Revisiting Mindless Eating

The learning modules from Omada has some information on this topic.

The scenario: After mindless eating while watching TV you find yourself wanting more, seemingly still hungry. In addition to my thoughts below, there is research that looked at why this happens.

The research suggests that this is because we were not “present” while eating. Essentially, we need to employ all 5 of our senses while eating to ensure out body knows what we’re doing. Even hearing the food go down. How’s that for some science.

As I’ve been paying more attention to eating more slowly, this has a side benefit of paying more attention to the experience. Armed with the knowledge above, I’ll be able to focus more and not turn into food zombie.

Hazardous Waste?

I was thinking about stuff that gets generated from glucose testing. For lancing, I use the Accu-Chek Fastclix. This is very easy to use and does not have any exposed needle. That said, it is still considered a “sharp” and the used drums should be put into a heavy duty plastic container. You can also purchase inexpensive sharps containers. When 3/4 full, seal it up with duct tape, mark Do Not Recycle on it and toss it in the garbage.

Your state may have specific requirements on how to dispose of these materials. Check out https://safeneedledisposal.org/ for your state.

For test strips, the consensus seems to be it’s OK to toss right in the garbage. Just like you would a band aid. Easy enough.

Bananas

I was going to grab a banana on my way to work and thought let me check the nutritional values. In the past I have always been good with eating any and all fruit, by T2D is making me check my thinking.

So, I tool a little look at what’s in a banana.

And decided to do some research before eating it. Mostly due to the sugar. My understanding is that fruit sugar is better than refined sugar, but that seems like a lot.

Most of the sources indicate it’s ok 🙂 The warnings are about fruit juice and dried fruit. But moderation is the key. At some point today I’m eating that banana.

Dawn Phenomenon

I’ve only been testing my blood level for a week now, but have been a bit surprised when testing in the morning. The results have been higher than the tests before dinner. Since I have not been eating or drinking into the evening it was one of those things I needed to dig into.

What gives? Apparently hormones. Your body kicks things up a notch in the morning to make sure you have enough energy to get going. This comes from the liver, which acts like a glucose warehouse that works to release what you are using overnight. The challenge is if your body does not create enough insulin to let the liver know to stop or it can’t effectively communicate with the liver with the same result.

What can be done – track closely the food you eat and when as well as when you are taking medicine. Skill up and make the required adjustments. I am getting into this habit now. As you might expect this can be a variable process and takes time to get to the right levels.

Note: This is just the beginning of my research into this topic. It is very high-level and will likely need some corrections, but it gets me started.

Omada

I was reading up on diabetes and came across the term Certified Diabetes Educator and that talking to one is a good idea. I checked at work and found that this is covered by my insurance. I registered, verified that I was a fit for the program and was enrolled. And it is a full program.

Professional health coach for 1-1 guidance
Connected devices (scale, blood pressure or glucose meter)
Weekly interactive lessons
Online community of peers

After getting accepted, I did a questionnaire to help them understand me, my goals and more importantly my commitment. I answered the questions honestly and without any editing. I should have saved the answers – would have been good to put here.

There is a lot to like about this program. Another level of accountability with the potential to learn a ton. And have professional resources to answer the questions that the academic information may not cover. Looking forward to seeing how this works. I’m debating to try to use the app now rather than waiting for them to send me all the info…we’ll see if I can wait.

Pretty Straight Forward

One of my research items: What’s the best way to lower triglycerides?

Thanks https://www.mayoclinic.org/

Exercise regularly. Aim for at least 30 minutes of physical activity on most or all days of the week. Regular exercise can lower triglycerides and boost “good” cholesterol. Try to incorporate more physical activity into your daily tasks — for example, climb the stairs at work or take a walk during breaks.
Avoid sugar and refined carbohydrates. Simple carbohydrates, such as sugar and foods made with white flour or fructose, can increase triglycerides.
Lose weight. If you have mild to moderate hypertriglyceridemia, focus on cutting calories. Extra calories are converted to triglycerides and stored as fat. Reducing your calories will reduce triglycerides.
Choose healthier fats. Trade saturated fat found in meats for healthier fat found in plants, such as olive and canola oils. Instead of red meat, try fish high in omega-3 fatty acids — such as mackerel or salmon. Avoid trans fats or foods with hydrogenated oils or fats.
Limit how much alcohol you drink. Alcohol is high in calories and sugar and has a particularly potent effect on triglycerides. If you have severe hypertriglyceridemia, avoid drinking any alcohol.

Week 17: Progress Report

Been out of town for another week and did pretty well. I did not visit the gym, but chose to walk to many of the venues for dinner and fun. One way ended up being just over a mile which was nice. I’ve noticed that I tend to drink a little more coffee (decaf) than I would when at home. Next time I will need to bring my water bottle that makes it too convenient to want to drink anything else.

Cranial Activity

On this trip, I had a chance to hear a talk about change from Chip Heath. Chip and his brother Dan wrote a book, “Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard”, that I highly recommend you read. It is written in a style that provides content along with great examples. Chip is also an outstanding speaker (check out this snippet about his last book, Made to Stick), who among other things talked about how hard it is to eat right these days. With the complexities of nutrition combined with the lack of clarity from things like the food pyramid, it just makes it tough. He mentioned a book to cut through the confusion titled “Food Rules”, written by Michael Pollan. This is quite possibly the best way to start rethinking about what and how to eat. I read this on my Nook and was very satisfied with the experience. Some books on food and nutrition have lots of pictures and charts which don’t translate well, but this book was ideal for my Nook.

