Testing Utterli Phone Posting

HG-14: Finally an Update  play >

HG-14: Finally an Update

7/30/2009 | Download File (6.16 MB) - right click to download

It has been a long time since I've updated this blog and podcast, certainly the longest break I've taken since I started podcasting. The reason, as you might have guessed if you were following my story, was the declining health of my mother, who fought cancer for 4 and a half years. It took an enormous toll on her, of course, but also on me. It has been a part of my own story on these podcasts about health and fitness, as I juggled the stress of dealing with her illness, living at home and helping take care of her, while also trying to take better care of myself. Sometimes I think I did well, other times I sacrificed one for the other. As Mom got worse last year, I also gave in to stress eating, found it more and more difficult to work exercise into my daily routine, and I just didn't have the time or energy to focus on much of anything.My mom died in October of last year, in a way that seemed sudden and unexpected, despite her illness. I thought I had at least several months more with her, and hoped she would get better and have much more than that. She worsened very quickly one night, and by the next afternoon, she had left us. I was shell shocked, and even though I had been preparing myself for this eventuality, my grief has been stranger and more difficult than I ever imagined. The details of my grief are beyond the focus of this blog and podcast, but I did feel I needed to let you know in general terms what has been going on with me. My life has been forever changed, and I am only now getting to a point where I can talk about it. For months, I couldn't even talk about it with most of my friends, it just felt too huge and overwhelming to even broach the subject.About five months after Mom's death, I started seeing a counselor to get some professional help with the scary, difficult, and dark feelings I was having. It has helped a lot, but I know I have a long way to go in the grief process, which will probably continue, in a sense, for the rest of my life. Right now, however, it is still at times very difficult. Part of taking the best care of myself--and here is where I get back on track with the focus of "healthy groove"--is to get regular exercise and eat healthfully. This is not even about weight loss, it's just about doing whatever I can to feel better and take care of my body, which in turn is supportive care for my emotions, mind, and spirit.So while I had let my diet and exercise slide (and even fall off the map entirely) in the months prior to and following Mom's death, I did finally start exercising in March of this year, starting with daily walks and yoga. I noticed the ability of both forms of exercise to calm my nerves and generally improve the way I felt, immediately. Again, this was not even about weight loss at the time, it was just about wanting to feel better. I was still having trouble with emotional overeating and I had regained the 30 lbs that I lost two years ago on Weight Watchers. I tried going back on the Weight Watchers Core Plan, which worked so effectively for weight loss during the 100 days that I followed it back in 2007, but in less than five days I was already off the wagon and not even wanting to get back on. At that point, I just said I'm done with Weight Watchers. One thing I never liked about that plan was the constant focus on weight, rather than body composition, and I think I fell into a pattern of wanting to lose as much as I could, and not admitting that I might be under eating and losing too much lean body mass along with fat. So I'm looking for that happy medium. Five weeks ago, I started following a dumbbell resistance training routine from a book called 5 Factor Fitness by Harley Pasternak. It's only 3 exercises a day, with a cardio warm-up and cool down, but it changes every day of the week and I have found that I really like the 5-day split format. This is something I've never tried before, and I feel like it's working in terms of becoming stronger and making progress with increased resistance from when I started. I'll probably talk more about this in the future as I continue to follow it. This, combined with a moderate amount of hiking, has me feeling like I'm back in an exercise groove, and that feels good.My problem, and always the bigger challenge, is diet. I had that recent failed attempt and ultimate rejection of Weight Watchers, and then I purchased some excellent calorie-counting software and kept track for about three weeks. Eventually, of course, that got tedious and frustrating when faced with situations like 4th of July picnics, where I had no idea how to keep track of all the "little bites" I ate. Sometime back in May, I think, I saw for the first time an infomercial that really caught my eye. Now, I'm not normally one to be taken by infomercials, I'm extremely skeptical of the format and anything that's sold on television, but the focus of this program really intrigued me. It's called the Food Lovers Fat Loss System, and its creator, Robert Ferguson, claims that you can eat all the foods you love and still lose weight. Now, I know already that this is possible, from my Weight Watchers experience. Nothing was ever forbidden on that plan, if you had the Points available to "pay" for it. I did eat pizza and sweets, even while losing weight, though in significantly smaller quantities than I had been eating them before.I don't expect this new system to have any magic to it, I'll probably end up eating much the same way I was on Weight Watchers, but I like the framework and the focus on estimating portion sizes to combine foods into "fat loss plates," as he calls them. I've been listening to Robert Ferguson's podcast and reading two of his previous books, and that has helped cement for me my confidence that he really "gets" weight loss, and the big picture of how it needs to fit into your life. One of his books is titled "Fat That Doesn't Come Back," and boy, isn't that e

Testing Utterli Phone Posting  play >

Testing Utterli Phone Posting

12/29/2008 | Download File (0.33 MB) - right click to download

Mobile post sent by jonogroove using Utterli.  Replies.  mp3

HG-13: Trying No-S for Real  play >

HG-13: Trying No-S for Real

7/28/2008 | Download File (6.82 MB) - right click to download

I'm finally giving the No-S Diet a good try, feeling pretty good about that (though I'm having my difficulties with it as well) and taking a longer-term view on the whole issue.Audio: HG-13 (~12 min.)

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