With the end of September in sight, I am, once more, looking over what these last months brought me. This time, I am rather pleased with the way things have been going. My weight has dropped by several kilos, and I am, once again, on a losing streak of the desirable kind, so there´s hope for the next quarter of the year to bring even more success in the weight loss department.
In the exercise department, sadly, I have almost completely slacked off. Too much going on around here. Maybe I´ll be able to get myself back on track there in October, after all, there are still some three months to go before I reasonably can expect it to snow. And ninety days times 300 calories burned might mean just those four kilos that would get me below morbid obesity.
Knowing that that point is within reachable distance by now actually feels strange. For so long, my interior representation of myself was something like "hello, I´m Julia, and I am hopelessly morbidly obese.".
One of the most urgent tasks for me, right now, is finding out what to think about myself when I am no longer obese.
Another is finding out all those things about myself that I never even got around to thinking about because my weight was, literally and mentally, getting in the way.Considering how long I´ve been obese, there are bound to be plenty.
And I have to go through them lest I regain every pound I´ve lost.
Julia
2011/09/30
2011/09/28
Roadside photo booth
Sometimes, stupidity is the criminal´s worst enemy.
Several weeks ago, the license plates of my car were stolen. I had not really had a lot of hope they´d find the perpetrator.
But now, I (and the police) at least know what the perp looks like- he´d put my plates on another car, and was photographed speeding by an automated radar trap, one week after I´d discovered the theft.
Of course, I was sent the ticket, complete with picture, and on top of the time I wasted getting new license plates, I had to inform the local traffic authority that this was neither me nor my car on the photo, add copies of all the paperwork that has already accumulated, and inform the local police.
Still, I did have a good laugh at that guy´s expense. The only drop of sadness is that he had to pick an automated station to get himself caught speeding. Well, I hope he´ll run into a police control soon- I have some bills I would like to present to him :(.
Julia
Several weeks ago, the license plates of my car were stolen. I had not really had a lot of hope they´d find the perpetrator.
But now, I (and the police) at least know what the perp looks like- he´d put my plates on another car, and was photographed speeding by an automated radar trap, one week after I´d discovered the theft.
Of course, I was sent the ticket, complete with picture, and on top of the time I wasted getting new license plates, I had to inform the local traffic authority that this was neither me nor my car on the photo, add copies of all the paperwork that has already accumulated, and inform the local police.
Still, I did have a good laugh at that guy´s expense. The only drop of sadness is that he had to pick an automated station to get himself caught speeding. Well, I hope he´ll run into a police control soon- I have some bills I would like to present to him :(.
Julia
2011/09/27
Shoe closet revisited
This weekend I finally tackled a task I had been procrastinating about.
I did do a round of decluttering my shoe closet in the spring already, but that time, there were several pairs that were either not loose enough yet or "too good to toss".
I had talked myself into keeping them by saying, I could always wear these with thick socks. Back then, that even worked, sort of.
But during the last weeks, I found myself avoiding those shoes, and when I wore them, socks or not, I found my feet floating around in them, sliding sideways and forward, with the heels flopping around with every step.
Conclusion? I have lost volume in my feet, too.
So, this weekend, I pulled out all of these candidates and put them into a big trashbag to take to donation.
First, of course, I tried on several pairs of them one last time.
Doing so helped me in getting several things very clear.
First of all, I am really down one and a half shoe sizes. Keeping the bigger shoes and wearing them only hurts my feet, apart from looking frumpy.
The second insight had to do with a pair of high-heeled mules I had bought in the first euphoria of weight loss.
As a teen and twen, I always wore shoes that had at least five to six centimeter heels. I had to quit doing so when I got too heavy to walk in them. And I had always imagined that I would wear them again if ever I were to lose enough weight. So, when I saw those high-heeled beauties (they had a somewhat wider heel, so I thought I´d be having enough support in them), I just had to have them.
But when I wore them for a full day the first time, my ankles hurt the day after. So, I thought I wasn´t thin enough yet to wear them. Back into the closet they went.
Yesterday, I tried them on and- found my feet sliding around in them, and I found that the arch of my foot hurt after just a few steps. I don´t know if there is any damage internally to my feet from the weight they have been carrying for so long, but like it or not, I´ll likely never again be able to comfortably wear shoes with a bigger than four centimeter heel.
It was one of those senior moments. The realization that my body, even when the excess weight is coming off, will retain some of the damage done by overload and time. The realization, too, that the interior image I have of a slim me is badly dated. At my age, I won´t be able to wear the things I thought I would be able to if only I were slim.
Most of them have been decluttered a long time ago, anyway. But even when I threw them out, I still believed there´d be others just like them.
It was almost as if there was a stored version of a younger me, complete with clothes, heels and lifestyle, inside my mind that was just waiting to be reloaded.
But life doesn´t work like that. I have changed. My life circumstances have changed. My job has changed. My body has changed.
It´s time to put that other version of me to rest. I wouldn´t want to have to go through the things that she went through again. So why should I bring her back? I won´t get a mulligan either. No chance to do it over knowing what I know now.
What I can do is accept that my life is different now. Actually, it´s a lot better than back then. I don´t need to perch on impossibly high heels any more just because they made me look taller and slimmer. I have found that respect doesn´t have to depend on having that long-legged tall slim look I tried to achieve. Nor does it depend on wearing the most garish makeup, or the wildest hairdo.
These days, I never wear make-up any more, I keep my hair cropped short in its natural pewter color, and in my low-heeled shoes, I have to look up to see a lot of people straight in the eye. The stick-on long fingernails have long gone to be replaced by plain old short nature.
I spend no more time and money on faking something that I am no more, and have never been. And what I save that way I can spend on being with DH and experiencing life with him. Life in the here and now.
Julia
I did do a round of decluttering my shoe closet in the spring already, but that time, there were several pairs that were either not loose enough yet or "too good to toss".
I had talked myself into keeping them by saying, I could always wear these with thick socks. Back then, that even worked, sort of.
But during the last weeks, I found myself avoiding those shoes, and when I wore them, socks or not, I found my feet floating around in them, sliding sideways and forward, with the heels flopping around with every step.
Conclusion? I have lost volume in my feet, too.
So, this weekend, I pulled out all of these candidates and put them into a big trashbag to take to donation.
First, of course, I tried on several pairs of them one last time.
Doing so helped me in getting several things very clear.
First of all, I am really down one and a half shoe sizes. Keeping the bigger shoes and wearing them only hurts my feet, apart from looking frumpy.
The second insight had to do with a pair of high-heeled mules I had bought in the first euphoria of weight loss.
As a teen and twen, I always wore shoes that had at least five to six centimeter heels. I had to quit doing so when I got too heavy to walk in them. And I had always imagined that I would wear them again if ever I were to lose enough weight. So, when I saw those high-heeled beauties (they had a somewhat wider heel, so I thought I´d be having enough support in them), I just had to have them.
But when I wore them for a full day the first time, my ankles hurt the day after. So, I thought I wasn´t thin enough yet to wear them. Back into the closet they went.
Yesterday, I tried them on and- found my feet sliding around in them, and I found that the arch of my foot hurt after just a few steps. I don´t know if there is any damage internally to my feet from the weight they have been carrying for so long, but like it or not, I´ll likely never again be able to comfortably wear shoes with a bigger than four centimeter heel.
