Wow, I really am shocked with the results of this last weigh in. I expected my Thanksgiving feast to have an impact but I never would have imagined this. Plus I also enjoyed a pumpkin pie shake from Jack in the Box last night with my kids. I figured a large was a bad idea but they are just so darn good. I guess that is why this is kind of unexpected. I have lost another four pounds since the 20th! Had I known that eating copious amounts of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, pie, and shakes was the secret to weight loss I would have started sooner!
I am kidding of course. The truth is that between the few acts of legendary feasting I was very careful with my diet the rest of the time. Like many things in life, balance seems to be the key. If you do something excessive one day then you simply adjust for it later on. I personally believe that just as your daily caloric intake should be monitored so should your weekly caloric intake. If you exceed one day, take it easy the next.
One other thing that may be helping is I started taking vitamins again. I am sure that there are times when my diet lacks certain essential vitamins (vitamin C comes to mind) and so hopefully this helps in some small way. What do you think? Should vitamins continue to be a part of my routine? Let me know in the comments section below.
Total weight loss to date stands at ten pounds. I now weigh 340 pounds. Nothing to be proud of but it is progress. Losing weight truly has to be a lifestyle change. Slow and steady will hopefully win the race. I need to lose another 141 pounds to be below two hundred. Lets do this!
Vitamins are usually considered good to supplement what you may be lacking, but there is also debate on how little or even how negatively affecting synthetic vitamins can be. I've made the switch to whole food vitamins. More expensive, though.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tip Gabe. I will look into that once I use up my current supply of vitamins.
DeleteHere's my book of an answer...You asked for it, you got it: HAHAHA
ReplyDeleteTake a multi-vitamin for men for now and during times of stress or lack of time to prepare healthful meals or a period of poor eating habits (such as vacations) AND until you are confident you are eating a majority of your meals from minimally processed foods. Always cut the vitamin in half before you swallow. Some brands don't even digest otherwise.
Humans were not designed to need supplements (there are some health/disease related exceptions) if the food supply is adequate and varied in content and of good quality. When we started processing whole foods however, that is when deficiencies in our country began showing up. When grain refining mills were first developed the rich people were becoming deficient in B vitamins because they were the only ones who could afford to buy white (processed) flour. The white flour had lost a great deal of it's nutrition during processing. The poor people eating whole wheat flour had adequate levels of B vitamins. So to counteract this finding and to allow the rich to go on enjoying white flour, we started fortifying white flour...adding back only a very small amount of the nutrients (vitamins) we lost during processing (and none of the hundreds of phytochemicals). This same concept applies to all processed food. It is just nutritionally inferior to it's whole food counterparts. If the majority of our diet was comprised from minimally processed foods that are not found in cans or boxes or drive-thrus, we would not have nutritional deficiencies needing to be covered by supplements. Regarding whole foods--think back to the farm days before the day of massive food factories. You picked your produce, you washed it, cooked it or cut it up and ate it. Our you killed the cow and cooked it up (no box, no can, no 20 additional chemicals to preserve or enhance taste).
Real food is adequate to supply all our nutrient needs and more and does so much more naturally and perfectly balanced than any type of supplement can ever do. BUT until a person has adopted a diet that contains a majority of real food in it's minimally processed form, it would be useful to take a multivitamin. That said, I would add that research is pretty IFFY on whether vitamins are beneficial or not, as they are not in appropriate balance as they would be found in nature. Real food is he REAL ANSWER.
_______________________________________________________________
(one exception--vitamin D supplements are important to northerners who don't eat oily fish or see enough sun each week to meet needs).
You need to move to Arizona. Lots of sunshine here. I do need to do a better job of eating whole foods though.
DeleteMichael Pollan is one of the wisest food/nutrition authors out there. Read his advice in his book Food Rules and you will be food wise. It is not that he is a PhD in nutrition or a genius scientist with all the answers. He is an author who has excellent common sense regarding food. He talks about supplements in his book...it is something to the effect of..."become the kind of person who takes supplements, then don't."
ReplyDeleteI will see if I can get this book you mention. Thanks.
Deletelast comment...you are doing great...keep up the good work!!
ReplyDeleteThanks Jewels. You are too kind.
Delete