In groups of 5

So I lost my first 5 pounds today!!! Of course I'm rather apprehensive about the scales tomorrow; they seem to be rather vindictive. One day they'll go down 1/2 a pound and the next they'll go up 2 pounds. I really don't know the rhyme or reason, though I have a sneaking suspicion that if I logged what I ate and when I ate it for the next couple of weeks, I'd have a better idea. Can't be bothered, though.

When I happily announced to a group of people that I was going to lose weight this semester (why oh why did I do that?), I wasn't thinking about the miserable aspect of that. Realistically, there are 2 ways to lose weight. Increase exercise. Reduce calorie intake. I've done both in order to have maximum impact and because I know that for my body I can't just increase exercise because I end up eating whatever I like and putting on weight instead of losing it.

This time around I'm limiting myself to 2 meals a day with fruit in the evening if I need it. It's hard. Actually, it's VERY HARD. And yes, I meant to put that in all caps. My stomach rattles rather emptily at about 8 pm and I usually don't get to sleep til 11 so I end up being distracted by it and can't think very clearly. I crave carbs because I love eating bread and my current diet doesn't allow for a lot of that.

Here's what I'm doing:

• Exercise 3 miles a day (walk up hills/jog down hills) 6 days a week
• Eat oatmeal with blueberries and walnuts for breakfast 5 days a week
• Eat beans for lunch 5 days a week if possible
• Skip supper or eat an orange/grapefruit if needed

Nothing too fancy but the key is consistency. The benefits after 2.5 weeks:

• Lost 5 pounds
• Pants fit better
• Increased self-esteem
• Sleep well at night
• Reduced sugar cravings

I didn't even realize it, but because of my diet, I've significantly reduced the amount of sugar I eat. Now, if I want something sweet, I have a rice cracker with Smuckers Fruit Spread and Tofutti Sour Cream. A couple of those and I'm happy!

I'm so pleased that this has been successful and I'm writing about it because I need the accountability. I need to lose a minimum of 29 pounds by August 1 and 5 of those are gone already! I plan to march at my graduation with a huge smile, not just because I completed the studies, but because I reached a very important personal goal of losing weight. I am also going to a large convention in July and would love to feel comfortable in my skin when I meet up with old friends there. Plus I need to learn how to eat healthy now so when I'm there for 2 weeks I don't put all the weight right back on. This is the daily battle, possibly a battle for life, but that is why I'm fighting it. I want my life and I'm willing to fight my natural desires for the sugars, the carbs, and the processed foods high in fat, so I can be victorious with Christ's help.

Tumbling Backwards

Last week was great. Lost 3.5 pounds. Jogged an hour each morning. Ate oatmeal for breakfast and lentil soup for lunch. I finally wasn't hungry at suppertime and was content with fruit or a single slice of bread.

This week was horrible. Found 1.5 of those pounds. I was supposed to lose another 2 so now I'm off track. Ate chocolate granola bars for breakfast, frosting for supper. Slept in every morning. Trying to keep up with a sudden mountain of expectations at work and school while finding some time for me.

Not exactly sure where I'm at right now. If I don't keep up the exercise and healthy eating, I think a thousand thoughts a day about how I need to lose weight. If I keep it up, I get discouraged when I see the weight fluctuate as it is wont to do, seeing as how I'm a female and if I happen to cry the night before I'll lose 2 extra pounds!

It is one day at a time but it has to be a long term plan too. I would be so happy if I could take my graduation photos in six months as a woman who is a healthy weight. That number is 27 pounds away. It means a pound gone every week. Every single week.

An Emotional Hole

I stress-eat. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone but what I need to know is how to stop doing that. Tonight it was a frustrating text message exchange that set off the binge of Danish cookies and hazelnut vanilla spread. I think I managed about 1500 calories, or 10 times as much exercise as I did today (which was not easy, I might add). They say that exercise is not as beneficial to weight loss as learning how to eat right and it makes sense when I look at the numbers.

In the end, it's only me who suffers. When I find myself in a difficult situation and I console myself with high-fat high-sugar high-carb comfort foods, I feel good for a moment but once the food disappears and I come out of the fat/sugar/carb "coma" I realize that 1500 calories has gone into my mouth but the emotional hole is as empty as before.

I had decided to exercise diligently this week. I am changing my resolution. Instead I shall work on understanding what is going on inside my head and heart. I shall also use some of that time to indulge in healthy foods. In other words, make hummus and eat it with cucumbers and olives instead of grabbing chips and salsa. Peel an orange instead of a granola bar.

My affirmation for this week: "If it doesn't challenge you, it doesn't change you." ~Fred Devito.

Which key is it?

