Today a friend told me that I look like I've lost weight. This is a friend that I see most days of the week, so it's not like I disappeared and suddenly came back thinner. I was quick to mutter something about actually gaining weight, and the black pants helping (which are tailored and fit nicely - thanks Mom & Dad). I think it goes to show that clothing fitting you properly can be better than a few pounds lost.
Oh, and I was only kinda right about the scale... it did go back and forth a couple times again before stopping at 136.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Accountability
The scale said 136 again this morning... I checked. Twice. Okay, three times, but I swear I'm usually not so nutty about the number. It just that I have this really neat digital scale that measures body fat, and it did that little hiccup the first time. A quick glimpse at 135.5 before settling frustratingly back in to 136. I've had it for probably seven years now, through ups and downs and a baby, and it's still teasing me.
See, if I had started this blog six months ago, it would have been called The Last Ten instead, when I was hovering around 130. Which is really pretty boring, since the whole world seems to be trying to lose the last ten. I think for the sake of my ass that I'd rather be back there though.
This is where that whole balance thing that I mentioned yesterday comes in. For about eight months, I tracked my calories and exercise very closely. Which worked... really well. I found that having to put into the program every last calorie, from a grape to a chocolate chip, made me more accountable to myself. I wasn't about to eat something that I knew would skew my numbers in the wrong direction. I wasn't going to admit to a computer program that I'd just scarfed 4 mini packets of Nerds because they still remind me of 1st grade. So I just didn't eat the junk. And I lost the weight.
While I love the program, here are the problems that I found: 1) It forces you to really know exactly what and how many nutrients are in every item you consume. The easiest solution I had for this was eating way too many packaged foods. Arguably healthy packaged foods... yogurt and a Clif bar for breakfast, Lean Cuisine for lunch, but processed and packaged nonetheless. 2) The time it takes to log every. single. morsel. of food you've eaten in a day can get extensive. I tried to combat this by eating a lot of the same things, especially for breakfast and lunch, then just rotating through a few well known healthy dinners. It was still a lot of time.
That's not to say that I wouldn't, or won't go back to it. If this little experiment doesn't work out, and I can't keep close enough track in my head, then I'm right back on that calorie counting train. I figure I'm *this* close... I've already gained back six. It's just that I really can't fathom tracking each spinach leaf for the next 40 or 50 years.
That's where the title of this post comes in. What I really did like about the program was the accountability factor. Knowing that I was going to have to put down in words and numbers how much I'd eaten and how hard I worked out kept me more motivated. I challenge anyone to try it. Keep track of every calorie you eat for a week. Not in that half-assed, rationalizing 'eh, that giant bowl of ice cream probably had 100 calories' kind of way. Write it all down, every bite... in a notebook, on the computer, wherever. I bet you'll think twice about a second biscuit with dinner when you know you'll have to see it in writing later. You'll hear about tracking your calories time and again if you spend any time at all in the "world of weight-loss." And it's because there really is truth there.
I'm hoping that writing here can bring me both the balance and the accountability that I need. For instance... I ate a big handful of peanut butter filled pretzels tonight while I was making dinner. Stupid, right? Here I am cooking a really healthy dinner of steamed jasmine brown rice, healthy-ish orange chicken from Trader Joe's, and steamed broccoli sprinkled with cardamom. It was practically done. Then I ate close to 300 calories of pretzels.
I bet the scale won't even bother teasing tomorrow.
See, if I had started this blog six months ago, it would have been called The Last Ten instead, when I was hovering around 130. Which is really pretty boring, since the whole world seems to be trying to lose the last ten. I think for the sake of my ass that I'd rather be back there though.
This is where that whole balance thing that I mentioned yesterday comes in. For about eight months, I tracked my calories and exercise very closely. Which worked... really well. I found that having to put into the program every last calorie, from a grape to a chocolate chip, made me more accountable to myself. I wasn't about to eat something that I knew would skew my numbers in the wrong direction. I wasn't going to admit to a computer program that I'd just scarfed 4 mini packets of Nerds because they still remind me of 1st grade. So I just didn't eat the junk. And I lost the weight.
While I love the program, here are the problems that I found: 1) It forces you to really know exactly what and how many nutrients are in every item you consume. The easiest solution I had for this was eating way too many packaged foods. Arguably healthy packaged foods... yogurt and a Clif bar for breakfast, Lean Cuisine for lunch, but processed and packaged nonetheless. 2) The time it takes to log every. single. morsel. of food you've eaten in a day can get extensive. I tried to combat this by eating a lot of the same things, especially for breakfast and lunch, then just rotating through a few well known healthy dinners. It was still a lot of time.
That's not to say that I wouldn't, or won't go back to it. If this little experiment doesn't work out, and I can't keep close enough track in my head, then I'm right back on that calorie counting train. I figure I'm *this* close... I've already gained back six. It's just that I really can't fathom tracking each spinach leaf for the next 40 or 50 years.
That's where the title of this post comes in. What I really did like about the program was the accountability factor. Knowing that I was going to have to put down in words and numbers how much I'd eaten and how hard I worked out kept me more motivated. I challenge anyone to try it. Keep track of every calorie you eat for a week. Not in that half-assed, rationalizing 'eh, that giant bowl of ice cream probably had 100 calories' kind of way. Write it all down, every bite... in a notebook, on the computer, wherever. I bet you'll think twice about a second biscuit with dinner when you know you'll have to see it in writing later. You'll hear about tracking your calories time and again if you spend any time at all in the "world of weight-loss." And it's because there really is truth there.
