Still Here

do0rdiet.blogspot.com
Christina 2009

In October of '07 I took a new, full time job। Since then I have left that job in exchange for a better, full time job with the local university. What does this mean for my weightloss. It means that I put back on most of the weight I lost (20 out of 25 pounds). I have been changing my eating habits for the past 3 weeks. I hope that I will be successful "for keeps" this time. I have many new inspirations and I can honestly say that I've learned alot.


New Inspirations:
Kung Fu Panda and Queen Latifa are two of my favorite inspirations right now. Po the Panda (voiced by Jack Black) shows that food can be a good motivator (not a reward... but I'll get to that in the future). It also shows that sometimes when you get that food that you so badly wanted, you may be surprised and find that you are truly not hungry. Queen Latifa is great in her Jenny Craig ads. She never talks about what size she is, she simply, but confidently states that she is a size healthier. Her modesty and honesty about her own personal struggle are very inspiring. One other inspiration is People Magazine's list of folks who lost 100 or more by diest and exercise alone. It is very, very uplifting to see women who have succeeded. It gives me a sense of long term direction to know that it took most of these women 2-3 years to achieve their goals. And it's relieving to know that most of them have kids. It really helps me to see that this can be done. (I will not quit, I will not give up)... see previous posts.

What I've Learned:
One thing that has changed is my attitude about being healthy. Last year, when I would go over my daily calorie goal, I would freak out. I think this ultimately lead to the cessation of the healthy lifestyle. If I couldn't be perfect then there was no reason to try.

Now, my food log reflects positive weight loss days (or is that negative?) with the color green. Any daily calorie count less than the number of calories my body normally burns in one day is green. Any daily count within 200 calories of my sustaining point are yellow. And any daily count that goes over my sustaining point is red. I was much harder on myself before, too hard I think. I've even reconsidered the name of this blog, but the resolve behind the idea still stands.

I have learned that it is OK to fall off the horse, as long as you get back on. One bad day, two bad days, even three or four or a week. Just get going again, as soon as you can. I also allow myself a cheat day once a week. More on that in a future post.

I am happy to say that during the first 2 weeks of healthier eating, I lost 6 pounds! That's a little faster than I want the weight to come off, but after this weekend, I think things will average out.

So, here's to a starting the summer on the right track. Here's to staying on the track. Here's to me! And here's to not quitting. We can do this!


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I Cheated And It Was Beautiful!

do0rdiet.blogspot.com
Christina2009

I did not follow through with my plan from yesterday, which was to eat only vegetarian for 3 days. But it's OK.

It's OK because I did mostly stick to it today and the end result was BEAUTIFUL! I had to add an extra column to My Food Log so I could log all of the food I got to eat today. This is because I mostly ate vegetables with a little fruit thrown in. I ended up having 2 servings of protein. One meat at dinner which is where I cheated. And one serving of good old fashioned Planter's Peanuts, Dry Roasted as a snack. Also with the snack I had one serving of oatmeal with one pad of lite butter. This was my only bread serving for the day. I DID NOT make the same mistake that I did yesterday, what with the FOUR rolls at dinner and all. I actually have 70 calories to spare, but in light of yesterday's failure (and the day before for that matter) I'm going to call it quits on eating for the night.
I am rather impressed with this vegetarian-ish way of eating. I avoided dairy and meat until dinner. I also avoided bread and simple carbs (sugar and the like). So I'm going to try to do the same thing tomorrow. Also, one little plug... O'Charley's in my town will sell a To-Go side of vegetable medley (broccoli, squash, and carrots) and they will prepare it with no butter for $2.07 tax included. The medley was surprisingly filling. So props to Chux! And here's to shooting for the same kind of day tomorrow!
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Like the Leaves of September

My body is changing shape and so is my attitude. My stomach shrinking is great and so is my positive outlook.

I'm sure that this is just me being moody, stressed, and tired but I'm getting bored with dieting. That being said, I am determined not to give up! I should write that ten times just to reiterate it to myself. I do fine with lunch. I am usually skipping breakfast and then I am tending to eat waaaayyy too much for dinner. I'm going to go re-read My Diet Plan (see archives... too tired to put in the link) and hopefully I will revive. My title has to do with the fact that in August I was rapidly racking up red days. Many days were green, some days were yellow, and more often than I would like, red days appeared. My Food Log (see LINX) looks like the leaves of a tree, changing in September. I need to hold on to the green of July and if I have to stumble, my log should then look like a tree in March or April... mostly green but with hints of immature yellowish green.
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When Green Suddenly Turns Red

do0rdiet.blogspot.com
When a good run of green days suddenly turns red... what do you do?*** Last week I was determined to get back on track with my diet after having had a few weeks of events and vacation. I incorporated the use of mini-goals. Instead of just striving for the large progress markers, I focused on the next few days. This was a tremendous success as I ended up with 5 days in a row with green results. But then...

