[indiblue]

Well it's April Fools Day already on the eastern hemisphere so I'm staring the new chat!

krampus and Dianne the thing that helps me is to eat my sweet/indulgence and IMMEDIATELY log the calories. Yesterday I was working on a cover letter eating my disgusting(er, amazing) brownie batter and has my calorie counter pulled up. Logged as I was eating. As full as I was I would have gone in for another except I saw I was already over my 1200 for the day. I need that kind of instant feedback, otherwise I'm in denial and give myself the benefit of the doubt... hence a second brownie. I've often thought they should create a machine like a heart rate monitor you wear on your wrist that calculates the calories you've consumed in real time so you can literally know the exact bite when you need to stop eating. For me I need that instant feedback so when I become a filthy rich venture capitalist I'll invest in the R & D for it.

Daisy welcome back!! We missed you around here! I'm glad to see you are back on track and happy with where you are.

Wildflower It's awesome you are feeling smaller (and I agree with the out-of-sync comment) and it makes complete sense for you to focus more on exercise and sleep right now. Regardless of what you choose I hope you are able to find relaxation and balance.

kat YAY! Don't worry about the freakout, I do it too all the time. Glad you're back to normal

[krampus]

I woke up feeling thin and awesome after my successful run yesterday and almost wanted to weigh myself, but I figured it would be more worth it to prolong the magic of just going by how I feel. My suit jacket that I bought in Germany is back to buttoning comfortably and I have significantly less fat gathered around my hips than I did a week ago.

Today is the first day of the school/work year in Japan, and it's been meetings all day long. The English department ordered fancy bentos for lunch. They are enormous and look something like this: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-R...0/image212.jpg - ours had different contents but you get the idea. I am the heaviest/fattest (and I'm not even fat!) female teacher in the dept this year and I observed my petite coworkers eating almost all of theirs including lots of rice. I was full before I could start on the rice so I left it. Another milestone to feel proud of - not eating stuff just because it's there. There are a bunch of boxes of cookies and sweets sitting near my desk in the staffroom and I am sort of indifferent to them.

Overall I'm in a good place right now

[kat999]

indiblue, I like your heart rate monitor/calorie calculator idea!

krampus, way to go staying away from the rice because you felt full!

Still 118 this morning. Bummed that I'm not all the way back to the 117 that I managed to reach last weekend, but in all honesty my body might not have been ready for that. I was actually only fully 117 for about three days, so maybe the opposite problem was going on then and I was dehydrated or something.

Date night with DH tonight. We might ordinarily go out for dinner PLUS drinks/dessert/coffee, but I'm going to try to persuade him to let us scarf down a quick (healthy!) dinner beforehand and then I personally will try to eschew dessert and just stick to a glass of red wine and an espresso. Wish me luck not caving and inhaling an entire piece of cheesecake! I might even tell him not to "let" me order the cheesecake, even though he totally doesn't care when I cheat on my plan.

[Dianne042425]

Happy Friday feathers and Happy Fools day

Indiblue See, thats what makes me want to "binge". I have a strange mind. I guess I get freaked out when I have reached my limit and have those thoughts "omg Im at my limit, I cant have anymore, what do I do, oh no". I just freak myself out by feeling so confined and definite once I hit my limit. I also have a calculator for a mind. I add up my daily calories in my food (to my dismay) even though I stopped "calorie counting" (used to on Dailyplate). You just have so much more willpower than me!

Krampus I am SOOOO happy to hear you are feeling/doing much better. You were stuck in a rut for a little while. Are you still doing the intuitive eating?

Kat Seeeeeeeeeeee, now dont you feel much better? You KNEW it was a fluke on the scale and your body just fluctuating, but I understand. That darn scale has so much power. Thats why i dont go near it; especially after a really bad day. The water bloat would just throw me into a binge or become a fool crying hysterically

I havent been doing well the past week. Ive been keeping up my running but with my multiple birthday celebraions I have been eatig around 2000-3000 calories daily. Yesterday was my first lower calorie day (around 1600). So I feel good today. I think my size 4's still fit the same so I am happy. I havent stepped on the scale in almost a month! Next week, Im going to do 2 full days on plan and then weigh. Ahhh so nervous!