I'm hoping that writing here can bring me both the balance and the accountability that I need. For instance... I ate a big handful of peanut butter filled pretzels tonight while I was making dinner. Stupid, right? Here I am cooking a really healthy dinner of steamed jasmine brown rice, healthy-ish orange chicken from Trader Joe's, and steamed broccoli sprinkled with cardamom. It was practically done. Then I ate close to 300 calories of pretzels.
I bet the scale won't even bother teasing tomorrow.
Monday, April 26, 2010
On A Lark
This morning I weighed in at 136 pounds. Not horrible, but certainly not where I want to be. A little more than a year ago, I lost a bunch of baby (and whole grain Goldfish - yes, I know, it sounds ridiculous to me too) weight. But not all of it. At least, not as much as I hope to lose. Not enough to put me back where I was when I was eighteen, which, as anyone over 30 can tell you, really is frozen in time as some sort of ideal.
I hope to write about my quest to lose the "last" sixteen pounds. The ones that are stuck on my hips and belly and the backs of my arms, the ones that the little voice in my head tells me are permanent unless I get a little crazy. It's about trying to find a bit of balance while on this quest. Sometime I'll tell you the meaning that sixteen has in my life, above and beyond the number on the scale.
I've done, and continue to do, a vast variety of things to make it to this goal. I have been strict as hell with my diet, using a diet program to track every calorie in and out. I work out four days a week (it would be like seven, eight, ten... except I'm trying to find a balance between my family and my workout). I've said screw it all and eaten Halloween candy until I was sick. Okay, this doesn't count as getting me to my goal, but for the sake of honesty, it's something I've done. I want to do triathalons. I plan to complete an Ironman before I die.
So why start a blog? Mostly because I've been reading a lot of them lately. Probably because I need somewhere to whine and vent, and my husband's getting pretty sick of hearing about the size of my ass and 50 recipes you can make with chickpeas. You know how you can see something, or watch something, or read something and end up saying "I could totally do that!" I did the same thing a bunch of years ago when Trading Spaces was new on TLC. I was convinced I could be an interior designer... never mind my complete lack of artistic ability. I made a couple pieces of silly artwork, covered a couch, made a few throw pillows, and by then it was out of my system.
I have such high hopes for this blog though!
I've found there's this unbridled honesty in the blogs I've been reading that I envy. Anonymous honesty. The ability to just type whatever comes to mind and not care if someone reads it, or learns something fabulous, or just thinks you're a total idiot. So I'm just going to put it all down, and if you take issue with that, so be it.
By the way, did I mention that I'm trying to cut my family's food bill? By a lot? Not because we ate extravagantly before, but because money has been tight around here, and this seems like a relatively easy undertaking. I'm trying to get us to around $250/month for the four of us - or about $2/day each. I'm not really planning to take pictures of receipts and such, but I am keeping a running tally for the month. (And for last month, when we came in at $217.68 which in retrospect didn't include a Sam's Club trip, so that number is off. Great start, right?)
So, I plan to write about weight loss, and gain. Workouts and the lack thereof. Cooking and food, and being a non-red-meat-eater when I know my husband wishes I would just cook him a steak sometimes.
I hope it turns out just like I envision.
I hope to write about my quest to lose the "last" sixteen pounds. The ones that are stuck on my hips and belly and the backs of my arms, the ones that the little voice in my head tells me are permanent unless I get a little crazy. It's about trying to find a bit of balance while on this quest. Sometime I'll tell you the meaning that sixteen has in my life, above and beyond the number on the scale.
I've done, and continue to do, a vast variety of things to make it to this goal. I have been strict as hell with my diet, using a diet program to track every calorie in and out. I work out four days a week (it would be like seven, eight, ten... except I'm trying to find a balance between my family and my workout). I've said screw it all and eaten Halloween candy until I was sick. Okay, this doesn't count as getting me to my goal, but for the sake of honesty, it's something I've done. I want to do triathalons. I plan to complete an Ironman before I die.
So why start a blog? Mostly because I've been reading a lot of them lately. Probably because I need somewhere to whine and vent, and my husband's getting pretty sick of hearing about the size of my ass and 50 recipes you can make with chickpeas. You know how you can see something, or watch something, or read something and end up saying "I could totally do that!" I did the same thing a bunch of years ago when Trading Spaces was new on TLC. I was convinced I could be an interior designer... never mind my complete lack of artistic ability. I made a couple pieces of silly artwork, covered a couch, made a few throw pillows, and by then it was out of my system.
I have such high hopes for this blog though!
I've found there's this unbridled honesty in the blogs I've been reading that I envy. Anonymous honesty. The ability to just type whatever comes to mind and not care if someone reads it, or learns something fabulous, or just thinks you're a total idiot. So I'm just going to put it all down, and if you take issue with that, so be it.
By the way, did I mention that I'm trying to cut my family's food bill? By a lot? Not because we ate extravagantly before, but because money has been tight around here, and this seems like a relatively easy undertaking. I'm trying to get us to around $250/month for the four of us - or about $2/day each. I'm not really planning to take pictures of receipts and such, but I am keeping a running tally for the month. (And for last month, when we came in at $217.68 which in retrospect didn't include a Sam's Club trip, so that number is off. Great start, right?)
So, I plan to write about weight loss, and gain. Workouts and the lack thereof. Cooking and food, and being a non-red-meat-eater when I know my husband wishes I would just cook him a steak sometimes.
I hope it turns out just like I envision.
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