When I arrived at work yesterday, there was a DoorDash bag by the locked security gate. It was a sunny 85 degree afternoon. I looked at the receipt. Somebody had ordered two pints of Ben & Jerry’s at 1am, a mint chocolate cookie and a chocolate chip cookie dough. I checked the security footage. The poor, confused dasher drove all around, looked at the apartments next door, looked at his phone, left and came back several times, and finally dropped it at the gate to melt overnight. I felt empathy for the person who never got their ice cream, empathy for the lost driver, and a bit sad for the ice cream itself. When I told a coworker, he got excited and asked if it was melted yet. LOL Um, after 14 hours in the heat, it’s toxic soup now.
Oh dear --- I'm not sure who to be more sorry for...the poor DoorDash driver, the person who didn't get the ice cream or you seeing all the good ice cream gone to waste. 😅
I’m here! I need to post an update. I haven’t had much to write about lately, but I will get on it. I’m actually really happy that food peace is a thing. I no longer have a bunch of angst and scheming going on, new plans to try, problems to fix. It all feels pretty effortless now. So, I don’t know what to talk about. If anyone would like to suggest a topic, food or otherwise, that would give me a push to get typing. 😊
It's been busy for me! Lots going on at work, and I just competed at a national level powerlifting meet last weekend in Austin, TX. So training up to that took a lot of bandwidth, and I'm now enjoying a very long-awaited break. But it's still not a true break, as I'm working this Memorial Day weekend. Oh well. I started my summer reading with the Kamogawa Food Detectives. And I'm looking forward to seeing my nephew get married in July.
I finished listening to the Evaporated: Gone with the Gods podcast recently, and I give it two thumbs up. Jake Adelstein is one of its hosts, and he's the author of Tokyo Vice, which was adapted into a tv show on Max. It's about the thousands of people who go missing every year in Japan. Many of them decide to disappear because of debt, illegal activity catching up with them, or in the case of some women, they're fleeing from domestic abuse. Very riveting. I found it curious that Japan doesn't maintain a database of missing persons, unlike the US. And Japanese culture generally shrugs at the notion of a person going missing, almost as if it's a given due to the individual's circumstances. If the Evaporated were to turn into a Netflix documentary, I'd watch it.
@hayley and @sarah too I appreciate your reading lists. I just started Delia Ephron's Left on Tenth because I recognized her as Nora's sister, and I adore Nora Ephron. I'll hopefully be able to start "The Maid" aftewards, too. I placed a hold with my library, and it will be a six week wait. 😫 Ugh!!
I only read 7 books in 2023 which was less than 2021 and 2022. My goal is to prioritize reading again in the AM and I hope I can read at least a book a month if now two. I'd also like to read more fiction.
My 2023 books were:
Outlive - Peter Attia This was probably the longest book I read but also the quickest since I read most of it on a camping trip where I didn't have access to the internet. That tells me something right there that I need to keep making it easier to pick up a book instead of my phone or ipad.
The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning - Margareta Magnusson
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals - Oliver Burkeman. Basically we can't do it all so we need to make choices. Really liked this book
Next Level - Stacey Sims
Good for a Girl - Lauren Fleshman
You're a Miracle (And A Pain in the Ass) - Mike McHargue
Left on Tenth, A Second Chance at Life - Delia Ephron
I started a lot of other ones that I didn't finish and had to return to the library and still need to revisit.
I love reading everyone’s book choices and both you and Joyce have convinced me to finish Outlive.
Good observation about reading more when you spend less time in front of a screen! I’m the same way. I actually find now that I get through more books when I listen to them I think because I do so when I’m cooking, cleaning, driving, and taking my dog for a walk although now I find I listen more to podcasts than I do audiobooks.
What did you think of Roar? I believe Stacey Sims is releasing an updated version of the book this month. I never read all of Roar, but I did like Next Level.
I liked ROAR but it's been a while since I read it. Also I'm past her target audience on that one as I think it was mostly how to structure workouts around your period.
I've enjoyed listening to audio books - I especially like autobiographies that are read by the author. But I also listen to podcasts - I subscribe to more than I could ever listen to all - and usually go to a podcast for working out and cooking, etc.
