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973741 tn?1342342773

Name one food to give up for your health goal

As the question title states, what is the one food you want to 'try' . . . no, WILL . . . give up this week to head toward your health goal?  Are you trying to lose weight?  What one food do you want to try to eliminate this week that might help you?  Do you want to be heart healthy?  What one food do you want to eliminate that might help you?  Do you want to be overall more healthy?  What one food do you want to eliminate from your diet this week that might help you?  

Baby steps.  One day at a time, conquer one food at a time.  Oh, and do you think you need a cheat day of one day a week allowing the eliminated item so that you can maintain not having it the other days?
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Avatar universal
I'm not going to eliminate anything.

I will try to reduce "junk food" snacking between the hours of 1 pm and 6:30 pm, when I am almost always very hungry and will cram just about anything in my mouth.  I will at least try to revert to my "eat healthy snacks first, and if I am still hungry I can have chips or cookies" plan, which is good because I end up eating more fruits and veggies that way.

"Healthy" is up for debate - my short list of "healthy" snacks for me includes: clementines, carrots with hummus or ranch dressing, apples (plain or with peanut butter), bananas, cheese sticks, cheese (in moderation - for the protein?), hardboiled eggs, cottage cheese.  In between healthy and junky are pretzels, and a bowl of cereal.  (I tend to run 6-8 miles in the morning, and I'm currently trying to listen to the hunger cues my body is giving me.  I know this isn't a normal amount of snacking for most people).

Yesterday, my snacks included: birthday cake, a cheese stick, a bunch of pretzels, and some pineapple.  I can do better.  (Birthday cake is almost gone - it is hard when there is cake lying around.)

I'm going to point out here that I often get "extreme afternoon fatigue", which could be thyroid hormone related (I have no thyroid and am still having fatigue most days), it may be anemia related, or a combination.  What I do know is I make some of the worst food decisions in the afternoon when I'm in this fatigue period, I'm not sure if I just have no will power, do not care, brain is not functioning to its full potential, or what, but I can do better than I currently am.

My goal is to lose the extra 6-7 pounds I'm currently up this year.  The hormone suppressing medication made my weight go up quite a bit in a short period of time (peaking at 12 lb up in May, June, and July), so I know it isn't all fat to lose, I'm still unclear how much weight is from water weight and how much is actual fat or muscle I have gained.

My other goal is to be kind to myself.  Nothing is off limits, but that doesn't mean I can eat donuts, Cheetos, and Sour Patch Kids all day every day (those are my favorite junk foods).

I'm also trying to not be hard on myself for gaining a few pounds.  This year has been exceptionally tough for me - in January I had exploratory surgery, found out I had a large fibroid, and was getting progressively more anemic until starting medication which knocked estrogen down to stop the bleeding in February, this was all before the pandemic hit the US, and delayed my fibroid surgery.  So, a few pounds is not going to make or break me, and as long as I stay healthy, it is ok if it takes a little longer to lose the weight.

That being said, I feel much better after eating a clementine or carrots and hummus than after I eat a donut or Cheetos, so maybe that is something I will think about when thinking about snacks.
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4 Comments
I'm with you in that I probably won't entirely give up anything.  I find that when I try to give up certain things, I end up feeling "deprived" and will ultimately start binging at some point.  I'm a lot better off to go ahead and have a little bit of the "forbidden" foods if I want them because that way I'll eat just a small amount instead of binging.  

If we didn't have any of that stuff in the house, it wouldn't be a problem, but my husband likes to have snacky things on hand (he doesn't eat fruit or veggies) and it's too hard to watch him snacking away on goodies, while I'm eating carrots (even though I like carrots) because the carrots won't satisfy me for very long.

Sarah - a lot of us with thyroid issues have that afternoon "crash"... it's often caused by adrenal issues.  When the thyroid isn't optimal, the adrenals kick in to try to take up the slack.  I have the same type of crash in the afternoon and I know my thyroid hormone levels aren't optimal because I started seeing a new endo in April and he lowered my med dose because he thought my TSH was too low... I was having a hard time prior, but it's really gotten bad since.
It's also possible the crash is from exercising early in the morning.  Running in particular can leave you very relaxed.  I always used to exercise in the evening, partly because I'm not a morning person but mostly because after a day of doing stuff the body is looser whereas it is tight up0n first awakening.  Now, these days I sleep in the daytime and not very well, so everything I do is wrong, but before a medication wrecked everything and made everything work oddly, exercising in the evening after meditating reinvigorated me whereas doing it in the morning did cause me to start getting tired in the afternoon, sleepy tired.  
Thanks, it is possible.

In my experience, the fatigue is much worse on days I do not exercise at all in the morning, and I have less (or no) fatigue on days I do 20 miles or a marathon.  I usually feel better (less fatigue) when I do 8 miles than when I do 6 (or at least that is what has happened so far this week).  I know, it makes no sense.  My best guess is that exercise helps me utilize whatever thyroid hormone happens to be floating around in my body better.  Is this just a specific phenomenon for me?  Or does it apply to everyone?  I do not know.

I started running in 2001, and by 2002-2003, I realized when I took more than two days off of running, I become really moody.  So... I don't think I've actually taken more than 2-3 days off of running (or swimming or other cardio) since then, except when required to by a doctor.  I think the "moodiness" I experienced way back then was hypothyroidism (or Hashimoto's) related, and exercise actually helped with thyroid hormone production (when I still had a thyroid) or conversion of T4 to T3.  (I have no scientific knowledge that this is the case, I'm just basing it off of when I experience more or less hypo symptoms.  It could entirely be that running helps lower my anxiety which then helps to convert more T4 to T3.)

