Sharing Family Secrets With My Daughters

As I look at all the messages, life lessons, and traditions that I have shared with my children, perhaps one of the most important has been the key to healthy living. My parents were pretty naive about food. The biggest imprint they left on me was to try anything and everything and to clean my plate.

So that got me to thinking about the messages that I send my daughters about food. To be honest I never really shared with them the knowledge I gained from the nutrition courses that were completed as part of my undergraduate education or the many diets that their mother and I had been on over the years as we both yo-yo’d up and down.

But the entire picture had never been as clear as it is to me now or as simple. Yes there is a lot of explanations about what I eat and what I don’t eat, in this blog and on my ever evolving food plan. The simple message I share with my daughters, the secret Sawyer Family tradition to looking great and feeling young as you age is:

“Eat Beans, Meat, and Vegetables Six Days a Week and on the Seventh Day eat whatever you want. On top of that MOVE, I do Yoga!”

That is the entire family secret to a healthy life and longevity. It is brief and to the point. There is no counting calories, though I do pay attention to calories. The is no measuring the quantity of what you eat, you simply eat a series of no-carb, a slow-carb or low carb days, following cheat day. Which series your going to follow depends on how much weight you want to achieve and how often you have been on the stage you are on. You should never go on the no carb stage of the diet for more than three weeks at a time.

But to keep the message simple I always start and end with the same old time tested and true advice from the annals of Sawyer Family legend.

We can be skinny, we can be vibrant, we can be healthy if we “eat our beans meat and vegetables”.

Don’t I look Yogafabulistic! I sat on that rock for 30 minutes till someone…..

The things I notice is that I look thin sitting down. You can see space between my elbows, I did a happy dance when I saw this photo!

……finally, came to my rescue and took that picture. Okay, for the first 20 minutes the squirrels in Mears’ Park literally ran circles around those lovely white birch trees dancing mere inches from Corky’s nose just across the water. They were relentless, if I had my F350 dually and was out at the Torturro’s I ‘d saunter over to my truck pull out my pink pistol pull the trigger and shoot corn nuggets to feed the poor fellows. I am not that red neck, I don’t own a gun, yet! My dad did make sure I was proficient in gun safety and I did my share of shooting as a kid. Just not a real gun fan now a days. No need to own one, at least not for me.

I just knew that Corky and I would look so cute sitting there, that surely someone would come and offer to take our picture. I hadn’t planned on the squirrels or the fact that by the time the dog settled down and my clearly obvious gestures of sitting there with my Droid……

Bill's sister lives on Little Birch lake and we spend many weekends at her cabin with Bill's neice and nephew. Linda is one of the strongest women I know and she raised two fine children I am proud to call family!

…..in my hand taking pictures would surely end, when a kind person finally offered to take the photo. Thirty minutes on a small flat stone surrounded by cold water, one can say I was stiff and that smile was trying. But it is the photo I was looking for to celebrate the next chapter of Will and Bill’s Excellent Adventures.

You see moving to Minnesotawas Bill’s idea, not mine. However, Bill has followed me all over the country this last decade while we opened a bed and breakfast and an equestrian event production company, so there was never a question when Bill wanted to return to his family. The problem was

After we got my great photo I wanted one of Corky!

The Fat Yogi and Nicole.....look at that fat cowboy it is a wonder my horse ran that fast!

that once I got here, it did not feel like home and then to add to the misery, Minneapolis got hit by the November Snownami 2010 and then pummeled by one of the worst winters in more than 30 years….. I don’t do snow!

I like to cross-country ski and downhill ski and I am little kid on a tube or a sled, but…… I don’t do snow! Just like as a cowboy barrel racer, I did not do horse shit. Of course I have shoveled, albeit less than my fair share of shit and snow, but I have shoveled a great deal in my life. I would not call me lazy, I am just extremely motivated to find other options than shoveling. You might say I have shovel PTSD.  In fact I shoveled my way through six years of graduate and undergraduate education. Every summer I worked for my Mormon buddy who owned a landscape company. He and I would spend weekends in the fall either setting up a pumpkin stand or preparing for the Christmas Trees and gift shop sale at his nursery retail center in Idaho. I more than know the value of work and being poor, but i also know how to avoid a shovel at all cost…..I bet I am not alone in that skill. It is all because my father had me shovel 13 tons of mud from behind our house in the 80’s to pay for my high school ring.

