And The Survey Says?

Eating Plan Survey 2010

OK, Thanksgiving is over. Christmas is over. New Years is almost here. Let's see how you are doing on keeping up with your eating plan. (Notice I didn't say "diet"?) Here is a survey for you to take. Have fun with this one.

1. If you did not stray from the eating plan you are on, give yourself 5 points.

    If you strayed 1 time give your self 3 points. 

    If you strayed 2 times give your self 1 point.

    If you strayed 3 time give your self -2 points.

    If you strayed more than 3 times give your self -4 points.

2. If you used 1 of the Holiday Recipes we posted on the Over 40 Fitness Tips site, give yourself 1 points.

    If you used 2 of the Holiday Recipes give your self 3 points. 

    If you used 3 or more of the Holiday Recipes give your self 5 points.

    If you didn't used any of the Holiday Recipes give your self -1 points.

    If you used someones Holiday Recipes give your self -2 points

3. If you went out to eat and didn't stray from your eating plan, give yourself 5 points.

    If you strayed 1 time give your self 3 point. 

    If you strayed 2 times give your self 1 points.

    If you strayed 3 times give your self -2 points.

    If you strayed more than 3 times give your self -4 points

4. If you were offered a holiday treat and politely passed it by, give yourself 5 points.
    If you snatched just one item from the tray give your self 3 points.

    If you grabbed two or three goodies, give your self 1 point.

    If you indulged in more than three items, give your self -2 points.

    If you couldn't control yourself and gobbled treats while no one was looking, give your self -4 points.

5. If you drank eggnog with alcohol on a holiday festive occasion,give yourself -5 points
    If you drank diet eggnog without alcohol, give yourself -3 points.
    IF you drank milk with your cookies, give yourself -1 point.
    If you were a good boy or girl and resisted the milk and the cookies, give yourself 5 points.

6. If you ate talopia or white fish at your holiday meal, give yourself 5 points.
    If you ate lean white chicken or turkey meat at your holiday meal, give yourself 3 points.
    If you ate roast beef or ground beef at your holiday meal, give yourself 1 point.
    If you ate pork chops or ham at your holiday meal, give yourself -2 points.
    If you ate fast food burgers or pizza for your holiday meal, give yourself -5 points.

7. If you went for a short walk after your holiday meal, give yourself 1 point.
    If you played outside with your kids or relatives after your meal, give yourself 3 points.
    If you rode bicycle or ran more than 5 miles after your meal, give yourself 5 points.
    If you sat around and watched football or basketball on TV after your meal, give yourself -3 points.
    If you took a nap or drank alcohol after your meal, give yourself -5 points.

Add up all the points you now have from questions 1-7, subtract the number of pounds you gained and compare the resulting number with the following chart:


35 Points = You are a dedicated and determined participant in your bodies healthy living style. Good job! Keep up the great work.

25-34 Points = You did well for the holidays. You are in the above average group. You strayed a little with temptation but you were not overwhelmed. Good job! Work a little more on avoiding temptations.


15-24 Points = You are on the average with all of those who succumb to temptation and find the socializing effect of food consumption just a bit more than you can handle. You would do well to avoid the parties and crowds next year. Try baking some of those tasty treats that are low calorie and stay away from the sugar and flour. Keep working and get some exercise this next month.


0-14 Points = Well, well, we had a more difficult time of it this year, didn't we? It definitely is a hard time of the year for you and you will need to work extra hard to lose those extra pounds you  packed on this year. Hopefully, you haven't given up but you can get motivated and can spring back into a healthy diet and get back on your exercise program.


-1 and below = I guess there is no explanation for this other than you just didn't try at all. It may have been too much for you this year. Sometimes that happens and we go all out to enjoy ourselves with thoughts of jumping back into the healthy lifestyle afterwards. You may be able to do that and I hope you can, but it will take several months to shed those extra pounds and regain the ground you lost during the holidays. Next year plan on spending your holiday at a fitness resort or hiking in the mountains or surfing in the ocean. A more aggressive lifestyle will help to keep you from idly strolling through the pastries and rich, fatty foods. Time to get to work now. Go to our Over 40 Fitness Tips site and try our free exercise and diet plan.

39 Easy Diet Tips

I recently put up a list of 39 Easy Diet Tips on our new Over 40 Fitness Tips website. I wanted to give you just a sample of some of the great tips there. They have been collected from ladies that are in our community. Just imagine yourself looking for ways to stay on track with your eating and living a busy lifestyle. That's probably not too difficult to think that way, since most of us already do. The hard part is learning and doing the right thing when it comes to staying on the diet. Here are some tips to get you started.

