Meg mentioned this as a topic in another thread, but it's becoming a major reality for me. How do you fight just being tired of the whole food aspect? I've been at goal now for 2 1/2 years and am heartily sick of planning meals, egg whites, chicken breasts, protein powder and oatmeal. I LOVE lifting and tolerate cardio, that's not a problem.
Any tricks out there? Let's hear from all you successful maintainers or almost maintainers!
Mel, I don't know, you might not want to hear this, but here goes. Variety. More variety in the diet. Not so much with the oatmeal every day, maybe try something else, like this Kashi stuff. I kind of feel like a hypocrite saying that, because I tend to eat the same things a lot, my salads, my fat-free cheeses, my blueberries. But I think I need a change too, as I'm definitely on a diet plateau. Lately I've been getting into more of a low-G.I. mindset, so I'm thinking about dropping my beloved baked potato, usually with veggies on top, and eating a bean-and-pasta salad instead (much lower G.I.).
I also need to change up my gym routine a bit, as well. I'm maintaining my LBM at about 120 pounds, but deep down in my heart I think I'll have to train myself to run again to get the rest of the fat off. Even the elliptical isn't doing it for me. But 5 miles a day at a 10 minute pace will do it.
For me that implies cutting way down on saturated fat, a lot of "slow" carbohydrates, no sugars at all, less fruit, more frequent feedings. So I guess I'm using this new goal of running again as a guide to make other changes and shake things up. (I also just ordered "The Female Athlete's Body Book" by Gloria Beim to get a handle on injuries, as that's a continuing problem.)
So I think maybe a new goal that causes a "ripple effect" of change in the eating and working out routines would be my suggestion. At least, that's what I'm going to try. Good Luck!
Hey Mel, good question... I was thinking this the other day myself and thought maybe taking a week off...
Off from the gym, or maybe go to the gym but do whatever without it being so routine. OR since it's starting get nice out go bike, blade, garden, just not your routine kind of thing...
Also for a week, forget about food just prepare stuff eat the same as the family...
In my mind this week off would be good but it also worries me that it may turn into 2 weeks... But I guess I'd have to put it in my head that it's from Sunday to Sunday...That's it that's all, no ifs, ands or buts about it...
BUT, last week I was in a rut and that's how I felt but after 4 days of the Easter weekend I felt so awful that I WANTED to get back into it... So my week that I was so worried of turning into 2, lasted 4 days... go figure......
This week as of Thursday I'm back on track and happy again...
I do agree THINKING all the freakin' time about food and exercise and is a pain in the, ya know? But I do so feel 100% better when I'm on track....
I struggle with the same issue, Mel. Like you, I love the weights and can deal with cardio (since it’s a necessity in my case to keep the weight off). It’s the food that’s the hard part; always was, always will be. So I don’t think it’s lifestyle burnout at all — just food burnout.
But food is a tightrope for those of us who have struggled our whole lives with weight issues and often associated eating disorders. It’s trying to find a balance between the food is fun and food is fuel mentalities. If it’s tastes too good or there’s too many choices or portions are too large, we end up eating for the pleasure and taste of it, not for nutrition or even satiety (like when it tastes so good that we regret being full because we just want to keep eating?) But if it’s only fuel and it ends up being boring or tastes dreadful, then we rebel and don’t want it and reach for a bad choice.
In a way, I WANT to bore my taste buds to death. When I look at my Fitday account, it’s about 15 of the same foods, all the time. I don’t want to eat for the fun of it any more. I did that for 46 years and all it got me was F-A-T. But I know you eat a very clean bodybuilder-style diet and that can be beyond boring. I pretty much eat the same things that you do but try to make them a little more interesting while still sticking to the same parameters. Like a little mustard sauce on the salmon or a nice homemade LF salad dressing Maybe a few raisins in the old oatmeal? Ease up just a tad?
Ilene’s suggestion about taking a food break is a good one — but only if it doesn’t tip you headfirst into a binge. It’s a really individual thing. Some people thrive on having one cheat day or cheat meal a week. Some people could take a week off, not do too badly, and come back strong the next week. For others, such as myself, it’s a recipe for disaster. The longer I go without sugar, the easier it is. One screw-up and I find myself right back into my old destructive eating habits. I have to stay as clean as possible to keep this weight off. Of course, I’m not perfect and I do my share of messing up, but I strive to stick to my food plan 100%. And that's just me; you’re different, we’re all different. It’s all about knowing yourself and what works (and doesn’t work) for you.
