This was an interesting week because over the weekend, it looked like I might be gaining this week. It wouldn't have been a surprise, considering that this was the opening weekend of the NFL season, I was going out on Saturday to watch college football, and I do like my football, except that with all this in mind I was still eating carefully. (Remember, daily weighing means that you'll see temporary fluctuations in either direction.)
But then the weekdays arrived and normalcy returned. Either that or ... never mind. Anyway, yesterday was kind of funny. I noticed two things: in the evening, I was really, really hungry, and around 10 or so, I felt a migraine approaching. I thought about the combination of hunger and migraine and wondered if perhaps something was amiss.
I counted through the day's food (I don't log any more): protein bar, toast, hamburgers, corn and peas ... um ... um ... fiber bar ... and I came up with 1400 calories, rounding up. When your daily allotment is 2000, that's a pretty significant difference, especially considering I had about 400 at "dinner". So I figure my body was panicking, knocking stuff off shelves and jumping up and down on the bed trying to get me to feed it. I ate another protein bar, took some Advil, and that seemed to fix the situation. It did serve as a reminder that I do need to plan my eating better ... it's great that I have all these 200-calorie pieces that I can assemble for meals, but I still need 10 of them a day.
So anyway, it looks like I need to go to Kohl's and hit their sale. (Hopefully my card is for an additional 30% off. I always seem to get the low discounts.) As much as I like the loose-clothing look, the vast majority of jeans that I have just aren't going to cut it any more. My goal is in sight, less than 4 pounds away.
A profile of zlionsfan
- zlionsfan
- Indiana, United States
- I like cats. I play a lot of games. Sometimes I develop web-based applications; this keeps my current employer from firing me too often. My favorite color is blue, or maybe green.
I am constantly impressed with your long term tenacity in this endeavor! I wish some would rub off on me.
ReplyDeleteHave fun buying your new cloths.
Do you think you will get your reward in the next two weeks?
Well, different things work for different people, but what worked for me was making as many decisions as I could in advance.
ReplyDeleteI don't cook that often, so I looked at a lot of prepackaged foods to find ones that I could eat and stay within my limits (2000 calories, roughly 50% carbs, 25% protein, 25% fat). I don't do that well in the morning, so I got protein bars. The ones I get are high in vitamins and minerals, and they are 400 calories so that I get a good start in the morning. I looked up enough fast-food places to get a variety of things I could do for lunch, and I picked up enough different pieces for dinner to have a decent variety of meats and vegetables, even if it's just salmon patties or hamburgers and broccoli or corn.
Then I just repeated it often enough that it's second nature. I don't have chips or cookies at home; even the ice cream that I bought when I had my sore throat lasted about a month or so. (And I still have some fruit bars left.) If I'm hungry, the food I have here fits into my plan. I tend not to exercise a lot, so I set my caloric limit knowing that exercise would have to be a bonus rather than an expectation.
I also chose the pieces for my meals knowing that I will be doing this the rest of my life. Once I hit my weight goal, I can raise my daily caloric allowance, but not by that much, so for example, I had to find a way to eat pizza when I like. (Thin crust instead of thick, only one meat, and fewer pieces per meal.) BWW has to be on the list. (Naked tenders for the most part, fries are okay but don't eat all of them unless it's going to be a long day.)
So I don't see it as making sacrifices, I see it as changing how I live. Obviously the way I lost weight the last three or four times didn't last ... I made temporary changes. These have to be permanent ones.
I don't think it's realistic to expect 160 in two weeks. This week was better than the last two and I still lost less than 2 pounds ... I'd have to lose 3.8 pounds to hit 160. (Although I might give myself a bonus weigh-in on the 1st just to check.) Of course I could also work out some more and push myself ...