Monday, July 16, 2007

Advice turn around



Ok team. Ready for the big reveal? 146.0. Exactly the same. EXACTLY. Which is better than slightly higher which is what I was expecting (every day this week has been higher until today, so perhaps I had a gain and then a loss during the week?) Anyway, no change. Which was expected. Though not because I've been off track, but because I've been just dropping the pounds like an arctic explorer (did you know they burn so many calories that they force feed bacon cooked in lard and chocolate bars all the time). I knew I couldn't sustain the 2 1/4 lb / week I was doing. I mean last week I lost 3.8 lbs! I think my body was just catching up. So hopefully the numbers will start going down again soon. But in the mean time...I need some help. I know I'm a total know it all, telling you all to lift weights and eat fruit and whatever. So please pretend I haven't been all superior to all of you previously and gimme some tips. I'm eating my humble pie (made with splenda) and coming back with my tail between my legs and every other analogy you want. I had some nice beginner's luck and dropped 9 pounds in 2 months (which isn't too bad but nothing to write home about) but some of you have had real progress. Not that i'm trying to say you were so obese or something. Geez, this is hard. What I'm asking without trying to offend is for you to critique my plan. I'm not on an organized plan, WW, atkins, couch to 5K, whatever. So i can't say i've been over points or have missed 3 workouts. I'm gonna detail my meals a little bit here and my workouts and whatever and then I'm looking for NEGATIVES! If you just tell me that I'm doing great, then I won't change anything and the scale won't change for me. I won't be offended, I promise.


Ok, so food:


breakfast - today was Kashi-crunch cereal with banana and milk. Usually it's 2 pieces of whole wheat toast with peanut butter. I don't physically measure anything, but I try and look at the package to see what a serving is supposed to be.




snack - i drank 500+mL of kool-aid made with splenda with some benefibre mixed in. And as it's monday, it's office snack day and we had blueberry muffins with some kinda lemon sugar topping. Smallish muffins. there's only about 7 people in the office and we eat at this meeting every monday so I'd really like to be able to continue eating these snacks (somebody else brings each monday so I don't know what it is and don't want to offend anybody and also don't want to explain to everybody here why I don't want to eat it.)




lunch - sorta struggled to find something today, no leftovers and just wasn't feeling the salad since it would have been just lettuce since I didn't have any cut veggies. So I had a peanut butter sandwich. plus ~1.5 cups cherries, a plum, and a 50 calorie sugar and fat free yogurt. I have a feeling this is more food than most people eat for lunch. Let me know if it is. If I have leftovers or a salad or something that just replaces the sandwich, I still eat all the extras.




snack - I have a kiwi fruit, and ~1 cup baby carrots that I'll probably eat this afternoon. I'll likely have ~1/5 cup of trail mix as well to keep me full until supper




supper - plan is roast beef and probably rice and green beans. I'm always craving a "dessert" so I probably will also eat a banana or a peach as well.




late snack, usually don't have one cause I'm full from supper until late and then exercise at night. If I do, it's usually fruit again, watermelon or something. Last night we had a date night in and watched a movie so I made air popped popcorn and put 3 tbsp (?) of butter on it. Plus watermelon and 4 chocolate eggs from Easter. That's not a regular night snack, just a special date night one. Maybe my problem is letting myself eat abnormally on special occasions, I can find a special occasion probably once a week. (if not more, saturday I ate a clubhouse and fries at the stagette, (yes it was supper, not just bar food!), plus 2 drinks, then the next day was the movie night, 2 in a row...).




Every second day I do a weight training thing that takes ~20 minutes. I posted it on here earlier. I've upped the weights, they're now 20ish pounds. I'm not sure. I used to run intervals for 1/2 hour 3 days a week but since we got our puppy I haven't. Now I jog for 1/2 hour about twice a week and walk for 20 minutes pretty much every day. I think walking is good exercise if you're not used to working out. But I don't think I can expect really any benefits from it when I'm used to much more intense activity. About once a week I get a bonus fun thing in like a round of golf or a bike ride.




I drink a billion litres of water a day. Well probably 4 litres. Probably 4 diet cokes a week. My job is very sedentary and I live out of town so I have to drive to get here. I could walk or something at noon. I was going to join the gym in town because it was supposed to be opening last fall, but construction seems to have stopped for some reason and it's still not open. the only thing in town is the Curves and a physio place. During the school year they offer fitness classes for cheap and I was taking a 1.5 hour class once a week that did cardio combat and weight training. But it's not available during the summer. I think I can commit to some sort of serious training schedule if it's just for the summer. (not that anything's happening in the winter, but I won't do it if I think it's long term, it might end up being that way though). I still have access to the school gym if I wanted to go on the way home from work or something but I haven't in a long time.


I have a feeling the main probably is with the eating, not the exercising, though that would benefit from some kind of structured program as well. If you'd like to share what you're doing I'd appreciate it. Or if you can see any holes in my plan that would be great too. I think one problem I've just discovered is in the lack of structure and accountability. I'm just trying to "eat well" and "exercise some". No plan. I don't know if I could actually count points or calories or anything but maybe I should I've also go this elimination diet thing that's supposed to be a great detox and is only a few weeks long, but there's no sugar or flour in it basically. that's pretty rough. What do you all think?