About the planning part of it: I’m reconciled to the fact that I’ll have to plan meals for the rest of my life. I have to pay attention to what I’m eating. I can’t ever turn my brain off and just eat what I want to, when I want to, in the amount that I want. It’s going to take thought, effort, and planning to keep the weight off for the rest of my life. It’s a lot easier than at first, of course, because now I know what meals go together — chicken breast and an apple, oatmeal and protein powder, salmon and broccoli etc. I guess that’s the advantage of eating the same things all the time.
I think it’s all about finding your own balance on that food tightrope, though I’m afraid it’s not much of an answer!
i vote with those who suggest variety... i got so sick to death of the chocolate whey protein that i refused to drink it anymore and gave a new container to my sister so she could make meg's protein bars with it!!!! i eat pretty much to a routine, but i make sure to vary the protein for at least one meal a day.
i ALWAYS have a deviled egg for breakfast during the week. and have a stash of deli rollups [the unprocessed chicken, turkey, roast beef] and about an oz of cut up cheese, 1/2 c cc with all fruit preserves and a ff/sf yogurt. i may not eat all that, but it's ALWAYS there in case i get stuck.. and it's ALWAYS the same.
lunch is always a small salad with the same stuff on it [there's just way too much mayo and oil based stuff in the office cafeteria salad bar!] and protein. and the protein is what i change up all the time.
and i vary my workouts - within reason. there are some things i actually like to do, and some things i despise - like the preacher bench bicep curls!!!. but i take a page from something meg posted once [when you weren't looking!!!] and always do at least 2 exercises for each muscle group. so i tell myself that i don't have to do all the chest machines plus cable chest pullups...
but i gotta tell you.. i feel really strange making suggestions here.. i'm such a novice at this... but this is what's been helping me keep on track without too much b*** ing and moaning...
I know what you're going though because I go through it periodically. In fact, I am currently in the throes of a lull in terms of my eating. The last time this happened, I tried to investigate other ways of dealing w/ my food obsession (because that's what it is). I turned to some "anti-diet" books. I read 7 Secrets of Slim People & Intuitive Eating, among others. They made a lot of sense. Basically, these books advocate eating when hungry & stopping when satisfied (& not full). I tried this for a while, and while it certainly works, I found that the dieting mentality is so entrenched that I just had to go back to counting calories to stay in control.
It does get tiresome after a while having to constantly focus so much on food. Years ago, I realized that this is the main difference between me and "naturally thin" people: they aren't focused on food. If you're like me, you may have thrown your hands in the air and said to yourself, "Why can't I just eat NORMALLY?" However, like Meg, I've finally just come to realize that I'll probably always have to be conscious of what I'm eating in order to keep off the weight. It stinks, but there it is.
Like some of the others suggested, however, variety can help to alleviate boredom. Another thing you could do is to just take a little while off from counting and writing down (your food, that is). When you do this, just eat in moderation. When I got burnt out last year, I did this & continued my normal exercise. I'm not one to weigh myself, but I don't think I gained any weight from this break because my clothes didn't fit any differently. When I was ready, I went back to my calorie counting. Don't be scared to try this. If you start it and find that you can't control yourself, then you'll know that it's not something that works for you, but you might want to give it a try.
Oh, one more thing (I'm on a roll tonight!--LOL) . . .
I think these types of lulls are normal. As I mentioned in my previous post, I've gone through them, but the thing I'm proud of is that they were just lulls and not permanent lapses. I think that's what separates the maintainers from the yo-yo dieters (I've been both, so I'm speaking from experience).
Thanks for all the replies I found one more way yesterday to deal with food cravings- enter it into fitday BEFORE eating! Did you know that 1 cup of Peanut M&M's have 877 calories (45 are protein, but 108!!! carbs)? That stopped me in my tracks And since I'm a binge/volume eater, I'm not sure I would stop at 1 cup if I started
Vmelo- You are absolutely right. What I want to do is eat NORMALLY but I don't think I ever have known normal, so it's really not an option. I know how to starve, I know how to binge, and I know how to eat an obssessive bodybuilder's diet. So far that's the only thing that works for me.