I got busy again, had company come to stay for the weekend, a festival to attend, and an outdoor catering venue to work at. All of these events are out of the ordinary for me. I was completely off schedule. As a result I logged 3 red days in a row! It's like I take 2 steps forward and 2 steps back because on at least 2 of the red days I also consumed more than I burned... this equals weight gain. Actually overall, I have not seen a weight gain, even though I was over eating. I attribute this to the increase my level of activity. I normally have a sedentary day. I work at a computer/phone and I love watching TV. Over the weekend I did lots of walking, standing, lifting, and in general saw a huge increase in my activity level. But none of this explanation answers my question... what do you do when green suddenly turns red? I could try the mini-goal of 3 green days again. I could also concede slightly and strive for 5 days of yellow. I'm wondering if green day goals are putting too much pressure on me and therefore at the first change in schedule or activity I am more likely to fail. This weekend will also be filled with out of the ordinary events. I will be traveling to the Charleston area on Friday. Back home on Saturday. Then I have another outdoor catering event to work Sunday and Monday. Knowing that I may be setting myself up for failure, I am going to strive to have green days for the rest of the work week. Then I'm going to try hard to have yellow days (and I may push all the way up to 1800) all weekend. This is an obvious concession to my overall goal, but even at 1800 calories, I am still having some, albeit slower, forward progress. Should this idea not work out, I will be better prepared for next time, and I will have a better understanding of how to set those short term goals for stressful periods.

***If you're not familiar with my system, visit My Food Log for a better understanding. I color code my dieting success on a log of my daily calories. That way, when it's time to get on the scale, if the results that I'm expecting are not there, I can quickly scan back to my eating history and see why I was disappointed. Green days are days where I met my goal, currently 1200 calories per day (I still call it a green day if I was over the goal but by less than 50 calories). Yellow days are to represent days where I did not meet my goal, but I still was able to burn a significant amount of calories. Yellow days are from 1250 calories up to 1800. Anything over 1800 is a red day. Red days also cover days when I consumed more calories than I burned.

I am pleased to announce that I have had 3 official takers for my offer to develop free, personalized, diet plans. I am looking forward to hearing back from these folks. I am more anxious to see if I've actually helped. I still have 22 slots left for free plans. One aspect of creating these plans that I wasn't quite prepared to deal with is the time it takes away from my blog. My post rate has been low as of late because I have a limited amount of time each day to devote to internet/computer/blog work. So, I apologize for not having fun fresh material every day. I am working on ways to resolve this issue. I am currently "pre-writing" this article. I am hoping that this method will make it so I can get a good archive of articles that are relevant and ready to print while at the same time make my evening work hours more productive.

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Another One Bites the Dust.... but how?

One more pound lost. But according to My Food Log I shouldn't have. How did this happen? The best explanation I have is that on Saturday (after having a "red day" on Friday) I worked a catering job for my father-in-law. It was hot, so very, very hot. I also had a "red day" on Saturday. And I have had one today too. I suppose I have exercised so much that I am still burning calories instead of storing them. This puts me at 17 pounds lost since June 4, 2007. I am right on schedule for reaching my first goal. This is also helpful as the coming weekend, I will surely eat too many calories, but I will be engaged in much more activity than usual. On a side note, I am wondering if anyone is out there... reading I mean. The comments seem very sparse. Give me a shout if you're reading. Read more!

Updates

My Food Log links have been changed so that you can now view my entire log. following the link, first you are taken to the original sheet (created with Google Documents). That sheet is a good source for copying the format and starting your own log. To view July or August, just click on that tab.

McDonald's sucks. See post below.

Vacation coming soon. I will not be posting August 10-13. I will think about you while I relax in The Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Read more!

Why 1200? Because It's Working.

I have received a few comments about my goal of only eating 1200 calories per day. In answer to those comments I would like to explain why I feel this is an important premise of My Diet Plan. I will also explain how I intend to fend off "starvation mode".

Let me begin by stating the truth, I am an underachiever. I always fall short of my goals by rationalizing to myself why it is OK to fudge. This is across the board in my life with everything from dieting to laundry and banking. This is a known personality flaw. Therefore, if I set my goal to a higher calorie mark and I revert into my classic behavior, I will fall far short of my goal.

