Who needs the gym?

I often feel guilty that I don't go out and exercise.  All these people have gym memberships and are able to find time to get to the gym a few times a week.  Lifting weights, running on the treadmill and doing fitness classes.

But during the week my life is a race.  Get up, shower, get up the baby, feed the baby, make lunch, out the door and drive for 35-40 minutes, drop off baby, go to work.  At 4:30 we go in reverse ... leave work, pick up baby, drive for 45 minutes, back home, feed the baby, bath the baby, put baby down, make dinner and finally eat dinner.  This routine starts at 6:30 am and ends about 8:30 pm.

Oh man typing that made me exhausted.  Anyway back to my point ...

I don't have time to go to the gym, but this weekend also made me realize that I get plenty of exercise without the gym.  And the best part is ... I get to do it all with my family instead of being in a great big box with lots of equipment.

Here was my weekend broken down into exercises:

Cardio:
1 hour bike ride - 1/2 of which was in a flash rain storm
20 minutes of lawn work
10 minutes of "head, shoulders, knees and toes" while standing (this is harder to do then burpees!)

Fitness class:
45 minutes aquafit with family in pool - might not have been a lot of actually swimming but this was a whole body workout

Weight Lifting:
18 lb baby - need I say more

Miscellaneous:
100 yard dash to get dirt out of baby's mouth
stair climbing in short bursts
the hourly clean up everything off the floor

It is true that I probably should make more of an effort to make sure that I am fitting in some type of exercise into my week, but I will take exercising with the family over working out in the gym any day.

Is being obese a disease?

It has been all over the media so I am sure most people have heard that the American Medical Association has decided to declare that obesity is a disease. Here in Canada the CMA hasn't declared obesity a disease but did  suggest doctors and other health professionals work with their patients to reduce obesity through education, proper nutrition and regular exercise.

I completely agree with the CMA but there are a few problems. 

1. Lack of education

Our medical doctors receive very little training on nutrition. How are they suppose to educate us about nutrition if they are not themselves highly educated in the matter. 

2. Wrong education 

The Canada Food Guide recommends 6-7 servings of whole grains a day. So even if doctors were educated in nutrition they like nutritionist & dietitians, they would just be educating patients with improper knowledge. However I do believe that if people cut out the processed crap and fast food and ate "healthy" whole grains this would help fight obesity. 

*healthy as defined by the Canada Food Guide 

3. Most people already know this

Ok I have no proof of this but I am guessing that the majority of people, obese or not, know that proper nutrition and exercise would help them. 

According to the BMI definition of obese, I fell into that category for a long time and I can tell you 100% I knew the crap I was putting into my body wasn't going to help make me skinnier.   But at the end of the day people choose to eat junk and that is the main reason most people are over weight. 

Actually I wonder how many obese people there are who have eaten a clean healthy diet for years.   I am not even talking about a paleo diet. Just a diet that is full of fruits and veggies and has very little processed foods in it.
4. We need to be starting this education early

So if I am wrong above in #3 this means that we need to be educating people when they are children about proper nutrition and exercise.   They need to be learning early on how to eat properly.  And the best place to get an education is in school.

Also instead of cutting gym class because there are "more important" things on the curriculum for the students to be doing. Exercise should be considered a key part of the school system with some included in every single day.

What on earth could be more important for students to learn about then their health?Oh sure Jimmy might be a brilliant scientist but he is going to die at age 50 of a heart attack and spend most of his life in pain due to poor eating habits.
Also a healthy child eating good nutritious food and getting daily exercise  is going to be able to sit still at school more alert and ready and able to learn better.   

Defining obesity as a disease is just another excuse to make drugs to combat this "disease" instead of getting at the true problem that people are filling their bodies with junk and obesity is the bodies way of reacting to all this junk in the body.

*This post is a rant and is all my personal opinion.   I also do believe that a few people may have other medical issues that lead them to be obese, but that is not the same as saying that obesity is a disease.

The Ill Effects of Going Off Plan

We were away for the weekend getting home late in the afternoon on Sunday.  Poor planning and a need to get the little guy down for the night lead to a decision to simple get take out for our dinner.  Quick easy and close by were the criteria.

Sending J out for swaharma was the original plan.  We have an awesome swaharma place near by and while not completely on plan it isn't too bad an option as take out goes.

Unfortunately swaharma place was closed.  This lead to quick texting back and forth of what to eat.  Fish and chips was also closed.  So I sent J to Popeye's for some fried chicken.

I am not going to lie .. it was GOOD!  Spicy fried chicken with fries and a biscuit.  Oh and it came with a pop too.

We sat in the living room and the floor with a stupid Ben Stiller movie on the tv and started devouring our meal.  I had no intentions of eating the biscuit, but then J informed me that I had to try it and that "it was worth it".  They must pour some butter flavouring in their biscuits cause damn it was buttery good.

