Can you guess what this is? " WRONG !!" I bet you though this was a roller coaster, but what it really is sadly, is your DIET !! Well at least it's MY diet. No matter how many times I ride the crazy diet train, I some how always manage to get stuck at the top and then sit there waiting for some tall, dark and handsome fire fighter to come get me down. Maybe a personal trainer who works pro-bono .. if you know what I mean.
But then I wake up and the dream is over and I'm still stuck at the top. The Top of the Scale.
I finally realized that the only way down is if I get out and push. The big wake up call came on my birthday. That dreaded day, when I realized in 2 years I'll be 50 , but if I didn't get it together , I stood a chance of not making it that long.
So, I've climbed out of the Roller Coaster, at the top, looking down... way down, vertigo down. and just like when you are way up high on a cliff , you hear the voices in your head say : "Don't look down, just keep moving, and preferable not Over the Cliff".
If you hear another voice say "JUMP" , just ignore them, that's some irate driver who wants you to get off the bridge already and stop holding up traffic!!
So, that's what I've been doing, moving forward, not the jumping part. I'm Not looking way down, only looking at the path, staying the course until I make it to the bottom.
and what better way to make everyone else suffer my ever so exciting frustration on this journey, then to Blog about it!!
Get my creative juices flowing again and get some of you nags off my BACK!. Are you happy now???!! .
My first step was to get back to logging my food. To do a food journal. If we can pick up our smart phones 20 times day to check our Facebook status, there is no reason why we can't pick it up at the same time and log all the food we ate. The key here for me is to " just log it" . Not to worry about what I'm logging, how much, how many calories, worried about being criticized for what I've been eating... Just Log It and Own It ! . This was truly an eye opener, to actually acknowledge the true number of calories we eat in a day, and let me tell you folks, Butter is the Enemy !! I might have mentioned that before.
A bowl of KD ( aka Kraft Dinner or Mac & Cheese for the US peeps), with a hot dog cut up and mixed in [I know disgusting, just grab your garbage can and keep reading], has over 800 calories. If one is looking to lose weight and be in a range of 1500 calories a day, one can NOT afford to eat Mac& Cheese............ E-VER! unless you eat like a 1/4 cup. Good thing I do not crave this delicacy, as its only attraction was that it was cheap, fast & easy, like a Hollywood Hooker, therefore, I can happily walk away.
There are many apps and/or websites one can use to log their food and keep track of their health choices. I have personally picked " MyFitnessPal " . One reason is because many of my friends use it, its one of the original applications, it has a huge library of sources, and its very easy to use. The website and the app are very simple. I have gone onto Spark People, but I find their website almost too much and that you can't navigate around very well. Its overwhelming for sure. For the computer sassy person, its a great website for keeping track of more than your food, measurements, they provide meal plans to suit your lifestyle and some great recipes with all the info you need. For me its just too cluttered and confusing. I'm dieting, I have a short temper and attention span, remember !
If anyone out there is reading this and you have MFP or decide to join, add me as a friend. I'm under " yayagocrazy " . Mention that I sent you. ha.
I have left my "food diary" open for all to see. I'm sure it needs much fine tuning, I've already heard the criticism and all I can say is ..... @#$$%^#$%. maybe I can't say that, its a family blog.
I have made lots of changes in what I've been eating, more conscious choices in how I make foods, what foods I buy, read labels, look at calorie counts, spend my calories where they count most.
I just have to KEEP Logging. I'm 27 days in, 3 more days and according to the experts, this will become a habit, and hopefully not the kind of habit that will require me to get a "food log patch" after I'm down to 98lbs..... must keeeeeeeepppp gggooooiiinnnggg...
I'm currently down 14.6 lbs , with some fluctuation here and there, but not in crisis mode just yet.
Second step is to start incorporating exercise ... so lots of swimming for me. At least while its warm out.
So I hope you all will once again try to follow along at my latest journey , maybe learn a thing or two, for example, that you really don't care about my journey , but at least try to take away a good read.
Next step is over coming the highs and lows and the diet traps...the mental games.
oh, and I know " blah blah blah , your not suppose to diet, its a lifestyle change, blah blah blah " .
GO blow it out your Fitness Bootcamp !! face it , most of us diet at some point in our lives.
small changes, small steps , small goals - makes for healthier people.
I love you blog and I will get my journal out again also. Thanks
ReplyDeleteWay to go anonymous!! ;) .
DeleteThanks for the reminder to come and check out your blog J!
ReplyDeleteSince having the gastric bypass, I often have a lot of trouble with food in general - milk as a rule, and often meat. They instilled in us at the sessions that meat must be eaten first, to get the protein in for the malabsorption, but on the days that it's just not working I've been forced to get pretty creative.
My system is pretty screwy at the best of times, if I suddently went on a lettuce only salad eating diet my stomach would go bonkers too.. it's crazymaking..
It got to a point where if I didn't eat first meal, first something of the day before I'd been up an hour I'd be sick for the rest of the day.. and even now several years down the road.. habit is 2 cheese strings first thing, and "breakfast" an hour or more later.. any diversioni of that hasn't worked out well at all..
We'd initially signed on with Epicure both as an incentive to try new things and cook more interesting meals -- get out of the rut -- and of course as the joke became "spice up date night" so that we'd be cooking together more often and using our gift..
While I haven't totally cut meat out, I do follow the #MeatlessMonday threads and do make meatless dishes fairly often. I too am working on stepping out of my comfort zone.. trying new things.. picking up odd looking vegetables at the grocery store and wondering what kind of mischief that we can get into together..
Have been more and more aware lately of an increasing girth, and that my lymphedema is once again filling my legs with fluid - I admit it, I've been blaming it on stress, blaming it on life, being busy, not being able to do much about so much of it.. but ultimately there is always *something* we can be doing to affect change. Thanks for that reminder!
I'd love trade recipes with you sometime.
I've been plotting for a fall adventure. I really want to get into canning. I'v ebeen doing a lot more freezer prep, and planned leftovers to make meal times quicker, and we rarely eat out anymore (except maybe when we're held hostage in Vancouver for extended periods of time... groceries are so much more expensive out there than they are in Ontario.. I was so glad to get HOME)
Keep in touch.. I wish we lived closer.. I know you'd chase my butt around the block and make sure I was towing the line! ;)