Twinkie Diet Actually Proves to be Positive - I'm down with that.

Maybe not completely positive, but it is an interesting little experiment and incredibly relevant to what LapBand folks are going through.

A professor of human nutrition from Kansas State University did a 10-week-long experiment to find out if you would lose weight if you ate fewer calories even if what you ate was JUNK FOOD. He did. He lost 27lbs in 10 weeks because he consumed fewer calories. He ate snack cakes, chips, and other sugary, carb-infested goodies and STILL lost weight. He ate 1,800 calories per day of pure junk.

Here's the whole story on CNN.

He admits that the long-term effects of poor nutrition are not conclusive from his experiment, but that in a nutshell, he proved what he wanted to prove. That weight-loss is based more on calorie intake and not so much nutrition. He took a multi-vitamin everyday to keep from having issues - and his bloodwork proved that the multi-vitamin was sufficient for the 10 week experiemnt.

Is this not exactly what the LapBand life is all about? Less of anything is OK and moderation is the key.

I think the reason why his little study excited me so much is not because I'm going to go out and only eat Twinkies and Doritos, but because he has shown that Calories count and portions count - that makes me feel good about the decision I made to choose LapBand as my bariatric surgery and it makes me feel good about my everyday choices. They are over-all nutritious, but, when you splurge, it's all about the calorie in-take and balancing that out during the week.

I would like to see a woman do the same diet and see how the results might differ. However, I won't be the one volunteering for that ;)

Some Thoughts on Metabolism for Friday

A friend of mine shared this great information she got at her Weight Watchers meeting. They were talking about Metabolism and these are some of the notes that she took. I thought I would share. I especially like the M&Ms factoid. That makes you think twice each time you consider taking even the tiniest bite of a treat... It takes more to work it off than you might think!

•  Physical activity can counteract changes in metabolism after 45 years of age, when we start to slow down and we begin to lose muscle mass.
• Men have more muscle tissue so they burn calories faster. They just have a better engine than we do.
• When you are building muscle, you are not "gaining weight" because lean muscle burns calories 24/7.
• Boost metabolism by increasing heart rate - don't walk at the same pace, get your heart going, then slow down, get it going again, etc. and you'll get stronger.
• Metabolism is inherited but it can be changed with exercise, so don't just accept that you have a slow metabolism and "can't" lose weight, change it up.
• Food has no effect on your metabolism except if you eat too much, then it will affect your body fat, which slows your metabolism.
• Caffeine just increased your heart rate, it doesn't change your metabolism.
• One M&M is equal to walking the length of a football field
• "Don't eat anything after 7 pm, 8 pm, whatever pm" is a myth.  Your metabolism doesn't know what time it is.  It's not what time you eat, it's what you do after you eat.  If your metabolism has slowed down for the evening and you don't go for a walk or hit the gym, it's just going to stay slowed down and whatever you ate will do whatever it does to stick with you.

80s Halloween Costume Video

Hello to everyone out there! Thanks to all the new followers! I'm getting close to 50! woohoo! :)

So, before we went out on Friday night, we did a quick little video of our costumes! We are SO ridiculously goofy. I thought I would share with you all ;) Special guest appearance made by my kitty, Fiona. Oh, and we are both standing in my home office - no, I do not have a small child living with me...Stuffed animals and other collectibles abound - that's just how I roll LOL

Ugh. Damn you, Halloween!

So, I've been über busy lately - yes. I've been drawing zombies and getting my household back in order and tending to projects and such... but I've also been hiding from my band, from all of you, from my food journal, and from my bad habits over the weekend.

I was catching up on blogs today and I read Joey's vlog and was having one of those "OMG - THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I AM GOING THROUGH" moments and I had no one to tell about it, so I thought I would blog about. Don't you hate that? When you have a realization of some sort, but you know that no one else would get it, so you have to keep it to yourself? Well, I've got all of you out there, so I can "tell" you and you'll "get it".

Just look at my desk drawer. 

Do you see something that shouldn't be there? Um, yeah, I DO. F'in skittles. Where did they come from? Left over from trick-or-treaters, indeed. But, if those skittle packs were the only problem, then I wouldn't be blogging about this.

The problem began when my last fill of .5cc's didn't do much yet again. THEN, I had a busy schedule and ate a couple of breakfast biscuits from fast food joints over the last couple of weeks and other "fast" items with less nutritional value than I would like. I've also been in such a hurry to move on to the next thing on the "To do" list that I've been eating too fast and getting things "stuck". Which sucks! Then when Friday night's Halloween party rolled around I had two pieces of pizza (which is no biggie...it's homemade and thin crust and DELICIOUS) but I had numerous fun-size candy bars. NUMBEROUS. They go down so easy.

I was forgiving myself for it all. Truly. I had planned this worry-free food weekend in advance and knew it was coming, then it would be over as well as the super-busy schedule and I could resume good habits.

And then, the day after the party, we had a late start and didn't eat B'fast until 3 in the afternoon. Therefore, I was STARVING and ate too much and too fast. I actually felt a little nauseous the rest of the day because of that and I've NEVER eaten that much since I've gotten the band.

The reason I still feel so guilty about all of it is that my brain is still battling the food demon. My brain was having fun and it doesn't want to let go of that good time! It was all-around just a bad last couple of weeks that culminated into a Halloween blow-out that I'm having a hard time kicking. Do fun-size snickers really have that big of a hold on my brain? Is there CRACK in those things or something?

I just don't know how to make it stop. It doesn't help that as I sit here my stomach is growling wildly for some food. *Le Sigh*... 4 more weeks until my next fill. I just want to run away for Thanksgiving. Tell everyone that I am deathly ill and run away to Las Vegas or something. Screw it.

I hope I get my motivation back. I hope my brain can turn these feelings off soon. It's like a bad relationship... Food has given me a black eye so many times. I've put a restraining order on it, yet when we have one good time together again, I'm falling back in love...