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Spearmint Tea For Weight Loss?

WordVixen — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 01:54:00 +0000

UPDATE: I’ve built a Squidoo lens on my findings on how spearmint can effect PCOS. It’s been working well for me, so far.

My mother (the nurse) called me up today with a new home remedy for PCOS. You see, some of the side effects of PCOS is an inability to lose weight, facial hair (I don’t have much, but some), acne, excessive tiredness, insulin resistance, and so on.

I’ve been diagnosed with quite severe PCOS. And the best treatment? Birth control pill. Not so good when you’re trying to get pregnant. Of course, being that PCOS stands for Poly-Cystic Ovary Syndrome, um, infertility is kind of a given.

Anyway. The main culprit, at least in my case, is an excess of Androgen. Yanno, I’ve never had good experiences with men named Andy. And, Androgen is a male hormone, sooooo…

Here’s the thing. Supposedly, drinking 2 cups of spearmint tea a day can reduce your Androgen count. I wouldn’t recommend it for men (obviously) and it’s being touted as the cure for female facial hair. But, since it’s reducing the cause of female facial hair, and that cause is the same cause for my PCOS, it stands to reason that the spearmint tea would help my PCOS. If true, it should help me to lose weight, clear my face, and do all the wonderful things that birth control did except prevent pregnancy.

They recommend loose leaf tea, which is harder to come by. However, one of my search results noted that the androgen levels went down within 5 days of starting the tea therapy. Sound good? Sounds good to me too.

I figure I’ll give it 2 weeks of drinking it hot once I get my hands on some of the loose stuff, and if it seems to be working, I’ll experiment a little with making it ahead and drinking it as iced tea. Wish me luck!

My Healthy Food Product Reviews

WordVixen — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 23:12:00 +0000

Remember how I talked about Kashi pizzas and frozen entrees? Well, I finally wrote up product reviews on all of them and they’re now published on Associated Content.

So, if you’d like to see my take on them, click the links to see the reviews.

Amy’s Black Bean Enchilada

Kashi’s Frozen Pizzas

Kashi’s Frozen Entrees

Smart Ones Thai Style Chicken & Rice Noodles

Tandoor Chef Frozen Entrees

I have to warn you, towards the end I started getting bored and a little bit slap dash.

Meal Planning Is The Best Way To Reduce Caloric Intake

WordVixen — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 20:30:00 +0000

I’ve noticed it with myself for years now. I can have all the fantasies about eating healthy that I want, but when it comes right down to it, when I’m hungry, I’ll take whatever is available and ready.

This morning is a perfect example. Hubby and I wanted to get going and check out a local landmark. So, while he was doing his morning exercise (I do mine at night- move in the morning? Perish the thought!) I went downstairs and pulled out the last slice of Kashi pizza. While one slice may do me for the evening, it’s not enough for running around all day.

So what did I do? Everything else would require cooking, so I grabbed one of those foam cups of Campbell’s Select soup. Not the drinking kind, the bowl kind. And that’s where they get you. On the bowl, you see calories listed as 180 cal. but if you look down, one bowl of soup is listed as 2 servings. 360 calories. Sure, that’s not too bad. But my slice of pizza is 225 calories. So my breakfast was a grand total of 585 calories. Technically, that’s fine. But guess what? I have no plans for lunch or dinner either.

Now, if I weren’t trying to reduce our grocery bills, I’d grab a bunch of Kashi and Smart Ones frozen entrees to keep in the freezer. That way, I’d be able to have a nice meal of under 300 calories, no guilt, and no cooking.

But when you’re trying to keep grocery bills low, you have to juggle numbers that Enron would balk at. Do you go for the high calorie, cheap, easy stuff? Do you go for the labor intensive healthy stuff? Or the expensive, easy stuff? Can you mix and match?

Usually, I plan about 1/2 of a week’s worth of meals within our budget (both monetary and calorie), and then give up and put down whatever I can think of. And when it comes to the weekends? I usually give up entirely and rely on our Burger King coupons. Did you know that they never offer coupons on salads?

The amazing thing is, if I have something healthy, and ready to heat up, I almost never choose to eat out or pick the unhealthy convenience item. Maybe it won’t work for you, but I need to start planning the groceries a little earlier each week.

Want To Lose Weight? Take A Vacation!

WordVixen — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 04:10:00 +0000

I admit, I’m just like everyone else who’s desire to lose weight fluctuated with the availability of good food and lousy but addictive television programs. I’d try exercising every day, just to catch a cold a week later (if you can’t breathe and standing up is a chore, chances are you won’t feel like exercising), or suddenly pick up old hobbies.

I latched on to information like “Don’t check your weight every day, because it’ll fluctuate. Only check once a week.” and “Exercise is only effective if you do it 2-3 times a week.” as an excuse to not exercise… that day. It’s just that “that day” turned out to be every day.

But what it came down to is that I like my routines. They wouldn’t be routines if I didn’t like them, would they? And as I always told my husband “I only have so much time in each day to do things that I don’t like, and work takes up most of that!”.

But like I said in My Story, I always seem to lose weight while I’m at Walt Disney World. I even had a Freudian slip there and originally typed “Walk Disney”. Obviously the weight loss came from walking several miles a day, since eating chicken fingers and bacon cheeseburgers isn’t exactly diet food (though I did do much better on this trip, and I may write a post about the delicious, healthy foods that I had).

I usually stayed active for a few days once I got home, but it never lasted past the second or third day of the return of my routine. But this time, I realized that.

Vacation broke my routine. A vacation lasting longer than one week will totally break your routine. I’ve heard studies that said it takes 3 days, 7 days, or 21 days to make an activity, thought, or whatever become a habit. But it usually takes much less to break a habit. Not to mention how most of us re-evaluate our lives and goals while on vacation.

You’re not trying to make a habit of eating healthy and exercising- you’re trying to break a habit of not eating healthy and not exercising. Exercise and healthy eating are supposed to be our natural habits, right? They didn’t have cheese balls and pizza (as we know them) in the 14th century. They didn’t ride in cars to get to work. I wouldn’t say that they all ate healthily (research shows that most didn’t, but it was all natural!), but junk food and leisure time are relatively new phenomena.

I’m getting totally off track here, but my point is: The best time to break a routine or habit is while you’re on vacation. The best time to start a new habit or routine is upon your return from a vacation.

And if that doesn’t convince your partner to whisk you away to a wonderful somewhere, I don’t know what will!