A Challenge and a Mission - IIFYM (aka Flexible dieting)
They say write about what you know. In the current season I am living, I know learning about food, about my body and how to take better care of myself. I want to share some of that with you.
When I was younger I was thin without ever working for it. When I was a teen, my mom announced that she was paying for a membership at the newly opened fitness club in our small town. If memory serves me correctly it was during the era of Jane Fonda's Jazzercise. She and some of my sisters and their friends had joined the craze and since my "thighs were getting a little thick" she decided I should join them. I remember my dad rigging a pulley system in our house so she could do assisted leg lifts - that kind of makes me giggle today. That was my first exposure to intentional exercise. It didn't last long, imagine that.
I was still blissfully thin on my wedding day and for some years afterward. The day I went into labor with our first child (16 months later) I weighed in at a hefty 135 pounds. I had gained about 15 pounds from my normal non-pregnant weight. Those were the good ole days I tell ya. I haven't seen those numbers since I assure you. I don't recall what the scale said during the years between child one and two, but coming up on three I can tell you I started to gain steadily. I blame my father-in-law who lived with us at the time and loved, loved, loved treating the family to DQ - almost nightly. "Oh a little hot fudge sundae won't hurt you," he insisted. He lied. But not really. A little hot fudge sundae really doesn't hurt; it's the 104 hot fudge sundaes that take the toll. Those along with the suppers I had grown up learning to prepare for my husband who is your typical "meat and potatoes" kinda guy. His dad's comfort food - spaghetti - lots and lots of spaghetti (and don't forget the garlic bread or, better yet, the hot, fresh, crusty, french bread I taught myself how to perfect, and butter - lots of butter). So our nightly meals most often consisted of fried pork chops/chicken, mashed potatoes with white gravy, green beans with bacon grease or any number of other combinations of fried foods and starches and sauces. My love language is food; always has been, always will be I imagine. I can narrow the brunt of my weight gain to the months trying to conceive our third child. Stress was my status quo at that time in my life, and food was my drug of choice to be completely honest.
Over the years I continued to gain more and more weight. I wasn't the typical yo-yo dieter. I watched as people I knew tried one thing and then the next, always convinced that they had finally found the answer to their weight problem. Many people, including me, refer to some of those as "fad diets". I watched as they lost weight, gained it back, lost weight, gained it back and often gaining back more than they lost each time. I was convinced that losing weight and keeping it off was a hopeless endeavor and just didn't bother. I consoled myself that as people age, they get fat, it was that simple. Raising a family and taking care of a home left no time for doing the things that would be required to lose weight and exercise. It was a lost cause.
Then I started seeing photos of me and couldn't believe I had let this happen. Who was that person staring back at me in the photos and in the mirror. I sure didn't feel like I looked, yet. Then I did. In 2004 I started seeing information about a program at our local military base to help lose weight. L.E.A.R.N. Lifestyle, Exercise, Attitudes, Relationships and Nutrition. This didn't seem like a fad to me, it seemed like hope. My husband deployed for a few months and I decided to sigh up for the program. It was a perfect time to try something new without worrying about cooking different food for different people. The kids would deal with whatever they were give, right? LOL I began to understand it wasn't just about food. There were a lot of things wrapped up in our weight and body image. There were weekly meetings - accountability - and encouragement to keep it simple. It was free and it wasn't an open ended program that would continue indefinitely. The goal was to teach some new skills and launch us to put the things we learned to use - for life. It was without a doubt a benefit to me in my journey. I lost about 30 pounds, but more importantly I learned a key issue with my weight. I simply was eating too much. Even if I was eating relatively healthy, I was still eating too much. We logged everything we ate and I was absolutely stunned to see the amount of calories I was consuming on any typical day. We were encouraged to eat the same way we normally did for a week or two so we could see the patterns of our current choices. We learned to make smarter choices, using foods that were familiar to us, not requiring us to buy a whole new pantry of foods we weren't familiar with and probably would not eat long term, if we could manage to eat it at all.
My sweet husband returned from deployment and loved seeing the improvement in my weight and attitude. But it wasn't long before I fell back into old habits in food preparation and consumption. The pounds returned quickly and brought some friends along with it.
My attitude returned to the theory that long term, permanent weight loss was a myth. Then I watched as my daughter decided she could lose weight and she would lose weight. She started on a journey that led to many different attempts at weight loss programs and concepts. Some reminded me of the things I still refer to as fads, but most had some aspect of truth behind them and lessons in progress toward really caring for our bodies. She started to lose weight and people, including me, would tell her she really didn't need to lose any more. In fact, she often heard that she simply wouldn't be able to lose any more or change her body because of genetics. But she persisted, choosing to ignore those voices. She kept learning, first from one coach and then another. She learned to understand her body and food and so much more. She started to understand more about herself and the role her body image plays in her attitude and her heart. She made believers of all those who said it couldn't be done. And she did it in a healthy way with hard work, dedication, persistence and consistency. Then she started inspiring others to do the same. She is now a certified personal trainer and she's a natural. This is her gift.