Seek, Jack, Jiffy- I think Meg's right on the "bore my tastbuds to death strategy". It's when I start getting a little mor creative that I start to either lose it mentally or get a little too creative. I eat a pretty varied diet despite what Meg has seen ( we spent an entire weekend subsisting on homemade protein bars, egg white omelettes and oatmeal ), but spending too much time in the kitchen or fooling with recipes leads to my old recipes. And I was a really good cook.
Ilene- Every couple of months I do take a moderate gym break- Haven't since Christmas, but I've got one scheduled in a few weeks. I love the gym tho- it's what keeps everything else in line!
Sports? Does laundry count? or competitive vacuuming? Actually Seek, I USED to play/do a lot of sports. Skiied, kyaked, tennis, running, ref'd high school lacrosse, biked and played raquetball. I've pretty much had to give up all but biking and walking my dog due to injuries. I have fibromyalgia and while the very controlled lifting doesn't bother me at all, any kind of explosive or twisting movement sends me into a week long, agonizing flare up. That and my knees are shot from 30 years of running. I think this summer I'll try to get back into lap swimming again, and drag the bike out today after the first 8 loads of laundry are done
Thanks everybody! Please keep adding to this thread if any further thoughts strike you!
Mel-- it's just that while holding the line on food is a great thing to do, it's just bound to get boring after a long time because there isn't much intellectual engagement once you have learned all the basic principles. That's why I think training for a sport, rather than just dieting, makes the whole thing more interesting. I get that you have CF, and that makes it tough. Obviously "high twitch" muscle sports are out. What immediately comes to mind is some Asian mental/physical practice like yoga or tai chi. That gives the slow, controlled motion, but it also has a wealth of new stuff to learn and new goals to achieve. If you could find something like that to interest you, it could re-engergize your whole routine, making it less routine, as it were. How about consulting with a local sports clinic or coach to get some ideas? Couldn't hurt.
As for the food, I'm not suggesting you spend more time in the kitchen, I get that that's not good. But there are deeper reasons for getting more variety than your taste buds-- I'm talking about getting a wider sample of the isoflavones, anti-oxidants, trace minerals, and phytochemicals that we need for optimum performance. So, for example, instead of having strawberries as a fruit every day, maybe change to blueberries, raspberries, nectarines, star fruit, or what have you. That's just an example, and if you can't eat much fruit it doesn't apply-- it's just the principle of the thing I'm talking about. My doctor gave me a massive lecture on this when I first came in with thinning hair. She's convinced we don't know all there is to know about nutrition, and that the only way to "cover your bets" is to eat a lot of different things. She also told me that the lack of these micronutrients can set you up for a binge, as the body begins to crave whatever it's not getting. And I believe that's certainly true for me.
I've also found that I'm spending less and less time in the kitchen, as I eat more raw or lightly cooked food and I don't cook "recipes" much any more. If I do, it's more like a vegetable stew, I just chop up a lot of different things, throw them in the pot, put the stove and low, and leave. But that's just me-- cooking bores me silly!
Last edited by SeekInnerThinChick; 04-18-2004 at 02:21 PM.
Reason: typo
Hmm. Good question! I've been thinking about this for awhile.
Variety has its good points and its bad points for me - Fumento has a section in his book titled "Variety is the Spice of Overeating" and unfortunately that describes me to a T.
Quote:
Americans today are bombarded with a vast number of different food choices...Supermarkets now carry 12 times as many different products as they did in 1961, an average of 30,000 items in a single store. But even that doesn't tell the whole story. As a middle-class American I can afford virtually every one of those foodstuffs, even if I can't afford much of some of them. Yet a century ago a family might actually eat fewer than a dozen foods on a regular basis. Until the great famine beginning in 1846, many Irish subsisted almost entirely on just potatoes and buttermilk with an occasional turnip. And surely you haven't forgotten that rhyme you learned as a child: "Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold,/Pease porridge in the pot, nine days old."