I had hoped it wouldn't come back to this. Successfully managing to keep off about 5-8 pounds, but the rest of the 22+ have returned. I get frustrated because I wonder if I will ever manage to drop to that magical weight and be able to keep it there. Read about all-or-nothing thinking today in The Lost Art of Thinking and realized that there is where one of my challenges lie. I had just decided not to eat vegenaise again. I've done that before, then I've binged on it, and then I'm right back to where I started. It's hard for me to set realistic goals; in life as well as in weight loss I tend to aim for an "A" grade and anything less than that means that I'm less than also.

This is going to be hard, but this week I am going to restrict myself to 30 minutes of exercise every day. I'm doing it for a purpose; I want to be able to sustain it and I want to enjoy it/look forward to it. I will also do my best to eat oatmeal for breakfast and an orange every night for supper.

I'm turning 35 this year, in just over 6 months. I would like to reach a weight that makes me smile, both when I reach that milestone birthday and when I reach for my graduate diploma. I feel sad because I think it's not possible, I can't keep up a regime of oatmeal breakfasts, no suppers, no sugar, and no oil for long. Tonight though, I want to commit to myself that I will consider this goal as important as my goal of graduating with a 4.0 GPA (4 classes away from that!). I would like to dedicate time, persistence, and encouragement to my goal of a healthier me.

I recognize that the biggest struggle is not inside the doors of my refrigerator or the size of my plate. It is within me. When I can learn to be kind to myself and to translate that kindness into health instead of numbing foods, then I shall have unlocked the key to success.

The Natural Diet

It's okay to celebrate with food, but I don't think it's as healthy to reward or comfort with food.

That's my deep thought of the day. I watched "FedUp" last week and, being the take-action type of person I am, I decided to stop eating sugar. Completely. Well, with the exception of going out to eat because I'm not going to ask what is in every single dish and I eat out about once a week anyhow. When I go out to eat, I still try to make conscientious choices, for example having a savoury breakfast rather than waffles or pancakes.

I'm very curious to see whether it will make a significant difference in my overall weight, abdominal weight, and mental clarity. It's just been 11 days and in all honesty, I haven't noticed anything different. I'm committed to try it for a month, though. Learning about how sugar is in everything (and believe me, once you start reading labels, it is!) and how sugar affects insulin resistance, made me very interested in taking back the control that sugar seems to have taken over my life.

Well, let me rephrase something I said earlier, though. I think I am experiencing fewer cravings and my sense of sweet is heightened. For example, I had applesauce on my bread this evening and it tasted rather sweet to me even though it was unsweetened. The natural sweetness was enough to satisfy my need for a different taste than savoury.

My biggest challenge in all of this is finding substitutes. First, because I'm not eating sugar or anything with sugar, the natural replacement is fat. Ie. if I don't have jam on my bread, I'll eat peanut butter and margarine, probably not the best idea. Then I'm a bit frustrated because I'm a big bread eater and I'm tired of eating sandwiches with tahini and vegenaise. I want variety! I'm a sanguine! I think I'll have to just get creative and make bean dips and fruit sauces. If I experiment a little til I find what I like, it should get easier. I think what's so funny is that I'm getting frustrated because a handful of foods are being taken away, when in reality I have a huge variety of fruits, nuts, grains, and vegetables to choose from!

My go-to right meals that are keeping me from going crazy right now are breakfast bars with dried apricots, dates, applesauce, trail mix, and unsweetened soymilk all mixed up and baked in the oven, and quinoa salad. Quinoa is probably high in calories and I'm still trying to get my emotional satiety buttons to recognize that when I have a bowl of quinoa salad, that is a meal and not a starter! But I mix up a huge bowl of that and it lasts me throughout the week. Another fun way to eat quinoa is with chickpeas, sweet corn, and green salsa.

The reason for this post, other than that I realized it's been far too long yet again between posts, is that I stepped on the scales this morning and it was not a good day. I resolved that I need to do something conscientiously and intentional to make a difference in that number, so I'm going to do so. I have a lot of excuses, I'm busy with work and studies, could be due to metabolism, etc. ad nauseum. But I think a lot of times we create our own destiny by the words we speak and we can speak truth or we can speak falsehood. I want to learn how to speak more truth so my actions will follow.

Lagging

So today wasn't the best of days. Ate a Twix bar, an Aussie bite, a microwave chocolate souffle, 2 waffles with maple syrup and margarine, and a piece of basboussa. In addition to 2 regular meals. Walked just over 4,000 steps. Yep, it wasn't the best of days. I haven't mentally calculated all the calories, but I'm pretty sure it's more than my daily allotment of 1,500!

