Plateau Hell

I was checking in at my WW meeting on Saturday and the clerk told me I was doing good.

I guess I am.  Good at maintaining.  I lost 25 pounds in the first year I joined and I've kept it off, but I'm not losing any more.  I gain and lose the same pound every week, except for my birthday week when I gained 5 pounds by not working out.

So I obviously need to do something drastic to get this weight loss going.  I've lowered my WW daily point values and I'm going to my life guru Gwynnie (yes, those three links are three different times I've blogged about Paltrow.)

I was reading an interview with her in Fitness or Shape, one of those magazines, and she talked about her fitness regimen she uses in addition to eating very clean.

45 minutes of cardio and 45 minutes of weights 5 days a week.  It's longer than my typical morning routine, but I'm going to try this for a couple of weeks and see how it goes.

Let's do this, Gwynnie!

Oh Gwyneth!

So my best friend Gwyneth Paltrow is coming out with a cookbook.  And a country album.  And a lifestyle magazine.  She's the more pretentious Oprah (if that's even possible)... and I just can't stop loving it.

I even DVRd Regis and Kelly last week because Gwyneth was cooking.  She made something I couldn't eat but I did love hearing her talk about cooking and I totally admit I got a little teary when she started crying talking about how her Dad influenced the cookbook.  I still start crying almost every time I talk about Pops.  Daddy's Girls are like that long after Daddy is gone.  Trust me on this.

Waterworks aside this book is a pretentious mess waiting for me to read it.

So imagine my joy when my friend Katelin found a blog with the best lines from Gwyneth's new cookbook.

This is my favorite line-

"I'm not sure how healthy bacon is in general, but I know it's incredibly delicious." This week has been like water torture to avoid giving into my bacon craving.

I'm tempted to get someone to sit in my kitchen and eat bacon and tell me how good it is so that I can live vicariously through them.

I feel so much better knowing my best friend and former vegan Gwyneth Paltrow also loves bacon.  It's like a forbidden love.  Like the Thorn Birds in my kitchen. 

My other fave phrase- "Hippie Shame Spiral"  You KNOW I'm going to steal that one.

I'm what my friends lovingly (at least in my head) call a crazy hippie liberal. 

And yes, I baked cupcakes for a friend last week and used eggs... now I know I should be happy I didn't go into a hippie shame spiral. 

I also forgot my re-usable bags at the grocery store this weekend... and I had a little bit of a hippie shame spiral.  

I want to start a band and call it "Hippie Shame Spiral" I'll wear birkenstocks on stage every concert.

Gwyneth Goes Goop

I'm pretty sure I've talked about my love of Gwyneth Paltrow in the past.  Yes, she's a pretentious and apparently uppity not-that-great actress.. but I've loved her since high school.  "Sliding Doors" is still one of my all time fave movies.

So, you KNOW I subscribe to GOOP; Gwyneth's pretentious self-help newsletter.  I have high hopes if I follow all of her advice I can land my own moody, rich British rocker and adopt a child I'll call Pomegranate. 

In her life advice she suggests expensive trips, cleanses and her friends different shops/restaurants to try... meaning most mere mortals can never take her advice.  Until today.

My dear Gwynnie (since we're obviously so similar I get to call her that) took on sugar addiction in the latest edition.  We all know I'm familiar with that beast of an addiction.   C & H is like my pusher man (cue Curtis Mayfield).

I've been back on the sugar binge for the last few weeks and I'm ready to try and kick it again.  Me and Charlie Sheen need to put our benders to an end.  So let's see how La Paltrow wants to save me from the white powdery goodness.

Tips to beat the cravings:
- Eat regularly. Eat three meals and two snacks or five small meals a day. For many people, if they don’t eat regularly, their blood sugar levels drop, they feel hungry and are more likely to crave sweet sugary snacks.

-Choose whole foods. The closer a food is to its original form, the less processed sugar it will contain.
-Have a breakfast of protein, fat and phytonutrients to start your day off right. Breakfast smoothies are ideal for this.

