Week
1, Monday, 10/5/15, Weight: 148.8 lbs.
Week
2, Monday, 10/12/15, Weight: 145.2 lbs.
Week
3, Tuesday, 10/20/15, Weight: 147.0 lbs.
Week
4, Monday, 10/26/15, Weight: 146.2 lbs.
Week
5, Monday, 11/2/15, Weight: 145.2 lbs.
Week
6, Monday, 11/9/15, Weight: 142.4 lbs.
Week
7, Monday, 11/16/15, Weight: 142.0 lbs.
Down 0.4 lbs from last week, and down 6.8 lbs overall in 6 weeks.
Awesome,
I made it through the weekend (of eating delicious birthday cake with
@BadgerReader, yum!) and still managed to maintain/even lose a little. Yay!
But there’s another tricky Birthday weekend ahead (more cake with my
family ;), and then the Thanksgiving feast week. Here we go, I’ve got to keep it down!
My
favorite “foodie” movie that I’ve just watched in the latest bunch is called Fed Up, narrated by
Katie Couric. It’s a pretty
hard-hitting, anti-sugar documentary movie with plenty of news clips, facts,
and personal stories to keep it interesting.
I found it equally inspiring and depressing. My takeaway: no one is going to protect you
and make sure you eat the right things (not the food companies, the government,
your family, or your friends), so you have to take it into your own hands to
eat better. But it’s an uphill battle
because of all the marketing and accessibility to “garbage” food that’s all
around us. And they basically point to the
“lie” of the energy balance—calories eaten must equal calories expended. Rather, they state that sugars (in all its
forms, including sugar-free artificial sweeteners) make the pancreas work
harder and release more insulin which keeps us hungry and stores these sugars
as fat. I’m not sure I believe/agree
with everything in the movie, but it’s full of pretty interesting ideas. And it made me realize that all I can be certain of is that I should be making most
of my diet full of fresh, whole (organic/local) vegetables and fruits, and
cutting out sugar as much as I can. I
may even try their 10-day challenge (no sugar in any form/honey/syrup/white
flour), but probably AFTER all the holidays are over!
My
successes with my goals from last week:
1.
I jogged three times this past week, and two of them were 30 minutes at 5.6 mph,
and the last was 10/5/5 minutes at 5.8/5.6/5.4 mph. However, I’ve decided to take a new approach going
forward, because I’m not enjoying it and feeling “invigorated” afterwards, as
you can see in my previous post. I think it’s time to focus more on feeling
good while/after exercising, and not hating it (so that I continue to do it!). I’m planning a separate post on my heart rate
while jogging and what I plan to do next.
2. Green veggies are my friends; they're both healthy and tasty! I’ve realized that I feel
less like having cold salads lately (brrr!), and more like eating sautéed
greens, steamed green veggies, and stir-fries.
I even incorporated spinach into homemade lasagna noodles that I used in
butternut squash white lasagna, mmm, here’s the recipe.) I admit it’s
pretty “putzy” with many steps, but I
think it’s still worth it because: 1) it’s really tasty (though I would add some nutmeg or
other spices to the white sauce next time, in addition to the mozzarella I
topped it with), and 2) we’ve eaten 2 meals off of it already (and there are 3
more in the freezer!).
3.
I’m still keeping my food diary up-to-date. It’s so interesting to look
back over the past week to see what I’ve been eating. And it holds me accountable – I can’t hide
the fact that I ate 8 homemade peanut butter cookies in one day (yup, I did
that this week, eek)!
4.
I’m still working on reducing the quantity of my food eaten. But in general, I’m still feeling a bit more
hungry than before I started this, so that’s good.
5. The good news is that I did skip dessert three days this past week. The bad news is that I had three very big
dessert days: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
However, I tried to compensate a little by eating fewer other “bad
carbs” (white bread, rice, etc) on those days.
The more I learn about this, the more I realize that I would likely have to go “cold turkey” and eliminate all sugar if I wanted to truly beat my sugar addiction. Ugh, I don’t know if I can
ever do that…
6.
It feels great that I didn't eat out at all this week!
7.
I baked twice, but they were some big, delicious kahunas: homemade peanut
butter cookies (husband JK took some to work, and then I froze the rest, but not
before I ate too many—see item #3 above!), and delicious, decadent homemade
birthday “Chocolate Pudding Blackout Cake” with @BadgerReader. The good news on the cake is that we cut the
recipe in half and made a 6” cake instead of an 8” cake, and then I fed some of
it to JK and froze the rest. Mmm, it is
so chocolately! Here's some tempting pictures... (I promise to take more pictures of my "healthy" foods too in the future.)
8.
I’m done with my antibiotics, but I’m still eating my almost-daily plain,
whole-milk yogurt (with a ripe, sweet banana or a spoonful of homemade
jam). Soon I may start some probiotic
pills to continue to “heal” my gut. I
figure it can’t hurt to have healthy gut flora, right? Especially if there’s any truth to that
helping a person be thinner/healthier.
9.
Hmm, whole-foods, plant-based vegan meals: oops, I didn’t do any of these… I need to work on this, and shoot for making one recipe a week! I do have some tofu in my fridge, waiting for
a stir-fry soon. And I did make vegetarian
lasagna, so that’s a step in the right direction. Also, even though we are currently eating more
meat and chicken, at least it’s in small amounts (like the chicken stir fry
that lasted more than 2 meals for us both).
The thing I like least about the animal products we are eating now is that we are still eating a LOT of cheese (too much, really), and probably still too much processed/cured meat (even if it is from a
“local” farmer/processor) such as both cured bacon and pepperoni just this past
week. I’d like to stick with more of the
“whole” animal products (and do my own processing, if needed), and really minimize the
bacon and nitrates in general!
I
just hope that I can use this way of eating to achieve my weight loss goals,
and then maintain a happy weight for the rest of my life. Do you think it will work?
Forward
Flavor!
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