Talking It Off

Here We Go Again

17 Day Diet, Last Ten Pounds No Responses »

May 072011

Two months later. I’m 50. I promised myself that I need never think about my weight again.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Oh well.

I’m happy with life in general and being lighter isn’t going to make that better.

However, I just can’t leave aside the idea that I would be healthier if I weighed less.

I still want a healthy sized waist and my knees would like a lighter body for running.

the husband and I are embarking on the 17 Day Diet. YES, I KNOW.

Now that I’ve read the book, I see that it’s not so much a low carb as a low GI diet. I just need something that doesn’t leave any room for “faffing”.

Of course, I’ve already modified it for my own enjoyment – just a little milk in my tea and coffee – so we’ll see how it goes.

I wasn’t going to weigh myself but I did it without thinking this morning – after not doing so for almost 2 months!

So I’m starting at 148.6. Let’s see if this is the ticket to 139.

Two Weeks In

Keeping Going, Last Ten Pounds No Responses »

Mar 072011

It’s the beginning of the third week and I’m wavering between encouragement and disappointment.

Weight: It’s all over the place between 146 and 148 – up and down and up and down and etc…..

I’m not used to this stubborn lack of downward trend – especially when I’m eating the correct input/output balance of calories that should lead to a loss. That’s discouraging – but I’m still down overall and I can’t possibly not lose a little given the way I’m eating and moving. So I’ll plough on.

Exercise: Yesterday I did my “accidental” 10k in 70 minutes.

Must explain the “accidental”. I run 5k with a group of women every Sunday and the group meets around 2.5k from my house. We are currently without a car so, if I want to run with the group, I need to cover 10k. Last week I walked down and back. This week I ran a bit and walked a bit down and back and ran most of the 5k in the middle. Result: a 70 minute 10k. I’m looking forward to improving on that next week.

So the “things to do by 50″ project moves forward. My hair is almost all grey, I’m into the New Testament on my read through the bible and I can now cover a 10k in a respectable time. If my weight isn’t exactly where I envisioned it, then I can hardly beat myself up.

If, on my 50th birthday, I wake up weighing 147lbs but able to run 10k in an hour, I won’t be disappointed.

But I still want to get that waist down another inch so I will keep working hard till the end of April to see if I can do it.

EDIT! I wrote the above in my dressing gown, went upstairs, put on my jeans and did up my belt. To the next hole. Just the motivation to keep going and show a quick 2 fingers to the scales.

Belly Fat

Exercise, Health, Last Ten Pounds No Responses »

Mar 022011

Last week I lost a couple of pounds and this week I seem to have put them back on – despite eating and exercising to plan.

So what am I going to do?

I’m going to keep pushing through until something happens.

I’m going to keep running and walking and journalling and being positive that my health is being improved even if the scale isn’t doing anything positive.

I’ve said it before but I certainly need to remind myself that this isn’t really the “last 10 pounds”. Mentally, I’m at the end of something but, physically, my body could lose another 25 pounds and still be healthy. So I just need to keep doing this – and do my best to ignore my projected weight loss figures for March. That kind of counting unhatched chickens only leads to discouragement.

I’m keeping this positive mindset because I’ve been reading up on the subject of visceral fat – the fat that sits inside your body and around your organs. Here’s what I’ve learned:

There’s no doubt that I have an “at risk” shape. Even though I have a healthy BMI, I should lose another inch or two off my waist to be really healthy in the body fat department.

Exercise will work on this kind of fat – even in the absence of weight loss – so I will keep moving whether the scales move down or not.

If you want to read more, look at these Obesity Panacea posts:

This one talks about how exercise reduces visceral fat even if it doesn’t have a large effect on weight.
This one talks more in depth about the relationship between exercise and weight loss.

Wine

Food, Last Ten Pounds 1 Response »

Feb 272011

Wine

It’s long been an angel/devil, love/hate thing but I’ve finally made a decision about the drink which is so much a part of my middle aged life.

I’m not going to have full bottles of it in the house any more. I’m happy to have a glass when I eat out. I can also buy those little single serving bottles once in a while as long as it’s for a social situation.

But it can’t sit by the bottle-full in my fridge and be just neutral in my life. It’s not neutral; it’s negative.

I don’t like how it makes me feel.

I don’t like how it makes me eat.

Judging from conversations with friends of a similar age, we’ve got to the point where alcohol in general has a swifter and harsher effect on our brains and bodies. Even a couple of glasses can leave us with headaches the next morning. And who needs that?

I’ll let you know how it goes

The Custom Built diet

Food, Last Ten Pounds 1 Response »

Feb 242011

I decided to take a different approach to this “regime”. (The word is in the news so much these days that it just seems to fall off my fingers onto the keyboard.)

