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BAMOM19's Recent Blog Entries
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Tuesday, April 01, 2008
April 1
No one goes hungry
All people are fed
The oceans are clean
Lake Erie's not dead.
The Irish aren't fighting
The Arabs love Jews
The swords are now plow-shares
Now ain't that good news?
The water's delicious
The air is so clear
On top of a mountain
You see to next year.
Couples stay married
Children are jewels
Sure got you going!
APRIL FOOLS!
Got my morning spinning class in. It was a great class, but the spin room was way to hot-over 70 degrees! But, I got it over and done with and felt great about it!
Ok off to umpire...one game got cancelled, but I picked up a replacement!
Monday, March 31, 2008
This morning's workout was really great!
dumbbell chest press 3x10 25#
bench press 3x8 75#
cable flyes 3x15 30lbs
overhead shoulder press 3x10 25#
upright rows-barbell 3x10 45#
shoulder press machine 3x15 55#
single arm overhead tricep ext 3x10 15# x 2(left & right arms)
tricep bench dips 3x10 10# plate
overhead tricep extensions 3x10 25#
tricep machine 3x15 35#
50 minutes of spin class
I had tons of energy, lifted pretty heavy and had a very energetic spin class. No post workout fatigue, and no nap!!! What a difference a week makes.
I'm interested to see how my body reacts tomorrow after doing my morning spin class and then umpiring in the afternoon. Nutrition and meals are going to be a challenge, but I'm sure I'll figure it out. During the past week I noticed that after about an hour of the game, I was developing a slight headache and losing focus a little. I think it's due to dehydration. Since the games were in the morning, I was restricting my water intake so I didn't have to use the bathroom during the game. I also was going without a mid-morning snack. It won't be so bad with the games at 3:45 since I usually consume at least 12 glasses in the mornings by the time my workouts are done.
Feel the Rush, cont.
Stopping the Domino Effect:
Here comes the hard-to-swallow truth: The only way to curb a sugar habit is to cut back drastically. It will be rough in the beginning, but your body will crave sugar less as it regains its insulin sensitivity. In order to extract your sweet tooth, you first need to know how much sugar you're actually eating. There are plenty of hidden sources of sugar and, as Connie Bennett reports in her book, Sugar Shock!, more than 100 names for sweeteners. Take note of sugar's pseudonyms and look for red-flag ingredients like dextrose, rice syrup, and cane juice. Read labels for a week and jot down how much sugar you're taking in--you'll probably find that it far exceeds the approximately 10% of your daily caloric intake the federal dietary guidelines recommend (That's about 20 grams or five teaspoons, per 1,000 calories consumed). You'll also realize that many products touted as healthy are still high in sugar. There are no laws regulating the use of the words "all natural" on food packaging, so manufacturers can label their products with abandon. "'All natural' is a really misleading term, and it does not necessarily imply that a product is low in sugar," Bennett says. Even if sweeteners do come from all-natuiral ingredients, they can be highly concentrated, as they are in dried fruit. One ounce of dried pineapple has about 21 grams of sugar, compared with 2.6 grams for the same amount of fresh pinapple. So watch your portions of trail mix.
Once you know how much sugar you're really eating, you can control your intake. Here are the pros' tips for cracking down on the most seductive tabletop substance known to man:
Eat breakfast"Ninety percent of sugar addicts skip breakfast," says Kathleen DesMaisons, Ph.D., author of Potatoes Not Prozac. "They wait and get a big hit of sugar at 10 am" When you eat breakfast, you prevent the drop in blood sugar that makes you crave sugar later.
Pick Fruit. Satisfy your sweet tooth with apples, bananas, and berries which temper natural sugar with fiber and loads of antioxidants, says Elisa Zied, M.S., R.D., a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association and the author of Feed your Family Right! Dried fruit and 100% fruit juices will also do in a pinch, but they don't have nearly as much fiber and are more concentrated sources of calories, Zied says, so limit yourself to a quarter cup or less of dried fruit or one cup of 100 percent juice a day.
Think 100. when you simply must have a cupcake or a candy bar, stick to 100-to-150 calorie portions and 16 grams of sugar or less.
Indulge right after dinner. Late-night ice cream fixes give you a pure, unadulterated sugar rush. Have a small scoop soon after dinner instead and you'll reduce (though not counter) the insulan-spiking effect, DesMaisons says.
Cut out "overt" sugars. Tackle the worst offenders first: sucrose-laden treats like candy, frappuccinos, ice cream, and soft drinks. If you drink a soda every day, try having one every other day, then once a week, then not at all.
