Trim Healthy Mama Plan (31 page)

S
o we've been wondering, should we write this chapter directly to the rare guy who might pick up this book, or do we write it to the woman who loves and cherishes this guy? Hmm…

Decision made. Since the species of male who could make it this far into a Mama book is probably rare to the point of being on the “endangered” list, we'll write to his woman. But if you do happen to be that EXCEPTIONAL guy reading these words, a belated welcome to you and sorry we've called you Mama throughout the whole book. We hope you won't need several years of counseling from that now.

In all seriousness, though, this plan works spectacularly
for
men. We wrote it for Mamas simply because we are Mamas, but the way sugar affects our bodies is not gender specific.

A man who had lost forty pounds on the Trim Healthy Mama Plan to reach a healthy goal weight came up to us at an event at which we were speaking. He had a great analogy for men and shared it with us. He said, “I think of your plan this way. I use gas for my car and diesel for my truck. I don't put them both in the same engine if I want my vehicle to work. Picturing S and E meals as either gas or diesel helped me get down to a healthy weight.”

If we as women find the idea of constant rabbit-food meals so unappealing that it causes us to want to go out and gobble a Big Mac, our guy feels that to the
n
th degree times ten. Men can really sink their teeth into this way of eating. They love the heartiness of the
food. Steak, chili, meat loaf, and pizza: This foursome of man foods that often make up most guys' diets can easily be THMified.

Men LOVE to be filled up. Ever notice fast-food TV ads directed to men? They're all about filling them up with gigantic portions. As long as those large portions are THMified, your man can find his trim, too.

If you need direction on how much to feed your male, then refresh yourself with the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. There was a baby-size portion, a mama-size portion, and then a papa-size portion. Papa's bowl had a lot more porridge. It was not “just right” for Goldilocks.

Unless you are a very high-metabolism woman who can eat circles around your guy and still stay trim, he's usually going to need to eat quite a bit more than you do to stay satisfied and happy. The simple reason for this is he is created with more muscle so he requires more fuel to burn. Our own husbands often eat twice as much as we do at mealtimes.

That means when it comes to the number guidelines we've given you, don't get so finicky about them when it comes to your man. A medium-size sweet potato is just right for you in an E meal. Your guy might need a large. Don't forget, though, that it is important to also fill him up on protein and non-starchy veggies so he doesn't have to carb out to get filled up. If he needs to lose weight, the main thing that matters will be that he is basically separating his S and E meals and eating the right carbs—those gentle ones we suggest rather than spikers like white dinner rolls and white pasta. But even if some Crossovers occur here and there, men have a better chance of losing weight by including more Crossovers than many of us women do.

We have a greater percentage of essential fat in our bodies than men and less natural muscle, so we do need to pay more attention to the actual safe boundaries suggested when it comes to carbs. Your guy might want a couple large bowls of chili while one satisfies you. Don't call him a hog in your mind. He's just being a guy. Before you stay up all night worrying that his S chili turned into a raging Crossover from too many helpings that included beans, he's really just upsizing into guy portions. A true Crossover for him looks more crossed than yours. So don't look at him crossly! The fact that he is eating healthier even if weight is not shedding fast is fantastic!

Men who have
Type 2 diabetes or severe insulin resistance need to stay much closer to the forty-five-gram carb safety net we advise. They'll need to have more starchy veggies and protein on their plates if they need to fill up more.

We've had some fun stereotyping here, but if your guy naturally has a slower metabolism or a smaller appetite, don't think him less of a man. Just as a few women can outeat some men, some men don't have the huge appetites we've been describing. No biggie—it takes all types to make up this world. Your grocery budget will thank you for that.

What if your guy is not interested in joining you on this journey? He's very happy with his potato chips and sodas and, even though he may have glaring health and weight issues, he doesn't want to change. What now? Nag, nag, nag, and put stress on your relationship?

Our advice is to let him know that you want to do this, you'd love for him to join you, but it is up to him. A few suggestions so this goes better in your favor. You may not want to say something like, “All of us girls from the book club have decided it's time we all get skinny together, so we're reading
Trim Healthy Mama Plan.
I want to fit back into my size-eight skirts and you need to get back into your size-thirty-two jeans. Sara was over the other day and I showed her our wedding pics and she mentioned you were so cute back then.”

