conclusions and strategy after a lifetime of mediocrity... and about 100 days of pure health

R

rocky71

New member
I have to have healthy food around. Pre-prepared veggies, spinach, raw veggies, salad and dressing ready to go.

I cannot read recipes – they make me hungry. Glossy magazines make me hungry too. Oprah Magazine makes me hungry.

I get hungry in the evenings but if I make a point not to eat after 7pm (or whatever time) I am able to stick to it.

If I have a big/late lunch I can easily skip dinner and eat in the AM again. (starting at about 2pm). This is a great way for me to avoid the guilt of overeating and have a big lunch or eat out.

Rather than eating leftovers from the kids and bites of their cookies and such. I can use the ‘I splurge only on dark chocolate’ idea.

I can replace sugar with xylitol. I can live without sugar or xylitol!

I can replace flour with other healthier flours – spelt, coconut? I can live without bread!

A big breakfast ruins my diet for the rest of the day. Pancakes are so bad that I don’t even want to sample them when I make them for the kids. Better off not to even have a small taste.

When I read diet advice and feel like I must follow it, it makes me hungrier and I eat more.



Example of this is no fruit after meals or no water after meals – If I think about this it makes me really want it more. Also trying to let body get into ‘post absorptive state’ rather than ‘fed state’ makes me desire food more.



I am able to go from 7pm to 8am in the ‘post absorptive state’ but cannot go 6 hours between regular meals without feeling unhappy.

I can, however, follow the advice that if I feel hunger, try not to eat and it will pass. (In order to try to go longer between meals without snacking).

I feel more inclined to believe in ‘no snacking’ than in having lots of snacks and always being in the ‘fed state’ but I don’t like it! My own solution is to do the 1x per day from 7pm to the morning so I get in the one big one. And use fresh veggies as a snack food whenever I want.

I am not going to give up my coffee but can live without sugar or xylitol in it. (for the first time in my life!)

When you take 99 steps up and trip down one, you do not go all the way to the bottom of the stairs.

Nothing tastes as good as thin feels.

Keep in mind why I want to be thin and remain thin. Think of this once per day for 10 minutes. Visualization and motivation are key for me.

Interesting to observe the associations between rich and thin and how being overweight and mediocre keeps you poor as well (or vice/versa?). Hope no one finds that offensive but this is my diary and I feel there is something to this that I want to verbalize for my own motivational needs.

I’ve found that motivation is more important than what ‘type’ of diet but at the same time I focus on getting it right (and sometimes take a step backward because of it).

Taking photos every 2 days is a huge help. I find even after a bad day or two I look more or less the same – confirming the 99 step idea. I did not fall all the way back to the bottom. This is somehow much better for me than the scale. Incredible how after a bad day I sometimes look even better than the previous photo. Much more motivating and rewarding than the scale.

Not weighing myself probably helps – but weighing myself could be a motivator? The august challenge – from 136 to 133. It worked. Weigh-ins once per week. September Challenge 131~ It does not seem to be working - hence I'm starting this diary. I need to re-motivate. I need something to get me going again.

2 months in and going strong. Without a scale. What will happen now that there is a scale? (see the August challenge! - and now the unsuccessful so far Sept Challenge. I am dreading the weigh in this monday. I feel like I'll be above 136 again and the whole aug challenge will be out the window. I gained 1 lb the first week in sept and it has hurt my motivation and my psyche.

Every other day photo and 4x/month weigh-in with a monthly goal of 2-3 lbs until maintenance?

Beans

Whole grains

I like the concept that at restaurants I choose first – and don’t base it on what others are ordering.

I can say no when offered sweets. I am getting good at it.

The more I avoid sugar the easier I find it to say no to sweets.

The more I avoid bread the easier it is not to eat it.

I am extremely confused about carbs in food and how bad they really are. Can potatoes really be bad?

After an extended binge I need to reset my internal hunger signals. Love this tip.

I know this is unpopular on this forum but - I am able to fast for 24 hours especially when I feel things are starting to slide. This seems to jumpstart me back into focus. And makes me feel thin again after having that feeling of fat from overdoing it for a few days. I don’t, however, see immediate results on the scale or in photos. But maybe this is b/c of overeating for the day or two preceding the fast. This goes with number 30.

Fall challenge – Sept 21st to Dec 21st – goal is to get to goal weight of 125.

When can I start running again? Will the weight melt off. (I had a very bad case of Plantar Fasciitis - or heel spurs and stopped running)

Why do I overeat around my parents? They have always sent me mixed signals about food and my weight. At about 150 lbs they will tell me I'm thin enough. (MEDIOCRE!!!) I live in a different country than my parents and only see them once or twice a year. When they see me at 130 lbs they will probably try to force feed me and I will probably feel obligated to eat in front of them to prove I'm not aneorexic.

