One week weigh-in: 213.6.  Down 5.2 units. 

[insert cute graph here--I wish . . . ]

I did fairly well for the first week. No major lifestyle “detours.” I only had two big obstacles this past week: one I could control, and the other I couldn’t.  Avoiding white flour is the hardest part of my new routine. Whole Foods needs to build a store in my small town so I don’t have to drive 45 minutes when I need something. The other challenge is pre-menopausal, I guess: a period that has now lasted for 26 days.  A doctor’s visit it is. The problem is, DH was just “sold” to another company and the new insurance doesn’t kick in just yet. Gotta find that list of doctors and be ready.

Foods I ate last week:

–marinated vegetable “salad” of green beans, chickpeas, corn, black beans, bell peppers, onions, and carrots, tossed with olive oil, vinegar, Splenda, thyme, salt and pepper.  I’m keeping a big bowl of this in the fridge until I get tired of it. I love it.

–migas (scrambled eggs with corn tortillas, peppers, onions, cheese)

–whole grain pancakes with sugar-free butter pecan syrup

–goat yogurt mixed with papaya and Splenda (another new favorite–the goat “cheese” is low fat and has added fiber)

–homemade whole-grain bread

–a sandwich on pumpernickel with avocado, green chiles, and swiss cheese

–brussels sprouts, white peaches, olives, cherries, carrots, sugar-snap peas, spinach

–strawberry gazpacho

–several Atkins shakes (leftover from a few months ago–but I like them!)

–homemade banana-bran muffins

–oysters!  prepared several ways. A friend gave us a 2-quart container from New Orleans. They were so good.

–bites of DH’s shrimp risotto

–white pizza

These last two items I had last night, eating out, and I will probably pay dearly for them when I get on the scale tomorrow.

I need to work on consuming more vegetables and drinking more water.

A confession: new-found old friends on Facebook is competing with my blog time!  After I get caught up, I will blog more and learn the tricks of trade. In my mind’s eye (name that quote!) my blog is witty, informative, and a veritable patchwork of colorful pictures.

Here’s to week two.

Excelsior.  

How many minutes (hours?) a day do you devote to you?  Do you love routine or hate it?  Does it depend on age?  Is variety the spice of life?   Is a regular schedule the key to weight loss?

Like many, I’ve been on dozens of diets. I can only remember a few that weren’t concerned with a regular eating schedule, determined of course by the average human body’s cycle.  

Yet there are SO many contradictions, like ”Never skip breakfast!” and “Don’t eat if you’re not hungry.”

I’m one of those who has always blamed lack-of-routine/too busy/too-tired-to-care-or-go-to-meetings  for failing at my diet attempts. I’m struggling at the moment with getting past that this time around. It’s one of the reasons I’ve chosen the whole foods, low-fat, vegetarian “lifestyle” rather than a stricter regiment of counting something.

The fact is, I’m not hungry in the mornings at all. The fact is, I sometimes don’t eat lunch until 5:00.  With two restaurants, I can’t always predict my schedule. It’s gotten much better in the last two years, but there are still times when I don’t get home until 11 pm. And then I still have to eat supper and go straight to bed.  My biggest challenge is figuring out a way to live with that and still lose weight.

So far so good. Yesterday: 216.6, down .6 from the previous day. Today 215.4. That’s 3.4 “units” since Monday.  I won’t weigh every day (again, current lack of routine) but it encourages me this early in my lifestyle change to see that something’s working. If I hit a plateau, I’ll deal with it then!

When I hit 50 in January, I vowed to slow down and pay more attention to my body. Why I’ve always felt guilty for spending time on myself, I don’t know. So I’m trying to develop an attitude whereby I  ENJOY plucking my eyebrows, exfoliating my feet, going to the dentist, etc.  If I can build some ME time into the daily grind (hello blog!) I will be happier. After all, I like me and by golly, I deserve it. 

Here’s to me.  [lifts glass of herbal tea in the air.  I'll insert graphics when I figure out how]

Here’s to routine.

Excelsior.

No, I won’t be staying with Amy for awhile.   She blew my diet off course the very first day!