It was one of those senior moments. The realization that my body, even when the excess weight is coming off, will retain some of the damage done by overload and time. The realization, too, that the interior image I have of a slim me is badly dated. At my age, I won´t be able to wear the things I thought I would be able to if only I were slim.
Most of them have been decluttered a long time ago, anyway. But even when I threw them out, I still believed there´d be others just like them.
It was almost as if there was a stored version of a younger me, complete with clothes, heels and lifestyle, inside my mind that was just waiting to be reloaded.
But life doesn´t work like that. I have changed. My life circumstances have changed. My job has changed. My body has changed.
It´s time to put that other version of me to rest. I wouldn´t want to have to go through the things that she went through again. So why should I bring her back? I won´t get a mulligan either. No chance to do it over knowing what I know now.
What I can do is accept that my life is different now. Actually, it´s a lot better than back then. I don´t need to perch on impossibly high heels any more just because they made me look taller and slimmer. I have found that respect doesn´t have to depend on having that long-legged tall slim look I tried to achieve. Nor does it depend on wearing the most garish makeup, or the wildest hairdo.
These days, I never wear make-up any more, I keep my hair cropped short in its natural pewter color, and in my low-heeled shoes, I have to look up to see a lot of people straight in the eye. The stick-on long fingernails have long gone to be replaced by plain old short nature.
I spend no more time and money on faking something that I am no more, and have never been. And what I save that way I can spend on being with DH and experiencing life with him. Life in the here and now.
Julia
2011/09/22
Going nuts- with reason
One of my primary binge foods have always been nuts. Peanuts, cashews, walnuts, pecans. Preferably roasted and salted. Or almonds, the smoked variety.
They have the distinction of being easily storeable, needing no preparation, and thus they are perfect as a standby food for those days at the office when all hell breaks loose, your stomach growls and you don´t know when you´ll be able to get yourself a decent meal.
The problem, for me, was that I couldn´t stop eating until the bag of nuts was gone. I´d dig into those bags, pull out nuts by the handful, and chomp them down while attacking the files on my desk. On my worst days, I ended up having to throw out two such bags afterwards, empty.
The problem is that nuts are one of the calorie densest food groups. So, that kind of nut orgy instead of lunch would cost me the caloric equivalent of several day´s caloric needs.
Still, giving up nuts entirely is something I would not do, so they still are part of my diet. But, since I have started to journal my food intake to the gram, I can no longer take out a handful and gobble it up. I have to count them or weigh them, and when eating them afterwards, I try to be conscious of how they taste, how it feels to chew them, eating them one after the other to prolong the experience.
Eating them like that means that I have a bag of nuts (same caliber I used to down in one sitting) in my kitchen that hasn´t gone empty for about two weeks. I have been eating some five to eight halves a day, consciously, incorporating them into my daily calorie count.
Being attentive when eating is proving to be one of the most effective weapons in my weight loss arsenal, actually.
I have found that I can, unfortunately, down incredible amounts of food without paying attention to it. Eating while on the phone, eating while watching TV, eating while driving. You could always recognize my car by the dropped peanuts under the driver´s seat.
The problem being that after that kind of mindless eating, I ended up still wanting to have a meal. It was, psychologically, as if I hadn´t eaten at all. The food- never mind how much- had simply passed by my brain and dropped straight into my stomach.
This tendency to wolf down food is also one of the things I try to consciously change. For example, hubs and I usually have the same breakfast of ham and eggs. Hubs- who never had an ED- enjoys his, cutting off small pieces and savouring them. I, on the other hand, keep having to slow myself down. I don´t know if having had to sneak foods past my diet-happy relatives as a child is still influencing me there, but I sometimes catch myself eating as if I might get caught doing it.
The result is always that I do not feel satisfied after such a meal. My stomach may be full, even painfully so, and I still want - something.
By now, I have found out what that something is. It´s the sensory pleasure of eating. The taste, smell, and texture of food. I start a meal expecting that kind of experience, and if I shovel it down mindlessly, I deprive myself of the real pleasure to be had from eating. Which leads me to wanting another fix, a second helping, or a different food.
There´s only one cure for that. For someone who has been yo-yo dieting all her life it´s a momentuous step. I have to allow myself to eat. No more sneaking food, not even by myself, no more "if I eat this fast enough perhaps no one would see I was eating". Just sitting down, with nothing before me but the food, and then savouring every bite, taking my time to take in the taste, the texture.
I have found that I can, that way, be satisfied with less than half the amount I used to eat.
More satisfaction for less calories.
Sounds like the perfect weight loss recipe, doesn´t it? And all it requires is being mindful.
That way, even the infamous nuts become an acceptable weight loss food.
Julia
They have the distinction of being easily storeable, needing no preparation, and thus they are perfect as a standby food for those days at the office when all hell breaks loose, your stomach growls and you don´t know when you´ll be able to get yourself a decent meal.
The problem, for me, was that I couldn´t stop eating until the bag of nuts was gone. I´d dig into those bags, pull out nuts by the handful, and chomp them down while attacking the files on my desk. On my worst days, I ended up having to throw out two such bags afterwards, empty.
The problem is that nuts are one of the calorie densest food groups. So, that kind of nut orgy instead of lunch would cost me the caloric equivalent of several day´s caloric needs.
Still, giving up nuts entirely is something I would not do, so they still are part of my diet. But, since I have started to journal my food intake to the gram, I can no longer take out a handful and gobble it up. I have to count them or weigh them, and when eating them afterwards, I try to be conscious of how they taste, how it feels to chew them, eating them one after the other to prolong the experience.
Eating them like that means that I have a bag of nuts (same caliber I used to down in one sitting) in my kitchen that hasn´t gone empty for about two weeks. I have been eating some five to eight halves a day, consciously, incorporating them into my daily calorie count.
Being attentive when eating is proving to be one of the most effective weapons in my weight loss arsenal, actually.
I have found that I can, unfortunately, down incredible amounts of food without paying attention to it. Eating while on the phone, eating while watching TV, eating while driving. You could always recognize my car by the dropped peanuts under the driver´s seat.
The problem being that after that kind of mindless eating, I ended up still wanting to have a meal. It was, psychologically, as if I hadn´t eaten at all. The food- never mind how much- had simply passed by my brain and dropped straight into my stomach.
This tendency to wolf down food is also one of the things I try to consciously change. For example, hubs and I usually have the same breakfast of ham and eggs. Hubs- who never had an ED- enjoys his, cutting off small pieces and savouring them. I, on the other hand, keep having to slow myself down. I don´t know if having had to sneak foods past my diet-happy relatives as a child is still influencing me there, but I sometimes catch myself eating as if I might get caught doing it.
The result is always that I do not feel satisfied after such a meal. My stomach may be full, even painfully so, and I still want - something.
By now, I have found out what that something is. It´s the sensory pleasure of eating. The taste, smell, and texture of food. I start a meal expecting that kind of experience, and if I shovel it down mindlessly, I deprive myself of the real pleasure to be had from eating. Which leads me to wanting another fix, a second helping, or a different food.
There´s only one cure for that. For someone who has been yo-yo dieting all her life it´s a momentuous step. I have to allow myself to eat. No more sneaking food, not even by myself, no more "if I eat this fast enough perhaps no one would see I was eating". Just sitting down, with nothing before me but the food, and then savouring every bite, taking my time to take in the taste, the texture.
