Thoughts: 6.12.10

Things have been a bit topsy-turvy lately. I don’t even remember the last time I wrote, but life has calmed down a bit. Mostly due to me being laid off last month. Didn’t see it coming – our company was doing well, sales continued to go up despite the economy, but our parent company decided that they could handle our marketing themselves and save themselves the overhead – laying off all 4 of us. 5 out of 9 left in our company. 10 years ago when I started there were almost 400 people, so it’s been like a decade long episode of ‘survivor’ and we thought we were finally ‘safe’ for a while with things going well. Nope.

So, after getting over the initial shock of it, I realized it was time anyway – I’d been there for so long that I wasn’t challenged, my commute was insane [150 miles round trip 3x/wk] and I knew I wasn’t paid what I was worth. I got complacent because there was no stress – I knew my job inside and out. I loved my coworkers – we had a very tight crew, like family. So quality of life was great, but job satisfaction was low… So this whole thing is a nice opportunity to move on. I’ve been going full tilt getting my resume out there, meeting with recruiters, and I’ve had a few interviews. The first one went so well they wanted to hire me on the spot, but they got news of a merger that put all new hires on hold 2 days before they wanted me to start. The next one – which I had last week – went well despite me forgetting my portfolio at home [as a designer, that was pretty stupid…]. I was the only one they called to come in and the interview ended with them telling me they thought I’d fit in perfectly – because I’m capable of being a one-woman art department – it’s what I’ve done the past 12 years. So, we’ll see what happens with that – I’ll know end of next week if they’re going to extend an offer, but in the meantime the hunt continues…

My brother had a stroke a few months back [at 34!] due to him going off all his meds for diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, etc. He not only had a stroke, but had bleeding in the eyes that required both laser and chemical surgery to stop, and now he’s going in for a sort of bypass surgery to replace the arteries in both legs to get circulation going again to prevent amputation. And yet he’s still drinking regular soda and eating donuts. He didn’t see the stroke as a wakeup call like we’d all hoped – to him it just confirmed what he already believed – that his life sucks, that it’s worse than anyone else’s and he has the right to sit on his ass and feel sorry for himself. When I asked him about the soda thing, he became enraged and told me to shut up, and that he ‘wasn’t in the mood’ for me questioning him. So I hung up. I felt like I was talking to a dead man. I’ve learned over the years that you can’t help those who don’t want it – or think they don’t have a problem in the first place, no matter how obvious.

What his experience only reaffirmed for me was that sugar equals death to people in my family. We’re all prone to diabetes – it runs on both sides of my family. So, once again I stopped eating things with refined sugar it them, sticking to fruit and natural sweetners like agave, honey and maple syrup – but only sparingly. And, no surprised my weight loss has started up again with a vengeance. I started this journey at 255 lbs – the highest weight I saw on a scale. It could have been higher because I didn’t weigh myself for years, living in denial, believing I was ‘doomed’ to be like my mother [she was obese my whole life and still is]. I’m now at 197 lbs. I workout on average 6 days a week, doing cardio, boxing and weight lifting, hiking and trail running. I feel like I’m in better shape than when I was 18 [I’m 36], and I feel like the sky’s the limit.

Not eating sugar has made me realize this time around that my appetite has been cut in half. When I’m hungry, it’s not painful and panic-enducing like it used to be [do to very low blood sugar after crashing from a spike], and I don’t crave junk anymore. It’s literally EASY losing weight when you take out those factors from daily life. I eat so much less, but it’s all nutrient-packed food, so I always have plenty of energy. I sleep like a rock and my skin has cleared up after years battling adult acne. I started at a size 20 and now I’m a size 12. I’m hoping to get to an 8 and I still don’t know what my end weight will be – I’m taking it a little at a time. It could be 148, it could be 168. I don’t care anymore. I use the scale as a tool of measurement along with taking actual measurements and buying smaller clothes and fitting into them.

During the stress of the family issues and the work issues, I never stopped exercising but I did indulge in comfort foods a lot more, stalling my weightloss for a while, even putting a few lbs back on. There were also 2 weddings and a trip to Chicago in there as well and plenty of unknown to fear, but overall, I was able to handle it all much better than in the past. It didn’t derail my efforts, it just slowed them down. But I’m back on track, steaming toward my goals. I read a great quote from Winston Churchill when I first found out about the layoff, “Optimists see opportunity in difficulty, pessimists see difficulty in opportunity.” It struck a chord with me. Attitude really is everything. Life will knock you down here and there – it’s inevitable. What you do after that is completely up to you. You can sit on your ass, paralyzed and let more of your life pass you by, or you can get right back up, look life in the eyes and say, “bring it on.”

I’ve also learned that no matter how alone you feel, you’re never alone – it’s just up to YOU to reach out to people. In the end, true friends and loving family WANT to be there for you and want to help – even if it’s just to be your cheerleader in email. If friends & family aren’t there, get online. I’ve found twitter to be an amazing support system. Find people with similar interests, get to know them and put your issues out there and just watch all the encouragement and prayers come your way. It’s ironic that something seemingly so impersonal would renew my faith in the human condition… ;)

Fractionated Oil??