Late this winter I participated in a series of free healthy lifestyle seminars where I discovered to my amazement that I was regularly consuming over 3000 calories per day... and I wondered why I was gaining (insert sarcasm mark here). I also learned that I could easily reduce my intake to 2100 without feeling deprived or working very hard. Then I took that mark one step further and reduced my calories to 1800. I stayed at 1800 calories per day with lots of exercise (3-5 times per week both muscle building and fat burning) for 7 weeks. In 7 weeks time I lost 1/2 of ONE pound. I realize that I may have added muscle which is good. I also realize that weight loss takes time. But really now, I have to say that project ended in failure and of course led me to gain 10 extra pounds after I stopped.

I now fend off starvation mode by eating 4 meals per day. On a perfect day, I eat 300 calories at each meal and space those meals 4 hours apart. This is more than enough stimulation of my metabolism to keep my body from entering starvation mode.

More importantly, THIS IS WORKING! As you can see from My Food Log, I have been doing this since June 4, 2007. It has been almost two months. I have lost about 15 pounds by the scale and about 11 pounds by the log. My weight loss is constant but not too rapid. I am also making a lifestyle change. This is not just a diet. This is a way to retrain myself into healthy and achievable habits.

I have set my weight loss goal to 140 pounds. I am 5'6". That goal is in the acceptable and healthy range for a person of my height. The range is 115 to 154. I am even shooting for a goal that is on the higher end of that healthy range. When I reach my goal at my current level of activity I will be able to eat about 1400 calories per day to maintain that weight. Based on my current weight loss rate, it will take me until June 2008 to reach my goal. I think this entire reasonable and achievable.

I appreciate all of the comments I have received about this premise of my diet plan. I welcome further comments and would be happy to help outline a personal diet plan for anyone out there who is need of free but unlicensed help. Read more!

Blew It So Bad Today

I've been on a roll with green days this week. See My Food Log for details. But tonight was the office party. I work in a small office and we recently won a runner-up prize in a sales competition. The prize was a gift card with which to throw an office party. Since there are only 3 of us, we decided to go to dinner and take our husbands. I would have done OK were it not for the... and I'm NOT kidding... DEEP FRIED CHEESECAKE. It's a really good thing that I have done so well this week. Otherwise I'd would have gained this week instead of lost. And then there's the upcoming weekend. This will be a challenge. Weekends tend to be my worst times. I'm off to a great start.... here goes. Read more!

Simple Substitutions

Check out My Food Log to see how I incorporate these simple substitutions into menus. These substitutions allow me to not feel deprived. Not feeling deprived is important so that I don't gorge on "moment on the hips, forever on the hips" foods.

Splenda or Equal in my previously sugar sweetened tea. I don't like Sweet-N-Low because it tastes bitter to me. Splenda also tastes bitter to me if I use too little.... weird. This saves me about 400 calories per day as I drink alot of tea (too much in fact but that's another post).

Marinated mushrooms in place of meat. I still eat meat, but I can't afford the calories at every meal. I use a brand called Monterey. A serving of 'shrooms is "about 4". I slice them and add them to marina sauce, in salads, and in wraps. And 1 serving has only 10 calories and 0 grams of fat!

Hummus Dip instead of mayonnaise. I could use light mayo but it tastes weird to me. When I want to whet my palate and add a punch of flavor I use Hummus Dip. This is a little different than real hummus. It has fewer calories, less fat, and costs less. I've used this on wraps, with tuna, and with sandwich meats. I use a brand called Wild Garden. It costs less per ounce than other prepared hummus too. Each serving of 2 tablespoons has 35 calories and 2 grams of fat.

Nothing wrong with Lite Bread. It chews a little thicker but saves 40 or so calories from each 2 slice sandwich. I also like some lite yogurts, lite ice cream, lite dressing, and I almost forgot my favorite...Cabbot's Vermont Sharp Cheddar Cheese. Cabbot's has several varieties including 15% lite, 30% lite, and 50% lite. The latter is a little hard to cook with but the taste is all there.

Currently my favorite sub. I call it Black Forrest Delight. This is a semi-sub as I still use real chocolate. I use 1 serving of Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate. The sub here is Hunt's Sugar Free Cherry Snack Pack. I nibble at the chocolate so it melts in my mouth and follow with a small bite of cherry. It really takes the edge off when I'm having a decadent craving. Weighing in at 210 calories and 11 grams of fat, it's an acceptable solution for indulging.

Got any great substitutions? I'd love to hear about them. Read more!