I bought two frozen Amy’s vegetarian entrees on Sunday, along with other bare necessities just to get started. (I was low on time at the store, rushed through.)  I’d had them before and they’re delicious, but they’re partially WHITE.  Why won’t she use brown rice instead of white? I’m certain she knows how nutritionally bereft white rice is?  Plus, one of them had a small amount of diced potatoes.

Okay, I shouldn’t blame Amy. My fault for not being more prepared my first day.

As the entree was already microwaved when I realized it, I mixed some leftover brown rice in with the white. I guess I’m going to be forced to do the assembly-line thing and make my own frozen entrees. But that’ll have to wait until the weekend.

Yesterday I consumed: black coffee, 3 figs, a white peach, fresh goat cheese (like yogurt, really really good, way better than Yoplait or any of the fruity ones), two Amy’s entrees (Mattar Paneer, Palak Paneer), 1/4 c. shredded oat/wheat cereal, mini carrots, Laughing Cow low-fat cheese wedge, an English muffin, 1 T. peanut butter, some mixed nuts (the Heart Healthy kind), white wine.

That’s WAY too much food, especially for someone who sometimes doesn’t eat lunch until 5:00. I had cravings all day. On top of that, as I suspected it might, the morning fruit did not set well with me even though I isolated it. I will try it again, but if I get the same stomach results, out the window it goes! 

Bottom line: 217.2 units this morning. Down 1.6 units.

A quick Google last night proved that I am not alone with my fruit/sugar stomach issues.  Some people just have a low tolerance for fructose.  Fruit sits in the stomach and ferments, essentially, causing bloating and gas.  Because of the food pyramid that was drilled into me growing up, I’ve always felt guilty for not eating enough fruits and vegetables. If we can ever get past the food pyramid hoax, we might be able to get more in tune with individual nutritional needs instead of falling under the spell of commercial marketing schemes:

“By promoting the USDA Food Pyramid, The Department of Agriculture-the agency responsible for promoting the products of American agribusiness, not one of the many federal agencies established to monitor and protect our health — is serving two masters. This can be tricky — especially when one of them includes persuasive and well-connected representatives of the formidable meat, dairy and sugar industries. The end result of their tug-of-war is a set of positive, feel-good; all-inclusive recommendations that completely distort what could be the single most important tool for improving the health of the nation.”

–The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating

A HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL BOOK By Walter C. Willett, M.D.

TIme to go to work.  Am revising one of the restaurant’s menus today. Been putting it off for way too long. I have a fear of finalizing a new item and then no one orders it, so I have to take it off and reprint the menu . . again.   

Excelsior.

Mornin’.

Made coffee. Let the dogs and cat out. Psyched myself up by talking out loud in an encouraging, positive tone, things like “What’s the worst that can happen?  Scale explosion? Depression so deep you’ll go back to bed forever and lose your family, income, house?”

Took a deep breath, pulled out the scale and climbed on. (Even a two-inch step up can be a challenge sometimes.) 212. No–213.  Step off, on again. 211.

Not NEARLY as bad as I thought it was going to be. Except . . . I knew it was wrong. My jeans have been fitting more like they were stuffed with 218, 219 units.  (Not “lbs.” Units. It’s far less offensive.)

I remembered there were two more sets of scales under the sink. Resigned to do this thing right, right from the start, I yanked them out.

One screamed 218.4,  the other 218.8.

(Death to all donuts!   Including the german chocolate beignets I created the other night with white chocolate and raspberry sauces. )

For psychological reasons, I chose the 218.8. Yes, I know I should calibrate them, but I’m not so concerned with the tiny numbers at this point. I’d rather spend the time getting this blog going (focus focus focus).

 So there we have it: 218.8 units of me on Day One.

That was the hardest thing I had to do today. Painting the den will now seem like a piece of cake. With real buttercream frosting please.  : ) 

Now for the diet’s–read “lifestyle change”–two tenets:

No meat.  For me, that means no red meat or poultry.  Since I’m becoming vegetarian for non-philosophical reasons, I’m not concerned with details here. I was a vegetarian once for three months and liked it and found it relatively easy to do.  I love eggs and they like me; ditto for fish. But I’m limiting fish to the occasions when I feel I must have a non-vegetarian entree, like when I eat out, which isn’t very often. These days it’s mostly when I travel. (Eating at my own restaurants doesn’t count! Does sleeping in your spare room  equal a night at a bed and breakfast? I think not.)