My husband and I were discussing microwave popcorn last night – because he’s trying to cut down on his addiction to it, when I mentioned that the last time I looked, his favorite brand still had hydrogenated vegetable oil in it [“trans fat”]. He said he didn’t think so, so I grabbed the package and read off the ingredients and got mildy scared when I saw “fractionated palm oil” on the list. What the hell is ‘fractionated oil’??? I was also surprised I’d never heard of it before [I don’t eat a lot of processed foods, so I just never came across a label that had that on there, I guess…]. I had to wonder if it was the next version of hydrogenated oil, just named cleverly to fool us ‘idiot consumers’ [yes, I’m a bit paranoid, but shouldn’t we all be? lol]

Turns out all it means is, palm oil [originating either in Africa or in the US] is a very healthy oil. It’s high in saturated fats, but it’s also high in antioxidants and vitamin E. Great, right? Not so fast… when they fractionate it, they heat it so that the oil separates into 2 parts: oil that has lower and higher melting point. Then they skim off the stuff that has the higher melting point, which is more stable, much like trans fats used to be and discard the rest. They use this oil in a lot of baked goods, confections containing chocolate – and microwave popcorn. Commonly used oils are palm oil, palm kernel oil and coconut oil. Both Palm and coconut oils are very healthy and great to cook with if you can find it [Trader Joe’s carries coconut oil which I use in place of vegetable oil – it has very little flavor, so it’s perfect when you don’t want your oil to interrupt the flavors of whatever you’re using it for…]. Palm kernel oil is oil they get from pressing the pit of the palm fruit – which doesn’t really have much nutrition in it to start with, but it’s much harder to get oil from the pit than it is from the fleshy, pulpy fruit itself. 

So, what’s the bottom line? 

The good news: This fractionated variety of oil is NOT half a step away from being straight-up plastic like hyrogenated oils were and does not appear to cause cancer like trans fats do.

The bad news: The fractionation process pretty much strips any health benefits from palm oil, rendering it [pun intended] void of nutrition, and you’re left with just a bunch of saturated fat… which many believe to be one of the causes of heart disease. 

So, if you have to have your popcorn, fractionated palm oil won’t cause cancer, but it could add to your waistline or the walls of your arteries. I, personally don’t think saturated fats are that bad. They’re very stable and they’re a nice, slow source of energy. Too much of anything is bad for you, so I apply the same rule to saturated fats… I also believe that there’s a much higher risk of coronary disease if you have sugar issues. If your blood sugar is too high for too long [unchecked insulin resistance or pre-diabetes to full blown type 2], the sugar corrodes your artery walls, then your body sends in the cholesterol as a sort of spackle, to try and patch the damage so the walls can heal – but cholesterol is sticky and things like saturated fats can stick to it and form a sort of microscopic barricade in your artery as it sticks to itself, as well. If you have normal sugar levels, no need for cholesterol patching, and the increased risk of heart disease from eating saturated fats goes away. All things in moderation… I’m not giving up steak anytime soon, and as long as I keep my sugar nice and balanced, I shouldn’t have to. 

As for fractionated oils – I’m glad they came up with a more natural way of stabilizing oils for processed food, but I won’t be eating it anytime soon. I’m just glad that if my hubby decided to have some microwave popcorn when we watch a movie, he’s not eating a measured dose of cancer-causing plastic. Now, I am by no means a doctor, I just do a LOT of reading on this sort of thing and have come to my own conclusions. I’m not recommending anything, just stating what I think, pertaining to my own diet [and concern for my husband’s]. I think we all should know more about what we put into our bodies so we can make our own educated decisions about what we’re willing to subject our bodies too – or at least understand the consequences if we choose to eat something unhealthy anyway…

Photo credit: Novatek Filtration, Sweden

New Research In Weightloss?

I just read an article on psychologytoday.com about some relatively new causes for obesity vs. the old standby cause – you’re lazy and you eat too much. I’ve read about all of these ’causes’ before, so it’s not that new, but it was nice that they put them all in one place. You can read the entire article on psychologytoday.com if you CLICK HERE, or you can read my take on it in summary below.

Anyone who’s dieted knows there’s a lot of information out there and a lot of so-called “plans” that claim to be the one true diet [sounds remarkably like religion, and I suspect for some, dieting is their ticket to the promise land of skinny heaven… but I digress…]. From low-fat to low-cal to low-carb, how is anyone supposed to know what will work best? Well, if you’re like me, you’ve tried them. ALL of them. And in the end you lost some weight, but it was too difficult to stick to within the constraints of normal life and you gained back what little weight you lost – and then some. I’ve stepped my way up to gaining a LOT of weight over the years, lost some, gain more, repeat. Over and over until hello size 16. GHAH!

So, what’s the latest…?

Evolution: We’re built to store fat and keep it – it’s a survival thing. But back then, when we relied on extra fat to get us through the tough times, we were sprinting to hunt and evade, and walking many miles a day gathering and following our food, so obesity was never in the picture. Things started going downhill for us when we started planting crops. We went from tall, strong, solid, lean people with perfect teeth and almost no disease, to shorter, fatter, sickly people with bad teeth, lighter bones and chronic illness. We weren’t getting the nutrition we were built to process – we were eating grains. We were staying put, tending our crops. Our new formed communities started to grow, making nice, ripe breeding grounds for bacteria, viruses and disease. Of course there were plenty of pros to living that way – it freed up a lot more time running for our lives to work on other things like tools, language, writing, music and the arts, sciences, and eventually the technology we know and love that makes our lives much more convenient these days. And there was far less chance of starvation or being another animal’s food – strength in numbers. But flash forward 10,000 years later and our bodies still haven’t evolved to function optimally with our current diet or lifestyle. So… our genes are one factor. Some of us have stronger survival genes than others – we put on weight faster and easier. In a starvation situation, we’d win. But that doesn’t help us with designer clothing…