Why is dieting a secret? Why is it a secret around them?

Why do people make comments like, ‘well, if you WANT to be that thin’ – and the million $ one where everyone said I used to be too skinny. So many comments about how I look better heavier. BS.

Diet Sabotage by friends and family - Why? How to not let it get to me? Other people are put in their place by thin people.

a friend's comment when I was thin – I was starting to/risked looking matronly and now I’m sexy. (this friend was not a saboteur...)






To be continued as more random thoughts pop into my head...
 
About me -

was a skinny kid who grew up around too much junk food. I feel lucky to have been born in 1971 before obesity took hold of America and to have moved away from the midwest to NYC and then to Europe where lifestyles were skinnier (but of course growing). I now live on a small Caribbean Island and again feel like I'm able to avoid some of the lifestyle issues associated with getting very heavy.


Grew up very athletic - in terms of serious athletics 7 days per week with a Russian coach - did my sport in my sleep.

At puberty got 'fat' - as in ate at McDonalds all the time and didn't know anything about health and diet. Parents both worked and made things like potatos out of powder. Very little connection with real food. Cooking and housekeeping was frowned upon and I was taught a woman should become a business woman.

So I did that - went to college fat. (My highest weigh-in was 178 both in high school and in college) At one point in college I must have been around 140 but quickly gained it back working away from home in a restaurant one summer.

I was miserable and ugly in HS and in College. I can pretty much say that being overweight ruined that time of my life for me. Being overweight sucks and I cannot go back there and will not go back there.

I got a job in NYC out of college but for the first year could not afford the gym so started running (free of charge). I began to participate in races with the NY Road Runners Club and went on to do several marathons. But at work people bought king size bags of skittles, M&M's and other delicacies that I could not turn down and even in the apartment building I lived in there was a small store downstairs that sold reeces peanut butter cups. I remember buying 10 of those little ones at a time for $.05 each and gorging myself on them and then lying in bed feeling sick. Or a pint of ben and jerrys. So even with the marathons, I remained in the high 150's or low 160's for a good deal of time. Then I moved to a curopean country where food is NOT READILY AVAILABLE.... This is so huge and so apparent to me that it shocks that entire books are not dedicated to the cause. Example - you go in an electronics store in this country and voila - they sell ONLY electronics! No king size skittles. The newspaper stand - only newspapers (ok and phone cards and magazines but NO food). Thin people were everywhere. I am 5'8 and weighed in and around 150 - 155 and had to buy the largest size in regular clothing stores there. No bigger than a US 10. ... (THis was 1999 and Europe too has gotten fatter - but still...). Well, less easy access and no king size anything anywhere to be found and my weight decreased to low 150's with periods of 147's or so.

Then married and pregnant - 3 kids. Never got too fat. Ran a lot even during the pregnancies but diet was mostly mediterranean - lots of white bread, white pasta, nothing like now with buckwheat and oat groats LOL. My highest recorded weight during the pregnancies was 178 - same as non preg in HS and college. So overall a nice improvement - and over the course of a lifetime steady decline in the weight but never spectacular until....

DIVORCE! 2008/9 I didn't eat for 3 months from shock. I weighed about 125. I looked like a model. I stayed that way for a year or so and told myself I deserved this (I did!). I began a new sport which I will call wakeboarding (It's not wakeboarding but It's little practiced and I'm now somewhat well known in it and don't want to be recognized) and used that sport as a drug. I did it non-stop. It helped me get through. I also continued to run. I saw a great psychologist who taught me a lot about how our brain works and how sometimes we have to watch our brain - ex. when it's telling us to eat that cookie - and don't do what it's telling us to do. We didn't discuss weight much but the theory holds very true.

Somehow, though, pounds crept back on. They really packed on during a 1 month trip to visit my family in the US in August 09. So back in the upper 140's to low 150's.

I thought I'd never get that thin again because of the unnatural way I'd lost it.

But - as my weight has gone down, my exercise has increased and my diet has always improved.

From the midwest and Mc Donalds lifestyle to more sophisticated NYC lifestyle to my country in Europ where gorging yourself or walking around with a cup in your hand is considered vulgar (cars don't have cup holders, baby carriages DO NOT HAVE CUP holders for the mom or the baby!! Imagine a world where babies do not have to be fed 24 hours per day!) I look at America and think we've gone crazy. Cars that have 14 cup holders? Really?