Great post Joyce! I am a bookworm and always looking for new reads. I added the ones that sounded the most intriguging to me to my Goodreads list (particularly the Emma Rosenblum and Richard Osman series) and I'll post some of the books I really enjoyed from this past year. I'm interested in reading Pema Chodron's "How to Mediate" because I think I could use some specific guidelines on how to do it 😁
Peter Attia's book has been sitting on my nightstand since my friend bought it for me for my birthday in April. I'm about 100 pages in and so far enjoying what he says, but I took a break because it got a bit science-y for me. I did enjoy it though.
Here are my book suggestions (in no particular order)
None of This is True - Lisa Jewell (love her books!)
Someone Else’s Shoes - JoJo Moyes
The Whispers - Ashley Audrain (she also wrote The Push, which I read last year and LOVED!)
Good Bad Girl - Alice Feeney (I feel like you can’t go wrong with anything by this author)
Happy Place - Emily Henry (I actually didn’t enjoy this as much as her other books, but it was a huge hit at a yearly book swap one of my friend hosts)
I Will Find You - Harlan Coben (LOVED this book! My 13 year old was not as impressed)
Drowning - TJ Newman (2nd book I’ve read by this author. I think he/she was a flight attendant so the books always pertain to airplanes. This was gripping)
Molly the Maid - Nita Prose (she has 2 books in this “series”. I really enjoy the main character and these are very easy reads)
Skwigg's comment that she's currently reading the Autobiography of a Yogi made me think about the books I finished in 2023. My reading went way up ever since my work commute became a train-based one, and I got a Kindle. But I'm also proud to say I stopped the habit of slogging through books I didn't vibe with. I started David Sedaris' Calypso, and after 50 pages, decided it wasn't my cup of tea. Nope and I moved onto something else that was much better.
In no particular order, the books I really enjoyed in 2023:
Pema Chodron - How to Meditate
Gretchen Rubin -Life in Five Senses and Better Than Before
RF Kuang - Yellowface
Emma Rosenblum - Bad Summer People - this was drily funny, and has the bitchiest characters
Jane Pek - the Verifiers
Richard Osman - the Last Devil to Die - a "cozy" mystery, though there's still a lot of murder
Peter Attia - Outlive
Grady Hendrix - Horrorstör
If anyone wants to share their reads, I'm game. I want to add to my Kindle collection. 😃
Because I moved to a new state about two months ago, the topic of friendships is weighing on my mind. How am I going to make new friends? How am I going to keep the friendships I've made? It seems overwhelming, especially since I seem to spend so much of my time at work, and then at the gym. Then I realize both are still potential sources of friendships, too. I sometimes overthink things :-P
I’m downloading this episode now, Joyce - thanks! I definitely feel the effects of loneliness lately, as I’ve mentioned in my own journal. I also realize I could make more of an effort to initiate get togethers. Anyway I’ll give this a listen.
@Hayley, making plans is so not my jam, LOL. I tried organizing a get-together of a bunch of college friends, and it took 2.5 days for plans to come together, and only half of the original invite list is actually coming out to meet next Saturday. But it's still something.
And TBH, a lot of us have so much going on. For example, I met up with a friend at the PA Renaissance Faire yesterday, and she's kind of a caregiver to her sister (she lives independently, but has a lot of health issues). So I can't take it personally when she says it's very likely that December will be the next time we can meet.
I am definitely not the organizer in our bunch, but I was feeling really down last week and my son mentioned wanting to go to a farm/pumpkin patch with some friends so I thought I'd better take action. I didn't/don't foresee any of them coordinating anything so I took the bull by the horns and initiated a group text. Which was a total cluster, because trying to figure out a date/time with 10 other moms of boys enrolled in multiple activities is impossible. I ended up creating a doodle poll, and while half of the moms still haven't responded I've decided that even if only 2 moms show up with their kids that will be fine. What I don't want to happen is that I end up carpooling all the boys there and no moms show up. Selfishly this is also my time with friends 😄
I do agree that many people have a lot going on in general and it isn't always easy to carve out time. I love that you went to a Renaissance Faire with a friend! That sounds like a fun way to spend the day and if we aren't generally the organizers I say we give ourself kudos for initiating something.
