TransformationTuesday | Caridad Pineiro® Romance Author

January 5, 2016July 14, 2023

#TuesdayTip Mindful Eating #Fitness #Lifestyle #Healthy

Like so many people, I make New Year’s resolutions. This year I want to refocus on my writing, get more organized, lose another 35 pounds and be healthier in general. Big goals and sometimes they seem scary, but then again, there’s that old adage: Those who fail to plan, plan to fail.

So I wrote down some goals for when I want some new books to be out and plans with friends. I’ve been slowly emptying closets and cleaning up in my home office. As for continuing to lose weight and being healthier, I’m eating better and working out, but to not have the yo yo effect I’ve had in the past, I’m trying to find ways that this new me is the future me. That means having sound eating habits and not relying on food as a crutch the way I have.

I’ve acknowledged that. Since college and immediately thereafter, food has been the go to thing when I get stressed out or unhappy or to celebrate. I need to change that emotional connection to eating to break a cycle I’ve repeated all too often.

I’ve been reading more about diet and incorporating healthier foods and I signed up for a course at Rodale U. The course is on mindful eating and so far, the course has made me more conscious of what I’m doing with my eating and food choices. If you’re one of the first subscribers to the course, it’s free with the coupon code MINDFUL. You can click here to sign up for the Take Control Rodale U course! Remember the coupon code is MINDFUL.

Mindfulness is actually a thing I’ve been focusing on in general. Thinking about body and breath connections when working out or doing yoga. Being in the now instead of dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. I’ll share more about that in the future! For now, here are some quick tips for mindful eating:

Why are you eating the food? Is it because you’re hungry or for some other reason? If you’re not sure, ask yourself: Would you eat a regular meal right now instead of chips/chocolate/cookies?

Write down what you are eating! Keeping a food journal is a good way of tracking what you are eating and when. Are there patterns to your eating? Do you eat late at night? If you’re using an activity tracker, like Fitbit, there are journal capabilities in their app. I’ve mentioned Wellcoin in the past to journal, but also get rewards and prizes. I just won a $10 Amazon Gift Card there. Other food journal apps you can check out are Lose It and My Fitness Pal. There is also the grandmama of all fitness plans Weight Watchers.

I’d love to hear what some of your resolutions are and how they are going!

December 18, 2015July 14, 2023

#FitnessFriday My #Fitness Pinterest Board

I love Pinterest, although I haven’t been pinning that much lately. I’ve just been too busy with work and the holidays. But I have been keeping up with my goals to be more fit. In fact, yesterday I hit the 35 pounds lost mark. I had hoped for it to be 40 by the end of the year, but I’ll take 35 and I plan to keep on going. One thing I do to help get more fit is to use my Fitbit for not only tracking steps, but also as a food journal. Likewise, Wellcoin which I’ve mentioned before.

I also pin interesting workouts, infographics, skinny recipes, etc. to my Fitness Pinterest board and that’s what I’m sharing with you today! I hope you’ll find some interesting information there.
Follow Caridad’s board Fitness & Exercise on Pinterest.

November 3, 2015July 14, 2023

#TuesdayTip Boosting Your Metabolism

As some of you may know, I’ve been trying to lose weight and be healthier. I’ve made some lifestyle changes to do that and have lost 30 pounds. Some of the changes are probably obvious, but I’ll share them anyway along with some links for you on this Tuesday Tip day!

I drink more water! Water fills you up. It helps your liver process toxins from your body and first thing in the a.m., it wakes up your metabolism from a long night of rest. Click here for more info on how drinking water can help you!

I walk more and I exercise every day in one way or another. I try to hit the gym for cardio exercise at least twice a week and then do strength training twice a week. As we get older, it’s important to improve our core strength and stay strong to do everyday tasks. Click here for info on the muscles to work on for core strength and a quick core workout.

If you want, you can friend me on Fitbit and challenge me to a workout! I love challenges.

I’ve stopped using artificial sweeteners and only have sugar in my first cup of coffee. I’ve also limited myself to two diet sodas a day. Rough for me, but I know they are not healthy. Here’s a good article from the Mayo Clinic explaining the different sweeteners and possible concerns with them.

Finally, I’ve been researching ways to boost my metabolism to help burn calories. At work I’ve got a little kitchen timer that dings regularly to remind me to get up and move. I’ve started doing intervals on the elliptical and even while I’m walking, changing the pace to increase my metabolic rate. Click here for more tips on things you can do to boost your metabolism and burn calories just by doing some pretty simple things.

Hope you enjoyed today’s Tuesday Tip!

January 15, 2013July 14, 2023

Pound of Feathers or Lead? Serving Sizes Matter

As some of you may know from my Twitter and Facebook Posts, my goal for the New Year is to get healthier and lose weight. I’ve always stuck to an exercise regimen, but found that losing weight was just not happening in the past couple of years.