I have found that I can, that way, be satisfied with less than half the amount I used to eat.
More satisfaction for less calories.
Sounds like the perfect weight loss recipe, doesn´t it? And all it requires is being mindful.
That way, even the infamous nuts become an acceptable weight loss food.
Julia
2011/09/21
Down fifty
As my regular readers may have noticed, I live in metric country. But blogging about condensing myself gets me to convert my measurements to US pounds rather regularly.
This morning, I had the expected visit from the whoosh fairy: down two pounds from yesterday. When I converted my total loss to pounds, I saw...fifty! Fifty pounds gone off my top weight.
Kilogram-wise, it´s 23 down, 17 to go till goal, which means that I am more than halfway there. I haven´t weighed that much- rather, so little- since 2002, before my last big gain..
So, any further loss is taking me into unfamiliar territory. I have to find out what to clothe a body of that size with, how to move it, how to define myself.
For way too long, I´d been defining myself as "the fat one", the one who was glad if she found anything that fit her at all. I lived in a uniform of stretched-out jeans, elastic-waist skirts and baggy t-shirts, which in winter were replaced by equally baggy turtlenecks, topped off with jackets whose only saving grace was that I was able to put them on at all.
I have, over the last months, started to replace my wardrobe piece by piece with things that fit me now.
But, when browsing the clothes stores, I still find myself pulling out the plus sizes out of habit, only to put them back tut-tutting because these are way too big by now.
The rapid losses of the last few weeks are begetting a problem I never thought I´d have. Blouses and even jackets and coats may be somewhat oversized and still look good. But jeans? They are still my favourite kind of pants, and I like them tight-fitting. The part of me that seems to be changing the most right now is my posterior. Now, I don´t really grieve losing some inches off my backside, after all, I have always had a bit too much...abundance...there, but the smaller behind makes the seat of my jeans droop down in a bunch of superfluous material. I don´t feel good in jeans that don´t fit properly, but then again, I haven´t even worn out the ones I bought this spring, and I´d be crazy to go shopping for new ones when I know they´d be drooping, too, within mere months (I hope). So, I´ll have to stick with what I have for now. Perhaps I´ll be able to take them in a bit on the weekend, although I´m not so certain of my talents as a seamstress. And I´ll have to do another wardrobe raid to evict the ones that have, by now, become positively unwearable. To me, too-big clothes are like a grown-out haircut. One day I wake up and find that I need a haircut now, and don´t feel good until I had it. I have the same kind of itch when I find my pants are getting too big, but I have decided to wait at least until Christmas (and hopefully another coupla kilos and another size down) to scratch it.
And until then, I´ll try to rejoice in what the droopy bottoms mean: another part of me recondensed.
Julia
This morning, I had the expected visit from the whoosh fairy: down two pounds from yesterday. When I converted my total loss to pounds, I saw...fifty! Fifty pounds gone off my top weight.
Kilogram-wise, it´s 23 down, 17 to go till goal, which means that I am more than halfway there. I haven´t weighed that much- rather, so little- since 2002, before my last big gain..
So, any further loss is taking me into unfamiliar territory. I have to find out what to clothe a body of that size with, how to move it, how to define myself.
For way too long, I´d been defining myself as "the fat one", the one who was glad if she found anything that fit her at all. I lived in a uniform of stretched-out jeans, elastic-waist skirts and baggy t-shirts, which in winter were replaced by equally baggy turtlenecks, topped off with jackets whose only saving grace was that I was able to put them on at all.
I have, over the last months, started to replace my wardrobe piece by piece with things that fit me now.
But, when browsing the clothes stores, I still find myself pulling out the plus sizes out of habit, only to put them back tut-tutting because these are way too big by now.
The rapid losses of the last few weeks are begetting a problem I never thought I´d have. Blouses and even jackets and coats may be somewhat oversized and still look good. But jeans? They are still my favourite kind of pants, and I like them tight-fitting. The part of me that seems to be changing the most right now is my posterior. Now, I don´t really grieve losing some inches off my backside, after all, I have always had a bit too much...abundance...there, but the smaller behind makes the seat of my jeans droop down in a bunch of superfluous material. I don´t feel good in jeans that don´t fit properly, but then again, I haven´t even worn out the ones I bought this spring, and I´d be crazy to go shopping for new ones when I know they´d be drooping, too, within mere months (I hope). So, I´ll have to stick with what I have for now. Perhaps I´ll be able to take them in a bit on the weekend, although I´m not so certain of my talents as a seamstress. And I´ll have to do another wardrobe raid to evict the ones that have, by now, become positively unwearable. To me, too-big clothes are like a grown-out haircut. One day I wake up and find that I need a haircut now, and don´t feel good until I had it. I have the same kind of itch when I find my pants are getting too big, but I have decided to wait at least until Christmas (and hopefully another coupla kilos and another size down) to scratch it.
And until then, I´ll try to rejoice in what the droopy bottoms mean: another part of me recondensed.
Julia
2011/09/20
Rebalancing my walk
There´s one part of losing weight that I had not, until now, really been aware of.
You see, there´s a difference between the way a thin person walks and a fat person walks. If you are fat, you have more tissue on the inside of the thighs that forces you into a wide-legged gait and more weight to balance out all over. The result looked, at least in me, like a big fat duck waddling along, feet wide apart and with the toes turned outward, and with a distinctive sideways motion that made my head and upper body move from right to left at least twenty centimeters with every step. It´s not the way a human being is physiologically intended to walk. The sideways movement strains the hip joints, the outwardly turned toes make the footing instable, leading to frequent sprains and a bad case of plantar fasciitis on top. To add insult to injury, the weight of my chest and belly was pulling downwards on my spine, making me bend over forwards with my head hunched between my shoulders.
All of this, I could, at my top weight, not help. I simply wasn´t able to walk in a different way with all of that condensable matter to lug around. Since my joints, my back, and my feet creaked in protest at what they were forced to do, I started to use a crutch all of the time, thereby effectively abandoning any pretense at walking straight.
But didn´t I lose half of that weight by now? And put the crutch away many kilos ago?
The kicker is that the body goes into autopilot when walking. The way you walk is determined by habit, unless you pay conscious attention to what you are doing.
It was MIL who alerted me to this. On our last visit, I got up to walk over to the kitchen when she suddenly asked me if I was in any pain. When I replied that I wasn´t, she wanted to know why I was limping so badly then.
As I said, I hadn´t been conscious of limping. But when I did pay attention, I realized that I still, at just four kilos above the limit of morbid obesity, walked as if I still had to carry those almost fifty pounds I already got rid of .
Habits die hard. Bad habits die hardest. And a bad part of that habit is that there is probably already some cartilage in my joints worn off the wrong way, so, it feels- at least now- easier to move like before than it feels to walk straight again. But that is what I must not succumb to. Right now, I am starting a new habit. Every couple of meters, I check my posture when walking. I pay attention to not set my feet to far apart sideways, and I keep reminding myself to walk straight.
It feels different to walk like that. More confident, taller. The way I walked before I became fat.
It is mine to take back. All I have to do is pay attention.
There are some little-used muscle groups, especially in my back, that I have felt for the first time in ages now. I never even tried to stand tall while I was fat, so, the muscles used for straightening my back have obviously suffered from underuse.
Perhaps I should try some strength exercises to get my muscular balance back.