Basically – I sat down and thought about what I wanted to eat every day that would still allow me to lose weight. That’s such a different starting point than sitting down and wondering what I should cut out of my diet every day.

I came up with this:

breakfast – a big bowl of porridge, fruit and yogurt (porridge made with half a cup of oats and 2.5 cups of water.) Right now my fruit is tinned pumpkin heated up and stirred in with the yogurt. I’ll probably have blueberries next.

lunch -cottage cheese and 4 slices and ryvita. I eat 150g of cc which is about a quarter of a large tub. Sometimes I nibble on a couple of the crackers about an hour before I eat the rest.

snack – dried fruit. About 60 calories worth and, I’m afraid, for now I’m buying the over-packaged individual portions for some extra built-in self-control.

I also build in 6 big mugs of coffee and/or tea per day – each with 1/3 cup 1% milk. I tried to have less milk but it tasted like a diet, so I got rid of a 100g yogurt snack and just enjoy my milky hot drinks.

dinner – a big plate of vegetables and lean protein. I originally had thought about half the protein and a small portion of rice, but I’m happy with more chicken and no rice. (One less pot to wash.) These past couple of days have been chicken breast cut up with a green, red and yellow pepper, an onion and 2 carrots, all tossed in 2 tsp of olive oil and roasted in the over. I think the next 4 days will be a big pot of veggie chili.

alcohol - In the absence of a commute, I do like a drink to signal that the working day is over. Wine is hard to control once that bottle is open so I’ve opted for a well tonicked G&T. I use a measure of gin and a 300ml bottle of Fever Tree naturally light tonic which is very tasty. It’s nice long grown-up tasting drink with only 1 unit of alcohol.

Once I figured out what I wanted to eat, it was easier to figure out what needed to be temporarily off the menu, namely:

cheese
peanut butter
bananas
wine
all other forms of crackers and bread

With wine, the thought process was, “I want wine but can’t control it. What should I have instead?”

With all the others, I didn’t actually notice I wasn’t eating them because I started from “What do I want to eat every day?” and they didn’t feature on the list. Interesting. If I’d wanted to eat peanut butter every day, I would have made it work, but it didn’t even come to mind. Not just interesting – bloomin’ amazing.

Tomorrow: What happens on the days when I can’t just eat to my own selfish routine?

Hunger

Food, Last Ten Pounds No Responses »

Feb 222011

Yesterday I got thinking about the difference between these two statements.

I’m not hungry.

and

I feel satisfied.

I figure you’ll never see an ad (advert, commercial – we’re nothing if not bilingual around here) for a diet where someone says “And I always feel satisfied!” (big smile on a skinny body.)

The fact is that many of us overeat to feel “full” – not just to take the edge off hunger. I can eat an orange and not feel hungry but it doesn’t satisfy if I’m trying to feed something other than my appetite.

Yes, I know, it’s Weight Loss 101. But I’m not sure how to conquer it completely.

Yesterday, because I had given myself permission to be utterly selfish (anti-social, really) about food, I spaced my eating throughout the day to suit no one but myself. I only felt hunger when I needed to – as a signal to eat. I ate enough to satisfy that hunger.

Was I satisfied? Only because the thought of losing weight replaced the need to “feel full” in my stressful life. I figure it will be a good five days before “diet satisfaction” starts to wane and I need to replace it with something else.

So, thinking ahead, how am I going to stay satisfied without feeling overly full?

Something to think about today.

It’s War

Exercise, Food, Last Ten Pounds No Responses »

Feb 212011

I’m not big on military imagery but this weight loss thing certainly has some parallels with “warring”.

These past 2.5 years have been a series of battles won and lost, interspersed with periods of peace – and it’s time for the “last battle”.

The first thing I want to point out is that the enemy is not my body. And the enemy is not food. Those are both good, no, wonderful things and my closest allies during these next few weeks.

The enemy is my own attitude – that is, the sizable commitment gap between what I want and what I’m prepared to do to get it.

This week I’m prepared to close that gap by throwing all my ammunition at these last few pounds.

Ammunition?

Burning off at least 200 calories through exercise no matter what.

a 2 mile run
a 3 mile walk
2 hours of shopping
Those are daily minimums.

The thing I’m not going to do is spend one whole day doing nothing because I know that I’m going on a 5 mile run the next day. While the battle is raging, this has got to be an everyday commitment.

Eating with exacting discipline.

Breakfast lunch and dinners will be the same for 4 days at a time. Boring but it makes planning and shopping easier.
All ingredients weighed and measured. ie The 1/4 of milk I usually journal for coffee is actually 3/8. That won’t matter a bit in a few weeks, but it matters in battle.
Eating more than the recommended 5 a day of fruit and veg. This means snacking on carrots even when it’s easier to grab a cracker.

Counting the cost.