I have shoveled so much that I know I don’t like to shovel, it is a job best left to those who enjoy it and I am willing to go to great lengths to avoid things I don’t like. So my horses were kept in stables and my life is in a loft in Lowertown St. Paul.

Why Lowertown Saint Paul?

Last year after spending several weekends trapped in our home or a hotel because our hybrid could not clear the snow in the alley. It did not matter though, none of the

Living in a loft neither of us will have to shovel! Poor Bill he was way better at shoveling than I was.

4wd’s could clear it either, the city was shut down. Shortly after the trauma I told Bill that I would live in Minnesota as long as we are in a Sky Way condo  or loft and then I worked until I found us one. Hence the photos of the our loft. Next week we will showcase the loft in it’s own blog post.

So the reason this photo of our next life adventure, is of me alone sitting contentedly in Mears Park with Corky. Is because I finally am feeling like I have found a home. I have a vision for my future and a

Bill on a tractor in Oklahoma!

plan. I have a wonderful family that supports all I do and I have a brilliant husband whom I adore. Lowertown Saint Paul, Minnesota is now my home.

The Fat Yogi’s Next Bold Adventure!

So as Bill settles into his new job at an IT firm in the Twin Citiesarea it is time for me to begin working on my next projects. Here is where things are getting interesting. Once I shed the weight, I found some incredible energy and a new vision for my life. Bill says, “You change the world one person at a time, Will”. I never really know what he means but I think the person who changed

So here we are! Will and Bill in Minnesota!

from my blogging so openly and honestly about being fat and doing yoga is myself and since I love to write and create and share, I truly hope that I can inspire others to shed their fears and find their own best life. Along the way I am going to blog about my schooling, not only will the recipes continue, but there will be projects that I share with my readers as I learn them and work on them in my new studio/mudroom in our loft. I often feel as if I have been blessed with an incredible curiosity but a short attention spanwhich was why barrel racing was such a great sport for me. The

Here is the cool old werehouse that houses our loft!

entire competition would run from 14-18 seconds, I probably have ADHD and that was about all the concentration I have, of course we accomplish about 80 separate movements in that 14 seconds….lol…back to the story….

So I have been accepted into the pre-interior design program at University of Minnesota College of Design. I know exactly what my readers are thinking and they are right, gay guys barrel race, no matter how much I pretended the sport is filled with straight dudes, there are a few, but honestly that sport is gay guys and hot chicks. So yes I am following my next passion in life and going to design school as a 47-year-old man. My daughter Hillary just got a $20,000 scholarship to the University of British Columbia, so we will both graduate the same summer in 2015. How cute is that?

We are never to old to got back to school and chase our dreams!

Here is one of the rooms I did at the Inn and Spa at Parkside that Bill and I owned in Sacramento, CA. Bill really wanted a yellow room and it is not one of my favorite colors to work with so I used it once! The end result surprised me. The room was called Kiss and I imagine there was a lot of kissing done in this room. That was the point!

So the Fat Yogi is still going to be a blog where we really talk a lot about being fat and doing yoga, because it is an everyday struggle for me to eat correctly. But I do go back to the principles out lined in my food plan every time I take a diet holiday I never go more than three days and then with steely determination I start over and the end result is 182 pounds and dropping!!! Yogafabulistic!!!

During the first week or so of moving into our new loft while we were building walls and furniture our diet was less than perfect and as we got all the dishes unpacked and the kitchen restocked, we went firmly back on the eating plan.