No white. This is over-simplied, I realized last night as I lay in bed thinking of all the white things I can and should eat: yogurt, cottage cheese, egg whites, cauliflower to name a few.  So “no white” for me really means no white carbs. Rice, bread, pasta, potatoes. And high fat whites like cheese, mayo, and dressing should be limited.

The other principles listed are strictly personal:

Only fruit before noon:  I discovered a few years ago that eating fruit with other things (bread, meat, vegetables– anything, really) caused me to have stomach problems. The easy fix was to simply eliminate fruit, since my eating eating habits have evolved to where I really only eat once or twice a day (not a good thing!).

But I like fruit. And miss it, especially seasonal-only fruit. So fruit for breakfast it is. EXCEPT SUNDAY BRUNCH. (See a future blog about this. I’m sure there will be one. Probably even a category.)

And now I’ve come across another challenge: getting a picture on here. Today’s post will have to be a bit unfinished. Apperently I’m too *thtoopid* to post a picture at the moment. Give me time.  After the lifestyle-change fog lifts, a renewed clarity will take over, I’m certain, giving birth to leaner, meaner brain cells that will figure it out.

How time flies when you’re blogging, especially with technical hurdles. It’s time to paint the den. DH will be back tomorrow, the new work week will set in, and leisure time will be precious until next Sunday.  

 Wish me luck on Day One.  Good luck, Sally.  You go girl.  Size 12!   You can do it!

Excelsior.

Hi. My name is Sally, and I’m a . . . a what?  Fat girl?  No, I’m 50.  And that number hit me HARD (but it didn’t knock me down.  Did I mention I am fat?) Reaching 50 is probably the biggest reason I’m here. So I’m posting my goal to lose weight then buy a horse.  All the while bloggertaining the world wide web . . . or most likely just my lonely ol’ self . . . with my trip-ups and fall-downs–of which I’m certain there will be many. 

I don’t have a theme, really. Sorry ’bout that. But if the thought of me trying to throw a leg over a horse without the poor thing buckling in half makes me laugh (and cry), maybe someone else will get a chuckle out of it too.

Oh wait–that’ll take pictures.

SO let’s get focused here. List of essential items/must-do’s for tomorrow:

1. Weigh-in  (Ouch.  Big ouch. Can’t let DH read this one yet; I’ve got him tricked into thinking I weigh a mere 150 or 160 lbs. Yes, he’s that dense.  Hey,  wait a minute . . .  could I be the dense one? Does he have me tricked into believing that he thinks I weigh a mere . . . ?)

2. Upload a picture. (No brainer. I can post a bust shot just until I’ve eased out of this denial. It won’t take long, I promise. In fact, stepping onto the scales oughta do it.)

3. Start a contest to name my horse.

Allrighty then.

I think that went well, don’t you? But then the hardest part is yet to come: starting the diet.  It begins tomorrow at the crack of dawn, and I’m taking it slow by calling it a “lifestyle change.”

I’m going vegetarian. 

I’ve made my basic tenets pretty simple:

No white, no meat. 

I’ve also added a few things to my daily routine to help control my calorie intake: 

• Fruit only before noon (right now I seldom have breakfast, just coffee.)
• A full glass of tomato or lite grapefruit juice before lunch and dinner.
• Two glasses of water for every glass of wine. (I drink wine every night.  Oh hush.  But I hardly ever drink water. I guess I was born a few hundred years too late.)

Thanks for tuning in.  I’ve got all kinds of topics planned (like restaurant reviews, hospitality hints, how to hire a hit man to kill your ex–just kdding!)

See you tomorrow.

This feels weird.  Like I’m talking to myself.  Maybe I should have read some blogs before starting this. Oh what the hell.  Live a little, Sally!  What is it they say?  Live well, laugh often, blog like there’s no one reading?  Or something like that . . .

Excelsior.