DISNEY BRIDE DIETS - How are we all doing? PART 2

[Watergirl]

Just made some banana bread and it was lovely. Its fairly healthy, depending on whether you're having carbs or not. Only 140cals a slice and 2g of fat, so probably good for people on WW. I did half the amount of Splenda recommended and it's way too sweet for me, so will do half the amount next time.

So food for today is and will be:

B - hot chocolate and ginger low GI bar
L - pork salad sandwich with extra light phili, lentil soup
S - banana bread
D - Mushroom stroganoff, salad, green beans

Only 1000cals so got 200 to play with.
Sat with hot water bottle, but tummy seems to have settled a bit.
Feel a lot lighter! Wonder why some of us get bunged up. Must be lack of fibre, but have been having loads of psyllium husks.

[NatsyNoo]

Am stuck on the study (what the heck is notation anyway? ) so having a mini break before I crack on again!
Kel, you're probably right about the carbs/bloating, I do seem to suffer sometimes but haven't done in ages and it's usually around TOM which was last week so doesn't make any sense! I am just so constantly full but sometimes I feel hungry too, it's a wierd feeling. Anyhow the good news is I'm home with all the yummy food around and haven't spent all day snacking (though I'd really love to eat giant bags of crisps with my study!) but I won't

About the carbs Kel, I don't think I have enough scientific/nutrition knowledge to understand it really. I understand the why (i.e. carbs cause you to hold water) but I couldn't tell you which foods are high carbs. I understand from school that there's 2 types of carbs - starch and sugary...starch I get because it's very bulky but I just don't 'see' the sugary carb thing...I don't know if you know what I'm trying to say. Also it's really easy to say to keep carbs low whilst on WW, it would be ideal, but it really really reduces options on WW as the only other food I could eat is protein as high fat is a no no...like instead of eating a cereal bar or funsize chocolate bar or little bag of crisps, you eat some cheese or meat. But a lot of meat on WW is high points, as is fat, and so the other foods are what you are kind of encouraged to eat. I am hoping this is just a bad patch and me switching to lighter foods next week (salad, fruit salad, higher protein options) will help.

And obviously the running!

My iphone armband arrived today, trainers should be here Monday and I am off to get socks and crop tops next week on Tuesday I think. Hoorah!

Food for today (hope I'm not repeating myself! )

Breakfast - rice crispies (3)
Lunch - egg bap (3.5)
Dinner - 2 fishcakes, sweetcorn, ketchup (6)

So very low points today and my last minimullerice for pudding...I'll be on the ice lollies next week! Keeping it light!

Liz, 2 stone in 2 months is a tough call, but I am so determined to get over halfway there at least...my mission will then be losing a couple more lbs if I need to and maintaining it...can't get back on that slippery slope!

Right, best find out what notation is now!

p.s. watching BL USA just now...very sad x

[Watergirl]

Hey Nat - feel for you with the study, not much fun. BL was so sad
I know what you mean with WW and carbs because the premise of calorie counting is often that it's low fat.
Your body stores energy as fat or glycogen (what stored carbs are) and glycogen requires water to be stored. When you restrict calories and/or you exercise, you body starts to get rids of the glycogen stores first. Without carbs it does it even quicker. Glycogen actually weighs, as well as the water. So people doing things like Cambridge lose loads in the first week and so do low carbers. Then low carbers, with pretty much no glycogen have only the fat left to burn!
People doing things like WW and SW and RC will still have some glycogen (carbs) so they won't have a massive loss initially, and their body will carry on burning both carbs and fat.

Just reread your post and think you understand that bit, duh, sorry! Kel has low carbed for longer than me, so probably knows more, but from what I know about it because of the whole blood sugar problems I have, the body cannot tell the different between sweets and bread. It is all converted into sugar in the body.

Yeah 2 stone is tough. Think I am 12.10 now. Would love to see a 10 on the scales before my wedding day Just done some yoga, but have given up doing it at home. The positions are all over the place, so you can't see what they are doing, whereas in a class you can look around and the instructor also tweaks your poses. Really miss the Yoga school where I used to live.

Just watching The Event on telly, in between taking interview feedback from people who call.

[alkel2730]

Evening all,

I decided to have a little nap this afternoon and fell asleep for 2 hours – oops!

Liz – Nice to see you enjoying your food and being able to enjoy your home cooking again. Sorry to hear about your tummy problems, I guess that was inevitable but at least once its all out you should feel much better, and in a way its like wiping the slate clean and starting again, if that makes sense?