Does anyone remember 'where the wild things are' - the night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind or another - his mother called him wild thing and he said I'll eat you up. So max was sent to bed without eating anything!!!!!! Could an author even suggest such a thing in today's world? That would certainly be child abuse. My ex-mother in law once fed my son 3 ice cream cones while watching him and then said, 'well at least he ate something'. Um - yeah but the something could easily have been some brown rice had he actually been hungry. What about overfeeding as child abuse? I wish my parents had made me skip a meal or two. My point is that it's possibly the war culture where we are afraid to let our kids go hungry and we are those kids now grown up and fat.


Please don't spam me for these thoughts. It's a diary these are thoughts and I'm trying to be honest with myself and come to some conclusions as to how I got there and how NEVER to go back and how my kids will grow up with a healthy/not healthy relationship to food. (I'm not a believer in any form of punishment so I would never send them to bed without their dinner - but I will send them to bed without their dinner if they don't eat it and will not replace it with an ice cream cone). They can eat the dinner later out of the refrigerator or for breakfast the next day and I will allow them to replace it with a piece of fruit, nuts, a sandwich on whole grain bread or vegetable sticks if they really don't like what I cooked).


Ok - well then onto recent. I don't know what happened but 106 days ago something clicked. A friend was visiting here - wakeboarding with me- and losing weight. He commented about how his pants were falling down. I'm wakeboarding also but remaining heavy Also had a big foot problem which caused me to stop running for the last 6 or 8 months and caused some weight gain. Maybe this gain from not running, the friend losing weight as a motivator, some photos of me at a coctail party looking horrible! Something - I don't know what - clicked. My diet had in any case been more fruit and veg - more whole grain - I had been researching oils, flours - what to cook with, what combinations of food to use. I then got started whole heartedly - and what nailed it was the photos - taking a photo every two days.


On day 11 of my diet I took a photo of myself in a bikini. I looked not to bad at all! After only 11 days. I must have lost a pound a day or something - or maybe the diet had begun a bit earlier -but I have that photo labelled as day 11. Every other day I've taken a photo since then. It really worked. Even on bad days I look more or less the same.


I owned no scale. I had been too scared to use my digital scale back from when I was 125 and when I went to use it I found it no longer worked. So just photos. And the bikini store in town had a big sale and I bought maybe 50 tops and bottoms. Somehow the bikini thing was a big motivator. I just put on bathing suits day and night. It's fun and I look good and it was pretty motivating.


I also looked up motivation and weight loss on line and found good info. I picked out tips that help me and wrote them down. I keep two separate photo diarys on my computer. I read and re-read my motivation stuff...


I got down to 140 or so and found this site. I then got down to 133 and for the last week or so think I've probably gained a few pounds again trying to do the september challenge. It's killing me. I'm starting this diary as a way NOT to fall off the ladder completely.


If you take 99 steps up and fall down one step you do not go all the way to the bottom. (repeat 100x) Breathe!


Goal - do not let it all go ROCKY!!!! (and please I beg let me begin to run again and let my plantar fasciitis not come back! and let me have a good day tomorrow... )
 
#22 - this works for me too, but I'm trying to avoid having to do it again. It has jump-started me in the past though.


#25 - for some reason I just want to eat when I'm at my mom's house.


#28 - my aunt tries repeatedly to get me to eat fast food. I think it's because whenever somebody has lost weight in her house, they've 'left her' and moved out.
 
With my parents - well, I know they'll pick me up from the airport when I arrive (I'm visiting them in October). I'm visiting friends first in another state and flying on a direct flight to see them. Flying time will be 2 hours or less. But they will meet me a the airport with FOOD for the car ride home! Sounds perfectly normal right? But can't I (we humans) live without food for a two hour flight and a one hour drive home (and let's assume that I did pack carrot sticks and fruit for the flight anyway). This is that same mentality that I discussed in post 2 ramble. We must never feel hunger in today's America. They will bring me healthy food actually - probaby fruit - but maybe also something like trail mix. It's so hard to say no to as it's something I never have.


But when we feel hunger the food tastes better! Who would have thought?


Kiramon - Thanks for reading my ramble - I don't want to or like to fast but I will probably do it once per month or maybe twice. Every day from 7pm to 6 or 7am as well. (I leave the house to take my kids to school at 7 and like to have coffee first thing - so don't go 12 hours and again, don't want to make this something where I suffer. This is long term! So must be liveable. The concept of nothing after 7 is new to me - never tried it before but been doing it now for 3.5 months with no problem. I'll break the rule if I'm going out to dinner with friends. Again because this has to be liveable and long term.


