, perhaps at work, regularly, but she found it helpful to attend an additional one on her tough weeks.She always sat alone in the back row, held herself very stiffly, and generally exuded a sense of despair or even self-hatred. Our group leader would make her talk. What came out was an almost inarticulate stream of how hard...

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Ode to Breakfast

I've learned so much about myself since I started this journey to becoming and staying a healthy writer 17 months ago. One of these lessons was how important a healthy, filling breakfast was to my weight loss attempts.I have kept most of my trackers or food diaries since the beginning of January 2009. Whenever I've hit a rough patch where I'm struggling a lot to lose weight, I will look at them...

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