So this past month has been crazy (crazy fun?) I went to Utah for a week with the kids to celebrate my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary. I was able to meet up with a few of my friends and have a lot of fun. It was nice having extra help with the kids ... Mom doesn't get much sleep when she's sleeping in the same room as both of her kids. Anyway. Hopefully some day I'll be able to see the nice family photos we took.
Since Mark got a new job last year, we've been thinking about buying additional life insurance. Someone came by with an interesting investment thing where it's like part of it is life insurance and part of it is an investment with a guaranteed 2% return and a 12% cap, and it's got some kind of tax shelter associated with it because of the kind of investment it is. (Fair Tax, FAIR TAX, why can people make up stuff like this??!!!)
Anyway, in case you don't know, when you sign up for life insurance they come and weigh you and take your blood and test it for stuff to make sure you're not about to die from cancer. When Mark got his blood work back, his levels came back high for stuff that could be related to his liver. The life insurance company wasn't worried about that at all (but they were concerned about his Factor V Leiden, a blood clotting disorder we already know about which is not a big deal but whatever) but they couldn't give us a better deal than we already have on Mark's life insurance (yay, BYU alumni stuff!!) so we decided we'll get healthier and try again later for additional term life insurance.
Looking at the liver stuff, though, we decided to go see a doctor to figure out what's going on and what we can do. After a few doctor's visits and ultrasounds and whatnot, the doctor suggested Mark is developing a fatty liver and told him the best way to treat it would be to lose weight and go on a low-carb diet, "such as Atkins or South Beach."
So I'd heard of Atkins before, but not South Beach, and I was kind of excited that now we HAVE to get healthy because a doctor told Mark to lose weight. We've been half-heartedly "eating healthy" and working out, but we haven't really bothered to lose much weight because, heck, it's not like we've had to buy bigger clothes lately. And being pregnant gave me an excuse to not fit into anything anyway. ;)
I have a hard time figuring out what to cook (we love stir fry with lots of rice) because neither Mark nor I particularly like vegetables (stir-fry is the only way we're eating any) and Mark is allergic to half the fruits under the sun (apples, pears, peaches, cherries, pretty much anything with a pit...) So ... whatever.
Anyway, at the beginning of the month, Mark decided to cut down on carbs. Carmen wanted me to bake a birthday cake for her ponies (why not?) and Mark only ate a piece or two of it. I would make stir fry, and he would skip the rice. Stuff like that. I checked out a bunch of South Beach Diet books from the library and told him to skim through the recipes and find stuff he wanted to try (turns out he doesn't want any of it. All of the recipes are kind of specific and use weird ingredients we wouldn't use otherwise. Plus, they advocate the use of sugar substitutes. Blech, frankenfoods!)
We decided we would "officially" start our diet after I got back from vacation. I mean, there's no way I'm going to NOT eat the tortilla from my Cafe Rio salad, and I AM going to go to JCW's!! Neither of those places exist in Texas! A few days before I left (my vacation started on a Tuesday) Mark decided he was "officially" starting the South Beach Diet.
The way the SBD works is at the beginning, for 2 weeks, you cut all carbs out of your diet. No bread, no potatoes, no pasta, no sugar, NO FRUIT. They have some other guidelines, too, like you're supposed to only have reduced-fat milk and cheese and you're supposed to have a limit on the number of pistachios/cashews/etc you can eat, and I *think* they recommend Canadian bacon over regular bacon (Mark hates Canadian bacon) ... and Mark pretty much ignored that and went with the parts of the diet he agreed with that sounded ... well ... more sound. There is some diet/nutrition stuff we don't necessarily buy into. I'm not about to go below 2% milk because of the stuff they do to milk when you get down to 1% and skim. Mark is not convinced normal bacon is worse for you than frankenfooded bacon.
Supposedly, the goal of Phase 1 of the South Beach diet is to not spike your blood sugar, and hopefully get your blood chemistry back to normal. It will also kick your sugar/carb cravings. Carbs are easy energy and not very filling. Processed carbs are practically predigested for you, so you get lots of energy for little effort and maybe it helps you gain weight in your belly. Come to think of it, the skinny people I knew eat very few refined carbs and have lots of fiber ... so they might be onto something there.
So, now it's the end of August and we've had a little bit of a taste of a change of lifestyle ... Want to know how it went? Stay tuned!
Hey Kami! It's great to hear that both you and your husband are on the journey to better health! I will say if bacon is an issue, you could always take the middle road of turkey bacon—I know the brand I get bragged for the longest time that it was acceptable for all three phases of South Beach.
ReplyDeleteHowever, as you both continue to become healthier, keep in mind that weight loss isn't just about what we we eat or what exercise we do—it's also about why we do or don't do the things we know we should do to become better. It's easy for us to get caught in bad habits like eating because we're stressed out or having a bad day. It's easy to say that we can skip the gym today because we're seeking variety and can't stand getting on that elliptical machine for the tenth time. It's a way of filling our different human needs.
I'd encourage you to take a look at this video of Beverly, who lost 230 lbs. without any surgery or weight loss "magic bullets" aside from diet and exercise: http://bit.ly/RVsSYU In it, our different human needs are explained along with ways to become healthier. It's not that long, and you might find it to be pretty interesting.