All those different teachers and lessons have brought her to something we firmly believe is the key to life-long health and weight management. I believe that different things work for different people. I really don't believe it's one size fits all when it comes to pretty much anything actually. I do, however, believe that this will work for pretty much anyone who really tries it. Those who use it refer to it as Flexible Dieting or If It Fits Your Macros (IIFYM). I am convinced that this is the key for people who can't imagine eating quinoa or kale and not eating Oreos and ice cream. It is not clean eating - make no mistake about it. You certainly can eat clean if you choose to, but you can't use the excuse that you just can't say no to that weekly dose of fill-in-the-blank for the rest of your life so why bother. There is no food off limits. Yes, you read that right, there is no food off limits, but there are limits to how much of every food. The limit is just different for every person and learning to stay within those limits take some time and effort. It is an investment we make in ourselves, to live better, longer.
I'll write more later (or ask my daughter to) about IIFYM/Flexible Dieting and what that means. But the reason I introduce it in this post is to give you some background for the series that I plan to start writing here. I've been using this for about five months and added walking and training (lifting) to the schedule about four months ago. To date, I have lost a little over 35 pounds. I've lost them slowly, steadily and I have no plans to welcome them back. As I outgrew my clothes, I bid them farewell with a happy dance. No safety net for "just in case". But there is one obstacle that I sense is getting bigger and more challenging for long term success. Although my husband has said he wants to join me on this journey, he still is a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy at heart. I still have two kids living at home who really aren't on board with this new way of doing things. They're both actually really picky in their eating habits anyway, always have been. My love language of food hasn't actually ever changed, but the dialect is being tweaked a little. I still love to feed people - I can't imagine that will ever change and I don't really want it to - but that poses the challenge I mentioned earlier. How to prepare meals that people will enjoy and still fit into the IIFYM plan?
I am hereby making it my personal mission to learn how to do this. I am going to spend the next weeks and months learning how to take meals that I know my family enjoys, including some of their favorite comfort foods, and make them macro-friendly. Most of this effort will simply be in trimming portion sizes to what fits each individual's daily macro count and balancing the other meals and snacks to adjust to those counts. It can be done, I know it can. There are, of course, some things that can make dishes more macro-friendly without sacrificing taste, and I will experiment with those things as well. My primary goal will be to do this while using items that would normally be found in my Midwest-style pantry and freezer (i.e. things my parents would most likely be familiar with and others wouldn't have to ask how to pronounce that or where to find it at the grocery store LOL).
Over time I will also include lessons I'm learning on this journey. It is definitely "life-in-progress" and so I'm sure I'll have to amend some things to reflect new lessons.
Come along for the journey!
When I was younger I was thin without ever working for it. When I was a teen, my mom announced that she was paying for a membership at the newly opened fitness club in our small town. If memory serves me correctly it was during the era of Jane Fonda's Jazzercise. She and some of my sisters and their friends had joined the craze and since my "thighs were getting a little thick" she decided I should join them. I remember my dad rigging a pulley system in our house so she could do assisted leg lifts - that kind of makes me giggle today. That was my first exposure to intentional exercise. It didn't last long, imagine that.
I was still blissfully thin on my wedding day and for some years afterward. The day I went into labor with our first child (16 months later) I weighed in at a hefty 135 pounds. I had gained about 15 pounds from my normal non-pregnant weight. Those were the good ole days I tell ya. I haven't seen those numbers since I assure you. I don't recall what the scale said during the years between child one and two, but coming up on three I can tell you I started to gain steadily. I blame my father-in-law who lived with us at the time and loved, loved, loved treating the family to DQ - almost nightly. "Oh a little hot fudge sundae won't hurt you," he insisted. He lied. But not really. A little hot fudge sundae really doesn't hurt; it's the 104 hot fudge sundaes that take the toll. Those along with the suppers I had grown up learning to prepare for my husband who is your typical "meat and potatoes" kinda guy. His dad's comfort food - spaghetti - lots and lots of spaghetti (and don't forget the garlic bread or, better yet, the hot, fresh, crusty, french bread I taught myself how to perfect, and butter - lots of butter). So our nightly meals most often consisted of fried pork chops/chicken, mashed potatoes with white gravy, green beans with bacon grease or any number of other combinations of fried foods and starches and sauces. My love language is food; always has been, always will be I imagine. I can narrow the brunt of my weight gain to the months trying to conceive our third child. Stress was my status quo at that time in my life, and food was my drug of choice to be completely honest.
Over the years I continued to gain more and more weight. I wasn't the typical yo-yo dieter. I watched as people I knew tried one thing and then the next, always convinced that they had finally found the answer to their weight problem. Many people, including me, refer to some of those as "fad diets". I watched as they lost weight, gained it back, lost weight, gained it back and often gaining back more than they lost each time. I was convinced that losing weight and keeping it off was a hopeless endeavor and just didn't bother. I consoled myself that as people age, they get fat, it was that simple. Raising a family and taking care of a home left no time for doing the things that would be required to lose weight and exercise. It was a lost cause.
