Common “Sensa”?

I was at the gym this morning jogging my warmup on the treadmill.  Before I’d gotten on I attempted to change the channel on one of the wall televisions to the Food Network (don’t ask me why but cardio time passes so quickly when I can watch people cook!) but I couldn’t find the right channel number so I gave up and got on the treadmill anyway.  The infomercial that was on the TV perplexed me at first but then I couldn’t stop watching! 

 

It was this “revolutionary, technologically advanced weight loss system”.  The TV was on closed caption so I was reading along as they were showing pictures of greasy pizza and women driving in their cars while eating what appeard to be chicken & fries from a box and men blissfully consuming whole cakes.  The captioning was scrolling through; “I lost 68 pounds using Sensa and I never changed what I ate!”, “I lost 90 pounds using Sensa and never had to give up the good stuff!”.  I just about died right there!  So the premise is that you “use” Sensa and they promise that you will lose weight without ever having to change your behaviour.  What’s even stupider?  Sensa is some sort of chemical powder that you SPRINKLE ON YOUR FOOD and it magically makes you not want to overeat.  Apparantly this simple sprinkling of “all your favourite foods” causes your brain to believe that you’ve already eaten so you then eat only a percentage of what you would normally have gorged yourself on.  Give me a break!  When are people going to learn that if you simply stop stuffing your face with shit that isn’t food, move around a bit and drink some water you can save the $60 a month that they are trying to STEAL from you for the pleasure of sprinkling a salt-like substance on your food!

 

OK, rant over…..although now I’m going to jump around a little.

 

Still on the topic of common sense though, once again during this particular phase of the month, I am reminded to stay the course, hold on, not make any changes and SURELY not take anything that the scale has to say at face value.  I’m in Week Three of Stage One in the New Rules of Lifting program and last night I felt a muscle!  IN MY ARM!!!!  My arms have always been somewhat…..not muscular so it was very exciting last night. 

 

Also last night I was turned on to a couple very good blogs.  I originally found Solana Leigh through the Paleo link on wordpress and then discovered that she lives about 20 minutes from me.  Very cool to have found someone so close through something as huge as wordpress.  Anyway, she tweeted the link to a post on the blog “Making Shift Happen“.  The post was “Is It Just Me Or Is Paleo Fking Hard?”.  Through THAT link I came across a blog called Ancestralize Me  and her really excellent post “Paleo Women Are Phat” which discusses beautifully the fact that the majority of women who are doing paleo and working out are not going to look like the super lean fitness models that society (and ourselves) want us to be and that because of that it can make it difficult to discuss and teach and represent this lifestyle.  She reminds us in this article that women are not meant to be incredibly lean and that a little weight in the standard female places (hips, bum, thighs, breasts) makes us, not less successful, but more authentic.  This is not to say that we shouldn’t try, we should always, always be trying to achieve better.  But it really makes it a lot less frustrating.  For someone like me who doesn’t have a tonne of weight to lose, it made me wonder if I’m even meant to lose it at all?  Maybe I can gain muscle and increase my fitness but this fat that I have on me?  Maybe that’s the fat that I’m meant to have.  Maybe this is it as far as fat loss.  That is a very freeing notion.  Work hard, exercise hard, eat well, don’t eat what my body percieves as poison, always strive for measurable gains…..but maybe the fat that’s left stays.  Interesting.

 

Last night Ray had the leftover seafood fettucine for dinner and I had some Basil chicken sausages from Thrifty’s.  They were…..tasteless.  I wasn’t really feeling like dinner though so I didn’t really care.  I took my last piece of Paleo Banana Bread out of the freezer knowing that I would want a treat later.  Later came, I put my piece of bread in the toaster and warmed up the coconut butter.  When the toast popped I went to take it out and I dropped it, smashed all over the kitchen floor in way too many pieces to be salvageable.  I was crushed, no treat and a sucky dinner.  Until I remembered a recipe I’d seen earlier this week!  Banana Raisin Blondie!  Holy moses, so delicious.  SO DELICIOUS!  This will now be in regular rotation in our house, Ray loved it also.  Although it came out like a very moist little cake, its nutritional values would lean more towards this being a fat.  Butter, almond flour, almond butter, egg, some spices (cinammon, salt, bkg pwd) and then the only carb would be a half a banana and a small sprinkle of raisins.  When it looks like cake and tastes like cake but isn’t actually cake, celebrate!

 

I drizzled a tiny bit of honey over this but it didn't need it, the banana and raisins make it plenty sweet enough!

 

That’s it for me today (and more than enough, I think!).  Tonight I’m hoping for at least a 5km walk, we’re having Tourtiere (french meat pie) for dinner of which I will eat the filling and a salad.

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