Try eating pease (peas) porridge, hot or cold, for 9 straight days and see how much weight you'll lose. In fact, this is the key to those bizarre diets that emphasized just jelly beans or grapefruit or popcorn.
If you're watching your weight, try to watch your variety. Discard the diet books that offer you a different menu for every day of the month. Pick a small number of foods with low calorie density (that give you the full spectrum of vitamins and minerals you need) and primarily stick with them. Save extraordinary items for extraordinary occasions, such as eating out. And console yourself that if nothing else, at least you aren't eating pease porridge for the 9th day in a row.
(I don't know how helpful the above quote is, but what the heck - I quoted the title, so I thought I'd quote a part of the passage... )
So ANYWAY - I generally stick to what I call my "staples" - the food that I trust. My weekly shopping cart includes those boring foods like eggwhites, chicken breasts, yams, oatmeal, fruits and veggies in season (right now we're getting some DEEE-licious strawberries...I just bought another half-flat on Friday - they are so red and sweet right now - wash 'em, hull 'em, slice 'em, put 'em in Ziploc freezerbags with some Splenda...and they're ALWAYS ready!). Then there's stuff I buy for Jim - lean Jones ham (for his breakfast), whole grain bread (also for his breakfast toast - I have an 'issue' with bread, so I keep it in the freezer and take out a couple slices each morning), and some stuff like Kraft Mac & Cheese that he enjoys once in awhile. (yeah...I know...) I don't cook much - unless you count throwing a chicken breast on my Foreman grill or nuking oatmeal or a yam 'cooking'. (Once in awhile I'll amaze myself by making dinner - oh and I do make Jim his breakfast every morning). Dinner for me lately has been going to the salad bar at Draeger's supermarket and making a big salad, then topping it with some sliced chicken breast and a tablespoon of my favorite dressing (Girard's Light Champagne Dressing).
I'm one of those people who can merrily eat the same thing day in and day out for the most part for a very long time, which is a good thing usually...but during vacations, I DON'T try and stick to a diet or way of eating. I figure that part of the pleasure of vacationing is enjoying the food that's around. That doesn't mean, of course, pigging out and lying around! (generally our choice of vacations includes a lot of activity - i.e. Yosemite = hiking, biking, trail riding, NYC = walking all over the place; San Diego = biking, swimming, walking on the beach, etc).
As far as stuff like protein powder and MRPs go - I have them, but I don't rely on them as a staple. Sometimes if I'm at a loss as to what to have, then I'll have a Myo Lite or protein powder with some fruit (frozen strawberries or whatever) added. What I DON'T eat - unless we're traveling and there's ABSOLUTELY nothing else available - is bars. Generally, most of them taste like crap, they don't satisfy me, and the sugar alcohols in them do stuff to my digestive system that I don't appreciate, if you KWIM!
But I'm not saying I'm PERFECT. **** no - during the weekends, I'll have a free meal or free treat or two. I try to plan these to enjoy with Jim - we like going out to our favorite taqueria and having a burrito (lately, though, I've been gravitating to soft tacos made with corn tortillas - smaller than burritos = less calories - I just try to eat slowly (tough for me!) and enjoy the taste of the food - I find I'm satisfied with less that way.
I'm not sure if what I just typed was helpful...but there ya go. It's a conundrum - when I was eating a precomp diet, it got INCREDIBLY boring, to the point where I was literally gagging down my required meals. I was losing weight, sure, but I was also getting INCREDIBLY *****y - and our social life (such as it is) crashed to a standstill...
This all sounds alot like what I go through periodically! I usually spice things up some with like salsa ion my cottage cheese and I have bought new spices to try and am trying new veggies I never thought I would eat. I do have "free" meals about every 2 weeks to a month but I usually have no problems getting back on track. There is so much great advice I am learning here!
Diet (lifestyle) Burnout
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I found one more way yesterday to deal with food cravings- enter it into fitday BEFORE eating! Did you know that 1 cup of Peanut M&M's have 877 calories (45 are protein, but 108!!! carbs)? That stopped me in my tracks 
And since I'm a binge/volume eater, I'm not sure I would stop at 1 cup if I started 
from 30 years of running. I think this summer I'll try to get back into lap swimming again, and drag the bike out today after the first 8 loads of laundry are done 
