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
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