Monthly Archives: April 2012

April 28, 2012

Needing Some Encouragement…

By Angie Bullock

Well, I’m in the middle of Week 3 of The Metabolism Miracle, and I’m actually feeling very pessimistic. I’ve had a persistent thought running through my mind this week that I’ve really been trying to fight, because I know it’s the evil one putting it there: “I’ll always be fat”.

I feel like no matter what I do, no matter what diet I attempt, I am just stuck right where I am and my body isn’t going to budge. :-(

I did have a moment earlier this week where I felt thinner; my clothes were fitting a bit better and I thought I might be making progress. Unfortunately, that moment is gone and I no longer feel that way…

I am almost done with 3 full weeks. I’ve lost nothing since the end of Week 1. Now, I know I’m not supposed to be getting on the scale, but I just can’t resist. How else am I supposed to gauge how I’m doing, if I’m making any mistakes, if the food choices I’m making are working?

Summer is coming. Well, here in Texas, it’s pretty much already here, with temps holding steady in the 80s and even 90s everyday. I’m still not comfortable enough to wear shorts and I’m still not comfortable enough to wear sleeves that are shorter than down to my elbows.

I’m eating according to plan, I’m more active and I’m exercising.

Will I ever be comfortable in my own body again? Even after hitting my goal weight with Slimgenics, I still wasn’t comfortable enough to do those two things, so I’m really starting to question if it’s even possible for me to ever feel “in shape” again…

Part of me feels like I need to just accept that this is the weight I’m going to be and try to enjoy life anyway. Buy some clothes that comfortably fit me at this weight and move on. Then I think, NO!! That’s not good enough. Other people have succeeded, I can too! Or… can I?

I’m sure my internal struggle is plain for all to see. If I feel like I need to keep pressing on, then I know I won’t be content until I get there. This keeps me from enjoying life on a daily basis. That’s not good. God did not design me to feel this way and I know it.

But on the other hand, I feel like if I accept being content where I am now, I’ll certainly never get where I want to be, because I’m struggling to do it while fighting for it!

I know there’s a biblical answer somewhere… I just haven’t found it yet. I will continue to be in prayer and continue to give this over to God, because that’s all I can do…

5 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Dieting, Exercise, Metabolism Miracle, Prayer, Slimgenics, Weight Loss

April 21, 2012

My Body Failed Me…

By Angie Bullock

Following The Metabolism Miracle plan, I should be exercising a minimum of 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week. This week, Monday – Friday, I only managed to get in 3 days. But, they were all Zumba, which is far more intense than just walking or something, so I didn’t feel all that terrible about missing one day, especially considering that today I was planning on doing the 45-minute intermediate Zumba routine.

Alas, my body had other plans…

As I walked up the stairs with Zach to pray with him before his nap, I noticed that my ankles were really sore. I kinda chuckled to myself, thinking that it was an odd part of my body to be sore from Zumba! Then, I came back down, turned it on, put on my tennis shoes and started the warm-up routine.

I think I realized by 2 minutes in that this was NOT happening today. My ankles are NOT the only sore part of my body! Within 1 minute of starting the routine, my legs turned to pure jelly and I just knew there was virtually no chance that I was going to make it through 45 more minutes… :-(

Of course, I still needed to get in some sort of exercise, so I decided to flip on the Wii and do the “Free Step” routine on Wii Fit Plus (if you’re not familiar with it, it’s kinda cool – it just counts off a beat on the remote, so you can turn the channel and watch TV while stepping on and off the Wii Balance Board), which I did for 1 full hour. I logged just over 6,100 steps.

While an hour of that didn’t even have me as sweaty as 20 minutes of Zumba, I was warm when I was done and it felt good to move my body in a way that didn’t make me want to die! ;-)

As for the low carb/no-carb diet, it’s actually going really well and is much easier than I anticipated. Being such a meat and cheese lover has made it much easier!! :-D

Have a great weekend! :-)

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Dieting, Exercise, Metabolism Miracle, Weight Loss, Zumba

April 16, 2012

Ready, Aim, FIRE!

By Angie Bullock

Today, I want to talk about and take aim at one of my absolutely favorite things: SUGAR.

Anyway you choose to say it, I love sugar. I heart sugar. Sugar makes me smile. Sugar lifts my spirit. Sugar tastes good.

But, I’ve been noticing a “war on sugar” brewing lately and I’ve started hearing more and more about just how bad this stuff is for you. And just how much I love it actually seems to back up exactly what I’ve been hearing about it, unfortunately. :-(

I mean, I understand completely how it can make you fat if eaten in excess – I mean, duh, right? But what I’m talking about is more than that. This is stuff about sugar actually being toxic, addicting in a manner similar to drugs and contributing to many diseases.

The weekend before I decided to research, and then purchase, The Metabolism Miracle, I saw a commercial for that weekend’s upcoming 60 Minutes episode and how they were going to talk about sugar. Something stirred and I immediately told the DVR to record it.