And then, I can enjoy the fact that, with the condensable matter gone, there´ll be nothing left in my appearance to tell that I have been third-degree morbidly obese.
Julia
You see, there´s a difference between the way a thin person walks and a fat person walks. If you are fat, you have more tissue on the inside of the thighs that forces you into a wide-legged gait and more weight to balance out all over. The result looked, at least in me, like a big fat duck waddling along, feet wide apart and with the toes turned outward, and with a distinctive sideways motion that made my head and upper body move from right to left at least twenty centimeters with every step. It´s not the way a human being is physiologically intended to walk. The sideways movement strains the hip joints, the outwardly turned toes make the footing instable, leading to frequent sprains and a bad case of plantar fasciitis on top. To add insult to injury, the weight of my chest and belly was pulling downwards on my spine, making me bend over forwards with my head hunched between my shoulders.
All of this, I could, at my top weight, not help. I simply wasn´t able to walk in a different way with all of that condensable matter to lug around. Since my joints, my back, and my feet creaked in protest at what they were forced to do, I started to use a crutch all of the time, thereby effectively abandoning any pretense at walking straight.
But didn´t I lose half of that weight by now? And put the crutch away many kilos ago?
The kicker is that the body goes into autopilot when walking. The way you walk is determined by habit, unless you pay conscious attention to what you are doing.
It was MIL who alerted me to this. On our last visit, I got up to walk over to the kitchen when she suddenly asked me if I was in any pain. When I replied that I wasn´t, she wanted to know why I was limping so badly then.
As I said, I hadn´t been conscious of limping. But when I did pay attention, I realized that I still, at just four kilos above the limit of morbid obesity, walked as if I still had to carry those almost fifty pounds I already got rid of .
Habits die hard. Bad habits die hardest. And a bad part of that habit is that there is probably already some cartilage in my joints worn off the wrong way, so, it feels- at least now- easier to move like before than it feels to walk straight again. But that is what I must not succumb to. Right now, I am starting a new habit. Every couple of meters, I check my posture when walking. I pay attention to not set my feet to far apart sideways, and I keep reminding myself to walk straight.
It feels different to walk like that. More confident, taller. The way I walked before I became fat.
It is mine to take back. All I have to do is pay attention.
There are some little-used muscle groups, especially in my back, that I have felt for the first time in ages now. I never even tried to stand tall while I was fat, so, the muscles used for straightening my back have obviously suffered from underuse.
Perhaps I should try some strength exercises to get my muscular balance back.
And then, I can enjoy the fact that, with the condensable matter gone, there´ll be nothing left in my appearance to tell that I have been third-degree morbidly obese.
Julia
2011/09/19
Autumn arriving
We took advantage of the last sunny day on forecast to go for a long hike on Saturday. As the map we were using didn´t have height indications, we suddenly found ourselves, well, not exactly in the middle of nowhere, as we could see the city lying below us, but it was a steep incline of some fifty meters height difference down there, and what had seemed, on the map, like a comfortable walk down proved to be a slippery slope full of acorns and pebbles.
Before recondensing, it would have been impossible for me to get down there, even with my walking sticks. And now? I had left my sticks at home, opting instead for a pair of sturdy walking shoes.So, I started out downwards and did indeed manage to get to the foot of the mountain without accident. And I didn´t even have sore muscles the next day!
It´s experiences like this that remind me of how far I have come.
Another NSV this weekend came from the jewellery department. I have a ring that I bought long ago and wear every day. When I bought it, it fit on my middle finger. For a long while now, I was wearing it on my ring finger. And yesterday, it fit on my middle finger again! DH did look a bit astonished when I gave him that time-honored gesture, saying, "just look at this" :) - when all I wanted was to show him where I was wearing that ring...
Weight-wise, the plateau before the next decade is a lot more tenuous than I thought, so, I´m still waiting for the moment I can slide that decade weight down a notch. But I have- in spite of being home all day and a four-day visit with MIL- stayed at my pre-holiday weight. I still journal every bite I eat, stick to my calorie limit, and hopefully, that will translate to the jump into the next decade anytime soon.
With autumn arriving, I´ll have to do another wardrobe rollover. Luckily, I got myself a couple of blazers for the office on clearance this spring, which still fit me, and I have a couple of coats that are relatively size-tolerant, so I should be fine with them for another season. What is starting not to fit any more is, once more, my pants. Even with the stretchy material, they are beginning to look downright baggy. So, I´ll have to weed through them and evict the worst offenders. On the other hand, I´m glad my waist has reappeared from under the excess weight, so, with a belt I can still cinch my pants up on my hips and am in no danger of them sliding down inadvertently, which means that I´ll wait as long as possible to replace them- after all, I have another 18 kilos to go till goal, and continuously replacing my too-big pants is getting costly, after all, I have gone through five pant sizes in a year already. I am, by now, almost regretting that I threw out those smaller clothes that I thought I´d never fit into again. The jeans, at least, would come in handy. Then again, I kept them in a plastic box on top of my wardrobe for years, and I was, back then, definitely glad to be rid of them. Besides, they were those extremely washed-out styles that haven´t been in fashion for a long time any more.
So, no regrets about these any more. If my present pants get too big, I´ll have the joy of shopping for pants in a regular size for the first time in over ten years. And until then, I´ll wear my baggy pants like a medal. After all, it hasn´t been that long ago that those same pants were tight.
Julia
Before recondensing, it would have been impossible for me to get down there, even with my walking sticks. And now? I had left my sticks at home, opting instead for a pair of sturdy walking shoes.So, I started out downwards and did indeed manage to get to the foot of the mountain without accident. And I didn´t even have sore muscles the next day!
It´s experiences like this that remind me of how far I have come.
Another NSV this weekend came from the jewellery department. I have a ring that I bought long ago and wear every day. When I bought it, it fit on my middle finger. For a long while now, I was wearing it on my ring finger. And yesterday, it fit on my middle finger again! DH did look a bit astonished when I gave him that time-honored gesture, saying, "just look at this" :) - when all I wanted was to show him where I was wearing that ring...
Weight-wise, the plateau before the next decade is a lot more tenuous than I thought, so, I´m still waiting for the moment I can slide that decade weight down a notch. But I have- in spite of being home all day and a four-day visit with MIL- stayed at my pre-holiday weight. I still journal every bite I eat, stick to my calorie limit, and hopefully, that will translate to the jump into the next decade anytime soon.
With autumn arriving, I´ll have to do another wardrobe rollover. Luckily, I got myself a couple of blazers for the office on clearance this spring, which still fit me, and I have a couple of coats that are relatively size-tolerant, so I should be fine with them for another season. What is starting not to fit any more is, once more, my pants. Even with the stretchy material, they are beginning to look downright baggy. So, I´ll have to weed through them and evict the worst offenders. On the other hand, I´m glad my waist has reappeared from under the excess weight, so, with a belt I can still cinch my pants up on my hips and am in no danger of them sliding down inadvertently, which means that I´ll wait as long as possible to replace them- after all, I have another 18 kilos to go till goal, and continuously replacing my too-big pants is getting costly, after all, I have gone through five pant sizes in a year already. I am, by now, almost regretting that I threw out those smaller clothes that I thought I´d never fit into again. The jeans, at least, would come in handy. Then again, I kept them in a plastic box on top of my wardrobe for years, and I was, back then, definitely glad to be rid of them. Besides, they were those extremely washed-out styles that haven´t been in fashion for a long time any more.
