July 2012 – Betsy Schow

Snack Smart: Dried Fruit

Need a yummy low cal snack on the go?
Try dried fruit. Its portable and much easier to stuff in a purse or backpack than squishing and bruising that real banana or apple.

A word to the wise though, watch the label. A lot of dehydrated fruits are candied. All that sugar adds up to big calories that you don’t need. The fruit is sweet enough on its own. Bananas and apricots are notorious for this. Look at the ingredient list, if they add sugar, pass it by.

My favorite is the Kirkland brand freeze dried fruit. Just apples in a bag. 35 calories. The perfect snack in between class. Great for lunchboxes for the kiddos too.

Fitness Tip: Breaking it up

Is your morning workout the only time you are active during the day? Do you feel like you are stuck in a rut? Trying breaking your workout in two. Do half in the morning and half in the evening. Give your body two chances to rev your metabolic engine. You’ll also get that nice flood of endorphins twice too. If nothing else, try adding a light walk in the evening. Great for stress relief and a great way to keep your body moving and burning.

walking dog by johnny_automatic - cartoon of a girl walking a dog from http://www.usda.gov/cnpp/KidsPyra/ National Agricultural Library, Agricultural Research Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture

I Spy with my little eye…

Camera phones are one of my most favorite inventions in life. I love taking snapshots of seemingly random things. I decided to start doing this for the blog as well. Here’s my picture of the day.

Without the context of the scenery, you might think this is an aerial view of the ocean, with whitecaps dotting the water. Nope, it’s the clouds in the sky. Today they look like cottage cheese, or the crumble with whipped cream on a blueberry tart. Hmmm, most of the my thoughts are leaning towards food. I think that means I haven’t had breakfast yet.

What does this look like to you?

Definition of Failure

Every makes mistakes. Every one eats too much some days. I had one of those a few days ago. I made the mistake of getting into a BBQ wing eating competition with my husband. The place we were lunching at had bottomless wings.

A side note to dieters. Heck, to all people. Stay well away from the words from hell. Bottomless, unlimited, all-you-can-eat, etc.

Anyway, I got wrapped up in this wing competition and forgot my husband has hollow legs or something that he can stuff with food. He soundly beat me. But not before I had 20 wings. At 100 calories a piece. Ouch.

I regretted it for the rest of the day and well into the next. But while the belly ache served as a reminder to watch my portions, I can’t beat myself up about it. Learn from the experience, don’t do it again and let it go. Yes it means that I probably won’t lose any weight this week. But it says nothing else about me. The occasional screw up does NOT make you a failure my diet friends. It makes you human.

We are not failures when we slip and fall. It is only failure if we refuse to get back up.

The Game of Life

Back in the day, I used to love playing “Life”. I even own the Pirates of the Caribbean edition. But the game isn’t so fun when you’re playing it for keeps. The “Real Life” where stock markets can crash and send the value of the house card you picked into the toilet. And whose little plastic kids from the game scream, whine, and throw temper tantrums.

Oddly, my real life is echoing the game a bit. Only the stakes are higher than just a bad spin. Remember the go to college card so you can get a higher paying job? Well, my husband lost his job in February. We decided that it was in the best interest of the family and future jobs to send him back to school to get a degree. He should be done in another 10 months. So until then, we are living on our savings and a sandal budget (we passed the shoestring point).

As I watch the saving deplete, I can’t help but wonder, did we make the right choice? I think so, and time will tell. But I still feel I am moving around the board waiting for one of those bad opportunity cards to smack me with a penalty.

Have you ever had to gamble a bit with your future, and did it pay off? How did you know you were doing the right thing?

Snack Smart: Chips and salsa alternative

Ok, hear me out. I was skeptical too. But it’s actually good.

Salsa is pretty good for you. It’s the tortilla chips that’ll get ya every time. So try enjoying your snacky salsa with a different kind of crunch. Try celery or my personal favorite, baby carrots. Yummy and low calorie. Satisfy your craving without blowing your budget. Plus the ‘caliente’ in the salsa can help heat up your metabolism.

Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Fitness Tip: Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

You work out, you’re eating better. But the scale isn’t budging. A lot of times, it could be because you have a liar in your midst. The fitness equipment.

Often times the elliptical, treadmill, or cycle can overestimate the calories burned by 30-50%! Well, if you use that number to calculate you net calories, you might be blowing your budget without meaning too. Example: You are trying to budget for 1500 calories. If your elliptical says you burned 1000, then that means you have earned the additional 1000 calories. So you eat a total of 2500 calories for the day. And you are gaining weight. Because in reality you only burned 500 calories. And if this pattern keeps up everyday, the 500 calories over budget per day would make you gain one lb per week.

Fitness equipment is notorious for lying to make you feel good and get back to the gym. Here is a link that I like to use to calculate how many calories I’m REALLY burning.
http://www.webmd.com/diet/healthtool-fitness-calorie-counter

So if the scale is stuck, maybe you need to block out the info panel on the treadmill and recalculate your budget.

Fighting Fido

When you eat, do you have dog-like tendencies? Here’s what I mean

Is this you?

Or maybe this one over the last buffalo wing?

Maybe this one hits home.. staring longingly and begging for a taste of the food you can’t have.

Yeah, I’m right there with you. I had this epiphany yesterday when I found myself giving my three year old puppy dog eyes, hoping she’d share just a bite of her cookie. She didn’t.

I need to better control my food behavior. I am not an animal, licking the plate clean or fighting for the last scrap of food. I’m in control. I decide what I will eat and what I won’t. And if I’ve budgeted correctly, then there is no need to feel guilty. But swiping those last few fries off the kids plate… adds up real quick.

So stop fighting with Fido over the leftovers. Make your choices wisely and let the dog get the crumbs under the table.

Full Body: Take the darn compliment

Allow me to take you to my Spanish class today. When I handed my teacher the homework, she commented that I had “really nice arms”. So what immediately pops out of my mouth? “Yeah if you like sausages.” To which the teacher responded, “You like sausages?” (she’s from Peru… lost in translation)

Point is, when someone offers me a compliment, I feel the need to add a little bit of self deprecating snark. Do you do this too? Why are we so ready to see the bad and flaws, yet so reticent to jump on the success train?

In my pysch class, forever and a day ago, I heard it takes 5 positive comments to balance one negative. If you have a little inner critic, complaining about body parts all day, is it any wonder the scale leans heavily on the negative?

So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to try to make a conscious effort to take the darn compliment. With no additives. And not just hear it and brush it off, saying the snarky little comment in my head. Internalize what the person is saying. Give the person’s opinion weight and validation.

Join with me in telling the little monkey in our heads to stop throwing poo. What’s that song? “Accentuate the positive… eliminate the negative…”

If you can’t say something nice…

You should always listen to what your momma says you know. If you can’t say something nice, keep your yap shut. Especially in politics.

If you haven’t noticed, there’s a pretty big election coming up this year. And so far I have no clue why I should vote for either one of these yahoos. I’ve heard an earful of why I shouldn’t vote for the other candidate though.

It makes me ill that every time I turn on the news or check Facebook, there are pictures of Romney in a KKK outfit, or Obama looking like Hitler. Come on people. How exactly is this helpful, to anyone? To swipe a line from Buddha, It’s like poisoning yourself and hoping the other guy falls dead. Because make no mistake, this negative crap is poisoning you and everyone around you with hate. If you are a person that spreads these offensive and often false images and stories, do you realize how that makes you look?

So here’s my impassioned plea to my friends and family on both the left and right… stop throwing poo at the opposing candidate. This goes for the campaigns themselves too. All we hear is how one of them is going to ruin America. I for one would like to hear what you- or your candidate of choice- are going to do to make America better.

Stop using bully scare tactics. Stop kicking the other guy in the nuts. If the only reason to vote is so the other guy doesn’t win, we are screwed.