Diet Concerns

EATING THE RIGHT FOOD DOES NOT MEAN DEPRIVING ONE OF A GOOD MEALIt only means minimizing the amount of food intake in one’s body and using substitutes for other food products in favor of a healthy and nutritious diet. Doing these helped me to lose
3 lbs last week just by eating healthy food, less fat, meat and pork. Although our one-week stay in San Francisco last week made us to eat a lot of Chinese food (having been in the vicinity of Chinatown), I was still okay with it in terms of weight loss. What helped me a great deal is the fact that I had stopped my cravings for sweets (i.e. cakes, pies and chocolates). In between our Chinese meals last week, we also had Italian dishes for lunch and supper. So that helped a lot I think, since we ate mostly pasta in sun dried tomato sauce, served with minimal amount of cheese. Getting rid of chocolates in my diet is tough since I am a sweet tooth yet not seeing candies in my kitchen for a month helped. Husband feels the same way as I do in terms of not having candies in our house (I used to have candy jars in our sitting room apart from having them in the kitchen). It works for us!

From experience, whenever I had cravings for candies, I used to supress that feeling by not eating candies at all then after a while, I’d binge (like a glutton). And then the whole process of eating well totally gets lost. As a compromise, now I eat small amount of chocolates (occasionally like when we watched movies last Sunday) when my body asks for it. It needs some fat when it reacts that way. My younger sister Balloon taught me this whole concept of not totally depriving myself of something I love to eat but eating in minimal amount.

OUR CLOTHES SIZE CHANGED IN 4-MONTHS’ TIME

We became aware to stop eating a lot of sweets since we became bigger in size in 4 month’s time after I started baking a lot in November last year. We find that shopping for clothes was not fun anymore because we jumped from one size to another.

I was a size 6 when I got married two years ago, now I am size 8. Husband wore size 36 pair of jeans and size Medium shirts. Now he is XXL! Mamamia! So, we really have to work on our weight problems. Fact is, we are newly married. In most cases, new couples (according to statistics) gain weight easily at this stage of their life (they tend to eat a lot trying out new recipes and restaurants- that sort of thing). Moreover, the newness of their relationship seem to make them feel hungry all the time (laughs). Now we are paying the price for it. Hence, we are trying to get rid of those unwanted weight (for aesthetics and health reasons).

In shape, it feels great to dress up with a good body image; overweight, it's no fun at all as the thing to do to dress up right is to cover up those unwanted flabs and to try to wearing mostly black clothes to conceal the widening of the torso. This is really sad and a problem husband and I do reckon.

MEDIA SPOTLIGHTS ON WEIGHT LOSS PROGRAM AND OVER WEIGHT PEOPLE

As in our case of keeping in shape, we have also been highly influenced by media, as there are so many ads for people to lose weights on TV, magazines and movies. This is America. 5 out of 10 people are overweight. Husband and I were thinking on how it must be difficult for big people to walk and get out of bed; more so- to do other chores that average built folks do so with precision. Somehow, seeing the over weight bunch made me feel "slim" I know I sound insane (but wishful thinking I was slim again). Even on reality shows on TV, producers are encouraging over weight individuals to get into the weight loss competition as winners are rewarded with huge chunks of dollars! This is enough motivation for some to get rid of their 100 lbs + weight. Watching them made me think that I can do it as well as I am not obese just over weight. Those who participated in this contest came out to be confident again, better looking and happier with themselves as opposed to how they felt and saw themselves when they were "big."

HOW IT WORKS

Exercise and “eating the right food” do mean disciplining one’s mind and body to synch them for health benefits. Exercise is the key to toning the muscles well. Eating the right food helps one to live a healthy life. Hopefully, we’d follow through and be slim again as before!

THE BAD SIDE OF BAKING IS FINDING OUT THE VOLUME OF FAT PRESENT IN CAKES, PIES AND COOKIES

Just for clarification, I was not frying a lot of food in the past. I remember only made a deep- fried menu once last year, a whole chicken that I cooked last Thanksgiving Day, cooked a'la southern style with paprika, thyme, salt and deep-fried in peanut oil. Other than this, I wasn’t much into frying food. However, most of my cooking entails sautéing the garlic, onions and tomatoes and I use olive oil. My use of olive oil aside from cooking is mostly for my baking needs. Sounds good that I was using olive oil but hey, we still got be overweight! Why? Think about this- husband could easily finish the whole apple pie in two day’s time. It's his favorite! I do the the same with moist lemon cake. I can eat the whole cake in a day. I am worse! So while squeezing my brain to find out why we gained weight a lot I realized because there was an abundance of supply of cakes and pies in our kitchen. The culprit was my baking! Grrrr!

For instance, for one recipe of “lemon cake,” it needs one cup of oil to make it a “moist cake.” So just for that alone, it meant that husband and I had 1/2 cup each of olive oil in our system after finishing up the whole piece of lemon cake that I baked!
Cinnamon rolls are our favorite and top of the line in my baking. This bread recipe also calls for one cup of butter in it plus cups and cups of brown sugar and granulated sugar and several cups more of powder sugar (confectioner sugar)! So imagine how much sugar and fat our bodies were taking in since I started baking weekly (I baked three types of cakes, pies and cookies for each week) since November 2005!It felt great baking a lot here in the US since the cost of ingredients is affordable as compared if I were baking in Manila as most ingredients I am using here would be taken as “imported goods” there. Cost of one cake recipe that I bake here would be like $ 25-28.00 a piece in the Philippines, whereas here, I’d spend half of that price for the best cake I could bake.

In retrospect, I have been regularly using only extra- virgin oil for all my cooking and baking needs but despite this, we still gained weight, OMG! At least we have been digesting good cholesterol (sigh). But we also love olives and capers and these have lots of salt in them when pickled. Not good since they add up to our water retention in our body. Now I try to minimize in using them in my cooking. Hopefully, husband and I will reach our goal to going back to our old size. But it would take a lot of hard work and discipline to get through that. Hopefully, we’d be back in shape as we were!