-Try to incorporate protein and/or fat with each meal. This helps control blood sugar levels. Make sure they are healthy sources of each.

-Add spices. Coriander, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and cardamom will naturally sweeten your foods and reduce cravings.

-Take a good quality multivitamin and mineral supplement, Vitamin D3 and omega 3 fatty acids. Nutrient deficiencies can make cravings worse and the fewer nutrient deficiencies, the fewer cravings. Certain nutrients seem to improve blood sugar control including chromium, Vitamin B3 and magnesium.

-Move your body. Exercise, dance or do some yoga. Whatever movement you enjoy will help reduce tension, boost your energy and decrease your need for a sugar lift.

-Get enough sleep. When we are tired we often use sugar for energy to counteract the exhaustion.

-Do a detox. My experience has been that when people do a detox, not only does it reset their appetites but it often decreases their sugar cravings.
-Be open to explore the emotional issues around your sugar addiction. Many times our craving for sugar is more for an emotional need that isn’t being met.

Follow this advice and you could also be a willowly blonde with a fake British accent.  

But for serious... I am going to take some of this advice to heart and just like Lohan try to beat my drug one more time.

Good In, Bad Out

I have a dark secret. I read Gwyneth Paltrow's GOOP Newsletter.

It's pretentious and over the top but I can't stop. I've long had a girl crush on Gwynnie. It dates back to Sliding Doors; one of my fave films and she had an impossibly great hair cut. I still think one day I will cut my hair off super short like hers in the movie... one day when I don't have a double chin.

But back to GOOP-- Gwyneth is big on the detox diets. She's often spouting juice fasts and special supplements to drink instead of eating solid foods. Since I am not a millionaire movie star I cannot afford the expensive programs she talks about, so instead I've been doing some digging on the best foods to eat to naturally detox your body.

Here's the 10 bet according to one of my fave websites

10. Watercress- I have never eaten this before so I'm going to have to consult my Betty Crocker cookbook. The peppery green keeps free radicals away from your cells, helps energize cleansing enzymes in the liver, and is a natural diuretic.

9. Lemons- I'm a huge lemon lover. Anyone who's been out to dinner with me can attest to that, I love to squeeze lemon in my water and add some sweet and low for my hummingbird lemon water. Now I know lemons can alkalize the body and help with digestion.

8. Leafy Greens- It hasn't been that long since I blogged about the greatness of salads... now added incentive. Leafy greens boost chlorophyll levels in the digestive tract, which helps the body get rid of environmental toxins like smog and herbicides.

7. Fresh Fruit: perfect for farmer's market season, It's full of vitamins, antioxidants, fiber, and just about any other good thing you can name.

6. Cabbage- another one I've never cooked with, I've just had it in soups. I need to look up some ways to add it in to my diet because it's a huge liver cleanser.

5. Artichokes- probably my favorite food on the list. I eat them on pizza, fresh out of a can, in dips-pretty much anyway I can get them. My addiction is healthy because artichokes promotes healthy liver and gallbladder function and stimulates healthy digestion.

4. Beets- this is also on the list of foods I've never cooked with, but it's supposed to increase the production of antioxidant enzymes in the liver, which help the liver and gallbladder eliminate bile and other toxic substances from the body.

3. Ginger & Garlic- I love garlic. Eat it on everything, used to have a garlic cooker to make it in the microwave and just eat it. I'm a vampire's worst nightmare. And it will help clear free radicals out of your blood, so I'll have clean non-vampire sucked blood. Ginger and I are not friends.

2. Green Tea- Should probably swap one of my daily Diet Dr. Peppers for this. It's high in catechins — a flavonoid — which speeds up liver activity and increases the production of detoxification enzymes and is super tasty on a hot summer day.

1. Whole Grains- Pick whole grain breads, they are full of nutrients and antioxidants and incredibly high in insoluble fiber... a nice way of saying it helps you flush the toxins out of your body.

So these are going on my grocery list... so I can figure out ways to add them in to my food repertoire. Recipe suggestions?