I was skimming through recent threads and realize I only get notifications to the ones I actively follow. I thought this was one of them but I guess not. :)
@Joyce I feel you on the holidays. They're meant to be a joyous, warm, loving, celebratory occasion but for many they can leave you feeling down and sad. I'm sort of a mixed bag with that time of year, although when January comes I find I'm both happy to have a bit more structure and "normalcy" and sad because the holidays are over and this time of year always feels gray and cold.
As I was reading further down the thread I saw what @skwiggs said about carbs+fat=bloat/puffiness. I feel like bloating is always one of my big issues and that might just be due to gluten, which I am really careful about but understand that I live with 3 other people who *do* eat it so maybe there's cross contamination here and there.
I definitely find I am way more satisfied when I eat protein+fat. I still eat carbs throughout the day, but if I don't have butter, cheese, salad dressing, whatever, I'm never really satisfied. The weird thing is that when I eat something like GF pasta or rice (I made a Hello Fresh chicken fried rice the other night for dinner) I find that I'm insatiable. There wasn't a lot of chicken to go around (I feel like they always skimp on the protein 😁) and I went back twice for more before I finally thought I'd had enough. It's one of the reasons why I think I generally don't eat a lot of pasta. It's not my favorite thing in the world, but it always seems to take bucket loads for me to feel full and satisfied.
Just thinking out loud here - why is it so hard sometimes to do things we know will make us feel better? Or for me, anyway. On Christmas Eve, I was hungry and tired. Yet I didn’t want to eat even though I knew I‘d feel tons better with a proper meal. Instead, I had a grande coffee from Starbucks with sugar cookie syrup and milk 😬 And a bag of chips. Hardly sustenance. I eventually ate later that day. But I couldn’t really get into the swing of things and picked at my plate. Even the Christmas cookies were barely touched. I think I just had a very, very hard time on Christmas, and it showed.
This is all really interesting. I am experimenting with adding more protein and seeing if that makes me more satisfied/has any effect. Will report back.
I'm very plant focused and tend toward vegan but I'm with you @skwigg that low-fat vegan just doesn't cut it for me. If I go too many days without some substantial fat I just start to feel hollow and unsatisfied. At that point I need so real cheese, full fat yogurt, eggs or the like. Better if I just incorporate those things all the way along. And I agree that I think we're all different. I think some people do better with a more paleo/meat based diet with less carbs but I wouldn't last long on that way of eating.
I'm 55 @snail, which is nuts! I'm sure that different people feel wonderful with completely different styles of eating, but for me, low-fat vegan is the worst I'd ever felt. Upping the protein and fat (hello, cheese) helped tremendously. More salmon, avocado, peanut butter, eggs. Then, I was satisfied, and my muscles and brain worked again. Whew! I still think it's great to eat a very plant-rich diet, but eating only plants wasn't for me, especially as I age. I'll chalk that up to another thing I learned the hard way.
@skwigg , your thoughts about metabolism, eating and longevity reminded me of a comment I recently saw in an FB group. One woman posted that in order for her to lose weight, she needed to eat 1200 calories per day. And that she is 5‘5” and 126 lbs, 30% body fat. I wanted to reach into the screen and tell her she needs to gain muscle. I mean, no wonder she is miserable. She thinks she is in bad shape, but doesn’t eat enough to feel good, which would probably make her more willing to be physically active, and is another key to feeling fantastic about oneself.
Oh yeah, I feel that fat+carb combo a lot these days too, especially when it comes to animal fat and carbs. A BLT sandwich with real bacon can bloat me up pretty well, which is why I started eating tempeh bacon. It’s not the same, but admittedly, probably better for my heart health, too.
@skwigg OK, that all makes sense. You are in your 50s, right? I am 40, and noticing that a lot of the food I eat on a regular basis is not keeping me full as long? I know I struggle with protein (vegetarian) so maybe that's this issue.