Those fibre supplements don’t do anything for me, just give me wind!

How are you feeling, aside from the toilet issues, now that you are back on food and exercise? Have you started exercising yet? Speaking of toilet issues hows Freyja?

Nat – I read your posts out to Alex, as I don’t have the correct level of understanding to properly explain it to you, I know the basics but after that I’m not the best person to ask, what Liz said is a better explanation that I think I can give you.

Alex basically said that bloating can be cause by your tummy being full, trapped wind or even food allergies, and its hard to know as each person is different. I lost him a bit though when he went down the molecular structure of starch and sugars, and how the enzymes break down food, he also went down the route of explaining low GI and then the GL and to be honest I think I’ll confuse you even more if I try and reiterate all that to you – I’ll probably also get it wrong. So instead I’ll just say that you need to watch your sugary foods.

The reason sugar isn’t great is because it gets absorbed really quickly and when that happens it makes your blood sugar rise very quickly, but the side effect of that is that it also makes it drop really quickly and when it drops your body sends a message to your brain to say you are hungry and hence you eat more or if you are a dieter, just remain hungry. If you are feeling bloated and yet hungry, this could be why – you could be having too much sugars, rice crispies, muller rice are all sugary.

The reason why low GI diets work is because the foods you eat are broken down by your body slowly so it regulates your blood sugar and you don’t get those highs and lows and so you stay fuller for longer. They also tend to have a lot more nutritional benefit.
The other thing Alex said was portion control can be an issue because obviously if you eat a lot in one go then you are going to feel full and bloated as your body struggles to break down such a large load (I think this is where glycemic load comes in).
It’s hard to know why you are getting bloated (you could also have unknown allergies) when we cannot see your portion sizes, for example with the rice crispies, are you weighing them? With the egg bap, how big is the bap, was it white bread, what spread did you use? was the egg mixed with mayo or fried? Turkey burgers, are these in breadcrumbs did you have it with bread? I don’t actually expect you to answer these questions, lol, you’ll be ere all day, I’m using them as examples.

So without wanting to confuse you any more I’d say to you do the following things to reduce bloating and lose weight:

• Eat smaller portions in one go, graze if possible
• Eat lower carbs, particularly sugary type foods
• Exercise as you’ll burn up the carbs anyway
• Watch food types that say ‘low fat’ but are high sugar
• Eat foods that have some nutritional value on your body so avoid crisps and chocolate
• Make your protein and veg the main part of your meal and limit the carb element.
• Don’t eat late night
• Experiment with different foods so for a couple of days cut out the bread and see if it makes a difference, for another couple of days cut the sugar right back and so on to see if you can identify the culprit.

Too much fibre can cause bloating too. I’ve had too much today and I feel it.

I’m very surprised that any diet would encourage you to eat a packet of crisps rather than a slice of chicken for example, but obviously I don’t know WW that well so if that’s what they say.

You saw BL this week and did you also notice when they were in that buffet room that people were removing the burger buns or removing the top of the sandwich to make it open faced? On BL they have them following a low GI diet and they keep their cals quite high due to the amount of exercise they do so what you might find is if you can tweak your diet to more of a low GI type diet, so for example have porridge for breakfast or another high fibre cereal, swap white bread for multigrain brown bread, have a low fat meat in your sarnie, have low fat cheese (small amount) or even light cheese spread (like Liz) as I know you have to have cheese, with the fruit salads have berries and watch your portion sizes with fruit, or buy those fruit pots so the portion size is taken out of your hands, snack on carrots, celery and so on and then you start exercising and you will essentially have the perfect type of diet for health, weight loss and huger stability. When I come back from the US I’m going to follow a low GI lifestyle, not diet, lifestyle.

Diets can be boring but I guess to a certain extent they are, but I think the most successful dieters are people who think about food as fuel for their body rather than something just there to be a pleasurable experience, that may sound pretty depressing but that’s what food is and we all had far too many years of thinking about it wrongly! That’s not to say you can enjoy what you eat but more to say go back to appreciating food for what it is and what its there for – again that’s another thing they drum into them on BL and you’ll see them regularly refer to their food as fuel.