I did show some restraint.  There were still fries and most of the biscuit left over after I had finished stuffing myself to the brim.

But then almost instantly I started feeling the ill effects of what I had just done to myself.

Not only was I full but I was bloated.  My stomach looked like I was nine months pregnant with my food baby - a term I had not used in a lot of months.  I could barely bring myself to get up off the floor and onto the couch to lounge for the rest of the evening.  I spent the rest of the evening lying there like a beached whale hardly able to move and really uncomfortable.

The real effect of the meal came in the middle of the night.  I woke up at 2 am with my stomach still bloated and feeling completely full.  Then I laid there the rest of the night tossing and turning.  My stomach was screaming at me from the inside, asking me why I had to eat that horrible (but oh so tasty) meal.

Was going off plan worth the pain and sleepless night?  Nope

Did I learn my lesson?  Yup

Will I do it again?  Probably

All About the Planning

I posted last Friday wondering if I was really eating 80/20 paleo.  Very ambitiously I decided to take on the challenge of eating on plan for one week.

Well that was a grand idea that just didn't happen. Infact my week was so bad that I ate out lunch 3 days and the other two days I wasn't even at work for the full days. Hmm I am suddenly realizing that I didn't eat a good lunch all week. 

Anyway back to my point of this post. Part of the reason I failed so miserably (and partly gave up) my quest to eat on plan all week was lack of planning. 

Arriving home on a Sunday with no food in the fridge was not a great way to start the week.   I also must admit that I need to get more creative with my lunches. I am sure that with my freezer full of food and my 2 dozen of the most tasty eggs that I brought home from farmer Tom I could have figured something out. 

I even redeemed myself and made it grocery shopping on Monday. So the lack of planning excuse ends there. 

Tuesday I was home all day with a sick little guy and still didn't eat 100% on plan or a proper lunch. Really no excuse there. 

The rest the week were social lunches and while I could have made better choices I didn't. 

Dinners we were much better about. This was thanks to me planning out dinner the night before. 

Although we did have one little miss hap... came home to a crock pot full of raw meat. Eeekkk 

Apparently I missed hitting enter enough times to turn it on. But hey bacon and eggs are an awesome dinner and completely on plan!

Am I eating 80/20?

Most advocates of the paleo diet recommend following the 80/20 rule or 85/15.  Basically if you follow the diet 80 percent of the time and allow yourself to eat non-paleo food 20 percent of the time you are still going to reap a lot of the benefits.


This rule helps for people to not feel that they have fallen off the wagon when they have some bread at a restaurant or eat the stuffing at the Thanks Giving dinner.  It also addresses that we live in the 21st century where eating paleo isn't always possible.

 You show up at a dinner party and realize the only thing to eat is that big old bowl of pasta, with a side of garlic bread and cake for dessert.  Its going to be kind of hard to avoid eating wheat in that instance.  Or how about today where I was about to eat my big bowl of salad for lunch and realized I didn't pack any salad dressing.

From the start of eating paleo I made myself little rules.  I was going to stick to paleo in the house but outside the house I didn't need to be as strict on myself.  Or small amounts of sugar in food is ok.  This worked great and I lost over 15 lbs with no problems when we first started eating paleo.

Then we went to France where I decided that there was no way I was going to miss out on all the bread and pastries.  I was completely fine with my decision and do not regret it one bit.  However since coming home and getting back to paleo eating, I have noticed that the weight isn't coming back off.3

At home I am probably 95% paleo.  No gluten at all, but sugar and ice cream have been known to slip into my mouth.  Eating out is my big problem, especially with returning to work and having lunch with friends and colleagues that I haven't seen in a year.  Sushi, pho and worst of all dim sum are my lunch guilt pleasures.  Dinner is even worse choices, of shawarma, burgers, fries, burritos.  All quick things that we can grab and go.

This has me questioning am I really eating paleo at least 80 percent of the time or have I slacked off too much?

I am going to commit myself to a week of being paleo 100% of the time. No sugar, no take out, and no just a little nibble.

This is going to take a lot of planning and making sure that I have my snacks on hand.  But the important thing is I believe that I can do it.

Giving Up Sugar

When I tell people that I am paleo and explain what I don't eat, everyone right away jumps in and says they could never give up bread.  But I found the bread and most grains actually to be very easy to give up.  You just stop eating those types of foods and that is it.

For me the hard one to give up was sugar.

Sugar is in everything.  Most recipes call for sugar.  I really like sugar in my tea.  Sauces for cooking all contain sugar.  I just find it really hard to stay away from sugar.

I have eliminated sugar out of my tea.  But I must admit that tea is just not very good without the sugar.