@snail I work 3pm to 11pm, so dinner is usually at work. I live close enough that sometimes I can come home to eat. If not, dinner is at work. And if work is crazy, dinner is at 9pm. Every day is different. And I’m sure everyone’s schedule is different. The key is to pay attention to what’s effective and sustainable for you, especially as hormones start changing. My approach from 20 years ago would never work now. Even the one from two years ago wasn’t going so well. It helps to not make any assumptions about what you should be doing, and to get curious about what might be easier or work better. Like, I would never have thought that eating candy after breakfast would be beneficial, but it sure is. 🤷♀️ So is the mindset of eating enough and eating for muscle. Cooking dinner at midnight was never going to happen, so I eat dinner at work and bring snacks. If I retired tomorrow, the whole thing would probably spread out more, with breakfast starting at 6 or 7. I would love to go to sleep earlier and get up earlier. I forgot to talk about deliberate weight loss. A few months ago, I was getting really uncomfortable. Jeans cutting into me, wedding rings unwearable. I didn’t do anything drastic, I put fewer nuts in my smoothie, ate bread less often, started eating half a protein bar instead of the 300cal ones, and stayed a little more mindful of portions in general. Nothing happened quickly, but I started losing about a pound a month. That, plus a visit to a jeweler got my rings back on. No suffering, gasping or backlash at all from a very slightly lower food intake with more protein. I really feel like the frequent timing of protein throughout the day makes it easier for my old-people metabolism to utilize it. A decade ago it didn’t matter. I was all intermittent fasting and no snacking and that worked. I was going 7 hours or so between lunch and dinner. That just doesn’t fly anymore.
@skwigg Interesting! Thanks for all of that. You seem to eat most of the food early, too. That would probably not work for my schedule, unless my hours ever change and I get home earlier than 7:30 ever. Dinner is usually around 8:00...
@snail Diet logic will tell you that as you get older, your metabolism slows down, so you need to eat less food and do more cardio. Diet logic has it ass backwards. If you underfeed yourself, metabolism gets worse, hormones get out of whack, and fatigue sets in. Anytime I veered too far in that direction, I got tired and hungry, my belly poofed out, and my muscle definition vanished. The more I pushed, the worse all of that got.
So, now, as a post-menopausal woman, I know that low-calorie dieting and overexercising is like the grim reaper for your hormones. What makes my hormones (and muscles) happy, is rest, recovery, strength training, good sleep, quality protein, starchy starch, healthy fat, lots of plants, and being in the sweet spot on sugar.
I think I mentioned that when my husband retired and started going walking with me, we were eating candy the whole way. A few weeks ago, I was like, “This is stupid. NO more walking candy!” I quit eating it on morning walks, but found that I was eating more candy overall, like a lot more! LOL So, now I have a caramel and a couple of Tootsie Rolls in the morning when I walk the dog, and then I’m kind of indifferent about it the rest of the day. So, that’s my sugar sweet spot, deliberately having some first thing. Then, if more sugar presents itself later, I can enjoy or pass without ever feeling like I can’t get get enough of the stuff.
Now, eating for muscle and metabolism, that’s been interesting. I’m basically eating protein every 2-3 hours all day long. I’m not eating bodybuilder amounts though. I don’t count grams. I just make sure to eat some. I look and feel better, and definitely perform better, when I do. I have also sadly discovered that any kind of flour/fat combo now causes an insta-pooch of my lower abdomen. So, bagels and cream cheese, pasta and cream sauce, waffles and butter, donuts, all the fun stuff. I still love these foods and still eat them, but they aren’t daily staples the way they might have been in the past. I don’t limit carbs or starch though. I like oatmeal, sweet potatoes, lentils, quinoa, All-Bran, beans, fruit, that kind of thing. For whatever reason, I can eat satisfying amounts of those all day and stay quite lean, but if I butter two pieces of toast, I get puffy, my pants get tight, and my rings won’t come off. So, annoying.
Anyway, so, a day of eating might go like:
9:30 - A bowl of All-Bran with blueberries, blackberries, and gooseberries, and Silk Protein Milk.
Strength train for 10-30 minutes, three days a week
10:30 - Super food smoothie with protein powder, banana, berries, greens, nuts, seeds, herbs and spices
11:00 - Caramels and Tootsie Rolls
12:00 - a couple pieces of mozzarella and a handful of cherry tomatoes
2:00 - A big spinach and greens salad with chicken and cheese, honey mustard dressing, Mary’s Gone Crackers, fruit for dessert
2:30 - Atomic Fireball candy on the way to work
4:30 - Protein bar
6:00 - If I come home for dinner, something like a veggie burger patty with cheese, or an egg with cheese, or leftover chicken. Then, a starch like lentils, potatoes, or sweet corn, then a veggie like broccoli or asparagus, then a fruit like cherries or peaches.
