What Do You Do When Your Diet Has Stalled?

What do you do when your diet stalls?

 I have hit a plateau in my diet.  I have mentioned this a few times.

The duration of this plateau became a growing frustration.  I went through different stages of discouragement. But my family and friends just kept encouraging me.  And I came up with some do’s and don’ts for getting through this time.

This is what you don’t do.

  1.  Don’t grab the fattest part of you.

We have all done this.  You’re getting dressed or getting out of the shower, and while you’re sizing up of your physique, you notice that roll that won’t go away.  That arm flab or back fat you are tired of staring at.  You grab it and shake or squeeze it a little, sigh and put clothes on as quickly as possible.

Don’t do this.  When you notice the flab, try to avert your eyes to the parts of you that have changed.  For me I jump my eyes from my “problem areas” to the slimming of my waist.  Or the fact that I have fewer chins. 

Try to find the good.  Mutter to yourself “We’ll get there.” And walk away from the mirror.  

 2. Don’t offer to serve birthday cake at your nephew’s second birthday party.

 

Don’t offer to serve a delicious, two layer, half chocolate, half vanilla, smothered in butter cream, birthday cake.  Don’t slowly slice slab after slab after moist fluffy slab.  Don’t watch as the cake gently thuds on the little cake plates, making them literally spilling over with cakey goodness.  Don’t do that.

Result: one piece of birthday cake devoured, in daylight

      3. Don’t shop for jeans.

I had to buy jeans.  I had to buy jeans because I had a worn a hole in the inner thigh of my current jeans. Yeah, let the awfulness of that sentence sink in.

This type of hole is singlehandedly the easiest way to feel like you’re a thousand pounds.  That, and when you knock something over with your backside.  That just makes you feel like a huge person in a tiny world, like Shrek in a European market.

So I had to shop for jeans.  This can be quite discouraging. 

First, if you are wearing jeans you have had for a while or that you found in your closet, then all you need to know is that they fit.  You don’t need to look at what number is on the tag.  But when you have to get them from the store, the numbers are just staring at you, brazenly hanging from tags or abusively printed on a sticker running down your leg.  The way the sticker has the number over and over again, it’s like the “kick me” sign of the garment industry.

Secondly, no matter what ground you’ve gained in your diet, jean shopping is just too much tugging and tucking, shimmying and squeezing. And overall just deciding how much you actually need to breathe to live.

Now that we know what to avoid, here are some things that you should do.  The first two are so basic and widely known I am making them one point

1.   Assess your diet and exercise 

For me, I feel fairly confident in my diet.  I’m taking out all the right things and keeping in tons of healthy stuff.  I’m eating right.  I tried to see if there are some allowances, the “treats” that are built into my diet, I let myself have to often.  I took stock and tweaked only slightly.

And as far as exercise, well, I have talked about this in previous posts, but for some reason I just have the hardest time getting motivated in this area.  It just seems like it takes a lot to plan or orchestrate.  But one of my readers mentioned that even if you only have a small amount of time to exercise, exercise anyway.  Some is better than none. And slowly I have been able to gain some ground in this area.

2.   Stop weighing yourself.
 

This suggestion seems crazy.  But for me it was necessary.  I had been weighing myself every day.  And every day that the same number appeared was another day of defeat.  The kind of defeat that whispered in my ear that I was stuck.

I even toyed with the idea of giving up, because it felt like this wasn’t gonna work anyway, so quit before it’s an embarrassing failure.  

I resolved instead to stop obsessing.  The stress alone can keep the weight on. 

So I took a break from the scale.  I decided to keep my head down, follow the diet I’ve committed to, try to work in exercise as I can, and just soldier on. 

This break from the monitoring of my weight loss is refreshing.  It feels like this way of eating and exercise has transcended past a diet and is now just who I am.  (Wow, is this really who I am now?  That feels too soon to call four months in. We’ll see.)

Basically I just kept dieting through the crazy.  

Now I’ve stepped back on the scale occasionally, and I’ve seen the numbers creep back down.  It’s not time for the official weigh-in, but it’s good to see.

3.   Look at old pictures of you, when you were heavier than you are now.
 

I needed to remind myself where I came from, and how lousy it would feel to go back there.  I reminded myself of the lethargy, and how I hated anything I put on because of the body underneath it.  I reminded myself that there has already been change, inside and out, so it serves to reason that there could be more.

4. Take encouragement anywhere you can.
 

I created a Pinterest page for these resolutions at the beginning of this project.  When times are dark I can go back there and read the inspirational quotes, Bible verses, and articles.  

But more than the words themselves, when I look at the page I remember the state of mind I was in when I posted them.  I remember the hopeful me, full of zeal and enthusiasm.  I think of her, slightly heavier than I am now, cheering me on.  She would be encouraged by how I look and that I have stayed with this lifestyle this long.

She, the old hopeful me, sees the year stretching out before her, the project as a whole.  Somehow that makes this setback seem small in the scheme of things.

And I have mentioned my discouragement out loud to close family and friends, and let them speak truth to me.  And I have really forced myself to believe them and listen.