One thing that I had not done, as I had in the past, was limit my carbs. That was step one and wow, what a difference. Cutting back and substituting whole grain carbs has made a HUGE difference. It’s been just two weeks and I’ve lost 11 pounds.

The other thing I’m doing is being more conscious of serving sizes. Let’s face it, it’s tough to know what is a cup of anything and the last thing I want to do is to turn cooking dinner into a chemistry lab where I am busily measuring everything.

But serving sizes do matter and with that in mind, I laid out a tablespoon on the kitchen counter and took my plastic measuring cups to my office, where most of my mot egregious eating happens at lunch hour with my friends. The goal: make sure that the size of my portions was in keeping with the serving size so that I would know just how many calories I was eating!

But measuring cups and spoons are not always available, so how do you know when it’s one serving or more?

I’ve tracked down this excellent visual comparison from the people at the Food Network! Just click here to see how you can gauge just how many servings are in your portion!

My hardest one to judge is always meats. Now I know that of beef/chicken/pork looks like a deck of cards or my palm without my fingers (another good way to gauge). So how many ounces is in a meat serving? 3 ounces. If you’re eating fish, three ounces looks like the size of a checkbook.

If you’re going to have a larger portion (8 ounces) of meat, a serving is about the size of a thin paperback novel.

I hope this helps out if like me, you’re trying to implement a healthier lifestyle for the New Year.

April 19, 2011July 14, 2023

Tuesday Tips for Weight Loss

As some of you may have noticed, I’m back to trying to lose weight and get healthier. Stress and other things made my weight balloon upwards to its own area code. So shortly after the New Year, I began a campaign to change my lifestyle by becoming more active and eating healthier foods. As of this morning, I’ve lost 30 pounds.

Yep, thirty (30) pounds and I’m very excited about that. I’m also excited by the fact that the way I am eating and working out now seems sustainable, which is the key to keeping off the weight. After all, it’s not about a diet, it’s about a lifestyle that you can keep up.

You’re probably asking what I’ve been doing? For starters I try to be more active every day. I’ve started wearing a pedometer and strive to reach 10,000 paces each day, not including my workout regimen.

That means walking to and from my office and getting up once an hour to move about. With the weather getting nicer, sis and I have even started taking a short walk at lunch hour.

I try to work out 5 to 7 times a week for about half an hour a session. I mix up doing cardio with weight training. The weights are important because they help strengthen your muscles and muscles have a higher metabolism than fat which means that you are regularly burning more calories to sustain that higher muscle mass.

Plus who doesn’t like sleek toned arms and legs? Here are some simple exercises you can even do at home to tone your arms!

What have I changed in my diet? Well my favorite food group – bread, rice and pasta (LOL!) is virtually gone. I try to limit those to once or twice a week. When I do have either bread or pasta, I make sure it’s whole grain bread or pasta. As for rice, I’ve substituted quinoa. I’ve even made a tasty Chinese fried rice by substituting the pre-cooked quinoa for the rice. Have also made something similar to a tabouleh salad with this grain. You can check out more recipes here.

We still eat beef, pork and chicken, but in smaller portions and I’ve also started eating a lot more shrimp and eggs. Both are high in protein and low in calories (but watch the cholesterol if you have problems with that).

As sides to all our meals – a big salad and more vegetables. Lots more. The key is to have lots of high volume foods with low calories. Greens of all kinds make wonderful side dishes or even a once a week vegetarian meal. Cook up some collard greens or kale with onions and mushrooms, add some chicken broth and cannellini beans, top with some chopped tomatoes and you’ve got a very filling and low calorie soup. You can even add some cheese to the mix for added protein. There are lots of nice lower fat cheeses out there now and we regularly put cheese in our salads as well.

As for dessert, we’re eating a lot more fruit and snacking on cashews and chocolate covered raisins.

Where do I go from here? Well, I’m going to keep on eating healthier and working out. My goal is to lose another 10 pounds by the RWA National Conference at the end of June. I try to set those goals in reasonable amounts because there is nothing worse than setting yourself up for failure by being unrealistic.

If you’re in the same boat as I am, I hope these tips help you! If you’ve found some good things to get healthier, please share them with us by leaving them in the comment area.

Finally, our Danger Women Writing Contest and Guest Blog continues with a visit from the RomCon folks and a giveaway of tickets to this year’s convention. Drop by the blog later and leave a comment for a chance to win!

May 18, 2010July 14, 2023

Tuesday Tip – Weight Loss Progress & Tricks

Both my husband and I used to say, give us good bread, tasty cheese and a yummy bottle of wine and we’d be set for life.

The truth is, we’ve found that only two of the three have been good for us — the dairy and wine part. The carbs, not so good.

In our desire to pursue a healthier lifestyle and control our weight, cholesterol, etc. we’ve been decidedly better at choosing what to eat, namely, lower fat dairy, lean meats, more vegetables and fruits and the occasional glass of red wine (and yes, I know 100% grape juice has the same benefits!)