I’m usually not at all hungry after that and don’t eat again until morning. Though, if I get hungry I’ll have something else. My days can vary a lot. We have company, we eat out, I have popcorn for lunch, life happens, but in general my mindset is that I’m frequently consuming protein foods and whole foods, not skipping meals or letting myself get too hungry, and lifting things in order to stay strong and keep my muscle mass.
Hi! It's been awhile. Skwigg, you posted this in Sunshine's journal: "I have thoughts about actively trying to eat more or less, but they're sort of nebulous. I will say that, post-menopause, restricting food intake has the exact opposite of its intended effect. Metabolically, it couldn't go any worse for me. So, the "eat less, lose weight" mindset had to go in the garbage. What works for me is thinking more along the lines of eating to have a healthy metabolism and muscle mass. Those make it possible to stay lean at higher food intakes, which feels productive and doable."
Can you elaborate? What does eating to have a healthy metabolism and muscle mass mean? I am thinking ahead here. I've been on birth control forever, and will have to come off when I reach menopausal age, so I'm wondering about this.
The original video was taken down before I had a chance to watch. It sounds like it was a good one regarding the pitfalls of calorie counting. It must have caused a whole lot of drama. I don’t like it when she takes videos down. Her tagline is “Science & Sass” and sometimes the sass needs to stand. She’s very quick to say, “Sorry, I was too sassy.”
When I arrived at work yesterday, there was a DoorDash bag by the locked security gate. It was a sunny 85 degree afternoon. I looked at the receipt. Somebody had ordered two pints of Ben & Jerry’s at 1am, a mint chocolate cookie and a chocolate chip cookie dough. I checked the security footage. The poor, confused dasher drove all around, looked at the apartments next door, looked at his phone, left and came back several times, and finally dropped it at the gate to melt overnight. I felt empathy for the person who never got their ice cream, empathy for the lost driver, and a bit sad for the ice cream itself. When I told a coworker, he got excited and asked if it was melted yet. LOL Um, after 14 hours in the heat, it’s toxic soup now.
Anyway, that happened.
My random thought is I've not seen many posts lately, how is everyone doing?
I finished listening to the Evaporated: Gone with the Gods podcast recently, and I give it two thumbs up. Jake Adelstein is one of its hosts, and he's the author of Tokyo Vice, which was adapted into a tv show on Max. It's about the thousands of people who go missing every year in Japan. Many of them decide to disappear because of debt, illegal activity catching up with them, or in the case of some women, they're fleeing from domestic abuse. Very riveting. I found it curious that Japan doesn't maintain a database of missing persons, unlike the US. And Japanese culture generally shrugs at the notion of a person going missing, almost as if it's a given due to the individual's circumstances. If the Evaporated were to turn into a Netflix documentary, I'd watch it.
@hayley and @sarah too I appreciate your reading lists. I just started Delia Ephron's Left on Tenth because I recognized her as Nora's sister, and I adore Nora Ephron. I'll hopefully be able to start "The Maid" aftewards, too. I placed a hold with my library, and it will be a six week wait. 😫 Ugh!!
I only read 7 books in 2023 which was less than 2021 and 2022. My goal is to prioritize reading again in the AM and I hope I can read at least a book a month if now two. I'd also like to read more fiction.
My 2023 books were:
Outlive - Peter Attia This was probably the longest book I read but also the quickest since I read most of it on a camping trip where I didn't have access to the internet. That tells me something right there that I need to keep making it easier to pick up a book instead of my phone or ipad.
The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning - Margareta Magnusson
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals - Oliver Burkeman. Basically we can't do it all so we need to make choices. Really liked this book
Next Level - Stacey Sims
Good for a Girl - Lauren Fleshman
You're a Miracle (And A Pain in the Ass) - Mike McHargue
Left on Tenth, A Second Chance at Life - Delia Ephron
I started a lot of other ones that I didn't finish and had to return to the library and still need to revisit.