5.  Pray
 

I can’t really talk about going through a time of discouragement without it.  Mostly the prayers go something like this.

“I am trying to glorify you with how I am eating.  I think that is all you are really asking of me here.  I am frustrated and I am not sure I have this right but… I am just gonna give this worry over to you and just keep doing what I’m doing.”

In short, “This is making me crazy, so…here ya go”

So there you have it. I am still walking out of this “dry spell,” but I haven’t quit. 

Two of my best friends have black belts in tae kwon do.  I got to see a video of one of my friend’s black belt test.  She says that the key to passing is to just keep breathing. (And, I believe, to know a little tae kwon do).

So I just keep breathing.  Not giving up, not today, and today is all I really need to worry about.

Deep breaths, courage to the sticking place, eyes on the Lord.

What do you do when your diet stalls?

Spiced Curry Chicken in a Ginger Coconut Milk Sauce: Grain Free, Dairy Free

I love this recipe because it is relatively quick and yet it still seems sophisticated.  (I am all about seeming sophisticated.)  It is a delicious combination of warm spices and creamy milk. The meal can be served as is, although it also works wonderfully over rice.  The dish is quite satisfying, even though it is grain free and dairy free.

It is my first time writing a recipe.  So if you try it out, let me know if it works. :) 

Grain Free Spiced Curry Chicken in Milk Free Coconut Sauce

Ingredients:

8 boneless skinless chicken thighs

2 tbsp cooking oil of your preference

2 tsp paprika

¼ tsp ginger

½ tsp curry powder

1 tsp onion powder

½ tsp salt

1-2 shakes of a pepper shaker

1 shake chili powder

1 clove of garlic

Heat the oven to 400. Smash and mince the clove of garlic as small as you can make it.  In a large bowl mix the oil with all of the spices and the clove of garlic.  Add the chicken thighs to the spice mixture, and mix together with either your hands or a spoon until every thigh is covered in that spicy goodness.  

Spread out the thighs on a cookie sheet and place in oven.  Cooking times will vary here.  If the thighs are thawed and you lay them flat (sort of unroll them a little) they will cook in about 15-20 minutes.  If they are frozen or partially frozen the cook time will be more in the family of 30-45 minutes depending on size.  Before you serve the chicken thighs, always cut into the largest one, to see if it is cooked through. 

Once the thighs are in the oven, it’s time to make the sauce.

Vegetables in ginger coconut milk

Ingredients:

½ a pepper (I like red, yellow, or orange.  Green is fine, but I feel like it is an overpowering flavor.)

½ a medium onion

1 whole cauliflower

1 small package of baby carrots, chopped

¼ tsp paprika

¼ tsp ginger

¼ tsp onion powder

¼ tsp salt

1 can of coconut milk

So for the coconut sauce I dialed down the spice a little because we have quite a bit of spice on the chicken.  But feel free to add more if you wish.  

Mince the onion and peppers and chop the carrots into small medallions. In a pan, with some oil, sauté the onion, carrot, pepper mixture on medium heat, until the onion begins to become a little translucent.

When I am sautéing onions, I usually add a pinch of salt to help them sweat and a pinch of raw sugar to help them caramelize.  It also helps if you add just a few drops of water once they have been going for a little while.  This will cause just the slightest amount of steam.

While they are cooking, break down your cauliflower into bite-size pieces.  

How  to Chop Cauliflower

How to Chop Cauliflower

Once your onions are beginning to be translucent, toss in the spices.  Let everything cook in the pan for a few seconds and then add the cauliflower.  Stir the mixture until everything is coated.  You can sauté for a minute more here if you like, but the next step is steaming.  

Turning the heat of your pan to high, add about a ¼ cup of water and immediately cover with the lid. This should fill your pan with steam.  Steaming these vegetables takes about 1-2 minutes.  Check every 15-20 seconds, stirring the mixture to keep the vegetables on the bottom from being boiled. After a minute or so, test the carrots and cauliflower to see if they have reached the desired softness.  

Once the vegetables are done, reduce the heat to low and add the can of coconut milk.  

A quick word on coconut milk.  It comes in many different ways.  For the best results and a thick sauce I suggest canned coconut milk with an emulsifier added.  The emulsifier will cause less separation in the can and produce the thick creamy texture we are looking for.  

Once you add the coconut milk, keep on the heat just till the milk is hot.  Then you can take it off.  You don’t really need to let it boil or simmer.

Serve the chicken over the veggies and enjoy!  

Some extras:

If you want to add an extra layer of flavor you can steam the veggies in chicken broth. 

I also like to add about two teaspoons of unsweetened coconut flake to the sauce and a pinch more for garnish at the end.  But I have only found unsweetened coconut flake at Whole Foods or other specialty food stores.  And you may not want to hunt it down.  I usually buy a relatively small amount from the bulk section.   The coconut flake is also good in smoothies.  It adds nice texture to gluten free cookies, which, let’s be honest, need some help. And it also adds nice texture, and flavor, to a bread-free “breading” for chicken.

And you should always cook with a buddy. ;)

Cooking Buddies

I hope you like it! 