I never considered myself a sugar addict.  My go to treat would be a big salty bag of regular potato chips over a cupcake any day.   I don't even crave sugar.  If candies are sitting there I will eat them, but I would never go out of my way to  go get candy from the store.  But despite this I am still having a hard time giving up sugar.

I guess I just need to start with paying more attention to what I am eating and how much sugar is in it.   Sticking to whole foods and making sure that I am not adding sugar to my recipes when I am cooking.

Grocery Shopping with Company

You know when you read all those articles about how to save money and how to avoid buying junk when  grocery shopping.  Always on that list is to not bring your kids grocery shopping.  Well let me tell you that also on that list should be not to bring your husband too.

We went grocery shopping yesterday on the way home from work.  I was starving so avoiding temptation was extremely hard for me, but I did manage to.  J on the other hand loaded three different types of juice and a bag of chips into the cart.

I guess I should be happy that was all that he bought this time.  I made the mistake of sending him to the grocery store to get milk and eggs a couple weeks ago.  He came back with the milk and eggs plus a couple bags of chips and pop and other junk that we don't (shouldn't) eat.

I guess I should just be happy that he is helping with the shopping.  :) 

Paleo Naysayers

A couple of days ago, someone on Facebook posted a link to an article and commented about the paleo diet and how is it based on junk or pseudo science.

I am not interested in what the article has to say and haven't bothered reading it.

I have read a number of books on the topic of paleo. Many do give detail about what our palaeolithic ancestors did and didn't eat and how much healthier they are compared to the those who ate grains and farmed.  But while that information was interesting, it wasn't what made me start eating paleo.










What made me start eating paleo was the information in the books about how grains, including whole wheat, are treated by our body. Or how as society started following low fat diet recommendations their waste sizes started growing.

The books also listed off a number of health benefits that would happen as a result of following this diet, some seemed too unbelievable to be true.  Here is a quick list from Robb Wolf about what he says are the benefits of eating paleo.

That is why I had decided to give the paleo diet a try.

Here is why 6+ months later I am still eating this way.  These are the benefits to my family of eating the paleo diet:

1. Weight loss
2. Not bloated all the time
3. More energy
4. Sleep better
5. Allergies and asthma have all but disappeared 
6. Less headaches

Once you actually give the diet a try and realize that the books were right you really start to question all the things that you were taught about healthy eating growing up.  The Canada food guide recommends 5-7 services of grains a day, but is this really healthy for us?  Aren't those grains just being turned into glucose in our body?  When I was following those recommendations I was getting fatter and felt tired, sluggish and bloated all the time.

To all those critics out there who like to bash this diet or try to discredit it, I strongly recommend that you just TRY IT!  You will be amazed at how much better you feel.

Food at Child Care

The child care centre  has a great food program and we are emailed the menu every month.  We missed May's mail out and I didn't bother asking for a copy, so June was the first time I got to see the full menu of what Rylan would be eating.

Let me just say ... WOW

Here is an example of a couple of days of the menu. 

We have decided to have the little man be on a gluten free diet (not paleo) while at school (I hate calling it day care) so he has a few substitutions like rice cereal instead of whole grain cereal.

I couldn't believe how wonderful the food sounds that he is eating.  The most amazing thing about the menu and the food the little R is being fed at school, is that he eats it! 

R also now eats his food at home too.  When we came home from France, the only thing that R would eat was fruit and yogurt.  Didn't matter what else we put in front of him he wouldn't even try it. 

He came home from his first full day of school and gobbled down the entire meal of almond crusted chicken with roasted potato and green beans.

The school also works on getting him to eat items that he is not so hot on.  The little man spits out his green peas, but every time they are on the menu they make him at least try them.

Pantry Clean Out

When we started eating Paleo back in November I did a quick pantry clean out. This is something I had never done before whenever I had started a new diet or way of eating before.

Of course I felt guilty getting rid of food that I had paid money for. This lead me to holding onto a lot of things that were not on plan.

So 6+ months later I finished the job. I found two things interesting. The first was the amount of stuff that I had kept that I shouldn't have. The second was that we didn't eat any of it.

Lots of pasta, flour, crackers and just junk were causing clutter in my pantry. This kept me from being able to see or find any of the good things that I was suppose to be eating.

There are still a few things that I left in the pantry that I probably should have thrown out. The peanut butter is one item.  But I don't eat peanut butter, so I see that as J's item. However with no English muffins to put the peanut butter on, I imagine six months from now I will be throwing that out too.

I feel like this clean out was another step towards getting my body clean but also my life clean.  I hate clutter and now I have one less thing cluttering my life.  Now I just need to find a good way to organize my spices to make life even easier.

The clean out ended with two big bags being dropped off at a food bank box!