So, no regrets about these any more. If my present pants get too big, I´ll have the joy of shopping for pants in a regular size for the first time in over ten years. And until then, I´ll wear my baggy pants like a medal. After all, it hasn´t been that long ago that those same pants were tight.
Julia
2011/09/08
I´m astonished about myself
I have never been a fan of budgeting. In my native family, there was one person who was a veritable bookkeeping fiend, who kept tabs on everything from money spent on groceries to how much gas our car had used per kilometer. Everything was duly recorded, and woe to the perp who didn´t fill out the required lists, or whose lists didn´t add up.
It was enough to make me shy away from anything that looked even remotely like such a list. I didn´t like being made accountable, neither in the literal nor in the figurative sense.
It took me a long time to re-learn that budgeting is something that can make life easier, instead of harder.
What changed everything for me there was the realization that a budget isn´t meant to chastise you after the fact for going out of control. It´s meant to keep you from going out of control in the first place. And the control it keeps you under needn´t be something external. It can be your own.
These days I, too, am a listmaker. Not to keep tabs on anybody else, but to keep control of my life.
One place that helps immensely is my food intake. It is a really satisfying feeling to sit in front of my netbook in the evening, add up what I ate during the day, and then look what I may still eat. As I have the same thing for breakfast and lunch regularly, it´s the evening meal where I tend to get over my caloric limit. So, looking first what I may eat has been a big step forward for me.
It is actually what makes my weight, right now, go down rather steadily at a rate I haven´t seen since last year. Not grabbing that string of cheese, or "just a handful" of nuts, or "just one" chocolate bar. Not munching on peanuts all the time while preparing dinner. I had developed quite a number of self-defeating habits that I wasn´t really aware of just how bad they were, calorie-wise.
Seeing that, for example, the innocent-looking cut of cheese I ate when coming home "just to pass the time till dinner" was, on that day, what gave me the most calories, not the chicken breast that was dinner, made me realize that I was, actually, taking in a lot more calories grazing while cooking than I was supposed to eat at all if I wanted to lose more weight.
Having to write down every morsel, every peanut and every cookie, and then seeing immediately how they affect my calorie count, is helping me to keep within my limits. And I have started to really budget, that is, think first, eat last.
That way I don´t end up wondering every morning where the (high) number on my scales came from. It´s amazing how much one can overeat without noticing it. I am, today, determined to never again become a victim of the Sneaky Peanut or the Stealth Cookie.
Being accountable to myself for every morsel I eat is the trick. Then, ther is hope for me of getting rid of the rest of my excess baggage, too.
Julia
It was enough to make me shy away from anything that looked even remotely like such a list. I didn´t like being made accountable, neither in the literal nor in the figurative sense.
It took me a long time to re-learn that budgeting is something that can make life easier, instead of harder.
What changed everything for me there was the realization that a budget isn´t meant to chastise you after the fact for going out of control. It´s meant to keep you from going out of control in the first place. And the control it keeps you under needn´t be something external. It can be your own.
These days I, too, am a listmaker. Not to keep tabs on anybody else, but to keep control of my life.
One place that helps immensely is my food intake. It is a really satisfying feeling to sit in front of my netbook in the evening, add up what I ate during the day, and then look what I may still eat. As I have the same thing for breakfast and lunch regularly, it´s the evening meal where I tend to get over my caloric limit. So, looking first what I may eat has been a big step forward for me.
It is actually what makes my weight, right now, go down rather steadily at a rate I haven´t seen since last year. Not grabbing that string of cheese, or "just a handful" of nuts, or "just one" chocolate bar. Not munching on peanuts all the time while preparing dinner. I had developed quite a number of self-defeating habits that I wasn´t really aware of just how bad they were, calorie-wise.
Seeing that, for example, the innocent-looking cut of cheese I ate when coming home "just to pass the time till dinner" was, on that day, what gave me the most calories, not the chicken breast that was dinner, made me realize that I was, actually, taking in a lot more calories grazing while cooking than I was supposed to eat at all if I wanted to lose more weight.
Having to write down every morsel, every peanut and every cookie, and then seeing immediately how they affect my calorie count, is helping me to keep within my limits. And I have started to really budget, that is, think first, eat last.
That way I don´t end up wondering every morning where the (high) number on my scales came from. It´s amazing how much one can overeat without noticing it. I am, today, determined to never again become a victim of the Sneaky Peanut or the Stealth Cookie.
Being accountable to myself for every morsel I eat is the trick. Then, ther is hope for me of getting rid of the rest of my excess baggage, too.
Julia
2011/09/07
Thinking twice- and saving!
Food labels are sometimes a most educating thing to read.
I have, for two weeks now, been using Sparkpeople to track my food intake.First of all, it´s free. I can access it from any computer that has an internet connection. And it gives you a precise rundown on the contents of what you ate.
The latter feature, to me, is the most helpful one because you cannot only look at how many carbs etc. you had but also at a number of micronutritients, like calcium. Which got me back to supplementing. It seems to be near impossible to get in the RDAs on a 1500-calorie-a-day plan otherwise. But with a few well-chosen supplements I think I´ll be fine.
What surprised me was that their food lists seem to cover most of the things I can buy here, too, even though I live in Europe and the company is US-based. (Full disclosure: I am not affiliated to them, I just use their website for tracking).
Sometimes, though, I have to look for a close equivalent for what I want to eat, especially when I am resorting to pre-prepared meals which I sometimes have to do for convenience´s sake (I´m working full-time, after all, and get home quite late on some days).
And that, in turn, requires me to go and read the labels of some old favourites.
Like that of the frozen vegetable pizza that is a standby for those I-don´t-want-to-cook evenings in our household.
One pizza (twenty-cm diameter) for each of us.
Who eats half of what looks like exactly one dinner plate of pizza, anyway?
Me, that is, after I discovered that the nutrition information gave half a pizza as one recommended serving. So, after that discovery, I took a bread knife to the still-frozen pizza and cut it into two recommended servings, one of which went back into the freezer for next time.
Which meant that I didn´t go over my calories or carbs yesterday, and I know now that I can eat twice off one package of those pizzas. Which is, in effect, like a fifty-percent markdown per meal.
DH, who is not at present dieting, had a whole one, but then, as a male and being taller than I am, he can use the calories just fine. For me, seeing that I can have the same thing he eats if I watch my portions makes everything easier, too.
The serving size trap is something that I noticed quite frequently these days. Like the 400g- pack of greek salad that I would, formely, have divided by two and served. The recommended serving was..100 grams. Half of what I used to serve. Again, we had two meals off that salad.
What annoys me most is the packages where recommended servings and package content don´t compute. Like, when you have a 200g- pack and the recommended serving is 75 grams. You can either toss the rest, or eat it, putting you at 1.3 times the recommended serving size. Depending on what is in the pack, that can seriously impact your caloric balance.
I admit that I am not yet ready to toss those leftovers every time. But I think I should remember that the food industry doesn´t mind at all what happens to their product after we bought it. We could buy and toss whole packages for all they care.
I have been guilty of that, too, before starting to recondense myself. But first, I would stuff everything that threatened to pass the eat-by date into the bipedal bin, aka my body. Only what I didn´t manage to eat went to the trash bin.
First overbuying, then abusing my body as a receptacle for the excess food we had dragged home. Cooking way-too-big portions and eating it all because one doesn´t throw away food, or does one?