As someone in the bible wrote, “No one goes into battle without first counting the cost.” Really? I do it all the time with predictable results.
The cost to me this week is no wine in the house. At all.
The cost is eating very carefully during the day when I’m going out for dinner in the evening.
The cost is choosing what I’m going to eat at the restaurant before I go – and sticking to it.
The cost is not being a very flexible human being when it comes to food choices. I will stick with my decisions even when they are socially a bit awkward. (This is my biggest “cost”.)

I will keep up this lack of flexibility (regime, dare I say, “diet”?) until the scale is really moving. Then I’ll rethink my strategy. I’m assuming that I will be eating like this until I leave for Canada at the end of March.

And what has prompted this last push? I’ve made a decision that, whatever I weigh when I wake up on my 50th birthday will be the lowest weight I will ever aspire to again. I’ve had enough of “ought” and “should” and even “want”. Time to hit real middle age with my head high – no matter what I weigh.

In the meantime, realising that I am serious about that has made me think that I will be very disappointed if I don’t ever keep that promise to myself to get down to 140lbs and live with it for a while. Hence the battle.

(Now, where are my bagpipes?)

Vanity Insanity in the UK

Body Image No Responses »

Feb 112011

One year ago I weighed a couple of pounds less than I do today.

And in case you don’t think today is special – it’s the day I noticed the linen trousers in the grocery store. Actually – the ones I’m talking about are linen & cotton blend. They have a bit of structure and they wash well.

But I can’t remember whether I bought regular or long so I decided to try them on and grabbed the two size 12s (US 8s) off the rack. They are BAGGY. And, no, this doesn’t make me smile; it makes me furious. We’ve got a country getting fatter and fatter and fatter and the people are thinking that they’re not getting bigger because they’re still wearing the same size.

It’s particularly a problem with the cheap stores and you can’t getter cheaper than buying clothes with your milk and bread. But still. It’s misleading and dishonest and wrong. Oh sorry – it’s marketing.

I don’t really know why this particular marketing pisses me off so much – I guess because it actually hurts people in the same but opposite way that airbrushing models hurts people. People with a history of obesity just don’t need any more help with distorted body images.

There’s got to be something between the unrealistic expectations of the media and the lies of the clothing marketers.

Grrr. Wish I had a creative solution.

Double-Mindedness

Keeping Going, Last Ten Pounds, Things to try No Responses »

Feb 042011

I know what I want.

I know what I have to do to get it.

I haven’t been doing that.

And I know why.

Because I’m at the slow end of weight loss and these next few pounds will require sacrifice. And I’m not in the mood.

So the question is: Am I more in the mood to drink wine every night or to get these last few pounds off and finally keep that promise to myself?

I’m heading off for a weekend of work with a little socialising in the evenings and I’ll be eating out for seven of the next nine meals. On Monday morning, I’ll decide what I’m going to do but I know for a fact that it will not be a decision to faff around for the next three months with no real results. I’m done with wasting time.

I keep going on about wine, not because I drink vast amounts but because it’s the one thing I could cut out of my diet which would not reduce my nutritional intake. I’ve been averaging about 1500 calories in wine every week and that could easily be turned into a calorie deficit if I drank mineral water instead.

In other words, I don’t really have to wait until Monday to decide what I have to do. I think it might be time to give up severely curtail the demon drink if only for my waistline.

After the weekend.

Weight Fluctuations & World News

Keeping Going, Last Ten Pounds No Responses »

Feb 012011

In all honesty, as I watch the unfolding of events in Egypt, these “last 10 pounds” are just not that big a deal. I’ll keep working on it but I’m fully aware that my struggles to shift a little weight are nothing.

I needed to get that out there.

In the not-at-all-important world of Me, my weight is bouncing up and down the same 2 pounds almost regardless of what or how much I eat. Frustrating? Yes. Unexpected? YES. Once I start working hard at this, the weight usually falls off slowly but steadily.

OK – that’s out there too.

It’s one of those weeks with loads to do and little inclination to do it. I think my commitment needs to be to just plough through and make a dent in my obligations.

So here’s the plan for the next 4 days:

Keep moving – 5 miles today and 3 miles on Thursday – plus just moving in general.

Make my To Do list shorter.

Make my environment saner.

Put energy into reducing the weight of my little world that is currently sitting on my shoulders.

And take some time to visualise what I hope to get out of this Last 10 Pounds exercise – not to mention my job and my life in general.

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Here We Go Again

Two Weeks In

Belly Fat

Wine

The Custom Built diet

Hunger

It’s War

Burning off at least 200 calories through exercise no matter what.

Eating with exacting discipline.

Counting the cost.

Vanity Insanity in the UK

Double-Mindedness

Weight Fluctuations & World News

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Burning off at least 200 calories through exercise no matter what.

Eating with exacting discipline.

Counting the cost.

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