But when it came to weight loss, the one sure thing that helped and also reduced our belly fat — lowering our carbohydrate intake. We haven’t totally eliminated it, but we are much more conscious of eating high fiber, whole grain, low calorie carbohydrate products.

Of course, each person’s metabolism is different, so it’s a give and take to find out what works best for you. To help you, here are some more tips for you to consider.

Chocolate milk is a wonderful choice. I had hubby substitute it for those expensive high protein supplements and not only is it working, it’s natural! You can read more about the health benefits of milk by clicking here.

Substitute tea and iced tea for coffee or soda. Tea is packed with antioxidants and the polyphenols in tea can help ward off cancer and diabetes while providing a gentle boost of energy. Just make sure not to steep the tea too long to avoid releasing tannins which can cause stomach upset and constipation. Here’s more on the benefits of tea in your diet!

Use honey in your tea or for your other sweetening needs. Honey is one of nature’s wonder products and you can find out more about the health benefits of honey here. I had tried using agave nectar and found it quite sweet. In retrospect, and beyond all the hype about its wonders, I’m starting to hear a lot of negative things about agave nectar. So, if you’ve got diabetes or problems with your tri-glycerides, you may want to avoid it.

In my case, I had reached a plateau where I was stuck at a certain weight. No matter what I did eating wise, I could not get that scale to budge which I have to do for health reasons and not for vanity’s sake. The solution for me — increasing my weight training by adding more weight and increasing the work during my aerobic workout by likewise adding resistance. Both helped me bust through a plateau! I’ve lost 13 pounds and am looking to keep on losing until I am a recommended weight for my height.

You can read some other tricks for busting through a plateau by clicking on this link!

I hope you found this Tuesday Tip helpful! I’ll keep you posted on my progress and if you’ve got any suggestions of your own about losing weight and getting healthier, please share them in the comments section. And as always, check with your doctor about what you can and can’t do in terms of diet and exercise.

March 11, 2010July 14, 2023

Confessions of a Carboholic

Back on one of the Tuesday Tips I mentioned that I was battling the bulge again and some of you asked for me to let you know how I was doing.

Well, I am doing great! I’ve lost 6.5 pounds in about a month. I feel better and my clothes are starting to get loose. I’m counting the minutes until I can drop a size.

But to accomplish that I had to do some soul searching and realize something very troubling – I am a carboholic. Worse yet, that being a carboholic was so not good for my system. All that bloating and big belly started to go away as soon as I curtailed my carbs.

I did that in part with that wonderful book my daughter gave me — Eat This, Not That. I have the supermarket edition which is great because it lays out in no nonsense fashion what to buy and what not to buy and the reasons for those choices (although there is one with which I do not agree and more on that later).

First I cut back on my carbs and the carbs that I eat are lower in fat and sugar and higher in dietary fiber. Fiber is wonderful because it fills you up and keeps you from having that empty sensation.

How did I do that? Thomas’ Light Multi-grain English Muffins. At 100 calories per muffin, they have only 1 gram of fat and 8 grams of dietary fiber. In the mornings I will have it with a smear of one of those Laughing Cow Light Cheeses – also great! Only 35 calories per little wedge, but packed with flavor.

For Sunday pasta meals, we switched to Barilla Whole Grain Pasta (suprisingly on the Not That list, but I don’t agree). With 200 calories per serving, it has only 1.5 grams of fat and 6 grams of dietary fiber. Plus, it’s tasty unlike some other whole grain pastas.

At lunch I make sure to have veggies of some kind, whether alone or with grilled chicken, or a sandwich made with a muffin, low fat cheese and low fat ham (not a big turkey fan which would help, I know) or chicken.

For snacks – nuts, nuts, nuts. A handful of almonds (approximately 12), cashews or walnuts are a great snack at around 3 pm.

At night we try to keep it simple. Grilled steak, chicken or eggs with veggies and a salad. Actually, we’ve been eating a lot more eggs. They are not as bad for you as people think and if you buy some Eggland’s Best or another high quality egg, they are packed with vitamins and have lower cholesterol than regular eggs. I always look for a sale on them and stock up.

For a late night (around 8 pm) snack, I’ve been making our own desserts – like a low fat fruit-packed ambrosia — or having a small handful of Brookside Dark Chocolate Covered Pomegrantes. I get a 2 lb bag at Costco and they are absolutely delicious. 22 pieces are about 200 calories, but I stick to about half that amount because they are so decadent and dark chocolate and pomegrante are packed with anti-oxidants.

Adding all those fruits, nuts and veggies has gone a long way in helping as well. They keep me feeling fuller and I’m not having those horrible hunger pangs that wreck most diets. In fact, I’m not even thinking about this as a diet anymore, but as a lifestyle change because I can see myself eating like this for the rest of my life.

So, that’s my confession about being a carboholic and how I’ve changed some of my habits. I’ve also been going to the gym regularly and that’s been a big help. Any increase in activity is good for you, including a brisk walk!

Hope today’s Thursday Thoughts might be of help to you. 🙂