So yes we are going to still be a blog about food and yoga and reclaiming our lives, but part of reclaiming our lives is following our passions. My entire life has been spent it chasing

It took us 30 days, two new walls, a new entry area studio/mudroom, and 1300 square feet of vast empty space. Are you curious about what I have gotten done and what is going to be done? Stay tuned!

my passions and it is fitting that my hunger for design and my desire to live with my husband Bill Swenson has brought me to the first home I have truly felt is not just Bill’s home but this loft on Mears’ Park in Saint Paul. Is now my home also!

Part 2: “The Fat Yogi’s Bag of Tricks” Before During and After Photos of 41 Pound Weight Loss

From 230 Pounds to 186 Pounds!!!!

Yesterday is was 40 pounds today it is 41 pounds…..woohoo!!! Bill snapped todays photos and he was impatient. I interrupted his birthday eggs to take this picture. Tonight we are going to the Ordway to see the hit new Broadway musical, Next to Normal, to celebrate his big day! Hence the photos are a little blurry.

December 17, 2010 Wow I was FAT!!! 230 Pounds!!! Looking trim at 189.6 Pounds!

 

 

189.6 Pounds!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So how exactly did I lose the 41 pounds? Not only did I start on the Slow Carb Diet, I discovered it weakness after I lost the first 20 pounds and based on my years of studying and real life experience I developed this bag of tricks to actually lose weight and keep it off.

 

The Fat Yogi’s Bag Of Tricks

1. Binge weekly: at least one day per week as noted in my food plan.
2. Weigh Daily: Ignore what the pros say about weighing weekly. There is no research that shows that weighing weekly is better than weighing daily. Daily weights give you a running total of what direction you’re heading.
3. Identify a weight range of six pounds, three pounds each direction and make sure on a Day-to-Day basis you are staying within that 6 pound range.
4. If you are losing weight only record your weight weekly, on the same day, at the same time. This is your official weight. Through the week during this phase you are looking to see if you are staying within the range for that weeks weight loss. If you at anytime during the week you creep to 4 pounds above the range, look at what your eating.
5. It is OK to cheat between cheat days. Sometimes life throws you a curve ball and you have to open your mouth like and swallow that ball whole and fast. You need to create rules for cheating. These rules are to help you balance your goals with real life actions. Rules for cheating give your permission to start over each and every meal.
6. Allow yourself a bag or two of popcorn, no added butter and a diet coke once or twice a week, it must replace a meal or a snack and if the next day you get on the scale and your out of your safe weight range , double down on the food plan.
7. Once you have gotten the first 20 pounds off it is time to pull back on the beans a bit and focus on lean meats and vegetables. I will eat beans only once a day and many days are sole veggies and protein.
8. Protein bars with zero grams of sugar. I eat Think Thin protein Bars. Buy these by the box full, you will eat them a lot!!!!
9. Get used to feeling hunger. This is an entire post all on its own and it really has a yoga connection. Which is why it is a post all on its own. Let me just tell you there is power in developing a healthy desire for the feeling of hunger. REAL LIFE CHANGING POWER!!!
10. MOVE everyday. Even if I don’t make it to a yoga class everyday, I practice yoga daily! Getting your joints open and moving creates space for fluids to work in your joints. If you’re not opening your joints and moving them they get stiff and stuck and there is no room for joint fluids to move around.

Part 3: Hunger Pain and The Yoga Connection!

 

The Fat Yogi’s “Bag of Tricks” To Healthier Living: Part One-Do you ever hide your food?

 

On December 17th, 2010 I began this blog and I weighed 230 pounds. Boy was I a big guy and my poor horse had been hauling my fat ass all over the country. Today I am down 40 pounds and my blood pressure is that of an athlete, 115/75.

What you see above is evidence of the binges around the time of Easter, hence my favorite trailer trash confection, PEEPS! Now I did not eat this all at once, but over about three weeks, every couple of days or so, and after Bill would go to bed. I would drive over to Walgreen’s or McDonald’s and either eat a Big Mac or two boxes of peeps.

Confessions Suck! The entire time Bill was being completely faithful to our new choices, but I was adding a few bad food choices on a meal here or there. Plus, almost the entire time Bill and I have been following the low carb diet I have been eating one to two small bags of movie popcorn, no butter and a large diet coke.