I think for the very first time since I met you Nat, I’m reading and seeing a real change in you and you are beginning to understand diet and health more and are willing to think outside the box and what you don’t know you are willing to learn. Things become much simpler and easier when you can understand the effects on certain foods and food groups on your body and I think we all have a vested interest on here to understand that in order to lose weight. The problem is not everyone os the same and so what effects one person may not effect the other so its up to us as individuals to work out what is right and wrong for our bodies.

When I’m trying to advice people on here I’m going off what I know from what you post, so for you I know you get bloated and yet hungry and I know you also crave variety in your diet, you like the idea of exercise more than the act of doing it and I also know you give into peer pressure easily and I know you are very loyal to WW so knowing all that helps to try and help you through those pitfalls and work out ways to get round them but at the end of the day its now time for you to work out what you need as your body shape changes and your regime changes too, it might be in the future you are better going alone rather than with WW but then again it might not be and in time as you understand more you’ll see.

Sorry for war and peace, hope I haven’t confused too much.

OH goodness me, look at the time! I have to go I have to exercise.

Food:
B: 2 slices of toast
L: ocean crumble
S: small bowl of cereal
D: 2 egg omelette sugar free jelly.

Exercise: Hollywood workout 1 hour.

[Watergirl]

Brilliant advice Kel! Rings so true about the blood sugar thing and then finding yourself hungry again.

Freyja hasn't had a movement today! Think she was probably waiting for me to stop lol. Or I'm having sympathy bowel activity.

Been doing some weights today and yoga, but not done any cardio as feel quite weak from the upset tummy, so still sat on sofa with hot water bottle.
Think it will be early night for me. Hope you enjoyed your nap!

Got to go to Parents tomorrow. They are still away, so need to mow lawn and tidy a bit. Then do our garden when we get back, sort out a proper office upstairs and some other bits. Think the extra food will help with energy expenditure. Also want to do some more intensive exercise tomorrow.

[loves_disney]

hello all! just sat down on the sofa i'm exhausted! had everyone round last night then we went out! i had such a good night and drank diet&vodka. however really bloated so drinking lots of water just now. i'm very tired.

scott is at the curling world championships just now, and is in the semi final tonight. however it is in canada so the time difference is funny. the game is at half two in the morning! so i'm thinking for going to sleep soon for a few hours before then waking up again to watch it!

still need to do jillian, just had dinner so resting for a while. didn't get it in yesterday as my flatmates were all here.

hope everyone is well, very interesting reading about the carbs!

[NatsyNoo]

Thanks for taking the time to write that Kel

I don't think I have any food allergies (only time I get IBS is when I eat rubbish and I haven't been lately!), and like I said, I've not had starchy dinners the last couple of evenings...turkey burgers last night was literally 1 pack mince (to make 2 burgers each) with 1 egg between both of us and a handful of breadcrumbs. I had them with sweetcorn. Tonight I had 2 fishcakes with sweetcorn and some ketchup so again very little starch.

Since dieting my portion sizes are way small...I weigh everything, so had 30g rice crispies for breakfast this morning (but have had porridge with sweetener more times this week, just fancied a change), 1 small white roll (really don't like brown bread) with 1 egg and tsp ketchup for lunch. I don't get hungry enough to snack as a rule but when I do I tend to have an apple. I don't often eat crisps any more (don't want you to think it's habit, maybe 1 pack per week, if that), and my sandwiches this week have been roast beef, horseradish and watercress on white bread).
It's not so much in the day that I am hungry but since being on WW I have felt slimmest in the mornings and the last few mornings (this week) I haven't felt like that. At the beginning of the week, you know I said I'd gained weight? Well I've lost that and I'm now STS on last Monday. I am weighing as I feel bloated and I want to know if it's just my imagination but I don't think it is. Just to clarify as well, I don't feel hungry all the time, just before meal times, and that's right iyswim.

The only thing in my diet that's been different this week is that I've had a handful of peanuts everyday so perhaps that's what's been doing it?! It was just to use them up from the weekend but they're all gone now. Didn't think they could have an impact like this but maybe they have.

I'm just putting it down to a funny body week (and maybe the nuts) and hopefully with the exercise and salads etc I'll be better next week... can't let Liz put me to shame now can I? !

