March 2007 Archives

Dee's Mighty Cookbook

Dee McCaffrey is an organic chemist. Her book, Tasty Cuisine for Flourless and Sugarless Living is part cookbook, part motivational, part educational, all good.

Dee traces her first time overeating, aged 9 dealing with her parents divorce, to how that triggered the next few decades of her relationship with food. But it's not just overeating, it's what she was eating.

Like most of us that are overweight, Dee ate lots of refined carbs, sugary foods, processed foods and very little if any fruits and vegetables. Carbohydrates are not evil things. Fruits and vegetables are carbs. Her background in chemistry and personal research helped her make the connection between how the body processed "foreign" foods, processed carbs vs. the real thing.

Keep in mind, our ancestors didn't eat they way we currently do. Food was made fresh most every day and had little shelf life. All the processing food now goes through is mainly to extend the shelf life. It is quite possible the price we pay for convenience is our expanding girth.

Her book goes into detail on why flour and sugar are bad. Once she gave them up, her weight dropped. Within 3 and ½ months she lost 48lbs. One year later, she lost 102lbs reaching her goal weight of 108lbs and have kept the weight off for over a decade.

You may think giving up flour and sugar is too hard or very impossible, but she gives alternatives. Eat flour with the fiber still in it. Raw sugar is healthier than high fructose corn syrup. She also tells you what to look for in the store.

The bulk of the book is dedicated to her recipes. You get breakfast, salads & dressings, veggie eats, snacks, sandwiches and soups and even beverages. The recipes range from the basic, Veggie Omelet, to the exotic, Sunflower-Almond-Sesame Tahini Logs.

Reading and following her advice requires you to have an open mind and be open to change. Going completely sugarless and flourless in today's world won't be easy, but if you feel addicted to those types of foods and powerless to stop, give her book a read. It might help you to see that not only has that change been done, it's been done successfully.

Also available is Dee's Lose Weight For Life DVD, I'll review that one next week and also post some before/after pictures of Dee.

Workout Tunes

Readers on msnbc.com shared their workout playlist:

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• Anything by Frank Sinatra
• “Born to Be Wild” by Steppenwolf
• “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” by Kylie Minogue
• “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails
• “Crazy in Love” by Beyonce
• “Earthshine” by Rush
• “Escape” by Gwen Stefani
• “Fergalicious” by Fergie
• “Fighter” by Christina Aguilera
• “Going Back to Cali” by Notorious B.I.G.
• “Hold On” by Santana
• “Hung Up” by Madonna
• “Lose Control” by Missy Elliott
• “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers
• “New Workout Plan” by Kanye West
• “Personal Jesus” by Depeche Mode
• “Promiscuous” by Nelly Furtado
• “Rent” soundtrack
• “Run Like Hell” by Pink Floyd
• “Running on Empty” by Jackson Browne
• “SexyBack” by Justin Timberlake
• “Starve” by Rollins Band
• “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell
• “You Could Be Mine” by Guns ‘n’ Roses

The ones in bold are the ones I sweat too as well. Do you have any of these in your current rotation? What songs do you listen to? Do you prefer slow like Frank Sinatra or do you need high energy like Gwen Stefani?

Scale Jinxes

A few years back, when I'd do my morning weigh ins, I got it in my head I had to do them within 10 minutes of waking up and using the bathroom else the results would be skewed. Don't ask why. I don't know where that came from.

Perhaps I thought sleeping made the fat cells shrink up and after a period of time of being awake, the fluffed themselves up again. It seems silly now, but I was dead serious. I ended up stopping after a stint of moving and traveling forced me to stop doing early morning weigh ins and only remembered the jinx today as I woke up an hour earlier than usual and just stayed in bed tossing and turning.

What Scale Jinxes have you given in to?

Room for 10

The blogroll got it's bimonthly, if by bimonthly that means every two months, pruning. There is now room for 10 sites. It's a GREAT way to get your blog read and find fresh new reads.

Just keep in mind:

Sites that have closed, password protected, removed the FitRoll code and/or haven't updated in 2 months are removed.

Next pruning of the FitRoll is on May 1st.

Sites are removed without notice, sorry I manage too many other projects to email gentle reminders. If in June you wonder why your site was dropped, it likely did one of the above. However, if you set up a new blog, remove the password, add the code back or start back updating, provided there is room, you can get back on the FitRoll.