Ouch. First, your guy does not want to be skinny. He wants to be lean, and the last thing he wants to do is join you and your girlfriends at a tape-measuring-body-parts party.

How about something like this: “I want to feel more energetic for myself and for you and the children. I'd love to try cooking some more healthy meals and actually take a sane approach to getting trim this time. I'd appreciate your feedback on some recipes I want to try and I'll do my best not to be offended if you don't like my first attempts. Of course, I'd love for you to join me in this but that would be your decision.”

If he's not thrilled about it, do this for yourself first. Let your progress speak volumes, eat your yummy cheesecake in front of him—don't be obnoxious about it, but there's nothing wrong with a little “mmm-this-is-good” reverse psychology. The fact that you are enjoying your food, reclaiming your waistline, and not making this plan compulsory for him might start to make it appealing over time. Since Trim Healthy Mama meals are so man- and family-friendly, even if he is only eating your main meal at night, this alone may cause him to see enough results that he may want to go all in.

If you want a tried-and-true male-friendly recipe as his first taste of THM, try the Cheeseburger Pie. You can find that on our website or in our companion cookbook and pair it with his favorite non-starchy veggie of choice drizzled with lots of fats.

We both had our own husbands down so many rabbit trails with diet fads, they were more than twice burned and extremely gun-shy about starting yet another crazy diet. We both ate the THM way for a full year on our own before our husbands decided to jump fully on board with us. Once they realized the food was not weird and completely tofuafied, and that they could eat plenty of it, including desserts, they sheepishly came into the fold and have been happy here ever since. (Not to say they don't do their fair share of cheating, though, too.)

Maybe you have the kind of husband who constantly needs to put on five pounds and appears to lose weight through mere breathing. The challenge here is to find a blood sugar–friendly approach to weight gain for him. Maybe he can eat all the empty carbs he wants like donuts, white bread, chips, and Twinkies yet he still needs to put on weight. Even though you may not see the ravages of these destructive foods surface as fat on his body, the internal inflammation and damage on a cellular level is still happening. Spiking blood sugar and eating devitalized toxic foods speeds up the aging process and initiates disease. It may even be one of the reasons for his inability to gain weight as he is undernourished.

We suggest protein-centered Crossovers at every meal, prepared with healthy fats and served with blood-sugar-safe carbs. In very challenging cases, his Crossovers may need to include butter sliced as thick as cheese on whole-grain bread or rice at every meal along with hefty protein sources, and the inclusion of a tablespoon or two of raw honey. Don't pull out white potatoes from his Crossovers. Feed him like you would a wiry, growing teenage boy, as he probably has a similar constant metabolism burn going on in his body.

He doesn't need the sugary sodas and Doritos to keep his weight on. If he's open to it, try keeping peanut butter–based treats, sweetened with raw honey, on hand for him to eat right before bed. That might be one of the worst things for your weight but the best thing for his. Keeping nutritious, high-protein Crossover treats available at all times will help prevent him from reaching for empty carbs such as corn chips. Of course…he may not give a rip about what we suggest, but hey, at least we tried.

N
o guns-blazing, kick-in-the-pants motivational “Get stuck in, gals!” speeches to start this chapter. Hopefully you will be relieved and even intrigued to know why there will be none of that “push harder” talk from us here.

Many Mamas starting out on a new eating plan are already overwhelmed by new foods, recipes, concepts, and knowledge. Adding a bunch of physical training on top is almost a cruel joke. Not everyone starts Trim Healthy Mama with excess energy to burn, all hyped up to go sweat and burn in the gym. Hey, let's get real: Most of us don't. At first you may barely have the energy to be in a good mood let alone bust your guts in an hour-long workout. Here's a piece of advice that you may not have expected from authors of a health book: DON'T!

Don't what?

Don't start exercising yet!

Again we urge you to listen to that sane and simple voice that aims to not complicate your already complicated and weary self. PLEASE DON'T add exercise training at first if you don't have the energy! And PLEASE DON'T add new exercise routines if you are already a little baffled amid the learning curve of the Trim Healthy Mama eating plan!

For now our advice is to relax and get the eating thang down—at least for the first few weeks or even a couple months. Weight loss from Trim Healthy Mama can happen with or without exercise. In fact, you will get better health and weight-loss results by not exercising at first if you are truly run down already.