What Does Christ’s Resurrection Mean for My Diet?

Singlehandedly one of the dumbest questions I could ask in all Christendom.  Rivaled only by, perhaps, “Where does the youth pastor come down on pajama jeans?”

 

But in this Holy Week, I have been thinking about the fact that I believe in a living God.  I have mentioned this a few times before, as a source of encouragement, as I struggle with trying to enact change in my life.

I am trying to wrap my head around what believing in “a living God” means when it comes to the demons I am currently fighting.  

More and more, as I go about this change in my life, I am often reminded that I can’t just shine up the surface.  If I want change, lasting change, then there has to be a shift in my perception of who I am and who I am in the Lord. 

  

“Who I am in the Lord” is one of those Christian phrases we say often.  We like it because it sums up a large scope of things that are hard to put into words.  But let’s give it a shot.  Who I am in the Lord means defining myself by my relationship to God, and what I think He is asking of me, and what I think He thinks of me.   Basically, seeing myself through His lens, or attempting to do that.

So what does this all have to do with a living God?

 Last year, I walked through a depression.  And the term ‘walked’ is gracious. The details of this I will cover at later date.  But during this time I didn’t turn away from God, though I did feel like He might have turned away from me.  

It was a very frustrating and confusing time for me. I thought that, up to that point, I had done everything right.  I had followed all the moral instruction of my youth.  Read the Bible, pray, church, no substance abuse, wait for the right man, wait to marry that man, try to be a godly wife, beep, bop, boop.  

You see, in Christian education they taught us that bad life decisions came with bad consequences and a hard life.  This concept is a truth.  But somewhere along the way this concept got flipped, at least in my head, to mean that good life choices will lead to a not-so-hard life.  And I see how in some ways this is also very true, but I think it became stretched, in my mind, to seem like good decisions would allow me to avoid real hardship and sorrow.

So here I was, with a husband who had been so sick for so long, and me going into a depression as a result.  And it was the depression, not his illness, that felt like the overall failing of the system.  I felt like, “What the heck? This sadness isn’t what I signed up for.” I knew some trials would come, but where is the “mount up with wings as eagles” business that was on the walls of my high school?  Somewhere along the line there was a miscommunication.  I felt like either I had messed up or God had messed up.  Guess who comes out of that one feeling guilty?  

As I went through this time I undoubtedly experienced a lot of emotions, and one of my feelings was that I wanted to find something new.  I wanted a new truth.  Some truth I hadn’t gotten yet.  Some spiritual diagnosis that I hadn’t yet discovered.   And flip the switch that led to strength and hope.  

For a brief moment I thought about other religious practices, but not really.  I kept coming back to the verse “To whom shall I go, Lord?” I believe He is the Christ, son of the living God.  And that is written somewhere on the unshakeable foundations of my soul.  

During this time, I was built in layers.  There was the top layer that was questioning what I believed, if I had had it all wrong.  Then there was another layer that knew I needed God.  I was useless without him.  These layers had sadness and grief sloshing in-between them. 

Then somewhere deeper still there was the foundation of me.  Where some holy finger had writ that He is God and I am His.  And all this fussing and fighting, grief and wavering, will pass more like a storm on top of the sea, and less like an earthquake changing the terrain of the ocean floor.  

One day, as I struggled with this parfait of emotions, I was driving in my car, singing hymns.  Not worship songs, not updated versions of the old standards, but the old hymns, with the old difficult harmony and the meter.  I sang as many as I could remember.  And didn’t care how I sounded; I was just getting the words out of my mouth, as honestly as I could muster.  I was singing the steady, constant 4/4 meter, rhythmically messaging those truths into my soul.  Trying to stir up something that felt dormant in me.

So how do I believe in the old God in new ways?

Here is where the concept of a living God comes sweeping in like the refreshment of sea spray. 

Because a God who is alive is a God who is active.  A God who will reach me in new ways.  A God who is patient for me and pursues me.  A God who fights for me, even when I don’t believe it.  

A living God means my faith doesn’t hang on me, on my hours of penance, my good deeds, or my steps to the altar.  My faith, salvation, hope, is on the shoulders of God.  Who not only paid for my sins on Good Friday but rose on Easter so He could forever be Emmanuel, God with us.

I don’t need a new truth; just the living God who is able to teach me new truths about His eternal unchanging self.

He is alive so He could be our Savior in life’s trials, again and again. He is alive to be our comforter and healer, again and again. 

He’s alive! He’s alive! I’m not in this alone.  

I am not alone.

This is one of the lessons that God used as a comfort during that dark time.  He had more to teach me and He did drive home some old truths in new ways.  And that, my friend, is another post.

But what does Easter mean for my demons and my goals?  For my failing and my success?  For who I am and who He is asking me to be?

Just the fantastic promise that He will walk through these challenges with me, just as He walked with me through the emotional challenges of last year.  Just as He'll walk with me through the trials that will come in the future.

Simply put, I am not alone. 

"The steps of a man are established by the LORD,
        And He delights in his way.

 When he falls, he will not be hurled headlong,
         Because the LORD is the One who holds his hand."

Psalm 37:23-24