#h2orange

I watched the video on H2Orange again and decided to take the plunge. The drink is supposed to help keep your blood sugars in line a little more so you’re less likely to crash -- or need to snack. It’s not great. Imagine you have a cup of orange juice and start rinsing out the glass then decide to take a swig. 

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But, I decided, I’m in for a penny, in for a pound (literally) so I drank the H2Orange and after a few days, kinda got used to it. I think I did drink a little more water than I normally would’ve but I tend to drink a lot of water anyway and it was hard to tell because it’s been so hot and maybe that’s also why I’m drinking more? 

I added in some exercise this week b/c that is the focus. I walked mainly with some yoga for stretching. I haven’t really exercised since the start of the year so my hips are super sore. 

I reintroduced sweets into my diet and...bad idea. Bad bad bad idea. I polished off 2 slices of coconut cake, 1 slice of birthday cake, 1/2 of a ginormous blueberry muffin, 3 scoops of ice cream and malai kulfi all in one week. That’s more desert in one week than I’d normally eat in an entire month. I’m not even PMSing so there’s really no excuse for it but whatever.

 I don’t think I’ve mentioned the focus on lowering your “set point”. So a huge part of this program is getting your body to a lower set point by shrinking your stomach thereby lowering the amount of food needed to keep you at goal weight. Chewing slowly, taking breaks and stopping when full is supposed to get you there. It sounded woo woo at first but I get it. I’m at the point now where the thought of chewing more really kind of feels like a chore. I think I’m getting to a point where I feel like I’m consistently getting full on smaller amounts of food. One of the videos on lowering your set point, Marcia says “if you’re not willing to chew slowly for 6 weeks, you can’t be slim while eating regular foods.” I def like not having to track my calories so I’ll push through.

It’s confusing because the last couple of weeks, I’ve been asked if I used my food diary but there’s no real prompt or mention in any of the materials to use a food diary. I have my Happy Planner Fitness Planner handy (I actually got the box kit last year during their end of year planner clearance but either one will work). They’re undated but it doesn’t matter because I just add a page to the middle of my week.

I’m not tracking weights, measures, etc. aside from how many cups of water I drink per day. On the days that I did the H2Orange, I tracked that also --or at least I’ll start tracking that to see how it goes. 

I’m starting over tomorrow and that’s the best I can do for myself. This week, we focused on sugar, salt and alcohol in your diet. In talking about added sugars,  Marcia counts out how many teaspoons are in a can of soda. Teaspoon  by teaspoon she gets this incredulous almost Infomercial Silly look on her face of incredulity. 

Sugar is the bane of our existence, yes we know. She also names fruit sugars as something to limit which...I dunno. They’re not saying don’t eat fruit but just be mindful of it.  I’ve done the No S diet for almost 18  months and gotten very comfortable with limiting my sugar so it shouldn’t be too hard to limit my intake. I’m allowning myself 2 sweets a week. I went on the forum, called NSTown to ask people how they managed their sweets intake. Almost everyone said that after the sugar ‘detox’ they rarely have sugar or they make sure that they have sweets as part of a meal and not on it’s own. ‘It should take you as long to finish a dessert as it would a meal: 10-5-10′ they say (meaning 10 minutes to eat, 5 minute break, resume eating for 10 more minutes). I’ll try that next week.

Each weight loss program is hard in it’s own way. Calorie/POINTS counting requires sticking to your daily allotment and notating it, portion control requires meal prep, other plans require eliminating entire food groups or food altogether. Naturally Slim requires you to chew the crap out of your food. 

When I logged in this week to check in, I entered my weight (more on that later) and did a skills check test which asked if I chewed my food slowly, ate till I was comfortably full, and ate one food at a time. It also asked if I kept a food diary but it turns out that was a system bug. 

I spent the past 7 days mindfully chewing my food slowly till it dissolved in my mouth. There is nothing sexy about that. I literally got to a point where I thought, mmm, this veggie burger would go well with some dill pickles. Shit! But then I’d have to chew them. Ya. So the pickles stayed in their container because I had chewing fatigue. Non scale victory.

This week, the focus is on identifying your hunger levels and not eating if you’re not hungry. Prior to this plan, you may recall that I was on the No S diet for about a 18 months. In that time, I lost 6 lbs and felt frustrated as I saw the weight slowing down no matter how stringent I was about abstaining from snacks, seconds and sweets that weren’t on “S” days. There are tons of people on the awesome Facebook and No S message boards who gave me so much advice who lost gobs and gobs of weight but at some point, my losses slowed to a grind even with exercise. The one great takeaway from the plan is that I learned not to snack and not to eat sweets throughout the week which has been serving me well this week as I avoid sweets altogether and focus on my hunger signals.

This week’s lesson is on hydration, eating only when you’re at a hunger level that you’re hungry but not famished and using approved “Hunger Savers”. The hunger savers Marcia points out, aren’t snacks but foods to tide you over only in instances where you’re creeping into famished territory but can’t eat a full meal. The list includes a set amount of peanut products, strawberries, popcorn, meat, jerky, hard boiled eggs, fiber cereal and edamame. I bought some Skinny Pop and peanuts. You’re still supposed to chew these foods slowly over 10 minutes which kind of kills your desire to overeat them.

You also learn this week that eating when you’re hungry means paying attention to your body. Maybe your body doesn’t need breakfast. Or maybe you need breakfast but not lunch. Either way, just take note of this. I stopped eating breakfast most days last year when I realized I wasn’t always hungry for breakfast so this isn't’ a really big change for me. 

As for hydration, I learned about H2Orange, a 1:7 dilution of not-from-concentrate orange juice with water. You can drink plain water if you like (and I do) but the drink is from the American Academy of Sports Medicine and touted as a great way to keep your blood sugar from dipping too low. If you’re doing a lot of exercise, you can put a pinch or two of salt in it. I’ll pass for now.

I finally downloaded the app and...I don’t really love it. 

The one thing I’d really use the app for is the eating timer where you can time your meals and take a break from chewing. I don’t know that I’d use the message boards on my phone since I can do that on my desktop/laptop or watch the videos on my tablet since I can cast them to my Smart TV. I’ll stick with it a little while longer because it’s still new but I’m finding the timer glitchy. 

I lost this week. I’m happy I did but still hesitant because I’ve lost weight on every single diet I’ve ever done on the first week. There are scientific reasons for that but still, a loss is a loss and I’m happy.

This week I took a pledge to commit to one food activity over the course of the next week that I’d focus on and it’s eating one food at a time. That’s still something I have to remind myself to do.