Allow your body some time to heal and become nourished. Let it begin to flourish. Exercising on top of true exhaustion is a stressor that will turn off weight loss as your body slips into survival mode. In time, as you fuel your body correctly, your energy levels
will rise. As your blood-sugar levels stabilize and your cells become truly nourished with whole foods and both S and E fuels, you'll start to feel perky enough that the thought of vigorously moving your body doesn't sound so crazy anymore.

But let's be clear about something. When we talk about
exercise here we are talking about training the body in ways that are different from everyday healthy movement. When we say “take it easy and don't exercise” we are not telling you to sit on a sofa all day and maybe take a stroll to and from your car and back to your house or around your living room. A sedentary life only breeds more exhaustion and demise to your body. You've got to get some fresh air and get that blood of yours moving through your body to keep you feeling alive. Please do take lovely and lively walks. We don't consider walks to be physical training sessions—they are just enjoying the two legs God put underneath you.

There is going to come a time, we promise you, when you will want to start moving your new energetic self more vigorously. When this moment happens for you or if you are already there, actual physical training is a wise and well-needed next step. But major caution sign—hold up for a minute—the type of training you choose for your body at this point can either boost or bring down your health and shape.

Please do not suffer through long training sessions that exhaust your adrenals and raise
cortisol levels. Don't overtrain or wake up at five to fit in your hour on the elliptical machine when you hardly slept the night before. You might be able to flex more muscle after lots of brutal exercise, but your hormones may not be able to handle it. As Mamas our lives are demanding, and we know that stressing our adrenals will sabotage our weight loss, not boost it. Over and over again we see women unable to shed stubborn pounds simply because they are exercising too much. Our suggestion is that you keep training sessions to no longer than a half hour (of course natural activities like walking in the fresh air, dancing, and hiking are exempt from that).

Here at THM we not only shout “FOOD FREEDOM” but we also raise the battle cry for “BOOT CAMP FREEDOM.” We have to stand up and say no to these body-punishing, push-the-limits exercise notions that not only wreck our hormonal health and rob our luster for life but actually make miserable slaves out of us. Many Mamas are beaten-down prisoners to a religion of exercise that says if you don't clock in your quota of hours per
week of hard labor you are a fatty and a failure. We say no! We say move and make it fun! Move so you feel like celebrating life afterward and not falling on the floor like a dead cockroach. We have only one life to live. Let's not make it a tormented existence. Exercise training should be fast and fun and practical. It shouldn't feel compulsory but should be done out of the overflow of a zest for life.

Just as we went down so many diet dead ends, we also got caught up in the many exercise fads over the years (especially Serene). There is so much conflicting and confusing information out there about how a woman should exercise. After following much of it, Serene had to end up taking off several months from any vigorous exercise at all to heal her
body from damage of unwise exercising. After several years of burying ourselves in study about safe and effective exercise, we created an exercise system for ourselves and other Mamas like us—busy Mamas who want to heal our bodies rather than tear them down.

We called these sessions Trim Healthy Mama Workins. We coined them Workins because of our foundational belief that working out should never be attempted unless you are first working your insides—safely firing your deep core
muscles. Healing or developing a strong inner core before adding a whole bunch of circus moves is part of our simple, sane approach to health.

We designed Trim Healthy Mama Workins to be devoid of long, boring, time-wasting and injurious movement. The sessions are fast, effective, and designed to sculpt a fit feminine physique. This is a countercultural idea to the voice of the modern fitness industry.

Have you noticed the culturally accepted new fit female image is “hard,” “ripped,” and “shredded” beyond feminine soft lines? Models with rippling six-packs are splashed repeatedly on the covers of women's magazines. It's the new norm, but it is truly normal? While the portrayal of a healthy woman has changed over the decades, in recent years the example of female fitness portrayed by media is heading in a new and extreme direction. “Guns” have replaced toned biceps. The new “hot” or “sexy” is the ripple of ab muscles beneath tight skin rather than a healthy, trim waistline.

Getting your blood pumping and working up a sweat is good for you. However, this is a vastly different thing from many of the brutal workouts that are all the rage these days.
Muscles are great. We want to keep them as we age for hundreds of reasons, but our natural muscle distribution is different from men's. Our natural fat stores are vastly different from those of our male counterparts. Why are so many trying to reverse this natural distinction?

