How I plan to make 2023 "My Year"

I'm hearing it more and more. Different sources from all different health perspectives; MDs, DCs, NPs and just every day people who have found something that works for them. What are they saying? 

Americans eat too much. 

I look at myself and the guilt washes over me knowing that to be true. But what about all the chatter we hear around us from media, friends and even medical professionals saying things like:

• Breakfast is the most important meal of the day
• Vegetables and grains should make up the main part of your diet. (MyPlate.gov)

I had a house guest who was very sweet and also very thin and fit. She asked that I keep ingredients for her smoothies every morning; yogurt, fruits and veggies. Holy smokes! That thing contained more carbohydrates than I consume in 2 days! But how could I say anything to someone when I am so obviously overweight?

Or the typical carb-laden breakfast I hear my students talking about; cereal and orange juice. 1 cup Cheerios=20 g, 1 cup of skim milk to pour on it=10g, 6 oz of orange juice=18 g. Total 48, if you can only eat one small bowl. (I've been known to tear through half a box.) That's more carbs than I should eat in 3 days! 

I get it, kids do need more carbs and more frequent meals. However, I keep wondering if I had developed better eating habits when I was young, if I would be healthier today. With the limited time I have to research better habits, one topic kept recurring: Intermittent Fasting. After first dismissing it outright, I stumbled across this video from Cynthia Thurlow. 

From this video I learned the following:

• 2/3 of women 40-50 yo are overweight and more than 1/2 are obese. (There's me.)
• Women gain an average of 1.5 lbs/year in the 50's and 60's.
• Breakfast is not the most important meal of the day.
• The concept of "calories in and calories out" is just not effective. Balancing hormones is a big part of the picture. 
• Intermittent fasting is free, it's flexible and it's simple.

Benefits from fasting:

• Fat lost in the visceral area
• Improved mental clarity
• Spikes human growth hormone
• Induces autophagy
• Lowers insulin levels, blood pressure, improves our cholesterol profile, can reduce the risk for developing cancer and Alzheimer's disease.

This was all new to me! I was a huge subscriber to the "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day" club. If I didn't get my breakfast, I would get grumpy and shaky. I also had a high glucose level and suspect my insulin levels were pretty high as well. And eating in the morning would make me hungrier throughout the day. 

What I know and what I practice are not exactly the same things. I give in to pressure too much. But I have found that IF and keeping my carb count low definitely help. In fact, I was doing Atkins as a young adult and found it very effective. That was back when conventional medical knowledge warned against such a diet. January 2023 will be my testing point. I will be combining very low-carb with IF. I've been between 10 pounds, up and down, now for about 5 years. I 'll keep you posted on the progress!