Then I started seeing photos of me and couldn't believe I had let this happen. Who was that person staring back at me in the photos and in the mirror. I sure didn't feel like I looked, yet. Then I did. In 2004 I started seeing information about a program at our local military base to help lose weight. L.E.A.R.N. Lifestyle, Exercise, Attitudes, Relationships and Nutrition. This didn't seem like a fad to me, it seemed like hope. My husband deployed for a few months and I decided to sigh up for the program. It was a perfect time to try something new without worrying about cooking different food for different people. The kids would deal with whatever they were give, right? LOL I began to understand it wasn't just about food. There were a lot of things wrapped up in our weight and body image. There were weekly meetings - accountability - and encouragement to keep it simple. It was free and it wasn't an open ended program that would continue indefinitely. The goal was to teach some new skills and launch us to put the things we learned to use - for life. It was without a doubt a benefit to me in my journey. I lost about 30 pounds, but more importantly I learned a key issue with my weight. I simply was eating too much. Even if I was eating relatively healthy, I was still eating too much. We logged everything we ate and I was absolutely stunned to see the amount of calories I was consuming on any typical day. We were encouraged to eat the same way we normally did for a week or two so we could see the patterns of our current choices. We learned to make smarter choices, using foods that were familiar to us, not requiring us to buy a whole new pantry of foods we weren't familiar with and probably would not eat long term, if we could manage to eat it at all.
My sweet husband returned from deployment and loved seeing the improvement in my weight and attitude. But it wasn't long before I fell back into old habits in food preparation and consumption. The pounds returned quickly and brought some friends along with it.
My attitude returned to the theory that long term, permanent weight loss was a myth. Then I watched as my daughter decided she could lose weight and she would lose weight. She started on a journey that led to many different attempts at weight loss programs and concepts. Some reminded me of the things I still refer to as fads, but most had some aspect of truth behind them and lessons in progress toward really caring for our bodies. She started to lose weight and people, including me, would tell her she really didn't need to lose any more. In fact, she often heard that she simply wouldn't be able to lose any more or change her body because of genetics. But she persisted, choosing to ignore those voices. She kept learning, first from one coach and then another. She learned to understand her body and food and so much more. She started to understand more about herself and the role her body image plays in her attitude and her heart. She made believers of all those who said it couldn't be done. And she did it in a healthy way with hard work, dedication, persistence and consistency. Then she started inspiring others to do the same. She is now a certified personal trainer and she's a natural. This is her gift.
All those different teachers and lessons have brought her to something we firmly believe is the key to life-long health and weight management. I believe that different things work for different people. I really don't believe it's one size fits all when it comes to pretty much anything actually. I do, however, believe that this will work for pretty much anyone who really tries it. Those who use it refer to it as Flexible Dieting or If It Fits Your Macros (IIFYM). I am convinced that this is the key for people who can't imagine eating quinoa or kale and not eating Oreos and ice cream. It is not clean eating - make no mistake about it. You certainly can eat clean if you choose to, but you can't use the excuse that you just can't say no to that weekly dose of fill-in-the-blank for the rest of your life so why bother. There is no food off limits. Yes, you read that right, there is no food off limits, but there are limits to how much of every food. The limit is just different for every person and learning to stay within those limits take some time and effort. It is an investment we make in ourselves, to live better, longer.
I'll write more later (or ask my daughter to) about IIFYM/Flexible Dieting and what that means. But the reason I introduce it in this post is to give you some background for the series that I plan to start writing here. I've been using this for about five months and added walking and training (lifting) to the schedule about four months ago. To date, I have lost a little over 35 pounds. I've lost them slowly, steadily and I have no plans to welcome them back. As I outgrew my clothes, I bid them farewell with a happy dance. No safety net for "just in case". But there is one obstacle that I sense is getting bigger and more challenging for long term success. Although my husband has said he wants to join me on this journey, he still is a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy at heart. I still have two kids living at home who really aren't on board with this new way of doing things. They're both actually really picky in their eating habits anyway, always have been. My love language of food hasn't actually ever changed, but the dialect is being tweaked a little. I still love to feed people - I can't imagine that will ever change and I don't really want it to - but that poses the challenge I mentioned earlier. How to prepare meals that people will enjoy and still fit into the IIFYM plan?
I am hereby making it my personal mission to learn how to do this. I am going to spend the next weeks and months learning how to take meals that I know my family enjoys, including some of their favorite comfort foods, and make them macro-friendly. Most of this effort will simply be in trimming portion sizes to what fits each individual's daily macro count and balancing the other meals and snacks to adjust to those counts. It can be done, I know it can. There are, of course, some things that can make dishes more macro-friendly without sacrificing taste, and I will experiment with those things as well. My primary goal will be to do this while using items that would normally be found in my Midwest-style pantry and freezer (i.e. things my parents would most likely be familiar with and others wouldn't have to ask how to pronounce that or where to find it at the grocery store LOL).
Over time I will also include lessons I'm learning on this journey. It is definitely "life-in-progress" and so I'm sure I'll have to amend some things to reflect new lessons.
Come along for the journey!
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