Great post Joyce! I am a bookworm and always looking for new reads. I added the ones that sounded the most intriguging to me to my Goodreads list (particularly the Emma Rosenblum and Richard Osman series) and I'll post some of the books I really enjoyed from this past year. I'm interested in reading Pema Chodron's "How to Mediate" because I think I could use some specific guidelines on how to do it 😁
Peter Attia's book has been sitting on my nightstand since my friend bought it for me for my birthday in April. I'm about 100 pages in and so far enjoying what he says, but I took a break because it got a bit science-y for me. I did enjoy it though.
Here are my book suggestions (in no particular order)
None of This is True - Lisa Jewell (love her books!)
Someone Else’s Shoes - JoJo Moyes
The Whispers - Ashley Audrain (she also wrote The Push, which I read last year and LOVED!)
Good Bad Girl - Alice Feeney (I feel like you can’t go wrong with anything by this author)
Happy Place - Emily Henry (I actually didn’t enjoy this as much as her other books, but it was a huge hit at a yearly book swap one of my friend hosts)
I Will Find You - Harlan Coben (LOVED this book! My 13 year old was not as impressed)
Drowning - TJ Newman (2nd book I’ve read by this author. I think he/she was a flight attendant so the books always pertain to airplanes. This was gripping)
Molly the Maid - Nita Prose (she has 2 books in this “series”. I really enjoy the main character and these are very easy reads)
I have more but figure this is enough for now.
Skwigg's comment that she's currently reading the Autobiography of a Yogi made me think about the books I finished in 2023. My reading went way up ever since my work commute became a train-based one, and I got a Kindle. But I'm also proud to say I stopped the habit of slogging through books I didn't vibe with. I started David Sedaris' Calypso, and after 50 pages, decided it wasn't my cup of tea. Nope and I moved onto something else that was much better.
In no particular order, the books I really enjoyed in 2023:
Pema Chodron - How to Meditate
Gretchen Rubin -Life in Five Senses and Better Than Before
RF Kuang - Yellowface
Emma Rosenblum - Bad Summer People - this was drily funny, and has the bitchiest characters
Jane Pek - the Verifiers
Richard Osman - the Last Devil to Die - a "cozy" mystery, though there's still a lot of murder
Peter Attia - Outlive
Grady Hendrix - Horrorstör
If anyone wants to share their reads, I'm game. I want to add to my Kindle collection. 😃
It's been a while since I posted in here. So I'm sharing this Paula Pant podcast episode I just listened to that is all about loneliness: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7KgawwAqkx2XapwKqhWDsp?si=425a255057f74a71 It's a very easy listen - under an hour - and an easygoing conversation.
Because I moved to a new state about two months ago, the topic of friendships is weighing on my mind. How am I going to make new friends? How am I going to keep the friendships I've made? It seems overwhelming, especially since I seem to spend so much of my time at work, and then at the gym. Then I realize both are still potential sources of friendships, too. I sometimes overthink things :-P
I was skimming through recent threads and realize I only get notifications to the ones I actively follow. I thought this was one of them but I guess not. :)
@Joyce I feel you on the holidays. They're meant to be a joyous, warm, loving, celebratory occasion but for many they can leave you feeling down and sad. I'm sort of a mixed bag with that time of year, although when January comes I find I'm both happy to have a bit more structure and "normalcy" and sad because the holidays are over and this time of year always feels gray and cold.
As I was reading further down the thread I saw what @skwiggs said about carbs+fat=bloat/puffiness. I feel like bloating is always one of my big issues and that might just be due to gluten, which I am really careful about but understand that I live with 3 other people who *do* eat it so maybe there's cross contamination here and there.
I definitely find I am way more satisfied when I eat protein+fat. I still eat carbs throughout the day, but if I don't have butter, cheese, salad dressing, whatever, I'm never really satisfied. The weird thing is that when I eat something like GF pasta or rice (I made a Hello Fresh chicken fried rice the other night for dinner) I find that I'm insatiable. There wasn't a lot of chicken to go around (I feel like they always skimp on the protein 😁) and I went back twice for more before I finally thought I'd had enough. It's one of the reasons why I think I generally don't eat a lot of pasta. It's not my favorite thing in the world, but it always seems to take bucket loads for me to feel full and satisfied.