Number 17: Go ahead and get that red bell pepper. It's really the ripe one. Did you know red bells are just ripe green bell peppers? It's true, if you leave them on the vine they turn red. Greens are fine too but I think the color and ripeness of the red ones make them worth buying. Watch for sales. Or better yet grow them! :-)

Number 22: Use fresh kiwi. A kiwi is higher in potassium than a banana. It's a great little green fruit. It makes a breakfast brighter, especially when coupled with some bright red strawberries.

 Number 33: When all else fails, eat a pickle!

These are just a few of the great tips you will find on the web page 39 Easy Diet Tips.

Check out the rest of the website while you are at it. Just click here for a quick link to it. Over 40 Fitness Tips

And did I mention that we have some Holiday Recipes also? You can find that page by clicking here. Holiday Recipes

One last thing. Have a very Merry Christmas. Don't forget to thank God for the greatest gift of all. His son Jesus. It's because of Him that we can be thankful for all other gifts and life itself. 

Holiday Hooligans and Food Shenanigans

Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas to all of you!

If you are anything like me you enjoy the holidays for many reasons, but mostly for the social aspect of it all. In saying that I refer to the social eating and snacking that goes as well, throughout the holiday season.

There are a host of goodies that we create and consume this time of year. Mostly with refined sugars, flour and all the heavy ingredients that cause us to gain weight. Everything from frosted sugar cookies (one of my favorites) to aunt Helen's baklava and uncle Fritz's egg-nog with rum. Cakes, pies, cookies, candy canes, taffy and "chocolate covered everythings" line our store shelves and find their way into our homes. Those of us who bake for the season add to that, our special family recipes of turkey, candied yams, puddings, pies and yummies for the kids.

I have a confession to make. I still think like a kid when it comes to the yummies and treats. My mind is filled with sugar plums dancing in my head. I love the vast array of colors, fragrances and tastes that tickle my sweet tooth. I tend to lose my mind when it comes to restraint from overeating. I actually found someone standing on my scale after Thanksgiving that was 5 pounds heavier than I would admit to being. That person developed out of a four-day weekend of heavy foods and snacks.

Yes, I am feeling guilty for allowing myself to do that but I am also resolved to shedding those pounds again. I have four weeks to work it off and hopefully not put more on at Christmas. But the odds are pretty good that I will do the same at Christmas time also. Why do we do this to ourselves? Do we need to worry about it or are we just being obsessive about our weight?

There are a couple things I try to think about this time of year. One is that this is only a short time of dieting difference. So why worry? Just work it off afterwards. The other is that there should be a greater importance placed upon the social aspect of the holidays and I don't need to be a scrooge about every food item on the table. Eating a few social cookies isn't going to kill me. Another is that I don't have to eat everything on the table either. I can exercise some restraint from over indulging and be reasonable about my confectionery affections. Just because it is on the candy tray doesn't mean I am not obligated to sample it.

I understand the twists of thinking that go with the holidays. It's a smorgasbord of delights and I am on a diet? What sense does that make? But then I am not just on a diet, I have changed my eating habits. I am no longer the person who is compulsory towards foods that are not healthy for me. I am free to eat the good and healthy things in life. I have made a choice to be healthy and fit in my later years. I want to feel good about my weight and keep my body in good health. It is a life choice and I want to enjoy living this life. My family wants to enjoy living with me too.

So, I need to exercise. Not just exercise my restraint from the heavier foods and over indulgence, but exercise my physical body. When I eat differently during the holidays, I need to mix that temporary change in my eating habits to compensate for those changes. I need to take a walk, run a little more, be more active and fight off the sluggishness that comes with that leftover turkey sandwich or helping of stuffing. I also need to drink enough water to offset the bulging that transpires around my belt. My body needs the extra fluid intake to process those heavier foods and sugars.

I hope you have a great holiday season and enjoy socializing with your friends and family. It's a good time to reconnect with them and catch up on the year. Make it a time to re-evaluate your progress on your eating and exercise changes you have begun this past year.

Maybe you can start a life change this new year if you have been thinking you need to do something different. We are here to help you and have a vast array of tips available on our website. Go ahead. Give it a look and see what we are talking about. Click here for a direct link to our site. You can also type into your browser address bar the following URL: http://www.over-40-fitness-tips.com/.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you.

New Beginnings

I haven't written anything here for quite a while and it is because I am working on a new web site that centralizes on heath, nutrition and physical fitness. Shammah and I started working on it about the time I stopped posting things here and now we are getting to a place where I think I can start writing again.