I think one of the best benefits of running in the morning (for me) is getting that morning sun exposure .  It definitely helps with mood control, especially now when I've been dealing with many health issues.  I used to get an energy boost after running in the morning or at night, where I couldn't sleep for at least 3 hours after a run, but that hasn't come back since it left in 2015ish, when I also gained a bunch of weight and my thyroid was starting to really fail.

Another benefit of running in the morning is that I actually will do it.  If I put it off until later in the day, a hundred excuses will pop up.  (I do my "weight lifting and body weight exercises" in the afternoon or evening, and let's just say I'm failing spectacularly this year at doing 10-15 minutes, twice a week.  I have started playing around with a fitness band for hip strengthening because that is super important for runners, so for the last week I've been doing well, but lifting weights, squats, lunges, etc., all things I should be doing every week, not so much).

I do experience that very relaxing tiredness after swimming, or sometimes after running when it is really hot outside.  I love swimming (more than running?).  I used to be on swim team when I was about 10-12 years old every summer, and there is something about it that I don't get running.  

And, after this very long and rambling response, I will now point out that I do think running in extreme heat makes the fatigue worse, and I'm still having hot flashes from the medication which cause my body to sweat more than it normally would, so an 80 degree run my body will react like it is 95 degrees out, and that is probably adding on to the fatigue right now.  I'm hoping that soon the hot flashes will stop, and that my body will handle running in the heat better.  
It's not weird to me.  Regular heavy exercisers have a level that is optimal for feeling good and a different one for competition if you're into that.  Competition tests different things than exercising for the pure fun of it.  My run, whenever I would move to a new place, always evolved to where it just felt good.  Shorter runs weren't enough and longer runs were more challenging and taxing.  I wasn't really into competition or long distance running, I was about a 6 mile runner I think, I never trained for or ran a marathon.  I did two charity 6k runs but that was about it.  I wasn't ever going to be really fast, and if I can't do something really well I don't try and compete.  When I did martial arts, it was very different, because you were in a way always competing -- even when just doing forms you were being judged -- and the many years I played playground basketball, it's all competition -- if you win, you keep playing, and if you lose you sit and wait.  I think feeling differently at different distances is perfectly understandable.  As for the thyroid, that's a weird thing to have.  Different people have such different experiences with it.  My wife has Hashimoto's, but other than vaginal dryness you would never have known it.  She gained a little weight, but not much, and has never suffered any energy problems from it.  It's obviously quite different experience for different people.  What she did have an early problem with was getting he medication right -- endocrinologists are not my favorite specialty when it comes to how they treat the thyroid.  Always in a hurry.  But once it gets right, I hope you will adjust.  Wish I could still run.  I really miss it.  Swimming, not so much -- hate chlorine and it makes me dizzy.  
649848 tn?1534633700
COMMUNITY LEADER
I'd have to start with chips because that's always been my downfall.  I'm a firm believer that we have to start slow and work into things, so I'll focus on eating less, with an eye toward not eating any...  :-)
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3 Comments
Ya, chips.  They are a rough one to go without!
And you can never just eat a couple . . .  
Oh never just a couple of chips.  I have to be really careful because those bags seem to empty pretty quickly.  They must be putting less chips in the same size bag.  :-) :-)
134578 tn?1693250592
Mostly I'm just trying to not gain. People write about getting the "Covid 15" the way they used to write about the "Freshman 15" when I was in college. If I wanted to kick the afterburners, I'd drop all snack foods that come in packages that crackle (those contain greasy things like chips and fatty things like cookies) and ALSO cut out the Dr. Pepper. But I can much more easily drop chips and cookies than the D.P., our affair is long and habitual. Last few weeks to match my reduced activity in quarantine, I have consciously eaten smaller servings. I don't miss the extra food (not hungry in the night, etc.), but it's not enough to knock weight off. This week I might ixnay cookies. It won't get me far because I don't eat many of those anyway -- we keep some pretty plain ones around for my son to eat and they're boring. But at least, making it a point to never eat one is better than casually eating one every now and then.
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7 Comments
I object.  Chocolate chip cookies are an essential food group, are they not?  
Eh, most of the time I can take or leave chocolate chip. When it comes to homemade, I'm much more of a peanut-butter cookie girl. But chocolate-fudge mint (like the Girl Scouts sell) or Oreos, and I'm in more trouble. There's a kind of mint fudge cookie that is labelled as "Natural" and sold at my local store, if I'm stupid enough to buy a box of those I literally hide them from my son and eat them all myself in less than a week. Dieting starts at the store, obviously, where one snaps shut one's purse at temptation so one won't have to snap shut one's mouth at home every single darn day.
I used to eat those mint fudge cookies when I was younger.  And you know, Annie, what I buy are -- ready for it? -- chocolate chip peanut butter cookies.  Yeah.  That's right.  But I do parcel them out so I don't binge on them.  And I do buy them at the health food store so they don't have a lot of bad stuff in them.  But bottom line, Annie, chocolate chip peanut butter cookies.  
Good heavens, it takes a cheat day just to think about such a cookie.
We all deserve a cookie cheat day, that's my belief.
I'm not big on cookies, but it can always be considered exercise...  hand to mouth exercise.   :-)
Now I'm thinking that it would be interesting to make peanut-butter cookies in bar form, with chocolate swirls in the dough. This seems to be going the opposite direction of the intent of this thread. :)
973741 tn?1342342773
I'm going to start with giving up . . . any and all chips and cookies.  I'm going with two things because both should go.  I have kids so this stuff is 'around'.  But I don't need to be eating it!  
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