And I was wondering where the fat came from...
Of course, the excess food we dragged home was partly due to my wanting to be prepared for every eventuality. What if one of us wanted to eat, say, a piece of cake and there wasn´t any in the house?
I have, by now, found out what happens then. Nothing. If the person is really hungry, he or she will eat something else. If it is just a yen for something that appeals to our appetites, it will pass. Not being able to act on your appetite (vs. hunger) is, actually, keeping a lot of unnecessary calories out of our bodies.
Apart from that, our grocery bills are considerably lower, too.
And not dragging home too much food means that we barely ever have to throw out food that has spoiled.
What if you have been brought up as a member of the "Clean your plate, there are children starving in Africa"-club? Guess what, if you leave the excess at the store in the first place, a lot of supermarkets donate merchandise that is close to the sell-by date to food banks, so there´s a chance that the food that would be too much for you could, if unsold to somebody else, even be used to do good to somebody in your own community. In your trashbin, it helps no one. And if you really care about the children in Africa, consider donating the money you didn´t pay for those excess goodies to a charity or a development aid project that will really help the people there. <getting off my soapbox>
We inhabitants of the so-called developed countries are living in a world that has more food choices to offer than anybody can reasonably eat. We have- most of us, at least- cars to help us bring home gigantic stashes of food, and pantries full of more food than we can hope to eat before it expires.
All of these things are making us fat.
For me, that realization was the first step in getting my weight under control. And it´s a continuing battle, one that requires planning, journalling my food and reading labels all the time.
But the result is worth it.
Julia
I have, for two weeks now, been using Sparkpeople to track my food intake.First of all, it´s free. I can access it from any computer that has an internet connection. And it gives you a precise rundown on the contents of what you ate.
The latter feature, to me, is the most helpful one because you cannot only look at how many carbs etc. you had but also at a number of micronutritients, like calcium. Which got me back to supplementing. It seems to be near impossible to get in the RDAs on a 1500-calorie-a-day plan otherwise. But with a few well-chosen supplements I think I´ll be fine.
What surprised me was that their food lists seem to cover most of the things I can buy here, too, even though I live in Europe and the company is US-based. (Full disclosure: I am not affiliated to them, I just use their website for tracking).
Sometimes, though, I have to look for a close equivalent for what I want to eat, especially when I am resorting to pre-prepared meals which I sometimes have to do for convenience´s sake (I´m working full-time, after all, and get home quite late on some days).
And that, in turn, requires me to go and read the labels of some old favourites.
Like that of the frozen vegetable pizza that is a standby for those I-don´t-want-to-cook evenings in our household.
One pizza (twenty-cm diameter) for each of us.
Who eats half of what looks like exactly one dinner plate of pizza, anyway?
Me, that is, after I discovered that the nutrition information gave half a pizza as one recommended serving. So, after that discovery, I took a bread knife to the still-frozen pizza and cut it into two recommended servings, one of which went back into the freezer for next time.
Which meant that I didn´t go over my calories or carbs yesterday, and I know now that I can eat twice off one package of those pizzas. Which is, in effect, like a fifty-percent markdown per meal.
DH, who is not at present dieting, had a whole one, but then, as a male and being taller than I am, he can use the calories just fine. For me, seeing that I can have the same thing he eats if I watch my portions makes everything easier, too.
The serving size trap is something that I noticed quite frequently these days. Like the 400g- pack of greek salad that I would, formely, have divided by two and served. The recommended serving was..100 grams. Half of what I used to serve. Again, we had two meals off that salad.
What annoys me most is the packages where recommended servings and package content don´t compute. Like, when you have a 200g- pack and the recommended serving is 75 grams. You can either toss the rest, or eat it, putting you at 1.3 times the recommended serving size. Depending on what is in the pack, that can seriously impact your caloric balance.
I admit that I am not yet ready to toss those leftovers every time. But I think I should remember that the food industry doesn´t mind at all what happens to their product after we bought it. We could buy and toss whole packages for all they care.
I have been guilty of that, too, before starting to recondense myself. But first, I would stuff everything that threatened to pass the eat-by date into the bipedal bin, aka my body. Only what I didn´t manage to eat went to the trash bin.
First overbuying, then abusing my body as a receptacle for the excess food we had dragged home. Cooking way-too-big portions and eating it all because one doesn´t throw away food, or does one?
And I was wondering where the fat came from...
Of course, the excess food we dragged home was partly due to my wanting to be prepared for every eventuality. What if one of us wanted to eat, say, a piece of cake and there wasn´t any in the house?
I have, by now, found out what happens then. Nothing. If the person is really hungry, he or she will eat something else. If it is just a yen for something that appeals to our appetites, it will pass. Not being able to act on your appetite (vs. hunger) is, actually, keeping a lot of unnecessary calories out of our bodies.
Apart from that, our grocery bills are considerably lower, too.
And not dragging home too much food means that we barely ever have to throw out food that has spoiled.
What if you have been brought up as a member of the "Clean your plate, there are children starving in Africa"-club? Guess what, if you leave the excess at the store in the first place, a lot of supermarkets donate merchandise that is close to the sell-by date to food banks, so there´s a chance that the food that would be too much for you could, if unsold to somebody else, even be used to do good to somebody in your own community. In your trashbin, it helps no one. And if you really care about the children in Africa, consider donating the money you didn´t pay for those excess goodies to a charity or a development aid project that will really help the people there. <getting off my soapbox>
We inhabitants of the so-called developed countries are living in a world that has more food choices to offer than anybody can reasonably eat. We have- most of us, at least- cars to help us bring home gigantic stashes of food, and pantries full of more food than we can hope to eat before it expires.
All of these things are making us fat.
For me, that realization was the first step in getting my weight under control. And it´s a continuing battle, one that requires planning, journalling my food and reading labels all the time.
But the result is worth it.
Julia
2011/09/06
Teetering on the brink...
..of the next decade!
The scales I use for weighing myself are of the kind that has sliding weights you have to move to find your weight. Being in Europe, they are calibrated in kilograms. One slider is for the decades- as in 70,80,90- and the other one for single kilos, in increments of 0.1 kilos. The decade slider has notches to slide it into, so it doesn´t move off its place when weighing in.
And the most satisfying weigh-ins are those where I can, finally, take that slider a notch down. This morning, I was just 100 grams away from that point, so I expect to see it this week. Getting into this decade is special because it contains the point where I will officially cease to be clinically obese and just be overweight. It is a place I haven´t been for over ten years.
And my body seems to have made good use of the plateau that was so frustrating me. Namely, I caught a sideways reflection of myself in the corridor mirror yesterday, and did a double take before running over to ask DH, "am I imagining things or is there one chin less on me?" Hubs took a look and confirmed what I had, up to this point, not really noticed. At my most obese, my chin had been buried in a big roll of fat that went around my neck, actually making my face look twice as wide and giving me the appearance of having at the very least three chins agree with my real one whenever I nodded. And that- is almost gone! The best thing being that the skin of my neck has contracted, too, so I have been spared that turkey look I was afraid of getting.
One more incentive to stick to my guns. This time, it looks like I found the right way for me to continue condensing myself.
Julia
The scales I use for weighing myself are of the kind that has sliding weights you have to move to find your weight. Being in Europe, they are calibrated in kilograms. One slider is for the decades- as in 70,80,90- and the other one for single kilos, in increments of 0.1 kilos. The decade slider has notches to slide it into, so it doesn´t move off its place when weighing in.