I wanted to talk a little about new beginnings. There are lots of things written about spiritual beginnings and starting over with relationships and the like of various subjects, but this new beginning is one that deals with your attitude about your health. You see, you can have a new beginning there too. Just think about all the things you have put your body through in the past years of abuse.

You may not have abused your body like I did but then you may have not taken very good care of it either. I intentionally did things to my body I knew wasn't good for it. I didn't think I would suffer for it and I went into it with full disclosure. Now I have several ailments and disabilities throughout my body that causes me pain and physical difficulties. Now, I wished I hadn't done the things I did but there is hope of new beginnings even in the face of all that.

"How can that be?", you might ask. Well, the body has a way of healing itself when it gets the right nutrients and physical exercise. Believe it or not, the body can heal itself of many things. The process has to start with you deciding you are not going to continue to abuse it and you doing something positive about changing the way you are living.

Are you a smoker? Quit smoking. Are you a junk food junkie? Stop eating the garbage and get some wholesome food in that body. Do you sit around and watch TV every spare minute you have? Get up off you back side and start moving around. You are the answer to your problems and you have to do something about it or your body is going to rebel and fail on you. You will be looking at your loved ones from a hospital table gasping for air or wrenching in pain and finding out you could have prevented the terrible position you put yourself in, had you done something.

So today, right this minute, is your new beginning. Decide you are going to do something about your health and wellness. Take some time to look at where you are and how you got there. It will take some time to get out of that condition but you can do it. We can help you as well. So can your doctor or health professional. Just decide you are going to start over and do it.

Stay tuned for our new web site, especially if you are over 40 like we are. We will be bringing you lots of valuable information and lots of tips for getting healthy and staying that way.

Digging Deeper

There are many things in life that you can experience just by taking the road that runs across the top of those things, but to really experience something completely you have to dig deeper or dive into it. This is very true when you are establishing a daily routine of nutritional dieting. Actually the thought we mostly have in our minds when someone says they are "on a diet" is that they are eating less or eating special foods to loose weight. As that may be true in some cases it is not true in all cases. The diet I am referring to here and that we are living by is not that sort of diet. We are establishing a new way or habit of eating healthy and nutritionally. Not just to loose weight. I know I have said that before but I really mean it. I want to get to that ideal weight range but most importantly is that I have to train my body to something completely foreign to it. t least foreign in respect to the fact that I have let it eat just about everything it wanted to eat or thought was tasty...and lots of it.

There is the digging deeper part now that has become apparent. Digging involves getting my mind and soul into what I am doing. I have to spend more time working on the mental attitude of living and eating a different way. I don't mean that you should do thinking exercises, but training yourself to think of your eating as a sort of sacred function and dedicating yourself to the fulfilling of the purpose you have before you. The deeper part is finding those way to do it. Being willing to go the extra mile and doing things that you normally just wouldn't do. Not giving in to temptation and not giving up. You work hard to get to a place where you are preparing and eating healthy foods, staying on track with your exercise program and making your daily routine an enjoyable time of knowing that there is a reward for all that labor you are investing. Don't give up and give in to the impulses your body throws your way. Fight it like you would an enemy who is threatening your life because in reality that is what your mind will do if it is left to it's own ways.

I am working on a new website that is all about diets, nutrition and exercise. Basically, it is a web site that shows you how to stay fit and eat right. There are tips for the over 40 crowd mostly, but anyone can use these tips to stay healthy and not skate across the surface of an unhealthy way of nutritional and physical life. In one section I talked about how there has to be a little room for "cheating" so as not to blow your entire investment by being so rigid with yourself that your kill your desire for a healthy lifestyle. I'm not advocating that you just eat whatever you feel like eating, whenever you feel like it, but that you put a huge amount of effort into staying on track and then temper that with some reasonable visits to the untouchable section once in a while. Just be reasonable. Go there for a one time visit and then get back on track. What I mean by that is this.

I am eating my meals daily at home and eating the foods that are on my nutrition plan and then a friend invites me to lunch. I go to lunch looking for something on the menu that fits my eating plan and don't see a lot of options. Do I tell my friend I can't eat there or eat the side salad and look like an ungrateful jerk? (My friend is paying for lunch) No, I find something on the menu that is reasonably close to my eating plan and splurge a little bit. Maybe I order the dish without the cheese or leave the sour cream off. Maybe I don't order the biggest size entree and I make sure that I include some veggies on the side. Whatever the case my be, I do something reasonable this time because I am not always going to be eating out at restaurants and my main eating plan is provided at home with my normal nutritional food selections. Make sense? Be sensible. One lunch is not going to make or break your whole eating plan. Just make sure you go back to your plan and stay on the plan as the normal life style.