Enter sugar rehap. Like any addict, you need to detox before you can fully recover.. According to DesMaisons, it takes five days to fully overcome your cravings for sugar, and you'll feel awful for three of them. Prepare to be edgy and irritable starting on day two; by day five, you'll feel like a whole new person. After you've recovered, you'll find that a little sugar goes a much longer way.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Monday is my day of re-commitment. Due to an hectic week that disrupted my schedule, in particular, kept me from spinning class, I had probably my worst week in two years. While I umpired a game every day last week, I only got to the gym once. I feel so disjointed and unhappy with myself, so starting tomorrow I'm back at it again. Hopefully, this will lead to a bnner week as I will do my gym routine(cardio and strength training)in the morning and then go to my games at 3:45(every day except Monday). That should up my cardio time and give me the feeling of success that I'm missing right now. It's very frightening to think how quickly I can be moved from my focus and commitment. It's as if I see myself going back to my old ways. But, I won't let that happen, it's just not an option. So, I'm back in 100%...
Feel the Rush...
Sweet treats are bad news because they typically deliver a load of calories with little to no nutrition. A more troubling fact: As our consumption of the white stuff rises, so do the numbers on our scales. A study published in the Annual Review of Nutrition analyzed Americsan diets and found that from 1970 through 2000, daily caloric intake among women ages 20-39 jumped from 1,652 to 2,028. But get this: Over the same period, the percentage of calories we were getting from fats and protein decreased. Only the amount of carbs--particularly sugar--shot up. On average, each of us scarfs 25 pounds more sugar annually than women did back when American Bandstand started airing in color. There's no dancing around it: Sugar is a huge part of what's makin us fat.
Now brace yourself for two more nasty news flashes: (1) Eating sugar can stoke your appetite rather than satisfy it, and (2) it can even become addictive--no surprise to those of us who have a daily 3pm Snickers jones so strong we might be tempted to hurl an office chari at the vending machine if we ever ran out of change.
But don't despari, gummy-bear lovers: There's a light at the end of this frosted, candy-coated tunnel. With a little determination,you can train yourself to stop craving sugar. And when you do you'll experience something truly seeet: weight-loss success.
Sweet and Vicious
The newest threat to our waistlines actually has been decades in the making. In fact, we can pinpoint exactly when the sugar time bomb started ticking: 1967, the year high-fructose corn syrup, the first scientifically engineered sugar, was created. A combination of ffuctose and glucose, HFCS is a clear sticky liquid with the consistency of maple syrup that can be cheaper to manufacture and sweeter than natural, cane-derived sugar (1.16 times sweeter, to be exact). That means food companies can use less (though they still use a lot) to achieve the same degree of sweetness, which translates to bigger profits. Beverage companies in particular started buying the stuff by the ton. Over the years HFS also bagan replacing the sugar in cereals, granola bars, and even flavored yogurt. In 1970 HFCS accounted for less than 1% of all sweeteners consumed in America. By 2000, after countless fat-free products were pumped full of sugar to imporve their taste, that figure had risen to 42%. Now HFCS accounts for half of all sweeteners, and the United States is both the largest producer and consumer of HCFS in thw world.
Manufacturers currently use the taste-bud-pleasing stuff to flavor a huge variety of products, including foods that wouldn't normally contain sugar and that you probably wouldn't describe as sweet, like the sesame seed bun on a McDonald's hamburger, or th Saltine crackers you crumble into soup. Even if you vigilantly shun the sugar bowl and never let a piece of candy cross your lips, you could still be eating a dite loaded with sugar from stealth sources. According to a 2008 USDA report, more than 57% of all the sugar on the market is purchased by the food and beverage industry to flavor consumer products, and sweeteners (fructose, sucrose, glucose, and HCFS) are the No 1 food additive. If you eat without carefully checking food labels and restaurant websites for nutrition information, you may inadveretntly be pouring sugar down your throat. Where does it all end up? Yep, right in that jiggly jelly roll hanging over your jeans.
Taking our Lumps
Even when you're perfectly aware that your favorite brand of peanut butter is spiked with sugar, buying the unsweetened kind can feel like a major sacrifice of taste and texture. And that's just peanut butter--think of all the other sweet indulgences that are hard to resist: a croissant on the way to work, a handful of M&M's, the candy-flavored cocktail in the sugar-rimmed glass at happy hour. There's a reason you keep coming back for more: you've got a habit.
In a 2005 study of Physiology & behavior, a group of Princeton researchers led by psychology professor Bart Hoebel, Ph.D., found that eating sugar triggers the release of opioids, neurotransmitters that activate the brain's pleasure receptors. Addictive drugs, including morphine, target the same opioid receptors. "Sugar stimulates receptors to activate the same pathways that are stimulated directly by drugs such a heroin or morphine," Hoebel says.
When this phenomenon was studied in lab rats, Hoebel's students found that after 21 days on a high-sugar liquid diet, one group, whose feeding was delayed by 12 hours, showed signs of withdrawal, including anxiety, teeth chattering, and depression. While no human trials have been conducted yet, researchers hypothesize that sugary drinks, especially those consumed on an empty stomach, are similarly addictive for some individuals. So if you regularly replace breakfast with a sweet coffee drink, you could be setting yourself up for a sugar addiction.
