Showing posts with label weigh loss. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weigh loss. Show all posts

Friday, December 2, 2011

How To Fill Your Days with Negative Energy (that's a good thing)

Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

OOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmm

Ooooommmmmm....

Oh, hello! I see you've caught me meditating.

No! Wait! I said MEDITATING. Geeze.

Anyway. I have learned the importance of calm as a powerful dietary suppliment. It's pretty astonishing really. Regard the following graph so I can illustrate how meditation and calm can help fill your days with Negative Energy.

Hmmm...that sounded bad. Negative Energy Balance is a technical term for using more calories than you take in. It's a good thing.



This is a graph of my day to day calorie intake. Each bar represents a new day. The green ones going down are days I used more calories than I took in (Weight Loss) and the red ones...those are days I took in more calories than I used (weight gain).


Overall I'm doing pretty good. My weight is steadily declining...slowly, slowly, slowly. But it's going down. And that's good.


I've circled, in purple, a specific day. That red day. That day I took in quite a few more calories than I burned. Here's the interesting thing...that's the day I had a pressing deadline and a gagillion things I needed to get done. The kids weren't being terribly cooperative. People were calling to pile on more tasks for the day.


That was a stressful day. The thing is, I don't precisely remember eating more that day. It just turns out that I did.


A few diaries back I showed some research about how the analytical part of our brains can be easily overloaded, and when that happens, the salt-fat-sugar-hungry id part of the brain is no longer kept in check. It literally takes over, like some Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde sort of thing...or like a Cheeto crazed Incredible Hulk/David Banner sort of thing.


The research I talked about merely had test subjects memorizing numbers, and showed that JUST that task made people statistically MORE likely to choose chocolate cake over a fruit up


Now imagine if you have a million things to do over the course of a day and you're stressing out like crazy. A million little things to worry about. If your analytical mind is busy enumerating a To Do list and worrying about a set of crisies, your id is going to sneak a few bags of Swiss Cake Rolls while the super-ego is flailing around.


Weird, right?


I have found that it helps to relieve the mind of the To-Do list. Instead, I write things down. I try to get that crap out of my head. The moment I start listing off in my head all the things I need to do, I try to get it written down as soon as possible. That includes if I'm trying to remember what I ate during the day.


Get it out of your head. Clear the mind. That's why some caveman invented paper and a ball point pen.


And just as important....relax. Breathe. I'm sure I'll be talking more specifically about calm over time. It's something I stuggle to maintain.