Just thinking out loud here - why is it so hard sometimes to do things we know will make us feel better? Or for me, anyway. On Christmas Eve, I was hungry and tired. Yet I didn’t want to eat even though I knew I‘d feel tons better with a proper meal. Instead, I had a grande coffee from Starbucks with sugar cookie syrup and milk 😬 And a bag of chips. Hardly sustenance. I eventually ate later that day. But I couldn’t really get into the swing of things and picked at my plate. Even the Christmas cookies were barely touched. I think I just had a very, very hard time on Christmas, and it showed.
This is all really interesting. I am experimenting with adding more protein and seeing if that makes me more satisfied/has any effect. Will report back.
I'm very plant focused and tend toward vegan but I'm with you @skwigg that low-fat vegan just doesn't cut it for me. If I go too many days without some substantial fat I just start to feel hollow and unsatisfied. At that point I need so real cheese, full fat yogurt, eggs or the like. Better if I just incorporate those things all the way along. And I agree that I think we're all different. I think some people do better with a more paleo/meat based diet with less carbs but I wouldn't last long on that way of eating.
I'm 55 @snail, which is nuts! I'm sure that different people feel wonderful with completely different styles of eating, but for me, low-fat vegan is the worst I'd ever felt. Upping the protein and fat (hello, cheese) helped tremendously. More salmon, avocado, peanut butter, eggs. Then, I was satisfied, and my muscles and brain worked again. Whew! I still think it's great to eat a very plant-rich diet, but eating only plants wasn't for me, especially as I age. I'll chalk that up to another thing I learned the hard way.
@skwigg , your thoughts about metabolism, eating and longevity reminded me of a comment I recently saw in an FB group. One woman posted that in order for her to lose weight, she needed to eat 1200 calories per day. And that she is 5‘5” and 126 lbs, 30% body fat. I wanted to reach into the screen and tell her she needs to gain muscle. I mean, no wonder she is miserable. She thinks she is in bad shape, but doesn’t eat enough to feel good, which would probably make her more willing to be physically active, and is another key to feeling fantastic about oneself.
Oh yeah, I feel that fat+carb combo a lot these days too, especially when it comes to animal fat and carbs. A BLT sandwich with real bacon can bloat me up pretty well, which is why I started eating tempeh bacon. It’s not the same, but admittedly, probably better for my heart health, too.
@skwigg OK, that all makes sense. You are in your 50s, right? I am 40, and noticing that a lot of the food I eat on a regular basis is not keeping me full as long? I know I struggle with protein (vegetarian) so maybe that's this issue.
@snail I work 3pm to 11pm, so dinner is usually at work. I live close enough that sometimes I can come home to eat. If not, dinner is at work. And if work is crazy, dinner is at 9pm. Every day is different. And I’m sure everyone’s schedule is different. The key is to pay attention to what’s effective and sustainable for you, especially as hormones start changing. My approach from 20 years ago would never work now. Even the one from two years ago wasn’t going so well. It helps to not make any assumptions about what you should be doing, and to get curious about what might be easier or work better. Like, I would never have thought that eating candy after breakfast would be beneficial, but it sure is. 🤷♀️ So is the mindset of eating enough and eating for muscle. Cooking dinner at midnight was never going to happen, so I eat dinner at work and bring snacks. If I retired tomorrow, the whole thing would probably spread out more, with breakfast starting at 6 or 7. I would love to go to sleep earlier and get up earlier. I forgot to talk about deliberate weight loss. A few months ago, I was getting really uncomfortable. Jeans cutting into me, wedding rings unwearable. I didn’t do anything drastic, I put fewer nuts in my smoothie, ate bread less often, started eating half a protein bar instead of the 300cal ones, and stayed a little more mindful of portions in general. Nothing happened quickly, but I started losing about a pound a month. That, plus a visit to a jeweler got my rings back on. No suffering, gasping or backlash at all from a very slightly lower food intake with more protein. I really feel like the frequent timing of protein throughout the day makes it easier for my old-people metabolism to utilize it. A decade ago it didn’t matter. I was all intermittent fasting and no snacking and that worked. I was going 7 hours or so between lunch and dinner. That just doesn’t fly anymore.
@skwigg Interesting! Thanks for all of that. You seem to eat most of the food early, too. That would probably not work for my schedule, unless my hours ever change and I get home earlier than 7:30 ever. Dinner is usually around 8:00...