And the most satisfying weigh-ins are those where I can, finally, take that slider a notch down. This morning, I was just 100 grams away from that point, so I expect to see it this week. Getting into this decade is special because it contains the point where I will officially cease to be clinically obese and just be overweight. It is a place I haven´t been for over ten years.
And my body seems to have made good use of the plateau that was so frustrating me. Namely, I caught a sideways reflection of myself in the corridor mirror yesterday, and did a double take before running over to ask DH, "am I imagining things or is there one chin less on me?" Hubs took a look and confirmed what I had, up to this point, not really noticed. At my most obese, my chin had been buried in a big roll of fat that went around my neck, actually making my face look twice as wide and giving me the appearance of having at the very least three chins agree with my real one whenever I nodded. And that- is almost gone! The best thing being that the skin of my neck has contracted, too, so I have been spared that turkey look I was afraid of getting.
One more incentive to stick to my guns. This time, it looks like I found the right way for me to continue condensing myself.
Julia
2011/09/05
Kitchen epiphany
If there is one thing I can´t stand it´s feeling deprived. So, scaling down ingredients is sometimes a bit scary for me because I worry it might harm the taste of the food.
Case in point: my beloved caprese salad with tomatoes, basil and mozzarella. I had, all these years, had the habit of drizzling on the olive oil and balsamico after arranging the other ingredients on a plate. And, all of the time, I ended up pouring about two or three tablespoons of oil minimum on each plate (as I found out when I weighed the amount I was wont to pour), thus turning what should have been a healthy meal into a caloric desaster.
Yesterday, I was determined not to use more than one tablespoon per person. If you imagine the surface of a caprese plate, most of it would remain untouched if you tried to drizzle that on. So, what I did was chop up the tomatoes, put them into a bowl, put the olive oil, pepper,salt and a bit of balsamico in, too, amd mix it through. I let that marinate while I cut and arranged the mozzarella, then drained it (discarding the liquid that had collected) and put it between the pieces of cheese. I had used a diminutive creamer, like they use in coffee shops for individual servings of cream for your coffee, that holds just twenty grams of oil (checked it on the scales), and I had taken just half to marinate the tomatoes in. What was left inside was just enough to give each leaf of basil (I put one on each piece of mozzarella) a tiny drop of oil, too.
Guess what- this version of caprese was even more tasty than when I just slathered on the oil. At a fraction of the calories.
So, my kitchen epiphany for this weekend was the realization that pre-marinating my salads before arranging them allows me to reduce my oil consumption considerably. And, on a side note, finding out that that little stainless steel coffee creamer is a perfect measuring device for oil, apart allowing for much more precise application when I do drizzle some oil on something. Remember that the olive oil vendors want you to use more of their product, so the pouring spouts on the bottles aren´t designed to facilitate application by the drop, quite the contrary.
Which brings me to another unpleasant surprise I had this weekend. We have bacon and eggs for breakfast every morning, and I use a cast-iron pan for preparing it. Now, as that pan is used exclusively for the purpose, it is, by now, well-seasoned. I have a straight-edged steel spatula I use to take out the eggs and then clean the surface. Normally, there´s almost nothing that sticks to the pan.
I had, in a pinch, bought a different brand of bacon last week, and suddenly there was a sticky brownish layer of something in the pan that was hard to remove and made the eggs stick, too.
The cause of this development could be found on the ingredient list of that pack of bacon. The third ingredient in line was- glucose. Sugar. The kind of bacon I usually buy does not have that on the ingredient list.
Now, that is one brand I´m not going to buy again. And a striking example of how the sugar industry is pushing their product down our throats.Nobody needs to be fed sugar when they believe they are eating bacon. This sugar did nothing, not even improve the taste. Just push up our carbohydrate consumption and mess up my beloved cast iron pan (if that´s what sugar does to something you fry, what does it do inside you?).
I´ve returned to the original sugarless version of bacon, and with a bit of scrubbing and re-seasoning my pan is back in working order. Still, I found it shocking that there seems to be literally no food group outside unprocessed raw ingredients where you do not have to watch out for hidden sugar.
Ingredient reading seems to be one thing I need to do regularly if I want to avoid sugar.
Julia
Case in point: my beloved caprese salad with tomatoes, basil and mozzarella. I had, all these years, had the habit of drizzling on the olive oil and balsamico after arranging the other ingredients on a plate. And, all of the time, I ended up pouring about two or three tablespoons of oil minimum on each plate (as I found out when I weighed the amount I was wont to pour), thus turning what should have been a healthy meal into a caloric desaster.
Yesterday, I was determined not to use more than one tablespoon per person. If you imagine the surface of a caprese plate, most of it would remain untouched if you tried to drizzle that on. So, what I did was chop up the tomatoes, put them into a bowl, put the olive oil, pepper,salt and a bit of balsamico in, too, amd mix it through. I let that marinate while I cut and arranged the mozzarella, then drained it (discarding the liquid that had collected) and put it between the pieces of cheese. I had used a diminutive creamer, like they use in coffee shops for individual servings of cream for your coffee, that holds just twenty grams of oil (checked it on the scales), and I had taken just half to marinate the tomatoes in. What was left inside was just enough to give each leaf of basil (I put one on each piece of mozzarella) a tiny drop of oil, too.
Guess what- this version of caprese was even more tasty than when I just slathered on the oil. At a fraction of the calories.
So, my kitchen epiphany for this weekend was the realization that pre-marinating my salads before arranging them allows me to reduce my oil consumption considerably. And, on a side note, finding out that that little stainless steel coffee creamer is a perfect measuring device for oil, apart allowing for much more precise application when I do drizzle some oil on something. Remember that the olive oil vendors want you to use more of their product, so the pouring spouts on the bottles aren´t designed to facilitate application by the drop, quite the contrary.
Which brings me to another unpleasant surprise I had this weekend. We have bacon and eggs for breakfast every morning, and I use a cast-iron pan for preparing it. Now, as that pan is used exclusively for the purpose, it is, by now, well-seasoned. I have a straight-edged steel spatula I use to take out the eggs and then clean the surface. Normally, there´s almost nothing that sticks to the pan.
I had, in a pinch, bought a different brand of bacon last week, and suddenly there was a sticky brownish layer of something in the pan that was hard to remove and made the eggs stick, too.
The cause of this development could be found on the ingredient list of that pack of bacon. The third ingredient in line was- glucose. Sugar. The kind of bacon I usually buy does not have that on the ingredient list.
Now, that is one brand I´m not going to buy again. And a striking example of how the sugar industry is pushing their product down our throats.Nobody needs to be fed sugar when they believe they are eating bacon. This sugar did nothing, not even improve the taste. Just push up our carbohydrate consumption and mess up my beloved cast iron pan (if that´s what sugar does to something you fry, what does it do inside you?).
I´ve returned to the original sugarless version of bacon, and with a bit of scrubbing and re-seasoning my pan is back in working order. Still, I found it shocking that there seems to be literally no food group outside unprocessed raw ingredients where you do not have to watch out for hidden sugar.
Ingredient reading seems to be one thing I need to do regularly if I want to avoid sugar.