By constantly eating sugar, yo also force your pancreas to work overtime. As you eat more, it pumps out massive amounts of insulin; eventually, your body may become less sensitive to sugar and essentially, build up a resistance to it. Just as a frequent drinker needs to knock back more beers in order to feel their effects, you can begin to need more sugar to feel satisfied.
more tomorrow...
Saturday, March 29, 2008
A Minneapolis couple decided to go to Florida to thaw out during a particularly icy winter. They planned to stay at the same hotel where they spent their honeymoon 20 years before.
Because of their hectic schedules, it was difficult to coordinate their
travel schedules. So, the husband left Minneapolis and flew to Florida on
Friday, and his wife was flying down the following day.
The husband checked into the hotel, and unlike years ago, there was a
computer in his room, and he decided to send an email to his wife. However,he accidentally left out one letter from her email address, and without noticing his error, sent the email to the wrong address.
Meanwhile....somewhere in Houston....a widow had just returned home from her husband's funeral. He was a Minister who was called home to glory after suffering a heart attack. The widow decided to check her email, expecting
messages from relatives and friends. After reading the first message, she screamed and then fainted. The widow's son rushed into the room, found his mother on the floor, and then glanced up and saw the computer screen which
read:
To: My Loving Wife
Date: Friday, October 13, 2007
Subject: I have Arrived!
Dearest Love:
I know you are surprised to hear from me. They have computers here now, and you are allowed to send email. I have just arrived and have been checked in. I see that everything has bee n prepared for your arrival tomorrow, and look forward to seeing you then.
Hope your journey is as uneventful as mine was.
PS: Sure is hot down here!
Ok, I'm glad this week has come to a close. It's been a ruff one for me as I've missed all but one day at the gym. We had umpiring everyday and since many schools were on their spring break, the games were scheduled at 10 or 11 am which killed my morning gym schedule.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
A ship in the harbor is safe. But that's not what ships are built for.
- Anonymous
Taking the easy way out is, well, easy. Human beings naturally stick with their normal routines because they offer feelings of security. But by staying in the same routine, you miss out on new opportunities. In 1975, a third-year student at Harvard University decided to drop out and pursue something else. The student's name was Bill Gates. He saw an opportunity and took the risk. While this doesn't mean that every dream will transform you into a billionaire, it shows that some of world's geniuses took chances to follow their dreams. If you are waiting around for your goals to just fall into your lap, it could take awhile. But your goals are achievable--if you're willing to break from the norm and cast your ship down uncharted waters.
Achieving goals, that's what this is all about. To see yourself in a new and wonderful light, to realize you have become what you always wanted to be, is the ultimate goal to reach!
Here's some interesting info on the 100 calorie snacks:
While the snack packs are winners for portion control and short-term satisfaction, they typically lack hunger-controlling nutrients (fiber, protein and healthy fats). This means that they won’t control your hunger for long and may lead to further snacking and higher calorie consumption over the course of the day. A handful of nuts or a piece of fruit could stave off the munchies for around the same number of calories while also providing key nutrients like fiber or healthy fats.
And despite the fact that the labels on these snack packs claim "0 grams of trans fats," many still contain hydrogenated oil—the prime source of trans fats. Legally, manufacturers can label products as trans-fat-free if they contains less than 0.5 grams of trans fat per serving.
Smart Snack Alternatives
If you want a healthy, low-calorie snack but don’t want to pay the premium for convenience, here are some healthy snacks you can prepare yourself. You'll save money, reduce waste, and stay fuller longer with these 100- to 200-calorie ideas that you can portion out yourself.
Low-fat cottage cheese (4 oz): 80 calories
Raisins (50 or about 1 oz): 85 calories
Skim milk latte (8 oz): 85 calories
Air-popped popcorn (3 cups or 1 oz): 95 calories
Graham crackers (8 small rectangles): 100 calories
Thin pretzel sticks (48 sticks or 1 oz): 100 calories
Celery (5 pieces) with peanut butter (1 Tbsp): 100 calories
Unsweetened applesauce (1 cup): 100 calories
An apple (small) with low-fat cheese (2 oz): 150 calories
Baby carrots (10) with hummus (1/4 cup): 150 calories
Peanuts (a handful or 1 oz): 160 calories
Raw almonds (a handful or 1 oz): 165 calories
Low-fat yogurt (6 oz): 175 calories
Tortilla chips (12 chips or 1 oz) with salsa (1/2 cup): 175 calories
Whole wheat Ritz crackers (10 crackers or 1 oz) with peanut butter (1/2 Tbsp): 175 calories
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