Yet I still lost 40 pounds in the last five months and I am continuing to lose. I credit my success to a regular yoga practice, better food choices, bingeing, and learning to enjoy the feeling of hunger. The synergy of yoga and diet over the last 5 months is absolutely amazing and it created what I call my ‘Bag of Tricks’ (Bag of Tricks blog post part 2, tomorrow).

I have read almost every credible book written and tried every credible diet. I have taken multiple nutrition courses at the college level. I would have to say that no diet has ever given me permission to cheat as much as I have cheated on this diet and still lose 40 pounds.

I must have been eating close to 5000 calories a day or more prior to December 2010. So the occasional bad meal on top of about 1500 calories a day plus excercise (yoga, swimming biking) really did not change the over all outcome of the diet.

That is because, when I had a meal, where I made bad food choices. I did not let that meal or snack start the beginning of a spiral to seven years of bad food choices. I simply enjoyed the moment and my next meal was a correct choice. I attribute that to calories, even though I am not counting them.

A Big Mac has 540 calories and I would probably eat about 500 calories of PEEPS. Good thing PEEPS are so sugary, you can eat to many and after a box of 4 bunnies the second box is never as good.

So that would bring my calorie count to about 2000 on the days I was bad. Yet Bill hit a plateau and I was still loosing weight. I think eating 1500 calories or so a day for three or four days and then one day of 2000 and then back to 1500 calories for a few days before the big binge day, is the key. My metabolism probaly can’t figure out if I am starving it or fueling it. That was the beginning of my developing my “Bag of Tricks” to help me lose the weight and continue to lose wieght without feeling discouraged.

Feeling discouraged is worse than feeling hungry……….REPEAT THIS PHRASE….it is a key piece of information to the secret to losing weight.

When you are changing your daily eating habits, you are not joining a monastery, you are changing your day-to-day eating habits. That does not mean you can’t enjoy the occasional splurge several times a week, but you must have rules that you put in place to guide you willingly back to better food choices for the next bite that goes into your mouth.

If you are like the old me, one Snicker bar on the way home from work would set me off for weeks. Always waiting for the next Monday, while a growing sense of shame and FAT creeped into my soul and leaked out into my jeans. I was a pro at starting over.

I stopped starting over and started living……REPEAT!!!!

But I still have not talked about hiding food, hmmm……..the evidence is above and it is humiliating to look at. Hiding food, secret eating, am I alone?

I had never hidden food before, but Bill and I are making the same food choices and eating the same foods. So when I made a decision to (how can I minimize this????…hmmm..) I surely did not want him to know I was cheating, he would think so poorly of me. Plus he takes out the trash and would see the evidence. The thought occurred to me that this might be how people start a food disorder. Hence the confession and of course I have not done a Big Mac run or had a PEEP melt down since Easter. More importantly, I stopped hiding food. I can tell you those secret trips taught me more about my relationship with food than any thing I have ever read. We will come back to this but I would like some feedback about others secret eating and secret food stashing.

If you are brave enough to share your story about your unhealthy relationship with food…..I can tell you the 3000 followers of this blog would love to read about it, send me an email at wdsted@gmail.com and I will select one or more to blog about. I feel like I am only scratching the surface.

This is a part post!

Part 2: The Bag of Tricks and Before and after photos…

Part 3: Hunger Pains and the Yoga Connection

Day 42 of 60 Day Challenge (weight update): Why is this so damn hard and why do I want to give up?

 

This is my Eagle Pose, as you can see I am grabbing my shoulders. I did it this way for years and only a week ago I started being able to catch my hands in the first part. See below!

Total Weight Loss: 23 Pounds as of last Saturday!  

Last week was a real difficult week. Have you ever been to that place where the desire to just surrender seems overwhelming and that bag of gummy bears or chocolate ice cream screams out…..just eat me!

Well that is where I am at! But I made a commitment. I committed to 60 Day Bikram Yoga Challenge and I feel so much better as a result. Not just physically better, but mentally better, so why would I begin to even question my resolve in light of such positive improvements?