You are spot on about my exercise mentality Kel...you really are. I tried really hard to get into the DVDs but I just couldn't, they're not really for me I don't think. Your bike marathons really inspired me but the more I thought about buying a bike the more i thought joining a gym (for machine variety) would be a better investment for me. Then I thought, but I can run for free! So that's what I'm doing, and I'm really excited to get out, stamp the pavement, listen to some choons (or Disney podcasts) and watch my fitness improve. The chart is on the fridge, I know when I'm running, got my new gear here or on the way next week, and I've got a Dibb buddy to help me along the way. Liz's wedding is a real target for me.

I'm glad you've noticed a change in me the last few weeks as I feel changed...I am fed up of dieting knowing I could've got this weight off sooner if it weren't for my silly little slips, so I just want rid once and for all now. 2 stone isn't a lot and I have a real 'soon' target now, like I said.

Right, off to eat my last mini mullerrice and see my matthew as he just got in from work... did a lot of studying this afternoon when I got 'into' it so another productive day to be had tomorrow!

Enjoy the weekend at your parents'!

[alkel2730]

Hi guys,
Well what a beautiful day! It's days like today that make me wish i liked being in my garden more. Lol. I also wish I could sit out there with my cats. One day we will get some sun loungers and sort it but for now we really don't have anything to sit on! Lol.
I am going round my parents in a bit, we have to clear out rooms so that the flooring can go down. They are having a gym and so today all the padded flooring need to go down. I wouldn't mind but I doubt they use it It will really just be there for show which as you can imagine will make us very jealous!
Am just exercising now (bike) before I go but I appear to have taken leave of my senses this morning and have agreed to go running with Alex tomorrow. I hate running! Alex loves running and where it's so nice he was like 'let's go running' and for some bizarre reason I agreed. See what happens of people talk to me before I have a coffee!
Anyway as he rightly points out we live in rural yorkshire and are surrounded by field hills and nature and we really should get out and about more, so I've agreed to go running at a country park near here. It's a 2 mile jogging path around a boating lake and I've agreed to keep going round until it gets too much. I must be mental. As I pay off i've told him I need some leggings (big day for me!) and a pedometer and maybe a new sports bra (they may be little but they still don't like being bounced around in a rubbish bra! Lol. So after mums we are going to sainsburys to pick up said equipment. Wish me luck!
Cor I'm sweating on this bike! It's so warm today. It's quite nice in my make shift gym room cause it's on the ground floor of our house and this room has double patio doors over looking the garden so I'm kinda cycling in the sun. Alex is using his punch bag next door in his gym bit and it's so noisy so we are deffo getting the old exercise in!
You know one thing that's not good about my view - I can see how battered my poor plants and connifers are after all that snow and ice this winter! My poor plants have split and gone brown in places! Grass looks awfully patchy too where alex has cut it - any keen gardeners out there know any rescue remedies for such things?
Hope everyone has a nice day.
Xxx

[alkel2730]

Oh and one other thing: you know what's not cool?
When your cat pads on your face to wake you up! I actually have a hole just under my nose!
My lovely big Bentley gets very excited when his mummy and daddy gets up and jumps on us for a big cuddle and a good old pad, trouble is today mummy didn't want to get up and so tried to snuggle down under the covers more which resulted in said furry son moving up to pad on face. OWWWW! And I couldn't even tell him off as I bled as he was just giving me my morning cuddles!

Activity for later: cut cats nails!

[NatsyNoo]

Kel, LOVE THE NEW AVATAR btw, we've never had a kitchen sink, I can't even eat a single sundae! Doesn't really appeal to me tbh!

Oh I'm so crossed, there is nothing that I want to do more today than don a maxi dress and head out into that big wide world! Grrrr...but if I go I won't study at all and then I'll panic on Monday so it's for the best! I am very very much a summer girl, hence why I love Orlando so much. I feel so happy when it's sunny!

Just finished preparing my revision cards, so about to go through some old exam papers and see how much work exactly I have to do! A lot I suspect!

Just popped Mamma Mia in the dvd player for some happy choons...

My trainers just arrived! Felt very sporty when I tried them on! Just need socks and a couple more crop tops and I'm done!

Kel, sounds like a fab weekend you have planned. Glad it's not just me getting into running!

I know what you mean about skin holes due to beloved pets, Buttons scratches me up all the time!

Got to paint my nails this evening, they're a total mess!

Ooh also rest of DCL went on sale for 2012 yesterday and I'm so glad I booken when I did...no 5 night cruises which were our original plans so none of the Dream cruises fit in with our itinerary/dates, and our 7 night cruise has gone up £150 since we booked! Whoop!

Right, best go study!