My parents - in their lives everyone is overweight. The live in a close knit community. Everyone in the community is fat. Even the thin ones are fat. I have visited them at around 150 or 155 lbs and the neighbors all comment, 'oh you are so thin!' because to them I am thin. But that is not thin. Sorry but it''s just not. So if I actually go there weighing 125 - which is my goal and not too far off - I feel like they will think I'm some sort of science experiment. I somehow need to get past this because it seems to be a stumbling block with me. I need to somehow show them that I eat (a lot) but magically remain thin. Or else they will think_____________? What will they think anyway? That I'm aneorexic? Who cares what they think? I live in another country and don't even know these people. (but they can gossip about it with my parents - I guess that's the fear)


I'm 40 years old - my parents are 70 - this is ridiculous.
 
OK- more conclusions -


1. this diary is helping!


I was having a bad week and just getting some thoughts on 'paper' and out there in the public made me kick it in. Just Kiramon telling me that fasting helps him sometimes too - that was somehow enough moral support for me to get myself back on track.


I don't know what happened but before I started this diary I was ravenously hungry.


I don't keep junk food in the house at all but I do keep a large bag of walnuts which was killing me. They are so delicious and so addictive.


2. I have this weird thing where if I eat something (anything) I feel like I can eat more of that one thing and it's not cheating. So I grab a few walnuts and then feel entitled to eat more as if I could then write in my food journal (which I don't have) - 'walnuts' rather than 1 cup walnuts of 6 cups walnuts... - just 'walnuts'. So easy like that.


3. I am undecided about the scale. See, one of the things that made me have a bad week was beginning the sept challenge and being absolutely marvellous on my diet but gaining a pound. Now I've been terrible and I've lost a pound. I think that one gained pound sucked away my motivation. And now the lost pound should (hopefully) have the reverse effect.


When I say terrible I don't mean that quite so literally. I was offered a small bag of hard candies form the mom of my son and I actually ate them! That is unusual for me and probably made me want to eat more afterward. Other than that it was more like I ate larger quantities of healthy things. I made 2 spinach omelettes with 8 eggs total meant to last 3 meals and instead I managed to eat all of that before noon as well as a yogurt and berry shake and many handfuls of walnuts. That kind of thing. A lot of excess calories made up of the healthy food I have lying around the house. I'm finding I want to eat in quantity.


4. I'm wondering if this (ravenously hungry thing) is a monthly cycle thing as it happens to me about once per month. But when it happens it means the entire thing is at risk. I'm thinking it happens prior to pms and would like to start tracking that.


5. So note to self - was ravenously hungry Sept 6-10 or so. Or was it that sept 6th was my weigh-in where I gained a pound. Next cycle should start around Sept 18th.


6. playing around with fasting - I tend to decide to do a fast or not as the day goes along. So the other day after starting this diary I was packing a picnic for the kids and wanted to put in a smoked fish for me. It was so delicious looking that I ate it rather than packing it. That was at 11am - and I was super full as breakfast was only a little prior to that. So at that point I decided to fast until 11am today. So here we are at 9am and I'm finding that schedule pretty easy..


7. For fasting so far 11am to 11am has been the easiest. 1pm to 1pm - I'm pretty much starving by 1pm. Skipping dinner is somehow pretty easy for me but getting up in the morning and knowing I can't eat all day does not make for happiness. I think dinner can be skipped b/c I go to bed early. Put kids in bed at 7pm - read them stories to 8pm and I can just stay in bed and read or fall asleep. The trouble is getting up at 6am and waiting, and waiting and waiting. I'm getting excited now to start preparing my 11:00 meal. It's going to be green veggies with some type of grain and soy sauce. And I love it. And it will taste so good b/c I'm hungry! (for a change LOL!)
 
OK well the fast did really kick in the motivation. I feel SO MUCH BETTER! I feel like I turned it around. I feel like I risked falling down to the beginning again and didn't know what to do. I did 3 days of fasting for 23 - 24 hrs. More than I've done before but I felt on a roll and like it was pretty easy. It was 11am to 11am then a nice, healthy lunch - one day it was rice and veggies with soy sauce (cooked in olive oil). I ate quickly b/c I needed to squeeze in an hour of sport but didn't want to do it on an empty stomach - then the next day I ate again at 11am - the leftover veggies and rice and most of a smoked mackerel - and the following day - today I ate the rest of the mackerel and a new batch of veggies, brown rice and this time beans. I made a yogurt and blackberry shake in my blender as well. For dinner I made sushi for the kids and ate that with them even though it has stick rice in it instead of my whole grains. I also ate the leftover veggies from lunch. I have no idea how many calories sushi has but want to look that up.

I ate dinner at 6pm and lunch at 11am - so did go a long time and will not eat again until tomorrow at 11 - but will have coffee with cream in the early am.


