Fake tuna, real tuna

Hey hey heyyyyy :D How was your day? After our night of sangria, mine was a little slow :/ Worth it? Oh yes :D

After having bfast and posting the bloggy earlier, I did some Namaste Yoga on FitTV:

I’m surprised one of the puppies didn’t make it into the pic.. they think yoga time is “jump all over the yoga mat” time ;)

After yoga, I did some boring mumbo jumbo like pay bills, blah blah, but then it was lunch time :D

Today, I made some raw tuna rolls with jicama rice!!!

For my fillings, I set out sliced carrots and cucumber:

Ani Phyo’s Save-the-tuna-pate

Jicama rice seasoned with brown rice vinegar, garlic, lemon juice, salt and pepper: (for my jicama how-to, check out this post )

Before the roll:

And after. All sliced up:

Awesome layers o’ flavor:

I also had a plain salad:

And dipped the sushi bites in Nama shoyu. It was a glorious little lonchi.

A cucaracha for dessert:

After lunch, I went to the gym to pinch my Shape Up group with the calipers (everyone’s lost at least 3% body fat since the challenge started!! INCREDIBLE!), and made it to the gym in time to take a pilates class before teaching Zumba. I did a new dance tonight (“Buleria” by David Bisbal) and it was so much fun. The bad news: the AC still no workie. Looks like we’ll be having sauna aerobics for 4-6 more weeks!!! BAH. Like I said before, gotta roll with the punches.

Well I’m watching the MTV Movie Awards while the pilot munches his tuna steak – there’s been fake and real tuna in this casa today- and have already shrieked quite a few times. Why does R-Patz have to be so darn hot?? Of course, I have a hottie husband sitting next to me.. but he doesn’t want to suck my blood. The danger just isn’t there ;) Hahah.

Have a great night, bloggy friends :D

xoxo,

G

Musings on Aktins and Weight Watchers: My first brush with Atkins was after the failed Slim Fast attempt. I looked up the diet online and decided to give it a whirl. I didn’t even last a week. I’ve always been an active girl – it’s the eating badly that landed me in chubsville, not my exercise habits- and the lack of carbs couldn’t sustain my energy levels for the many dance classes I taught and took each week. Also, my first day on the plan, I got sick from all of the greasy meat and cheese. I had a feeling that this isn’t how we were intended to eat and called it quits.

I actually tried Weight Watchers after I had lost the 40 lbs, but after an extremely stressful summer (and WAY too many Subway cookies.. we had a Subwizzle right next to the dance studio), I gained about 10 lbs back and wanted to get rid of it. My friend was doing WW, and I figured I’d give it a try. The things is, I didn’t have a lot of weight to lose, so for that reason I only had 20 points to consume each day.

For those of you who don’t already know, Weight Watchers works like this: you get a specific amount of points to consume each day, activities can “win back points” and you also have a bank of extra points that you can dip into during the week. The basic formula for calculating the “points” for a particular food item is: Total points= (calories/50) + (fat grams/12) - (min{r, 4}/5)

(The min part is the dietary fiber of the food- if it’s less than 4 grams you use that number and divide by 5; greater than 4g is converted to 4 and divided by 5)

While this can definitely help those striving to lose weight to hold themselves accountable for how much they’ve eaten, this formula ignores the fact that a calorie is not a calorie. There are critical nutrients that some foods lack, have little point value and are encouraged (like saltine crackers), whereas an extremely healthy and nutrient/fat/calorie dense choice (like almond butter) has a much higher point value. We need a combination of macronutrients (good carbs, lean proteins and healthy fats) to keep our metabolisms going and remain satisfied for longer periods of time. The problem for me with Weight Watchers is that it didn’t encourage the best eating habits. I could eat whatever I wanted (even though I KNEW how to eat from doing South Beach… which I’ll probably post about tomorrow), and since I didn’t have many points, I was often ravenous throughout the day. Like the 1 day I wasted 12 points on a Krispy Kreme donut… it was delicious, though ;)

Needless to say, I didn’t lose the 10 el bees I had gained back by using Weight Watchers.

Dont’t get me wrong, I’m totally not knocking down the program and those who follow it—it just didn’t do it for me. Weight Watchers works for a LOT of people and I often recommend it to clients who do not want to change their eating habits. It can be an excellent starting point for weight loss and can become a lifestyle for many successful people. It just didn’t work for me and I knew I had to change my eating habits (not just the calories) to achieve what I wanted. So about after a month of eating junk food and being hungry, I was ready to move on….