You see how my arms are crossed and I caught my thumb.....that is a major accomplishment for me! I am so tight that I have not been able to do this in 4-5 years of practice, but after 30 something days in a row, my shoulders released enough to do it!

I’ll tell you why. We are lazy! Humans seek the path of least resistance and it takes a formidable commitment to overcome that inherent laziness. When I committed to eat better in December I was so miserable that it would have been more difficult to continue eating and resisting exercise than it would be to change.

However almost two months later, my health issues have begun to resolve, my body feels and look a lot better, and I am no longer miserable. So my mind starts telling me to let up just a little, enjoy life. That bag of gummy bears is only 500 calories, it is not going to add 23 pounds, but would I be able to stop at one bag? That is the question? Which is why I am glad to have a binge day once a week!

So with all these emotions running around and a deep feeling of insecurity and doubt, I have to remind myself of the commitments I made to change my life. I can’t give up yet!

Here you can see Kate doing it right and me looking like THE FAT YOGI! My leg won't bend all the way around and I am struggling. The point is that I am at least trying and my body is changing slowly going in the right direction. That is how it starts! You simply can't be afraid to go to yoga. You just have to go and watch your body change. I never once believed I would be able to catch my thumb in this pose, now I believe I can eventually get to where Kate is. Though I never will if I don't go!

 

I made a commitment to do a 60 Day Challenge. In the beginning I was ready to make a 30 day commitment and I increased it to 60 Days on a lark. Surely, I can do it, I thought. During the initial days it seemed like I could quit and start over because I was not very far into the committment, now at day 42, there is no way in hell that I would quit and start over when the goal is within my reach. In fact I have been playing with adding an additional 30 days. 

But what accounts for my doubts? I know that I am going to finish the 60 Day Challenge. But what about getting below 200 pounds and down to 175 pounds or even 155 pounds?

Do I have what it takes to get through this emotional block? Do I really believe I can do it? Why is this so damn hard today?

I don’t always have the answers. Nothing about this life is easy. It is a struggle and I have to believe that I will succeed. It is a must, but that does not mean I am going to breeze through this time of change with ease. It just means I am going to have to be real and accept that self-doubt always creeps in when we are about to achieve something great!

I Loved It When Whitney Houston Was Screaming, “Kiss My Ass” On National TV? We have all been there, right?

We Have To Orchestrate Our Own Comeback Story

Whitney was out of control, that girl, America’s Diva, exploded in front of all of us. I shook my head, oh, girl, I have been there. You know what I am talking about, right? A catastrophic meltdown. Remember, when Whitney was on that reality show, Being Bobby Brown, with her drug crazed husband and she was filmed screaming ‘Kiss My Ass’ (click here to watch). That was just one of many public and later drug filled meltdowns.

I know I have had my meltdowns, just ask Bill, he loves to tell the story of when we owned the Bed and Breakfast in Sacramento, CA. I had spent thousands of dollars on a  whole house music system. At the time, I was loving my Phentermine weight loss diet, popping those pills like they were candy and the weight just fell off. I only ate Skittles and Gummy Bears and drank mass quantities of water. I had energy galore and yes my emotions were tinged with a little rage, nothing I could not handle.

Until, after painstaking shopping for 30 or so CD’s of zen like music to accompany the urban hip feel of our Inn and Spa, our employees were carelessly stacking the CD’s on top of the player and not filing them back in their correct case. Time after time I would go into the office and organize the music and they would be strewn all over the place the next day.

It all culminated in a screaming match with Bill, where I really was irrational and raged at Bill as I grabbed the stack of 30 ZEN CD’s and sent them crashing to the ground. I wanted the offending employees fired. The moment was an epiphany of calm and karma as the most recent version of Buddha Lounge flew across the floor!

I am sugar-coating my Phentermine meltdown, it wasn’t just this one incident, it was a few months worth of crazy, but damn, I looked good and I could work for hours and the only by-product was rage. Hell I could live with that. The problem is, no one else could!