@snail Diet logic will tell you that as you get older, your metabolism slows down, so you need to eat less food and do more cardio. Diet logic has it ass backwards. If you underfeed yourself, metabolism gets worse, hormones get out of whack, and fatigue sets in. Anytime I veered too far in that direction, I got tired and hungry, my belly poofed out, and my muscle definition vanished. The more I pushed, the worse all of that got.
So, now, as a post-menopausal woman, I know that low-calorie dieting and overexercising is like the grim reaper for your hormones. What makes my hormones (and muscles) happy, is rest, recovery, strength training, good sleep, quality protein, starchy starch, healthy fat, lots of plants, and being in the sweet spot on sugar.
I think I mentioned that when my husband retired and started going walking with me, we were eating candy the whole way. A few weeks ago, I was like, “This is stupid. NO more walking candy!” I quit eating it on morning walks, but found that I was eating more candy overall, like a lot more! LOL So, now I have a caramel and a couple of Tootsie Rolls in the morning when I walk the dog, and then I’m kind of indifferent about it the rest of the day. So, that’s my sugar sweet spot, deliberately having some first thing. Then, if more sugar presents itself later, I can enjoy or pass without ever feeling like I can’t get get enough of the stuff.
Now, eating for muscle and metabolism, that’s been interesting. I’m basically eating protein every 2-3 hours all day long. I’m not eating bodybuilder amounts though. I don’t count grams. I just make sure to eat some. I look and feel better, and definitely perform better, when I do. I have also sadly discovered that any kind of flour/fat combo now causes an insta-pooch of my lower abdomen. So, bagels and cream cheese, pasta and cream sauce, waffles and butter, donuts, all the fun stuff. I still love these foods and still eat them, but they aren’t daily staples the way they might have been in the past. I don’t limit carbs or starch though. I like oatmeal, sweet potatoes, lentils, quinoa, All-Bran, beans, fruit, that kind of thing. For whatever reason, I can eat satisfying amounts of those all day and stay quite lean, but if I butter two pieces of toast, I get puffy, my pants get tight, and my rings won’t come off. So, annoying.
Anyway, so, a day of eating might go like:
9:30 - A bowl of All-Bran with blueberries, blackberries, and gooseberries, and Silk Protein Milk.
Strength train for 10-30 minutes, three days a week
10:30 - Super food smoothie with protein powder, banana, berries, greens, nuts, seeds, herbs and spices
11:00 - Caramels and Tootsie Rolls
12:00 - a couple pieces of mozzarella and a handful of cherry tomatoes
2:00 - A big spinach and greens salad with chicken and cheese, honey mustard dressing, Mary’s Gone Crackers, fruit for dessert
2:30 - Atomic Fireball candy on the way to work
4:30 - Protein bar
6:00 - If I come home for dinner, something like a veggie burger patty with cheese, or an egg with cheese, or leftover chicken. Then, a starch like lentils, potatoes, or sweet corn, then a veggie like broccoli or asparagus, then a fruit like cherries or peaches.
I’m usually not at all hungry after that and don’t eat again until morning. Though, if I get hungry I’ll have something else. My days can vary a lot. We have company, we eat out, I have popcorn for lunch, life happens, but in general my mindset is that I’m frequently consuming protein foods and whole foods, not skipping meals or letting myself get too hungry, and lifting things in order to stay strong and keep my muscle mass.
Hi! It's been awhile. Skwigg, you posted this in Sunshine's journal: "I have thoughts about actively trying to eat more or less, but they're sort of nebulous. I will say that, post-menopause, restricting food intake has the exact opposite of its intended effect. Metabolically, it couldn't go any worse for me. So, the "eat less, lose weight" mindset had to go in the garbage. What works for me is thinking more along the lines of eating to have a healthy metabolism and muscle mass. Those make it possible to stay lean at higher food intakes, which feels productive and doable."
Can you elaborate? What does eating to have a healthy metabolism and muscle mass mean? I am thinking ahead here. I've been on birth control forever, and will have to come off when I reach menopausal age, so I'm wondering about this.
The original video was taken down before I had a chance to watch. It sounds like it was a good one regarding the pitfalls of calorie counting. It must have caused a whole lot of drama. I don’t like it when she takes videos down. Her tagline is “Science & Sass” and sometimes the sass needs to stand. She’s very quick to say, “Sorry, I was too sassy.”