Physical Activity

Before I left on my trip, I joined LA | Fitness. In addition to the membership, I will be working with a trainer to continue my work on really getting healthy. I am very proud of the progress I have made which includes changing my eating habits as well getting moving. However, I think the next step is to add a bit of strength training to build a some muscle. This will need to be a combination of continuing to lose weight, working towards my health goal and getting stronger to increase my metabolism. I have my initial session tomorrow morning – looking forward to it!

Obligatory Chart

I am still on a bit of a flat point on losing weight, but am ok with it. It is a challenge to do the right things when travelling,but I made good choices and still managed to drop a pound when it was all said and done.

That said, I need to pay a little closer attention to what and how much I am eating now that I am back home. Getting into a rhythm on walking, mini-tramp and gym workouts again will bring back the balance.

Next Milestone – Weight=180, target date = 05-DEC-2010

Reminder: This will take me out of the obese classification and simply into overweight.

This is where it gets interesting

I had to run some errands at lunch today and thought about food choices I have made in the past. There is a Wendy’s nearby as well as a few sub places. Lately, I had been going to Chipotle and getting a chicken burrito. Now, I know adding cheese and sour cream was not a good idea, but everything else seemed fine. Healthy even. However, since I started trying to eat smarter I have not been there. Before I headed out I thought I would see what I was eating and what better choices I could be making. This is where things get interesting. I quickly found the nutrition information on their website (thank you Chipotle) and started looking at what I would get on my burrito. Here is what that looks like:

Even my limited experience up to this point had me picking my jaw up off the ground. Most of the ingredients seemed so innocent, so healthy. So I took a closer look at the ingredients, what makes more sense and created the following: Green Chili Chicken Burrito Bowl.

Granted, this is still a good amount of calories and sodium (what isn’t), but what a difference a little knowledge can do for your health. This was very tasty and as I was eating it, I realized this was something that I could make pretty easily to boot!

For those that are interested, here are the improvements. To me, this is stunning. These are the kinds of things that make this so real. These are great reminders that you can still have fun at nights out, but just need to be aware of all the hidden badness.

Bon appetit!

Where do you start losing fat first?

I was wondering where you start to lose fat first. Not sure why that popped into my head, but I did some looking and it appears that you tend to lose weight from the top down. Starting with your face and head then moving down to your body.

It gets interesting when you have problem areas like the pelvis, buttocks, and thighs of women and the bellies of men. In these cases you need to give those areas extra love (crunchies etc.) in order to burn fat. Another interesting note, the fat that women develop has an advantage during pregnancy (none beyond that) while the fat that men accumulate does nothing except shorten our lives.

Curious about what happens to the fat? The following is from the Mayo Clinic website, one of my favorites.

Body fat breaks down during a series of complex metabolic processes.

When you burn more calories than you consume, your body uses fat (triglycerides) for energy. This causes your fat cells to shrink. In turn, triglycerides are broken down into two different substances — glycerol and fatty acids — which are absorbed into your liver, kidneys and muscle tissue. From there, the glycerol and fatty acids are further broken down by chemical processes that ultimately produce energy for your body.

These activities generate heat, which helps maintain your body temperature. The resulting waste products — water and carbon dioxide — are excreted in urine and sweat or exhaled from your lungs.

– Katherine Zeratsky, R.D., L.D.

FitBit added a bunch of new stuff to their site yesterday. There is now a Premium area that adds a bunch of analytics and reporting as well as the FitBit trainer. This is designed to move you along from a sedentary to active lifestyle. It analyzes the activity that you record and creates goals and encouragements. I did the trial and here is how it looks for the daily view.

As you can see, I have a little more work to do tonight. Will hit the mini-tramp while catching an episode of something (probably MI-5). A got a swim in today and it was good. Getting my wind back and enjoying the time to think while in the water. It cracks me up a bit to get out of the pool and sweat. It makes sense, but seems wrong somehow.

Friday

Today was a busy day at work, but most of the busy occurred at my desk. I ended up with a measly 4400 steps. Have been staying up too late to be getting up so early and had the good sense to take a nap when I got home. Which was fantastic! However, it did delay eating dinner until just after 8:00p violating my no food after 8:00p policy. I’ll have to write myself up.

For lunch I was going to get chicken or fish but noticed they had turkey – so I got that thinking it would be good and good for you. Just to set the record straight, it looked like a grilled turkey breast, but it turned out to be a turkey burger. It was pretty good, but a bit high in sodium. I also decided to get a cup of chicken noodle soup – fearing it would be super high in sodium. It did not fail to deliver in that department. The next big task is going to be preparing breakfast and lunch and brown-bagging it. The café food is not terrible, but it is over processed and more expensive than just doing it myself. I’ve already started bringing in fruit and veggies as snacks and components to those meals, just need to step it up and bring the rest.

Been thinking about my cholesterol levels. Quick side note, it is never good when you have to learn to spell a new word that is not related to a fun exotic event. The question is how do I raise my HDL (good cholesterol). The Mayo Clinic website has a good article explaining what it is and how it helps. I really like their site, great content in digestible articles. Check it out! Here are the recommendations for improving HDL:

Don’t Smoke
Maintain a Healthy Weight
Get More Physical Activity
Choose Healthier Fats
Drink Alcohol in Moderation

Now, all of these are on my plan – just need to continue to execute. In addition to these steps, there are references to fish oil (omega-3 fatty acids) that could help as well. I’ve read that the our ancestors used to get “fish oil” from the animals they hunted and ate. As we’ve domesticated our herds and changed what they eat, this has gone away. With the proliferation of fish farms, they are starting to see fish without the fish oil as well. I guess that’s progress. I have been taking a daily multivitamin again and will likely add an omega-3 supplement after doing a bit more research.

17 Stones

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Move. Journal.

education