I imagine that living on crack is a lot like living on Phentermine and watching Whitney self-destruct is fascinating, because we all have the ability to self-destruct. We are frail and insecure and we all fail and make mistakes.

Last night I watched with wonder as Whitney sang, “I look to You” with Kim Burrel, of course Bill was his typical hard ass on her judging her a fraud, but I saw a come back and it warmed my soul. Whitney’s public performance last year in Korea had revealed a voice that had been shattered and lost. Her hard partying life appeared to have destroyed a London that attracted boos.

Whitney’s voiced has been restored and the girl is making a mighty fine comeback. Comebacks are not easy, in fact my Phentermine meltdown was easy to get over. I simply had to stop taking the pill, of course existing on a diet of Skittles and Gummy Bears had to go, but my emotions calmed down and I return to the normal big personality that I usually have minus the rage and flights of fantasy.

We all deserve a come back! I mean look at me last summer, that was actually a meltdown that was way worse than my diet pill popping days. It seemed the only place I could find happiness was through food. The more my life felt like it was spinning out of my control, the more I ate. I would wake-up driving through McDonald’s getting a breakfast burrito and go to sleep after eating three dinners.

This is my comeback! I have orchestrated it for myself, to get my life back under control and to take it away from food. Last night I added a 30 minute swim to my 90 minutes of Bikram Yoga and it felt great!

Of course I did not wear a Speedo, at the gym, which is my preference for swimming laps. I simply do not like the drag of board shorts, but at my size wearing a Speedo is even more uncomfortable than wearing yoga shorts. At the yoga studio we all wear yoga clothes, at the gym, them manly men are to shy to wear them and so was I, but give me 10 pounds and I will strap one on.

So yes, we all love a comeback story, why not write one of our own! Be the star in our own life that comes back and inspires others!

I am going to tell you that writing your own comeback story is going to be HARD!!!!!

There are no easy road maps to follow and we all have to find what works for us. For me it is simple, I needed to develop a daily regimen to follow. Something that would be easy to follow and some thing I could commit to.

Today is going to be day 37 of my 60 Day Challenge at the local Bikram Yoga Studio in Minneapolis, MN. When I started the 60 Day Challenge I did not think I would be able to do 60 days in a row, in fact I played with only doing a 30 Day Challenge. But I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I needed to commit to something tough and this is a tough commitment.

My comeback started with the following steps:

1. Recognition of the problem: I knew I was a fat ass and that my body was falling apart with every bite I took and every step seemed more difficult.

2. Get Moving: I believed that I needed to start moving before I could start eating correctly, so I started doing yoga! I was moving with no impact but was moving and that is a place to start.

3. Quit Smoking: Did it cold turkey, it was killing me and stealing my motivation and my breath.

4. Eat Right: I looked for a way to eat that addressed my issues from blood sugar to blood pressure. I needed a meal plan I could follow easily and quickly.

5. Make a Plan: I made a plan to start moving, then start eating, then I added an extreme commitment, one that has a calendar for me to mark off each day I complete.

6. Stick to the plan: No matter what I go to yoga…..NO EXCUSES! I am not flexible, it is hot, it is like HELL! Sometimes I hate it, but I always feel better and get a yoga high after class!

There is something about my ability to commit to this 60 Day Challenge that has changed me. I wish I could explain it. It is like I have been empowered to be the best me I can be and nothing is going to stand in my way! Nothing!!!!!

When you find that commitment in yourself, you will be ready to really live. I was a processed food zombie last month and last year. I am not a zombie anymore. Are you ready to leave ZOMBIE LAND and live?

Hear and watch Whitney’s Solo Comeback of “I Look To You”  I am sure she is singing about God and when you look into her eyes, you can see a gleam of happiness. I hope I have that same gleam. For me, I find my spiritual strength inside me and I hope it is radiating from me. I hope that you find your spiritual strength and the power of your comback and live life in the fullnes of joy!

If you are share with me your plan below in the comments section! I want to hear about it!