[krampus]

Dianne Birthdays are worth celebrating most of the time - you'll be just fine, go by how you feel and don't go back to the scale! I'm still doing intuitive eating but I can't kick the "calculator" part of my mind either.

kat999 Even if you do have the cheesecake, you have a husband who thinks you're hot stuff and you weigh under 120 pounds. Almost no one weighs under 120 pounds! Have fun tonight.

***

Today my neighbor gave me a package of peanut butter cookies. They're awesome and I want to eat them all but I know if I do I'll feel gross and sick. I don't feel stressed out about it. I do the same thing Dianne mentioned where going over or almost hitting my "limit" too early in the day makes me want to binge. Not having a limit is working well for me thus far.

Tomorrow is the first big challenge to this new train of thought - potluck picnic involving alcohol.

[indiblue]

Just saying a quick HI... my boyfriend booked a surprise weekend trip so tomorrow 5 AM we're peacing out. See you all on Monday!! Happy, healthy weekend

[lackadaisy]

kat -- Woah, you've made such progress while I was away! Enjoy your dinner. Don't even think about skipping dessert -- just go with a less-ridiculous option. I find that the sorbets & fruit platters at restaurants are actually perfect desserts -- not too heavy after a great meal, cleansing, and often cheaper. Or I get a really delicious macchiato or other indulgent coffee snack -- so delicious, usually under 250 calories, and you can really savor it.

[b]krampus -- I'm so glad you're doing better!! YAY. I have confidence in you. Stick to your awesome workouts and reasonable eating, and definitely don't let your worries about losing control lead to more worrying and more losing control. Your perseverance with exercise is such an inspiration.

Dianne/indiblue --what helps me keep from derailing on unhealthy food is a combination of the following:
1) Indulgent-tasting "healthy" food like 200-calorie low-carb protein bars that taste like brownies. Pricey, so I incentivize in two ways: I also only let myself eat them after workouts.
2) Reminding myself how much running or spin I'd have to do to burn off the calories.
3) Reminding myself what else I could eat for those calories.

The third is the most effective... I remember that I could have a bowl of blueberries instead of two bites of pecan pie, and I'm like "HELLLZ NO" and go find me some berries. This has been rough on my wallet, but a very delicious and affirmative strategy.

------

It's definitely good to be back! After thinking about how I lost control over spring break due to social pressures, and then binged three separate time in my first week back due to the stress of my regain, I've set a new 'spiritual' goal for myself with dieting so I don't freak out again:

1. I am NOT going to worry about how much I lose, and set really really low/achievable timeline in terms of when I'll reach my original goal weight. Even if I miss it, I don't care.

2. I AM going to end up at under 7000 net calories on LoseIt every week. And I won't do that by starving myself -- I will eat around 1200-1300, but more if I want to -- and work the rest off via exercise.

3. I will undercount all my exercise and do at least three days of intense yoga, two days spinning or other cardio classes, and two long runs a week. Walking doesn't count, but I'll keep walking 30+ minutes a day to get places. This isn't so much a weight loss goal as a personal desire to build my strength/endurance and my ability to successfully do various balance poses in yoga.

So far these goals have been really helpful for me this past week. I'm optimistic that I can stick to them -- I just did a 55-min intense spin class and 55-min intense flow yoga class, never taking any of the optional breaks, and I feel fantastic. But I admit that that's partly because I weighed in at 120.6 today. Progress!!

[Wildflower]

Well I've been down about a lb this week...the first pound I've lost all month. I'll take it.

Still focusing on stress reduction/relaxation/sleep. My stress level was over the top this past week so interesting that I lost a pound. I have finals next week and then 1 more quarter until summer break. I am counting down the weeks.

[kat999]

Wound up doing dinner out but neither one of us wanted dessert after all, so we just indulged by having some wine. Fun night, and I didn't stress about calories but was still subconsciously being healthy.

I haven't weighed today and I think I may just forgo it because I feel super energetic and just got in a GREAT workout. I'm counting that as my victory today.

Tomorrow officially begins my kind of hardcore training for the 5K I'm doing at the end of the month, so I'm going to try to take it easy on myself if I have a few days where I go over my allotted calories. Since I'll be doing a lot of running and cardio, I know I might feel like I need extra fuel some days, and that's totally okay.