As females, we have 12 percent essential fat in our bodies to support our reproductive organs, brain, bone marrow, spinal cord, and complete nervous system. Compare that percentage to men, who have only 3 percent essential fat. We also NEED nonessential fat—the fat that lies just below the skin layer and helps protect our bodies from injury and cold. It also provides us with a great source of energy and allows us to sit on something other than a tailbone.

A healthy amount of fat on a woman is not repugnant. Shredding fat much below 18 to 20 percent can wreak havoc on a female body. Our fat deposits communicate with our hormones. Too little fat and our hormones sense we are in a life-or-death state. This reduces fertility and upsets the entire endocrine balance. Yes, let's seek the trim—but the shred? That goes against our natural design! It's also dangerous.

Just because we don't want to shed off all of our female fat layers doesn't mean we aren't gonna get deep into effective moves that not only burn fat to healthy levels but also shape and strengthen a woman's body where it needs it the most. Trim Healthy Mama Workins will give you a dynamic and productive workout but yet they are safely modified for all the ages and stages of a woman's life, even the vulnerable pregnancy and delicate core-healing season of the postpartum months.

We train the “bummy” big time! (Oops, excuse us, we didn't mean BIG, like make it chunky; but it really should have some oomph, which not only looks nice but, more important, is the healing and preventative key to pelvic-floor disorders.) We train the whole back line of the body, restoring a healthy posture that is the foundation in losing the tummy pooch and reconnecting a diastasis recti (a split down the middle that makes our “innards” become “outards”).

We keep it real—maybe way too real, as we lanky sisters are not coordinated and don't even attempt to pull off “professional.” We shot these Workins in one of our own living rooms with all the mess, children, and chaos. We didn't bother cleaning up
for you (much) because that would be fake and we wanted you to know that this is something you can fit into your mess and your own busy, crazy life. We do most of the seven Workins in our pj's or grungies and don't show any midriffs or cleavage, because you don't want to see that and neither does your family. The other reason is because we have had a bunch of babies and don't have any desire to bare the belly or boobs, know what we mean?

Of course, you don't need our Workins to start to enjoy and get the benefit of exercise. You can do anything you want to do that floats your boat. Just make sure that whatever training program you choose does not exhaust your precious and delicate hormonal interplay and tear apart your inner, feminine core.

Here are some motivational fitness quotes we found all over Pinterest recently. They're being repinned tens of thousands of times.

Enough is enough! When we stumbled on the above quotes (and hundreds more just like them) we cringed at the brutish attitude they expect a woman must adopt to be fit and strong. Yes, women are equal to men in terms of worth, rights, and value, but we are also gloriously different. This needs to be celebrated, not distorted!

We are designed uniquely as God's female creation. Why not inspire one another to enhance our femininity by allowing our natural shape to be revealed in a beautiful balance of fitness and softness? Fall back in love with the idea of having a fit, feminine, wonderful but imperfect body rather than a shredded, hard physique that is never quite good enough for impossible standards. Here are some new Pinteresty sayings from us that we wish were more the vogue.

Whether you have fun with our Workins, design your own exercise program, or enjoy other safe and femininity-enhancing fitness programs, keep the joy of movement as your banner. Don't let exercise become the dirge of a “treadmill-captive time-clocker.” Exercise should never become a means of punishing your body for the previous night's popcorn splurge at the movies. Let the beauty of movement bring healing, not hurt, to your new healthy FREE you. Laugh out loud as you progress at your own pace in fitness, and, most important, don't take it all too seriously. Go ahead and do a silly jig, move for the mere pleasure of being alive. In fact, if you're not going to do a silly jig on your own, work in with us and we're going to force you to. We make big fools of ourselves in a part of our Workins that we call the Hot Tater Crazy Dance. But this kind of carefree spirit is better for your body and mind than all this serious structured gym-bound plodding. Life has enough of its own misery without adding more to it on purpose.

Note: If you need a break from our crazy selves, as your workout buddies we suggest you try some of Suzanne Bowen's exercise DVDs. She is a great friend of ours (married to our cousin) and is a professional trainer so, unlike us, she actually makes exercising look good and graceful. We love her approach to female fitness because she takes a similar philosophy to our own. Her BarreAmped workouts are short but effective and she protects your inner core. Check out her BarreAmped workouts at
www.suzannebowenfitness.com
.