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Every month my AIM (Adventures in Maintenance) buddies and I kick around various ideas on weight loss maintenance. This month we discuss the difficulties of all the food associated with the holiday season that seems to start in September and continues non-stop through the end of December. How DO you negotiate those grocery store aisles laden with treats of every sort, and the never-ending assault of goodies everywhere you turn?

One of my favorite comfort foods this time of year is "Pumpkin Custard," essentially the innards of a pumpkin pie. With a few adjustments, it is a very light snack that can be enjoyed just about any day of the year. Here's a link to my recipe. I've also lightened up and pumpkinated quite a few tasty recipes. The links are all on my blog. And if you enjoy reading about my friends' solutions to "The Eating Season," click over to my blog at Debby Weighs In and there will be links to each blog there.

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I just returned from the Pacific International Quilt Show. Every year it seems there is a special exhibit that really touches me. This year it was an exhibit of 23 quilts called The Tall Girl Series: A Body of Work, by artist Carol Larson. I had heard the story behind these quilts before I came to the show. But to see the quilts, and read the stories behind each one touched me in a very deep way.

The quilts tell the story. In Carol's words:

in 1965 when i was 17 years old and 78.5 inches long, i was surgically shortened 6 inches with the intention of giving me a “normal” life. so begins the introduction of the “tall girl series: a body of work.”

this series highlights the 40+ years since the three surgeries that broke my body, nearly crushed my spirit and forever changed my life.

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Is the summer heat getting to you? Have you run out of ideas for healthy meals and snacks? Or are you just too busy quilting, along with all the other activities of summer, to actually stop and cook? Lately, I've had fun creating some simple and delicious meals and snacks. Cooking is one hobby that can rob me of valuable quilting time. So I love it when I find new ways to make old favorites more easily and quickly. 

Some of the ideas I've come up with are a simple frozen yogurt, a green strawberry yogurt smoothie, a peach compote on top of protein pancakes, and strawberry rosemary scones! I made a new version of "overnight oats" (a yummy combination of yogurt, oats and chia seeds, kind of like a breakfast pudding,) that I called Almond Joy Overnight Oats! Now that's a great breakfast to start out your days in the heat of summer. I even made a simple lower calorie pizza using pre-made whole grain pizza dough. Oh, and I re-visited the recipe that I shared in the latest issue of The Quilt Life magazine--Single Lady Lasagne. This one has a few more ingredients, but even it is easier to make than traditional lasagne (and has a lot less calories!)

I share my ideas and recipes over on my blog, Debby Weighs In. You can find these particular ideas in these two posts: A Pretty Fun Day and Recipes and Ideas.

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I have a confession to make. I am a closet hooker. NO, NOT THAT KIND OF HOOKER! I am an occasional rug hooker. But with the never-ending succession of quilting ideas, it is hard for me to get to my rug hooking. At most, I make about one hooked rug per year. And I usually attend one big rug hooking event each year as well, which motivates me to actually WORK on my hooked rug occasionally. 

Over the last couple of months, I would tell myself every week "I'll hook my rug on Sunday." But it never happened. Instead I did some hand-quilting, or even knitted on occasion. So one Sunday, I set myself up for success. I actually set myself up to hook when I got home from church. I put away the current hand quilting project. I put away the knitting that is always at the ready. I even dusted the little side table off, and cleared away the clutter of needles and needle threaders that had fallen. And I got everything ready to go.

And guess what? I HOOKED ON MY RUG!

The correlation is obvious, right? You don’t need me to point out that we need to do the same thing to set ourselves up to make healthy choices when it comes to our diet, do you? I wrote about specific things I do to keep myself on the healthy eating bandwagon on my blog:

Setting yourself up for success, whether in art or healthy living…its a good thing.

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Is it just me, or have some of you found that the active life and quilting do not co-exist peacefully? 

I want to be an art quilter. That takes time. It requires long periods of sitting, thinking, dreaming, sketching, and finally sewing. Moving from the sewing machine to the ironing board is not mentioned on the American Heart Association's list of recommended exercise. And after a while, sitting for long periods of time is actually not very comfortable. 

On the other hand, I want to be healthy. Regular exercise is a very important part of good health. And exercise takes time too! Somehow I've got to figure out how to intermingle these two disparate parts of my life into one healthy balanced life.

Here are a few things that have worked for me in the past few months.

Functional exercise! Gardening and quilting seem to go together quite often. If you have a lot of work to do in the garden, not only will it nourish your soul and your creativity, quite often it will give you a very good workout for the day. 

When I am working consistently on a single quilt project, many times I will come to a point where I no longer even like it! Or, I will just be stumped as to which way to go next. That's the time to grab the dog and head out for a short walk. Oftentimes, I will walk back into the house and see my work with fresh eyes, and know exactly what the next step is.

If I've had a good day of quilting, sometimes I am ready to quit for the day by 2pm. That's when I head down to the gym for some work on the weight machines, the bike, or a swim in the pool.  

Another thing I have been doing (to increase my aerobic workout and also to decrease my total exercise time,) is HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training.) Basically, I walk as fast as I can for 100 paces, and then walk normally for 20 steps. I repeat this 8 to 10 times, and end my walk with a nice stroll. There is a lot of evidence that this type of exercise can raise your metabolic rate and give you a more effective workout in a shorter period of time (more time to quilt!!)

What if you are injured? Or old? Or out of shape? Check, check, and check. Been there, done that. I wrote about it here--You Can Always Do Something!