I will direct you to the website I am building in another blog post as I am not ready to publicly open it up to everyone. You will however find it if you search through the posts here as I have made mention of it elsewhere. Just understand that it is a work in progress right now and it will not be completely up to date on everything I want to offer. Soon, very soon. In the mean time, dig deeper and go the extra mile when temptation becomes apparent. And when you are stuck for an answer and there is a decision before you to eat otherwise on occasion, be sensible and eat something reasonable. You can do it. It's our new way of life.

On Track and Holding

We are on track with the new eating behavior and maintaining a steady weight. As I have said before, weight is not the real goal but changing the way we eat and live is. Weight is a result of a balanced behavior of eating and exercising. Can you guess which one I have been slacking on?
 
We are not getting our exercising in as we had hoped. Perhaps that is the problem . . . hoping and not doing.

Since we started this diet we have lost a considerable amount of weight and have kept that initial weight off. We have also been faithful with the eating routines we developed early on. Once in a while we will have an ice cream cone from Sonic or a sandwich from the Village Coffee House. I will even slip in a cup of coffee from time to time, but not as a regular thing and certainly not as a habit. We want to maintain the value of living with healthy foods and not sacrifice our wellness with trash foods, (processed junk) and things that do not do well in the human body.

Think of what they ate in the garden and what you could get from the garden. Those are the foods you should be eating the most of. Vegetables and fruits, nuts and good grains. Water in abundance of a gallon or more a day to keep your body hydrated and the parts moving like they should. Eating smaller portions 5 times a day and not stuffing yourself but just taking the edge off your hunger. If you do these things you will be eating healthy and your body will show its appreciation by shedding weight and developing muscle when you exercise.

For today, that is about it. I will start posting some recipes as we have time to but think veggies for now. Raw veggies preferably and lots of them. Your body will thank you.

We are Getting Closer

It's been a while since I last reported our progress but we are making progress. Just thought I should say that so you didn't think we were slacking or something. My wife is looking good and she thinks I'm still as cute as I used to be. Not sure what that means but I keep telling her kittens and puppy dogs are cute. Men are "dashing" or "handsome", not cute. Then she says, "you are so cute when you say that." What's a man to do?

You see this picture of watermelon? Do you know what this means? No, I'm sure your computer is working just fine. It means it is watermelon season and we can start eating watermelon more now. I think I told you in another blog that I tried the watermelon diet and lost 25 pounds in one summer. Well, I have about 15 pounds to go to reach my goal of 190 and I am seriously looking at this watermelon thing as a way to help me get there.

Now, understand that I am not going to stop my eating plan to do this or change anything about my diet. I am going to try to utilize the power of this delicious fruit (veggie?) for it's benefits of helping to curb my hunger pangs at night. There is only one problem with this plan and that is the multiple trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Just so you know we have pretty much stayed on track with the Page Diet eating plan and utilize no other supplements than the regular herbs and vitamins we normally take. We will occasionally have something that is not specific to the diet but we know that when we do that we will most likely be postponing the inevitable guilt of the bathroom scale. It does seem that a couple pound up on the scale after a day of not sticking to the plan does come off again in a couple of days being on the plan.

Here is an interesting item I found out. From time to time I am not in the least bit hungry. Sometimes for most of the day. Yesterday I just snacked on veggies all day and then had a small portion at supper. (4oz grilled chicken, quinoa salad and broccoli) I lost 2 pounds and weighed in at 205 this morning. Tara was the same. Not 205, just not hungry most of the day. She is maintaining about 135 but that will change a little. So why is that?

I think it's because our bodies are getting used to the eating plan we are on and not craving the starches, sugars and other processed "gotchas" we have been used to for so long. I believe our bodies know what they need and certain cravings come because our bodies are telling us they need something in that food substance we are craving. My body has these unusual craving for a certain snack food. I bet you can't guess what that is.

So we are getting closer to our weight goals and feeling so much better about bodies feeling so much better. That sounded kind of strange but that is how it works folks. The only thing we are lax on right now is the exercise. With the temperatures as hot as they have been we are reluctant to get outside and suffer heat stroke but I know we are going to have to do something.

Don't laugh but I used to exercise to an old VHS tape that Tara had called "Abs of Steel" or something like that. It was a "vigorous" and I mean "vigorous" grueling workout tape that did get me in shape physically. I can't say that the cats liked it when I was jumping around in the living room but it worked. I wonder where I put that tape?