[lackadaisy]

Wildflower--Good luck with final!! Mine aren't for another month and I'm starting to feel the stress already. Get plenty of sleep and make sure to eat well (eat more, just no junk!) so your mind is in top condition next week.

Kat-- Great job resisting dessert! What's your training regime for the 5k, if you don't mind my asking? I've been training very haphazardly for a 10k which is coming up in 2 weeks... sometimes it's hard to get my butt into gear to do those long runs when a spin class is more social/fun.

----

Yesterday morning I learned the hard way what happens when you don't eat enough after a workout. On Friday I did spin + yoga, and then ate as I wanted to the rest of the day... which meant about 600 cal before 10 pm, and then a huge amount at my roommate's birthday party (700?). On Saturday morning, I was groggy, fatigued, and miserable, no matter what I ate. I slept in the afternoon, missing a party and an afternoon run with friends... it took eating 500 calories of energy bars to wake me up by the evening. And even then, I paid for my irregular eating & slow digestion with a stomachache all night.

BUT I braved the discomfort to swing dance for almost four hours, taking very few breaks, and ate cleanly all night, so I ended up at a very good net calories number yesterday, too. I woke up feeling great this morning. Looking forward to holding steady and staying on plan (without going under) this week.

[kat999]

Originally Posted by lackadaisy;3788945
[b

Kat[/b]-- Great job resisting dessert! What's your training regime for the 5k, if you don't mind my asking? I've been training very haphazardly for a 10k which is coming up in 2 weeks... sometimes it's hard to get my butt into gear to do those long runs when a spin class is more social/fun.

Well, my normal workout regime is rotate between cardio, strength training, and yoga/pilates or other flexibility-based workout (like a ballet routine or something), but until the end of the month, I'm significantly upping my cardio to be the majority of my workouts, and scaling back strength and yoga to just a couple of times a week. Also, most of my cardio workouts will involve running between 1 and 5 miles, rather than doing aerobics or other types of cardio. So it's not a formal training regime exactly, just an adjustment of the kinds and intensity of workouts. Once I get closer to race day, I'll probably also add a 1- or 2-mile run in every morning before work and then do another workout later in the day.

[krampus]

I just weighed myself and was disappointed. Like, really disappointed. But I also ate more over the weekend than I normally would. So now what, do I hurl myself back into the cycle of weighing and counting, or do I chuck the scale into the nearest bush?

However, I overate a bit on Saturday and did observe that I was less hungry yesterday so I simply ate less, which as "duh" as it sounds is something I would have had a really hard time with for the past few weeks. Also, a dress that was a little uncomfortable last Monday feels good enough today that I am wearing it to work. It was, naturally, more comfortable 8 lbs ago >_<

[lackadaisy]

"Intuitive" controls are great. I've overeaten in the afternoon for the past two days, getting near my daily limit before 5 pm, which I thought would spell disaster, since I usually eat so much late at night. Surprisingly, I was then able to happily resist eating more the rest of the night... though one day I went to an ice cream social, and the other day to a swing dance with cupcakes and burgers. I was just too full.

It's such an empowering feeling to know your body is adjusting to the "right" calorie intake, isn't it?

[kat999]

Sushi last night. Oh, man, did I go over my calories for yesterday! Like 300+. Yikes. I'm not even quite sure how I managed to screw up like that, except that yesterday was a much-needed flexibility workout day for my 5K training plan, and Pilates simply doesn't burn the calories the way running does. Ah well. I didn't weigh this morning, so I'm not sure if I did any damage to my progress, but I'm doing cardio tonight after work and will expect I'll have a much better calorie distribution today than yesterday.

I did a LOT of cardio on Saturday and have the soreness to prove it, so maybe that mitigated the sushi extravaganza.

[lackadaisy]

Has anyone else tried Egg Beaters?

It's odd... I had some yesterday with dinner instead of egg whites and was shocked at how much they filled me up. Maybe it was because I ate a LOT of cashews 90 minutes before my dinner, so I was close to full already, but my 7pm dinner of 1c egg beaters, cucumber, & lettuce (150 calories) kept me stuffed until past midnight.

Giving it another try today. I'm a little skeptical of the possible ill effects of processed food, but it is made from actual egg whites, after all...