So what to do when a day like this happens? First of all, my stomach is feeling pretty miserable and I had to leave a couple bites of the souffle in the bowl because I would be sick if I ate anymore. I'm thankful for that, strange as it may seem. Second, I realized that I ate this evening because I am programmed to eat when I watch any kind of cooking show (Top Chef Just Desserts was my downfall) and I wasn't hungry. So my 3.5 weeks of going to bed with a growling stomach was worth it to finally have an evening when I wasn't hungry. Of course I defeated the purpose by eating. . .but that's besides the point. And finally, I know it's a hassle but I'm going back to counting my daily grams of fiber. When you know something works, wisdom dictates that you continue to do whatever it happens to be. I was discouraged when I first started my high fiber diet because it didn't seem to be effective. Until several days in, when the weight started dropping and didn't stop. When I quit being conscientious about the fiber intake, though, the weight stabilized and then began to creep back up.

I want, no I need, to lose the weight for good. My goal in all of this is to learn how to eat healthily so that when there are days that I can't exercise, my body will still be happy because I will be giving it fuel rather than clogging it up.

So tomorrow is the first of September and my goal is to lose 5 pounds this month. I think it's possible and I plan to achieve my goal. If I can do so, I'll be that much closer to my goal weight and I'll be able to fit more comfortably into my clothes. I have the cutest red dress sitting in my closet waiting to be matched with a pair of red heels and a slimming black belt. Just a few more pounds and this 34-year old woman will be steppin' out in style!

Step by Step

So after the summer, and all the traveling that goes along with that (yes, I'm still figuring out how to eat healthy while traveling, not so big on packing my own snacks and dried noodles and things), I have decided I need to work on the weight loss again.

I'm pleased to report that 3 weeks later I've lost my first 6 pounds! Super awesome!!!

Yep, like most people, after I lost about 20 pounds a couple of years ago, I went through my usual high-stress time and put on half of that and then a couple more. It was hard, my fun new clothes didn't fit anymore, I felt bad about my weight, and I attributed a whole lot of disappointments to those extra pounds. Then, with a bit of incentive outside of myself, I decided I was going to work on this weight loss seriously.

It's not easy. That's the first thing I always need to remind myself. It's soooo easy to put on the weight. Skip exercise, eat high-calorie low-nutrient foods, skimp on sleep, and load up on the stress. It's not so easy to lose the weight, even when you reverse the trend. Here are a few things I've been doing that have helped me in the last 3 weeks:

• Get regular sleep
• No food after 7 pm
• Drink at least 2 liters of water a day
• Keep a fiber log
• Make exercise manageable

I love sleeping but I'm a night owl and I need to wake up early to get my exercise in before work. That combination does not work well. This week I'm making a deliberate effort to turn off my laptop as close to 9 pm as possible and start winding down. I read a little, write a little, and do a Sudoku puzzle before I sleep.

My rule isn't hard and fast, but I do my best to eat supper around 6 pm so it has time to digest before I go to sleep. I find that I sleep deeper when I eat earlier.

If it's hard to drink 2 liters, try a tall glass as soon as you wake up, another glass after you exercise, and then keep a water bottle with you and drink from that throughout the day. I usually have 1.5 liters in by lunch and then work on the rest in the afternoon. Staying hydrated keeps the cravings down.

I found a blog online that gave detailed steps on how to keep a fiber log using myfitnesspal.com. I faithfully tracked my fiber for about a week (being sanguine it's hard to justify more time than that!) and was very surprised to learn where the fiber was: in beans. Yep, the humble bean, no matter which form (though black beans are extra high in fiber) is perfect for keeping the blood sugars stable. I aim for a cup a day. The perfect snack is half a cup of beans with salsa poured over it! Low calorie/high fiber and tasty too.

Exercise is my nemesis because right now I'm limited to a cement road as I'm rather stingy and don't want to shell out the $50+ a month to join a gym that I would have to drive 15 minutes to get to. I have decided to cut back from an hour, though, to half an hour because I think that is more reasonable for my lifestyle. I'm using exercise at this point to jolt the weight loss, but not as the primary means. My goal is to understand how to eat right so I don't have to rely on excessive amounts of exercise to stay at a healthy weight.

Yes, I have gone to bed with a very empty stomach that hurts and grumbles and growls at me. I'm hoping that goes away soon. Yes, I've craved sweets and chocolates and all things fried and tasty. I had half a Twix and the rest is sitting in the freezer. I bought dark chocolate Hershey kisses and mini York peppermint patties. Those are in the fridge for the day I know I'll need a little pick-me-up. Yes, I don't always feel like exercising so I skip a morning here and there.

What keeps me motivated this time? I think it's because I need to prove to myself that it can be done, at home, with simple ingredients and not a lot of hassle or expensive equipment. I need to learn persistence in this area so I can be consistently persistent in other areas of my life. I also want to write a book one day about healthy living and loving the journey you're on. So that's what keeps me going.