Julia
2011/09/02
U-turn complete
As I had suspected it took some time for my body to resume losing after my upward bump in weight. But today I went, for the first time, below my lowest weight I had before regaining. Which also means that I am officially back in onederland.
I must have been doing something right.
And now on to the next milestone, which would be going below BMI 30 and thus from morbidly obese to just obese. It´s less than ten pounds away...
Julia
I must have been doing something right.
And now on to the next milestone, which would be going below BMI 30 and thus from morbidly obese to just obese. It´s less than ten pounds away...
Julia
2011/09/01
Back in town and feeling good
It´s cooler, by about ten degrees centigrade. And for the first time, the four-day visit with MIL did not end in a several-pounds gain. Instead, I had a two-pound loss to celebrate!
How I did it? First of all, as little carbs as I could get away with. That meant bacon and eggs, but no bread or rolls for breakfast. Meat and vegetables, but no potatoes for lunch. Instead of the perennial cake in the afternoon, just two small cookies to go with my coffee.
And I had a straight talk with MIL about why I was eating like that, namely, that I´ll never be able to get to a lower weight level if I keep regaining what I lost in-between every time we go to visit her. Surprisingly, she seemed to understand and even voiced approval when she noticed that I was weighing my portions and journalling quite literally every bite.
The surprise obstacle turned out to be DH (I still think that stands for Diet Hazard) who kept offering me those carb-loaden goodies. Sometimes I had to turn on the broken record, as in "take just one, will you?"-"No" "but it´s just one" -"No".
This little word is becoming my best weapon when fighting to lower my weight, actually. Just Say No- to sweets, starches, and too-big portions of anything.
And the scales. Not the ones I get on, but the ones I´m weighing my food on. It´s shocking to see that the portions I would serve us if I did just eyeball them would be so much bigger than the portions I serve when weighing the ingredients.
One bad habit sticks out here. I used to pour oil for frying or a salad straight from the bottle. Even though I did not believe I used much of it, seeing the number on my food scales shoot up when I did, as an experiment, pour the oil I wanted to use into a little separate bowl first with my usual motion of tilting the bottle, was a real waker-upper. I mean, the stuff has nine calories per gram, and pouring some forty grams when all I need would be ten means putting myself back by a whopping 270 calories. In other words, all other things being equal, that would be two more pounds I could lose every month if I just ditch that habit.
Now, I am usually something of a very independent cook who hates recipes where you have to weigh everything. But when I look at where just eyeballing everything has gotten me, I know that this is one thing I have to change fast. Even if I feel a bit silly doing it. But then, I´m not yet at the point where I weigh spices, too. So I can still use my old eyeball measure for something. I mean, nobody ever got fat from eating too much oregano or parsley.
Somebody once said losing weight has a lot in common with getting out of debt. Namely, that the best way of doing both is setting a budget (monetary or calorie-wise) and writing down your expenses respectively your caloric intake as exactly as you can, so you see early when you are at the point of going over your budget.
What it amounts to in the end is mindfulness. That means switching off your autopilot and becoming conscious of the things you are doing out of habit, because some of your habits are most likely the cause of your problem.
Case in point, I had gotten into the habit of dipping my hand into a bowl of nuts and almonds I had in my kitchen every time I passed that bowl. Yesterday, I caught myself reaching for the nuts and stopped myself just as I was about to down a whole handful of them. I have since removed the contents of the bowl to a closed container that I have to take out of a cupboard and open if I want to eat nuts. The extra steps are helping me to stop and think before gobbling down several hundred calories without even being conscious of the fact that I am eating.
I have, actually, started to get into the habit of watching out for that kind of thing because that is where the calories have, in the past, snuck up on me. Bad habits and automatisms, combined with not measuring my portions, were what made me gain those almost ninety pounds, all the while protesting that there had to be something wrong with my body and metabolism because (or so I thought) I didn´t eat too much and kept gaining.
And good habits and portion control is what will help me to get them off again. With the first forty pounds off again, I find that I have to become even more careful about my intake if I want the next forty pounds to recondense, too. So, journalling and weighing ingredients it is for the time being. And I hope to see some results soon.
Julia
How I did it? First of all, as little carbs as I could get away with. That meant bacon and eggs, but no bread or rolls for breakfast. Meat and vegetables, but no potatoes for lunch. Instead of the perennial cake in the afternoon, just two small cookies to go with my coffee.
And I had a straight talk with MIL about why I was eating like that, namely, that I´ll never be able to get to a lower weight level if I keep regaining what I lost in-between every time we go to visit her. Surprisingly, she seemed to understand and even voiced approval when she noticed that I was weighing my portions and journalling quite literally every bite.
The surprise obstacle turned out to be DH (I still think that stands for Diet Hazard) who kept offering me those carb-loaden goodies. Sometimes I had to turn on the broken record, as in "take just one, will you?"-"No" "but it´s just one" -"No".
This little word is becoming my best weapon when fighting to lower my weight, actually. Just Say No- to sweets, starches, and too-big portions of anything.
And the scales. Not the ones I get on, but the ones I´m weighing my food on. It´s shocking to see that the portions I would serve us if I did just eyeball them would be so much bigger than the portions I serve when weighing the ingredients.
One bad habit sticks out here. I used to pour oil for frying or a salad straight from the bottle. Even though I did not believe I used much of it, seeing the number on my food scales shoot up when I did, as an experiment, pour the oil I wanted to use into a little separate bowl first with my usual motion of tilting the bottle, was a real waker-upper. I mean, the stuff has nine calories per gram, and pouring some forty grams when all I need would be ten means putting myself back by a whopping 270 calories. In other words, all other things being equal, that would be two more pounds I could lose every month if I just ditch that habit.
Now, I am usually something of a very independent cook who hates recipes where you have to weigh everything. But when I look at where just eyeballing everything has gotten me, I know that this is one thing I have to change fast. Even if I feel a bit silly doing it. But then, I´m not yet at the point where I weigh spices, too. So I can still use my old eyeball measure for something. I mean, nobody ever got fat from eating too much oregano or parsley.
Somebody once said losing weight has a lot in common with getting out of debt. Namely, that the best way of doing both is setting a budget (monetary or calorie-wise) and writing down your expenses respectively your caloric intake as exactly as you can, so you see early when you are at the point of going over your budget.
What it amounts to in the end is mindfulness. That means switching off your autopilot and becoming conscious of the things you are doing out of habit, because some of your habits are most likely the cause of your problem.
Case in point, I had gotten into the habit of dipping my hand into a bowl of nuts and almonds I had in my kitchen every time I passed that bowl. Yesterday, I caught myself reaching for the nuts and stopped myself just as I was about to down a whole handful of them. I have since removed the contents of the bowl to a closed container that I have to take out of a cupboard and open if I want to eat nuts. The extra steps are helping me to stop and think before gobbling down several hundred calories without even being conscious of the fact that I am eating.
I have, actually, started to get into the habit of watching out for that kind of thing because that is where the calories have, in the past, snuck up on me. Bad habits and automatisms, combined with not measuring my portions, were what made me gain those almost ninety pounds, all the while protesting that there had to be something wrong with my body and metabolism because (or so I thought) I didn´t eat too much and kept gaining.
And good habits and portion control is what will help me to get them off again. With the first forty pounds off again, I find that I have to become even more careful about my intake if I want the next forty pounds to recondense, too. So, journalling and weighing ingredients it is for the time being. And I hope to see some results soon.
Julia
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