It sat on the recording for a good week before I actually watched it, but this weekend, I finally did. Not only did it back up everything I read about sugar in The Metabolism Miracle, it took it even further.

Instead of trying (and probably failing!) to explain the information from the program, I figured I would just share it with you. The video is the entire clip about sugar that ran on 60 Minutes and is about 14 minutes long. If you’re interested in being healthier (and I fully believe we should all be intentional and conscious about how we’re taking care of our bodies that are temples for the Holy Spirit), I suggest taking a short 15 minutes out of your day to watch this. Even if everything isn’t completely true or you don’t agree with everything presented (I actually don’t), we still all know that sugar isn’t GOOD for you and it’s not going to make you healthier or skinnier if you eat it. ;-)

Now, whether or not you believe sugar is nearly as bad for you as these sources (and they’re far from the only two sources that claim massive health issues arising from sugar), and whether you believe I am anywhere near qualified to personally vouch for any of these things, one thing that I do personally know to be true: when I’m not eating sugar, food tastes better.

Another blog that I follow recently said something like this, and I completely agree: “it’s easy to miss the natural sweetness of a strawberry when you’re eating Oreos“.

I remember when I was doing SlimGenics, a diet very low in sugar, I found myself telling my hubby (and others) that I believed my tastes had actually changed, as I was finding foods that were previously only “ok” to be just fabulous and taste much better than I remembered. I was actually enjoying healthy food. Then I went back to eating foods that were high in sugar and all of a sudden, those healthy foods were no longer all that appetizing. Now, only about a week into The Metabolism Miracle diet (almost completely devoid of sugar at all), I am again enjoying food more, in general, and as promised in the book, I am not craving sugar.

Should you remove sugar from your diet completely? Well, that’s up to you. I know that I don’t plan to never eat sugar again, but I can promise you this: in conjunction with trying to maintain a far healthier lifestyle, long-term, combined with my new-found knowledge on sugar (and I plan to continue researching), I will be reserving high-sugar foods for infrequent special occasions. I will also be much more cognizant of the amount of sugars (and hidden sugars) that I put into my body (and feed my son)!

What about you? Do you have any thoughts or experiences directly related to sugar? I’d love to hear about it!

4 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Dieting, Gluttony, Metabolism Miracle, Slimgenics, Weight Loss

April 13, 2012

So Much For Day 4!!

By Angie Bullock

Well, today is Day 4, the day that I was supposed to wake up feeling better than I have in a long time; energized and not hungry. So much for that!! :-(

Backing up to yesterday, everything was going great until about 4:30, when we decided to stop at a park so Zach could play a little bit. He ran ahead and went straight for the equipment and by the time I caught up, he was climbing up a tower on the back of the structure and I decided I wanted to get a picture of this. I pulled out my phone and hit the camera app and hopped down into the mulch-filled playground area and almost immediately said “Ouch“!

I looked down at my big toe on my left foot (I was wearing flip flops) and saw a little ant sitting on top. As I moved my foot to try and shake him off, I must have disturbed the mound, because all of a sudden, these little fire ants were all over my foot!!!

A human leg three days after coming in brief contact with a fire ant colony.

It was at this point that the pain of multiple fire ant stings/bites started to hit me and I began to panic. I jumped up into the grass, literally jumped out of my shoes and pretty much freaked out until I got these little beasts off my foot (I don’t even want to know what I must have looked like! LOL!).

Of course, it was too late… the damage was done. :-(

The redness surrounding the immediate bites was rapidly spreading, so we grabbed a very adamant “I-don’t-understand-why-we-have-to-leave-we-just-got-here” 3-yr old and headed to the H-E-B down the street. My foot was on fire, so I sat in the car while Mike ran in to ask the pharmacist what I should do. He emerged with Benadryl and Neosporin + Pain Relief. The pharmacist said to take the Benadryl ASAP, which I promptly did – I took two tablets.

We then headed back towards our house and realized it was about dinner time, so instead of heading all the way home and back out for the errands we still had to run, we decided to stop at T.G.I. Friday’s for dinner.

I got the Sizzling Chicken & Cheese entree and substituted the mashed potatoes for broccoli and Mike and I split the classic wedge salad with blue cheese dressing that came with his entree. I figured that was a pretty safe bet for being carb-free, as the entree was literally just chicken, cheese and peppers.

By the time we left, I had pretty much launched into orbit from the Benadryl (I don’t know if I’ve ever taken it before) and Mike had to drive. I couldn’t believe how spacey, loopy and just all-around wiped out I was. I barely made it to our next destination without falling asleep.

We got home around 7:00 pm and I literally went straight to bed. I did not want to fall asleep that early, because I knew I would be up way too early this morning, but I was pretty powerless to fight it. I was out.