Exercise is going to take time. There's no two ways about it. But changing my intention and attitude about it will go far in helping me to incorporate it into my life without resenting the time it takes. And eventually, I came to realize that I did love exercise.

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I'm one of the lucky ones. I LIKE vegetables. Vegetables are good for you, and low in calories. We can all agree on that, right? But sometimes it gets difficult to get enough vegetables into your day.  

I've found that cooking extra servings and having them ready to warm up in the microwave is what works for me. I've also been exploring a few new-to-me veggies and veggie combos. Because if I get too bored with anything, I will just rebel and stop eating it. Having plenty of salad fixings ready in the fridge also makes for a quick lunchtime quilt break.

If you'd like to ready more about my vegetable explorations, click here:

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The AIM (Adventures in Maintenance) girls are at it again! This month we are tackling the topic of regaining weight after a large weight loss–IS IT INEVITABLE???

We all have heard the statistics--95 percent of those who have lost weight will regain that weight. But what about those who have lost a large amount of weight--oh, let's say one hundred pounds--and then regain a portion of that weight. Is that inevitable?

There is not a lot written about this. All I can tell you about is my own experience. If you'd  like to read the whole article, click on the button:

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It's that time of month again--time for the AIM (Adventures in Maintenance) girls to target another interesting topic. What and how exactly do successful weight loss maintainers eat? A reader wrote in and asked "How do you organize your daily food plan -- in detail -- I'm interested in the thought processes, and mental list-making, and actual grocery-shopping tactics. The day-to-day, "brass tacks" of healthy eating. It's been the most challenging thing for me."

So the five of us have tackled this question. I'm looking forward to reading my friend's answers. I'm pretty sure we'll all have a different take on this. If you are struggling with the whole concept of a lifetime of change in regards to your eating habits, please join us. It's sure to be an interesting conversation.

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What do pizzas and smoothies have to do with the healthy quilter? And why should they be lumped together in the same post? After all, one (pizza) is often considered the nemesis of the dieter, and the other (smoothies) are often (wrongly) considered the friend of the dieter. 

Recently I wanted some pizza. So I decided to try to make a lower calorie pizza, while still retaining the deliciousness of the honest-to-goodness pizza. I wrote about my experience here. If you check it out, you will notice that there is a LOT LESS cheese on this pizza. But it still retained the wonderful taste of the real thing, for a lot less calories. For the busy quilter, an added bonus to this kind of cooking is that the leftovers can be frozen in individual servings and reheated at your whim. When you are in the middle of that big project, no need to stop and cook!

And now for smoothies. I just wrote a blog about how pizza and smoothies are similar. Huh?? Both pizzas and smoothies are quite palatable. Both of them have an infinite variety of ways to make them. They both have many many different add-ins and add-ons that make them oh so tasty. And that is where they can become a problem for the person who is either losing weight or trying to maintain their weight loss. All those little add ins add UP. And this was the problem that I had with smoothies in the past. I would add in a bit of this and a bit of that, or follow a super sounding recipe. And pretty soon I had 400 calories in a cup. 400 calories that didn’t seem to keep me full for too long. And that doesn’t work for me. That’s why I made the declaration that I would rather chew my calories. And for the most part, I wrote off smoothies.

But this past November I decided to give smoothies another try.  This time, though, they had to meet certain requirements. I wanted to have 20 grams of protein (because protein keeps you full longer,) and only be 170 calories. Twenty grams of protein is 80 calories. This doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for add-ins. But if you are creative, you can make some very tasty smoothies. I've written about some of my simple creations here.

When I am in the middle of working on a quilt project, I really enjoy my smoothie break. It doesn't interupt the creative flow. There is very little prep work or clean up after. And it gives me plenty of energy to keep working for quite a while.

For the quilter on the go, here is my best tip for making smoothies the ultimate traveling companion. If I am going somewhere, and I don’t want to drink my smoothie right away, I will go ahead and make it, and then put it in the freezer for a while. How long I want it to stay cold and frosty will determine the amount of time I leave it in the freezer. I just love this. I can bring my smoothie with me and have it waiting for me, cold and frosty, as soon as I finish my visit to that first quilt shop! Don’t forget to pack a straw!

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Most of us, at one time or another, have been on some sort of diet to try to lose weight. And most of us (95%, if the stats are accurate,) have experienced the disappointment of regaining that same weight. I recently joined up with four of my "maintainer-blogger friends" to try to share our collective experience in weight loss maintenance. Collectively, we have lost a total of 528 pounds, and have been maintaining for 24.5 years. Our name is AIM--"Adventures In Maintenance." We plan to choose one subject and each write about it from our perspective and personal experience on the first Monday of each month.

This month the question we tackled was "What's Different This Time?" I'll give you the Reader's Digest Version of what I wrote. I knew this time that whatever I did, it had to be for the rest of my life. I actually knew that 20 years ago, before I started this last journey down the scale (eight years ago.) I knew it and I didn't think it was something I COULD do, so I refused to try dieting for a LONG time. And when I did finally start, the motto that was always on my mind was, "What you're doing now isn't working. You must do something differently." The third thing that I think helped was that I actually admitted that I needed help. I couldn't do it on my own.

If you'd like to read more about the possibility of long term weight loss maintenance, click on over to my blog, Debby Weighs In. I'll share more about what I've learned this time around, and I'll have links to my four friends who have shared their "secrets of success" in maintaining their weight losses.