The Eat Every Two-Hours Diet

While meeting with a friend the other day, his phone alarm went off.  He showed me the text alert: "2 hrs. Eat #3"  What in the world?  "This is the way I'm losing all the weight!" he tells me, while asking the coffee barrister to please wash a green pear that has suddenly appeared in his hand. 

The diet makes sense, really.  If you keep your food intake continual and regular by eating small amounts frequently, your body metabolism should go up.  The science behind it has something to do with fat stores and whether or not your body feels like it needs to "save up" fat for a potential famine (long period of growling hunger).  So, if you happen to be washed ashore on a deserted island within the next 4-5 hours, you will have the stored up energy your stomach has so politely kept for you!   By quelling your hunger every 2 hours, the body feels like "Oh, plenty to eat today, I don't have to store this energy up, because I seem to be getting food all the time!"  You then become a lean, fat-burning machine.

My enthusiastic dieting friend explained that he divides his day up into two-hour intervals, coming out with a total number of "eats" per day.  I don't exactly remember how many "eats" he got to have, but my guess is that it would vary, depending on the length of your day.

I had always had the facts of this dieting method in the back of my brain, somewhere.  Just not the part about militantly eating at the two-hour mark every time.  I thought I might give it a whirl, already determining if my phone had an alarm application to go off every two hours and how would I be able have nutritious snacks on my person at all times, etc.

I furthered my research by going to the libr- no!!!!  THE INTERNET!  I googled "two-hour diet".  My search returned mostly results pertaining to eating every three hours.  I discovered a book entitled The 3-Hour Diet by Jorge Cruise.  According to Jorge, "The secret lies in eating the "right foods" every 3 hours to stabilize your blood sugar, which controls your appetite. This steadies your moods and boosts your energy all day long.  Proper timing helps increase energy levels, alertness, muscle mass and, most importantly, helps reduce abdominal fat. In as little as two weeks, individuals who eat frequent, small meals are able to reduce cortisol levels by more than 17 percent. Truly amazing, isn’t it? Just imagine what a lifetime of eating this way will do for you."  If you go here, you can watch skinny fit Jorge as he hyper-ly energetically tells us about how to get rid of belly fat by keeping your insulin levels low.  Evidently the diet is working fabulously for Jorge!

bosu and i are now friends

it happened the other day, while narrowing my workout class choices down to fit my schedule... which basically means the day had gone by way too fast and well, i had not yet worked out!! horrors! it became obvious that the only class that i could get to was BOSU!!! ughh.... cue beethoven here.

what is a bosu? sounds perhaps like a japanese food or maybe a massage?  a bosu is a piece of equipment that is incorporated into a fitness workout.  much like it's cousin "the stability ball", the bosu is inflated and is supposed to help strengthen the body's core and assist in obtaining greater balance...the difference is that the bosu is a half-ball, with a hard plastic base. (some would even say "hemisphere", but why get so technical?)

now, i have had other opportunities to become acquainted with the bosu....usually for floor work, such as sit-ups, crunches, or planks, but for an entire class? ...how boring would THAT be?

apparently, a guy named david weck invented the device and started making these things out of his father's garage to sell.  BOSU stands for "both sides up" or "both sides utilized", depending upon whether you are referring to the product or the "philosophy of BOSU".   the first athletic team to train using the bosu was the u.s. ski team!

well, i discovered that yes, you can workout out for an entire hour with a bosu! ...and yes, you will like working out with it!  do you remember how much fun it was to try to jump on a pogo stick or learn hoola hoop?  the boso turns a regular, run-of-the mill aerobic class into something slightly tricky and challenging. the trick is that instead of the floor or a regular aerobic step, you do most all of the normal exercising on the BOSU! ...even running in place!  i could almost say the workout was fun! (almost...) :)

the workout discovery

ballet and tap throughout grade school, followed by a brief anti-social period of teen weirdness and then onto jane fonda cassette tapes in college, i have always tried to "workout".

i dabbled back and forth with fitness.  having always been tall and relatively thin, i never worried a whole lot about it.  every once in while, I would see pictures of myself and think, "hmmmm, what's up with that crappy posture?"  or "who is that ....oh, that's me!" 

during my first pregnancy, i enrolled in a "prenatal" exercise class.  the whole, yes-i'm-pregnant-and-i'm-still-working-out thing had not yet "caught on" at the time, it was the early 90's.  but, being always on the cutting edge of what's exactly acceptable and normal, i leafed through my prenatal materials, and, upon finding the number for the downtown YMCA, enrolled my moody, bloated self into a class. the whole process was rather empowering!  at the end of the 6-8 week class, i found myself missing the group comradery , the music and the energy!  i enrolled for a second class before my daughter was born.

after the birth of my daughter, i discovered a fitness class that met in a church fellowship hall and incorporated contemporary christian music into the routine.  i loved it!  the class was called "body and soul".  it met twice a week in the evenings.  i enlisted the help of my younger siblings, who at the time were young, full of energy and not-yet-tired-parents of their own offspring.  they eagerly agreed to drive the half hour out to the boondocks, where i lived, so that i could eagerly drive my spandex-ed, post-pregnant body to the first presbyterian church for a workout!

this lasted for a little while, maybe a year or so.  soon, LIFE caught onto the fact that i was actually working out on a regular basis and put the breaks on that....

stay tuned for more of my amazing discovery of the wonderful world of fitness and how it is the main activity, aside from plastic surgery, that can totally change your appearance and overall confident attitude!!

elements of beauty

this is my how i would like to outline the five basic elements of beauty in this blog:

• frame - our bodies, our shapes.
• interior - what's inside. not just our organs, etc...what about our spirits, minds, feelings, emotions?
• canvas - skin! it covers our entire body!
• paint - cosmetics, perfume - how do we accentuate our good points, camouflage the bad ones?
• curtains - our individual style. clothing, fashion!