After several years away from 3fc and several months of lax exercise standards, I have gotten the resolve to take advantage of the gym at the hotel I am staying at on a regular basis. The one time I successfully lost pounds, it was all about the exercise, several hours a day, everyday or close to it. I am trying to get back to that. I struggled over the years because exercise was not convenient; there was traffic on the road (In my defense it was really fast moving dangerous traffic); the gym was too far away; no one would go with me; I was moving soon and I would start then; my commute was too long; I was too tired. I had all the excuses … and all the pounds to show for it.
I have only made a week and a half, and usually it is around week 2 or 3 that my resolve gives out, so I will be returning here for support. Expect me.
In addition to the gym I have returned to tracking my food intake on fitday, something I stopped doing when I joined WW (I have since quit, I wasn’t feeling the local group and I didn’t have the energy to drive to the group I liked on a regular basis in rush hour traffic.) Since I am living at a hotel with limited cooking capabilities and included breakfasts and dinners, I figured I would get a baseline of my eating habits and really work on restricting calories when I move into my new home. However what I have discovered is the mere act of recording my caloric intake is enough to restrict it. Over the past week I have consumed about 100 calories less each day. Not because I have been trying to, by because I don’t eat casually. When I have to journal each thing that does into my mouth I consider each thing that goes into my mouth. And more often then not, I choose not to consume it. Great, I guess, but I also need to be careful that I A) do not shrink my caloric intake below a safe limit, a problem I had both on WW and when I was really loosing on my own, and B) don’t self-restrict to the point where I never get to enjoy the fun stuff... (I am a sucker for Space Ice Cream, good chocolate and lollipops) and then let myself get derailed or discouraged by these treats, or the lack thereof.
What I have noticed is when I am hungry. I require a snack around 11 am and again around 4:30pm. The 4:30 pm snack can’t be just water, which, while very satisfying, make me have to go to the restroom in the middle of my workout.
I have also the last few nights (esp. last night and the one before when my caloric intake was down 200-300 calories from my first paying-attention day, and an unknown amount from my not-paying-attentions days) been comfortably hungry when I went to bed, and I have been remembering my high school days when I felt an obscene amount of pride at that bedtime hunger. Of course looking back on it, while I was way skinny in HS, I was also probably anorexic
(I went to boarding school and food was presented on a schedule; I do not eat well, or at all, when placed on a strict schedule), so this might not be a good thing to go back to.