Words of Wisdom

Someone once told me “It’s not how much you make, it’s how much you spend”, which I’ve come to believe is very true. Take my friend HH in Victoria, he’s 55 and just paid off his mortgage. OK, that’s not a HUGE accomplishment, BUT, I do his taxes for him so I know how much he makes, and it’s not a lot. HH is a hairdresser, and unless your Hollywood Hairdresser to the Stars, you probably not bringing in a 6 figure salary. But it’s not what he “makes”, it’s what he “spends” that gives him the ability to pay off his mortgage, oh, and he did it in about 10 years.  HH can stretch a household dollar so far it’s amazing.

This leads me to a similar situation, weight loss, and another saying someone (Tamara) once told me,
“weight loss is easy, you just have to be burning more calories than your taking in”, and once again I’m finding this very true. Unless you have some weird glandular problem, either increase your daily physical activity, decrease your caloric intake, or a pleasant combination of the two.

Where I find these two situations are similar; with household income, you always know how much money is coming in, it’s difficult to track what (and where) your spending your money on. And that’s why people struggle making ends meet. And with food & exercise, it’s fairly easy to track how many calories you’re burning, but how many calories are you taking in? Again, I think this is why people struggle to lose weight. My fancy new GPS Running Watch loves to tell me how many calories I just burned on a run, but I find tracking calories going into me, extremely difficult, time consuming and boring. I HATE calorie counting.

To tackle this problem, of what food I’m eating, I’m going to go back to some basics and hope this helps. The first rule of thumb is to avoid anything white. Sugar, flour, pasta, potatoes (especially the deep fried variety), butter, mayonnaise, and the list goes on. On the flip side of that rule, try to eat food that have lots of colour, and apparently the darker the colour, the better it is for you. Yes I know that there are exceptions to this rule, like “Cauliflower is white” and “McDonalds Shamrock Shake is green”, but come on, really? It’s just a guideline, not the Ten Commandments.

Second is to plan my meals, especially breakfast & lunch. This is where I fail miserably. Breakfast is so important and yet I tend to just skip it and have a Starbucks coffee. And lunch, well if I haven’t packed it, then I’m roaming around the food court at noon try to find something, and chances are I haven’t eating breakfast either, so I’m starving to death. To counter this, I try and get my breakfast and lunch done up the night before, then it’s just done. FYI – my breakfasts of late have been amazing, delicious smoothies, and my friend CL has got me adding raw vegetables (beets, brussell sprouts) into the mix too. I get it all into the blender the night before, so I just blend it up and away I go.

Finally, everything in moderation. It’s OK enjoy things that may not be helping you lose weight as long as you’re in control, having them on occasion, or in smaller portions.  

Hi to my followers J how exciting is that,,, you totally made my day that people (other than Tamara and my mom) are following my Blog. To Amy, I am currently 208 pounds and hope to get down to 180. And to Fran, thanks for adding an international flair to Mountain Biker Eric.