Current Read: "Ultrametabolism"

Reading about health and wellness has always been a personal interest of mine. So on Facebook, I've been following Mark Hyman, M.D.'s occasional posts. One post just got me a little skeptical though. It was about how artificial sweeteners (i.e. diet drinks) cause one to gain weight. I was a disbeliever and said so! However, after a little back & forth banter with others in the comment section, I decided to at least give it a try since it has always been my policy to see for myself.

Previously, I virtually never ate fruit even though I really like it. I didn't like buying fruit only for it to spoil and become a waste of money. With breakfast, I'd typically have a diet drink whether it was Diet Coke or one of those little single serving packets that you pour into a water bottle flavored like ice tea or punch with no calories.

Now for something new. Having it ingrained into me that whole fruit is better than juice and that sweet cravings always accompany salt/savory eating, I bought a bag of organic oranges so I could have one anytime the sweet craving kicked in. The plan was I'd one and drink water.

Once started, it really didn't take any "getting used to". A quickly sliced up orange really did the trick, surprisingly! I started reading a bit, and discovered that Vitamin C is the catalyst to iron and calcium absorption. Well, a few years ago, the Blood Bank turned me down do to low iron and that was the cause of contantly feeling cold and fatigued. I took prenatal vitamins throughout my pregnancy so while I was still tired, I think I was doing well. But afterward, I stopped. And now reading about how low iron and low calcium can cause serious chronic fatigue among other stuff, I'm sitting here thing, "OMG, all that time?!"

Well, the orange experiment began about 3 weeks ago and you're probably wondering by now if I lost any weight. The answer is yes! While it was still just a little, according to my profile on our little Wii Sports game, (the balance board is very accurate for weight measurement) it's lower than it's ever been for the last few months we've had it. Huh. :-)

Deciding to get further into this, I've picked up Dr. Hyman's book called, "Ultrametabolism". While I'm going through the first two chapters, so far it is a MAJOR RE-EDUCATION (can't emphasize that enough!) on how whole foods as well as processed/unnatural foods interact with one's genetic code and thereby turn on either weight gain or weight loss. It's not a typical diet book in the ordinary sense. I am currently reading the Common Believed Myths and am simply dumstruck!

I'm not going into examples because I could never do it justice. And it's not a flip-through cookbook. It builds upon itself from the beginning so that's where you need to start. So if you are interested, they even have it on Kindle or there is an abridged audio version available. Again, I'm still reading the myth section so I'll probably post again about it later as I read more.

For the record, the other things I've changed out so far are:

• Replacing butter and Canola oil with olive oil.
• Eating "Total" breakfast cereal with soy milk. This was a pre-"Metabolism" decision because at least I'm getting the vitamins. But most likely this will be changed I get a better grasp of the Carbs Myth section. Oh and BTW, the soy milk is because regular milk just does a number on me personally. The soy milk is fortified with calcium anyway.

TTYL!