Starting the diary was one thing that probably stopped the slide.

Weighing in for the monday weigh-in for the Sept Challenge with a -1lb was also a big motivator. Last week I had gained a pound and was seriously discouraged b/c I had worked so hard. This week I ate quite a lot but that one pound didn't show up anymore, nor did any others... I thought I'd have been back to 136 (beginning of August) or even more but instead I was a solid 133 - very happy with that.


Would still like to hit 131 by the end of this month but also need to keep in mind how hard these last pounds will be and that I was at 134 last week and 3 lbs in one month becomes a lot. 132 would be pretty darn satifsying too.


Another friend told me today that I shouldn't lose another pound but also admired my muscular arms... Her comment was something like "you really shouldn't lose another pound - I mean unless you want to". I responded that in my sport it is


I am pretty serious in my sport and have quite nice arms.

Someone even made a facebook comment about me that said, "no this isn't photoshopped, she really is this buff" - Not unpleasant to hear! And it was probably when I weighed 143 or so - 10 lbs ago.
 
Random thought - WHY when I weigh 136 and feel soooo happy about it and so good about myself and then get down to 133 - and then go back to 136, do I feel like a tub of lard? This didn't exactly happen now but it has happened to me in the past (fill in those numbers with any numbers)... where you lose, feel great, lose some more, feel great, gain back to the first feel great and you no longer feel great but the exact opposite.... And this hinders your progress...or makes you slide backward even further...
 
Also I really want to work on what will happen when I visit my folks in October. I ALWAYS overeat when there. I repeat I ALWAYS overeat when I'm there.


What shall I do about this?


I'll be there for one week with my kids. They don't cook for me. They eat out a lot. They will offer to take us out to eat a lot. They buy food they think I'll like inc ice cream and prepackaged cakes but also bakery bought cakes. Massively hard for me to resist. They do ask me to cook (I'm a good cook and they like it and I don't mind cooking for them at all).
 
Well again I'm in the dumps. I'm wondering if it's this scale thing. I was ok before the challenges - just trying to be healthy and maintain a great nutrition style that will stick for life.

I have overhauled my diet - this is true. I do not eat junk food. I cannot really bring myself to buy anything wrapped in a wrapper like a bag of chips or candy bar. I would indulge in some fancy dark chocolate if that were even available on this island (LOL!)

My only real indulgence is cream in my coffee and sometimes a lot of it. But now the problem has been quantity. I'm eating a lot - albeit healthy - too many calories. Walnute, egg and spinach omelettes, lots of fruit - more than I had been eating.

I did get my period a couple of days ago - maybe that explains it. Also rainy season here - sad depressing weather. Unable to practice my sport.


But my savior could be that the day is approaching that I can begin to run again. I think it's been over 6 months now that I haven't gone due to plantar fasciitis in my right heel. Now the heel is feeling good - but I'm delaying running for fear of re-injuring it. Very delicate but really feel like the time is very near to start. Maybe just begin with a walk - something I could barely do even to get from bed to shower 6 months ago.


tomorrow is a new day. tomorrow is a new day. tomorrow is a new day. Do not give up.
 
Have been at this now for 4 months. And this week has seen me almost give up.

But - I'm not giving up.

First off I had to throw a b-day party for my daughter and wanted it to be special. So I worked hard - planned, cooked, etc. And I have to admit it was stressful and always will be stressful for me to do these parties. But I will continue to do them and will have another next month and another the following month. A lot of challenges including upcoming travel plans, visiting my parents, not being able to run due to plantar fasc, periods and so on. But the key is to not give up. The key is to keep up the visualization and the motivation. I do not want to step on the scale. Am doing the challenge this month but maybe will just drop out and continue again next month. I really don't want to know what I weigh. This is the dilemma. Does it help me to know or am I better off not knowing?



Although it's been a bad week I've come to a couple of conclusions

1. Maybe I don't need to weigh 125. I actually think maybe this really is too thin!

2. I am proud that I at birthday cake and Nutella but didn't do it for more than one day, gave away the rest of the cake and got back on track! I also have to give myself a break because it was a day of celebration after all. And the cake really tasted so good. I love plain birthday cake - love frosting. And when I can splurge it is best to splurge on things that I truly want to have rather than eating the kids leftovers and whatnot. Splurge on the really great things and don't feel bad about it. And then get back on track and don't feel hopeless.

3. I am proud that I've been at this for 4 months! For me a 'diet' usually lasts maximum 2 weeks. I still have to think it's the photos that are keeping me going.

4. On that note I need to keep looking at the photos, coming to this website and reading the motivational material that I've downloaded as I know it works for me.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top