So, I woke up this morning around 3:30 am and my foot was stinging, so I got up to put some more Neosporin on it. I tried to go back to sleep, but yeah right, who was I kidding? I found my way downstairs at 4:00 am, made some coffee and sat down on the couch and chatted with Mike (yes, he was already up, which is not unusual).

Here’s the bummer; I was STARVING. I mean, really, really starving. To the point of being somewhat nauseous. I actually felt a lot more like I did on Day 1 or Day 2, but this is Day 4! The day that my body has depleted the glycogen stores and I feel great!

I didn’t know if it was the fire ant toxin or the benadryl or what, but clearly something threw my body out of whack. :-(

I ate breakfast at 5 am and it barely did anything to curb my hunger – I had to have a snack by 7 am. It was at this point that I decided to look up the nutritional information for the entree I had at Friday’s. Oh. My. Gosh!

There’s 39 grams of carbs in that entree!? From what!? It must be the marinade on the chicken, which likely means that I ingested a fair amount of sugar… putting me all the way back to square one (not to mention the 1,100 calories, 65 grams of fat and 3,660 milligras of sodium!). Sigh…

I’ve actually felt better as the day has gone on, but I am now pretty sure that I won’t feel this fabulous Day-4 feeling until Monday… :-(

6 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Dieting, Weight Loss, Exercise, Metabolism Miracle

April 12, 2012

Detox Sucks!!

By Angie Bullock

Ok, I’m sure that my body detoxing from carb overload is nothing compared to the detox an alcoholic or drug addict goes through, but since I’ve never experienced either of those things, this feels fairly cruddy to me!! ;-)

I didn’t start the Metabolism Miracle diet on Monday, as previously planned (see this post for the background on my discovery of this book, if you missed it), because I just wasn’t able to finish the book (or do any shopping) on Easter. So, I finished the book on Monday, did a little shopping and started on Tuesday. Only one day later than planned, yes, but that means I’m just starting day 3 of the 3-day detox on not day 4! Boo! :-P

To be honest, it’s actually going really well, even though I’ve been a bit weak and had a mild headache (which the book said was likely for the first three days as your body releases its 3 days of glycogen stores). The science behind the book seems to make complete sense (of course, I don’t have anything to compare it to, but the author has been a dietitian for 25 years) and I am extremely hopeful this is a plan that will work even better for me than Weight Watchers. While I started out gang busters on that plan, the weight loss was slowing… slowing… slowing… and I couldn’t understand how I could be eating so few calories and not losing weight! This is something else addressed in the book that applies to the ½ of the population that is plagued with “Metabolism B”.

The dietary side actually reminds me a lot of SlimGenics (and even somewhat validates just how healthy, overall, I was eating on that plan), which was clearly very successful for me, but it seems to take it to the next level and requires mandatory exercise, which SlimGenics actually seemed to somewhat discourage. Of course, after finishing the book, I can totally see why; they are very scale-based and advertise losing 3-5 lbs a week. With regular exercise, your body will attack the fat and not the muscle (which weighs more), and you’ll lose inches faster than lbs on the scale. Personally, even though I’m a numbers person, I would rather look great and feel great than see a number that I perceive as “ideal” on the scale.

It also seems to explain why, even at my goal weight with SlimGenics, I was still very unhappy with how my body looked, unclothed. I was still very loose around the middle and felt like I weighed a lot more than I actually did. Here, it’s supposed to be the opposite. You will look like you weigh a lot less than you actually do, because you will be shedding purely fat. It also goes into far more detail about when to eat and how to spread out different foods, when to exercise, etc. These are things that have never really been addressed specifically with any other diet plan; they’re generally just about calories in must be less than calories out/calories burned.

The exercise part is very interesting, too, as it’s far less stringent than what the traditional exercise plans mandate. The minimum requirement is 30 minutes a day, but since it’s about activating your muscles and not gaining cardio benefits at this point, it’s just fine (and even recommended to keep your muscles active throughout the day) to do 10 minutes in the morning, 10 more at lunch and finish off with 10 at dinner. Well, that’s easy! Tuesday I did about 40 total minutes on playing Wii Fit Plus, three separate times throughout the day. Yesterday I did about 20 minutes of WiiFit Plus after lunch, then about 3o minutes of Zumba Party on the Kinect last night after dinner. Despite feeling less than fabulous, I find I still have plenty of energy for exercise! :-)

So, today is Day 3. The last day that my body should have glycogen stores to deplete, hence the last day I’ll feel this way. Tomorrow I’m supposed to wake up feeling great – more energy, etc. Looking forward to it! ;-)

Oh, and I’m not supposed to step on the scale AT ALL until I’m finished with Step 1, which is 8 weeks! Umm.. yeah, pretty unlikely. But, I am going to try and resist until the end of the first month, when I’m supposed to take my measurements again. We’ll see how successful I am with that… :-P

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