What's that you ask? I'm doing pretty good so why the big push? Well I've got weddings to go to. Plus I saw pictures of me on the weekend and I have a side double chin. Wait I'll put it up.... There. I saw this on facebook and cringed. (I think she did red eye reduction on the eyes, they look funky). My face just looks thick. So do my arms. I like them when I flex, but when I'm not, they're yucky. Plus check out my supermodel friend. Isn't she gorgeous? She's also trying to lose weight, and she is sorta bigger, but it's just so proportioned in her. She's really tall so I wouldn't know what she weighed but I'm so jealous of her. If my fat distributed itself like hers, I probably wouldn't try and lose. She can wear shorts and look good. My legs are smaller than hers, but when I wear shorts it looks ridiculous, bulges here, rubbing there. Anyway, that's off topic. I hate this picture of me, though I do look like I'm having fun. And here's another that's not great. Not terrible, but not great. Again, the arm, and just the general thickness of the torso isn't my fav. Makes my head look too small. That's my fav indicator of size, if your body is too big for your head you need to lose, if your head is too big for your body you need to gain. Really has little to do with actual head size as that doesn't vary all that much. Anyway, that's the bride to the left of me and all her friends. I really only know the 2 girls on either side of me, supermodel and bride to be. But they were all fun. And I completely behaved. I had 1 shot at the first bar, the bar bought one for all of us. Then that rum and diet in my hand at the second bar. And diet cokes for the rest of the night. Oh yeah, my point to all this was, I have weddings coming up and I want to take lots of pictures and be in lots of pictures and have a really good time as it's some of my best friends getting married. But I don't want to be self conscious, nor do I want to hate the pictures I'm in and not put them up or anything. Therefore, I ask for help! First wedding is only 2 weeks away so I will do an emergency no bread diet if I have to (but you have to tell me what I can eat instead!) to get this back on track!
Ok that post took over an hour of work time to write! Sorry for that! Hopefully I didn't turn you off from reading me! Now please, set me straight!

6 comments:

Kelly said...

yes, i love brocoli, with lots of butter spray :)

i think those pictures look good, you're too hard on yourself! i have weddings to go to this summer too...it's fun but time consuming at the same time. for each wedding there are like 4 parties. haha. i'm a bridesmaid in one, and the dresses are strapless. not lookin forward to it because i have a large chest in comparison to the rest of my body so i don't want to look like pamela anderson up there. lol :)

Anonymous said...

Hi Randi, You are doing great good on you. I know peanut butter has tonnes of calories, could you substitute something else? You are doing great with exercise, though I definitely think walking is beneficial. Any moving is good! Running etc might burn more cals but consistent walking has proved time and time again to be very effective. With food I always think that you need to make a life change, not 'go on a diet'. It doesn't work if you don't do it long term! You are doing great - keep doing it!

dizzydazey said...

Okay, this isn't what you asked for, but this is what you're going to get:

The only negative thing I see here is your attitude about yourself. You're exercising, eating well, and losing weight. You know that if you're gaining muscle, you're going to gain a pound - but you haven't. So you're probably losing fat while you're replacing it with muscle.

Stop comparing yourself to other women! You're gorgeous! You look great and YOU DON'T HAVE A DOUBLE CHIN!!! I'm totally not offended by the fact that you still want to lose, even though you're at my goal weight - but you're selling yourself short!

Keep doing what you're doing - don't burn yourself out and pat yourself on the back for all the activity you get in! Walking is beneficial!!! Comparing it to running is like comparing apples to oranges.

Maybe PB has a lot of calories in it and maybe you should slack off of it a little, but don't be too strict for a long period of time, because then you'll just burn out.

Who sounds like the know-it-all now? :o)

Anonymous said...

Cute pics. You look great.

Candace MacPherson said...

Sorry Randi, I'm gonna ditto Dazey. You look great. If you read us 'old' foggies threads, you may have read some of us talk about when we 'thought' we were fat, now we wished we could get there again. Love who you are. Keep up the exercise and enjoy being a healthy you - it's a sin to waste your life dieting when you don't need to.
If you do need to diet, you are losing in a safe, maintainable way (1-2 lbs/week). Any more and you may not keep it off. Doing diets that restrict certain foods? What happens when you're allowed to have them again? I've heard all to often about people who have lost by cutting out this or that only to gain it all back again and then some. I still have PB (low-fat), brownies (again LF), wine (don't mess with my wine). The point is, there's no miracle for this out there.
So my advice, since you asked, is to continue activity that motivates you, switch up both food and exercise choices periodically so you don't get bored, keep drinking lots of water, and enjoy the rest of the summer. You will make a beautiful bridesmaid.

Tigerlilly said...

Hi!!

Ok.. so you want me to critique your diet?? Eating is a tricky thing... sometimes you really have to see how your body reacts to different foods. For example: some people cut down the amount of fat that they eat and they automaticaly drop 10 lbs... some people (like myself) have to watch their insulin levels, so we have to eat very balanced meals (try the Sugar Solutions Book) that do not spike our sugar levels... then we start to lose weight. Maybe your eating too many carbs... or too much fat (peanut butter,etc.) the best thing to do is write down what you are eating for one whole week... then play around with it. See if you lose more weight when you cut down on fat... or carbs.. or sugar.

As for exorcise... as long as you are getting at least 30 mins of cardio in a day, you should be losing weight. Even walking counts. In fact, walking is the best thing to do. It keeps you in constant motion without putting strain on anything. Dont fall into a pattern.. believe it or not, your body can get used to a routine and that will slow the losing process. So mix it up as much as you can.. Shock your body!!!

As for the pics.. you look fantastic. (I think we all have the 'my head is too small/big for my body' complex! LOL

Dont give up.. and thanks for this post.. .it made me think about what I'm doing wrong too!!!

***Oh.. and the diet quotes are from quotegarden.com/dieting.html***