New Home for 40 & Fierce

We are now posting over at:
http://icre8.typepad.com/40_and_fierce/

Please update your bookmarks and we'll see you there!

Let Them Eat Cake

Offices are evil.

There's no ifs, ands and but(t)s about it. Offices are determined to trip you up when you're dieting (or changing your eating habits or whatever you want to call it today).

Yesterday management decided everyone "deserved a break" and offered cookies (jumbo oatmeal raisin and chocolate chip) and lemonade in every kitchen in the building. That's four kitchens. No matter where you were in the building, you'd have access to those cookies. Of course I took one. Are you kidding me?! Hopefully I worked it off in my one-hour aerobics class and 45-minute after-dinner power walk with Brian.

Today there's birthday cake in the kitchen. It's cut up into nice serving sizes in bowls along the counter. Lovely. So pretty too with purple flowers. I happened upon them when I went in there to heat my Balsamic Chicken Lean Cuisine. While I was microwaving, I stood there and stared at the cake. You see, I love birthday cake. Yellow cake with vanilla frosting to be exact. And this had tons of frosting. Just how I like it. The only thing preventing me from grabbing one of the bowls is that there was no e-mail saying they were up for grabs. I'm waiting for that e-mail and when it comes, I'm gonna be all over it like the frosting on that cake.

I told you, I have no willpower and I'm not even gonna try some Jedi Mind Trick to get myself not to eat one. The only thing that will stop me is if that e-mail never goes out because grabbing one without being offered would be rude. And since I'm the new kid on the block, I don't want or need that label.

Is Low Fat the Worst Diet Option?

I was watching "ABC World News" tonight and they had a story about the best diets. They compared Low Carb, Low Fat and the Mediterranean. Although more people follow a low-fat regimen, turns out Low Fat is not the best choice. According to the story:

Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Mass., found in a study of 322 obese subjects that the so-called Mediterranean diet — a diet plan characterized by high levels of healthy fats, fruits, and vegetables — beat out the low-fat diet both in terms of how much weight patients lost, as well as how many health benefits they gained as a result of the diet.

And...

Moreover, researchers found that a low-fat diet bestowed the least health benefits on the dieters compared with the Mediterranean and low-carb diets. Those on the Mediterranean diet were most likely to have improvements in blood sugar levels, while those on the low carb diet had the most improvement in cholesterol levels.

I have heard of the Mediterranean diet but didn't know it could do this much for you! I especially like that not only did people lose more weight, but they were able to keep it off and maintain this style of eating for the rest of their lives.

My husband and I honeymooned in Italy last year and loved the food. It was fresh, nothing processed, the right portions--no wonder everyone over there looked healthy and great in their clothes. While here in America we're afraid of fat yet getting fatter and sicker each year.

Has anyone tried the Mediterranean diet? How'd it work out for you?

Office Saboteurs

This morning I get into work and fire up the computer. I take a sip of my coffee, a bite of my Nigella Breakfast bar and launch Outlook. The first e-mail is titled "Want Sugar With Your Coffee?" Not a good way to start the day. I knew what was coming. The e-mail announced that there were donuts in the break room. Oh joy.

I walk into the break room to put my lunch bag into the 'fridge. I glance at the individually-wrapped donuts in glazed, chocolate glazed and blueberry. Oh joy.

But I don't bite. Nope. I Dionne Warwick and walk on by.

I usually crash around 2 p.m. and hunt for something sweet. I return to the break room. There are two donuts left. A little voice says, "Take one!" But I beat back the temptation. I have a small cup of hot chocolate from the machine instead. Not sure if that was better. Probably not, but at least I didn't eat a donut!

I get really irritated when people bring their junk food to the office to share, especially if I'm working on changing my eating habits (notice I didn't say "diet"). I have no willpower. I will eat any cake, cookie or candy you drop in front of me. By the Grace of God, I was able to resist today's temptation. But what happens tomorrow or the day after? Will I be as strong? Suppose I have a bad day and succumb to my Emotional Eating disorder?

Luckily, the Office Diet blog offers a great post about keeping control during the work day and provides some handy suggestions for navigating food temptations.

How do you handle the food landmines in your office?

Online Food Journals

I need to stay on top of Web 2.0 trends for my job, so I read Mashable, a social media news site. To my delight, they did a post on 25+ Web Apps for Dieting and Getting Into Shape. This post was right on time since I know that to be successful, I'll need to keep a food diary.

I've done Weight Watchers five times and the thing that always screwed me up was the POINTS system and keeping track of them in a journal. I didn't do it most of the time and it's probably why I never did well on the program. Constantly reading food labels, using the slider to convert everything to POINTS and then writing it down in those little booklets they gave you at your meetings got on my nerves. I need something really simple and easy to use.

As you can see from the upper-right corner, I decided (begrudgingly) on The Daily Plate (TDP). It's not a bad journal, per se, but their Web page layout is horrible. I also tried MyCalorieCounter, DietTV and MyFoodDiary (you gotta pay to play on this one).There are too many ads on MyCalorieCounter and I got too many error pages when I was surfing the site.

I really liked the interface on DietTV. It's clean, it's got nice graphics and it's easy to navigate. Only problem is you have to follow one of the diet plans they list. That's great if you want to use a specific plan and they have 90 you can choose from. I also like that they let you track how much sleep you got because that's an important, yet overlooked, aspect of weight loss. If I was on a specific plan, I would definitely use them.

The charts on MyFoodDiary are overwhelming. After you enter your food for the day, it says, "If every day were like today, you'd..." and they predicted I would gain 10 pounds by August. But according to The Daily Plate, I'm on track.I have no idea who's right, but for now, I'll stick with TDP for a bit and see how it goes. They have free and Gold (paid) membership. You can try Gold for five days and I still can't figure out why it's better than the free membership. Gold gives you a cute weight tracker that you can put on your blog that is supposed to work with Blogger, but when I tried it, it didn't show up in this space. (Hey TDP, you may wanna fix this).

So far I'm having a hard time trying to navigate the site and that doesn't bode well for me sticking with keeping a food journal. Good ol' pen and paper may have to be the way to go. We'll see. Or maybe I'm just cranky and don't feel like trying. Whateverrrr! I'm going through sugar withdrawl!