SunnyDay's Diary

got a little peckish around 3:00 so grabbed a cheesestick (70cal)
total calories for the day at 545
total water 64oz

more later...
 
so here's how suppertime set me back-
lemon pepper chicken (150cal)
long grain wild rice (200cal)
green beans (50cal)
2%milk (180cal)
add that to my running total for the day and it's 1125 calories. i'm gonna have a skinny cow in a minute (i know i know) that will put me at 1265. which is 60 calories up from yesterday but still under 1400. i think i'm just gonna shoot for somewhere between 1200 and 1400. anything below 1200 might not be healthy and anything above 1400 isn't gonna budge the scale. i hope that's right anyway. i hope 1400 is little enough and i hope 1200 won't hurt me or cause my body to rebel against weight loss. i guess we'll see. i'm gonna weigh in mon wed and fri i think. i can't bear the suspense of once a week and i'm afraid everyday will just frustrate me. so i feel like today was a pretty good day. hope tomorrow goes just as well!
 
i'm so excited!

so i ended up staying up later than i should have last night watching csi (old ones and new ones) with sweetie and i broke under the pressure. he was eating a huge (and i mean really it was a serving bowl not a cereal bowl) bowl of peanut butter crunch, which is like my favorite. but i didn't have that. instead i went and got a bowl of yogurt with granola. it was 160cal so added to yesterday's total i ended up with 1425. i'm a little disappointed in myself for that but all in all i think it's ok.

had a headache last night but figured i just needed rest, but now i've woken up this morning and my whole body hurts. my brother has been very sick with some kind of cold, i hope i'm not coming down with it. i slept until the kids got me up at 9 and so far don't feel well enough to do my yoga booty dvd. i really don't wanna skip it though so i'm just gonna try to do it in a little while. having a little breakfast now.
2 slices double fiber wheat toast (80cal) with 2tbsp fat free cream cheese (30cal) and a cup of coffee with some french vanilla stuff in it (60cal) for a (kinda low) total of 170. i know it's low but i didn't feel like eating really so i'm just proud of myself for eating this much.

so with the weighing on mon, wed, fri thing... on wed the new scale said i was 180.0 and i was wicked disappointed... didn't way yesterday even though everytime i went in the bathroom i was tempted to. this morning i weighed in at 178.8... that's 1.2lbs down!!! woo hoo!!!:jump: i know there are fluctuations, but when i was weighing myself on a daily basis i only saw very slight ones (like less than half a pound) so i'm thinking (hoping) that this is for real. this will be my first loss the whole time!! well i'm excited anyway. everyone keeps sayin it all goes back to the diet and you better make sure you REALLY know how many calories you're eating... and i do it right for 2 days and i get a loss... that is excellent. my dad and stepmom diet a lot and they go about it really strict through the week (but counting fat grams not calories, i'm not sure how that works) but then on the weekends they eat whatever they want. i guess it's harder for them to follow when they aren't busy with work and stuff. but i'm not taking the weekend off. full speed ahead, right? right. so i'll weigh in again on monday and i'm gonna be confident until then that i'll see a loss. it feels so good to see a result!

gonna go take a shower and see if i can get myself feelin up to exercise. check in again later...
 
no execise today

so i checked the exercise calendar for yoga booty (i laugh everytime i say that) and today it says to do hip hop abs, but tomorrow is just the guided meditation which isn't even a workout at all. so i decided to switch the days. i'll do hip hop abs tomorrow and take today off. that way i don't have to work out when i'm feeling so yucky. besides, it lists sunday as a day off and this way the day's off will be split a little farther apart. i wouldn't wanna do guided meditation tomorrow and then take the next day off. anyway, no big deal, just wanted to record my decision.
 
Hello!
You definitely made the right decision with the exercise. Exercising when you're ill might backfire badly. And anyway, you want to lose weight, not kill yourself trying..
And you exceded your own calorie limit by 25 cals. Yup, that's almost half an apple... ;) I wouldn't be too worried about that. Remind me, how did you come up with your calorie limit. I might have read it in your diary earlier, but I can't remember, sorry...
I'm going with a bit higher calories myself, 1700ish depending on how much exercise I get.
I hope you start feeling better soon!
Juliette
 
thanks juliette-- i'm hoping i feel better soon too :)
i'm actually sorta winging it where my limit is concerned. i have one of those scales that calculates your body fat% and i used that to figure my bmr- then i reduced it by 25% for weight loss and that actually gave me 1432 as my limit. so i'm calling it 1400 and i think that sounds reasonable. since i'm able to go lower somedays though i decided to put it anywhere between 1200-1400 because i think 1200 will still be healthy. really i just wanna make sure that i'm low enough to lose weight at a decent pace. i know it's not a really good idea to lose it too fast because chances are i'll gain it back, but if i'm losing it with a diet that i'm comfortable with maintaining then i don't think it will be a problem. i'm assuming i'll lose until my bmr becomes something like my calorie limit and then i'll hit a plateau. i'm also assuming that to have a bmr that low i'll be much much lighter ;) i could be all wrong about that, after all, i'm no expert, but it makes sense in my head so i'm gonna give it a try. thanks so much again juliette, just for being around.
 
I see that you got the best to help you with your nutrition and exercise things. :D Steve is great, so I hope you get all the info you need from him. He's really good at explaining all the tricky stuff about the human body. He's helped me a lot. :)
Juliette
 
post lunch posting

italian chicken (150cal)
wild rice (200cal)
with breakfast that's 520cal for the day so far. and i've only managed to drink 32oz of water. i'm really not having such a good day. 520 means to get to 1200 which is what i thought was ok i need 680...880 for 1400 but 1180 to get to the 1700 that steve says i should be having. though he did say to start slower at 1350... this is sooo confusing to me. i'm such an idiot :p anyway, i decided to eat some "real" food for lunch to maybe help me feel better. now i feel full, but still not good. don't really know what i'm gonna do with myself. i'll check in later...
 
You're doing just fine. Real food is good in any circumstances. :)
Take it easy and take your time to read and digest all the info you got. It's a lot at once, and nobody's expecting you to make any decisions or change anything just then and there. If you read our diaries, you'll see that we've all been through many of these thinking->deciding->re-thinking->making new decisions -phases.
Juliette
 
thanks again juliette, it's nice to know i'm not the only one feeling like i never know exactly what's the right way to do it.
 
italian chicken (150cal)
wild rice (200cal)
with breakfast that's 520cal for the day so far. and i've only managed to drink 32oz of water. i'm really not having such a good day. 520 means to get to 1200 which is what i thought was ok i need 680...880 for 1400 but 1180 to get to the 1700 that steve says i should be having. though he did say to start slower at 1350... this is sooo confusing to me. i'm such an idiot :p anyway, i decided to eat some "real" food for lunch to maybe help me feel better. now i feel full, but still not good. don't really know what i'm gonna do with myself. i'll check in later...

Starting out slow, with regards to raising your cals, helps control the various adaptations that occur to eating more. Namely, it helps to control weight gain.
 
thanks steve, i plan to start slow raising them, but i couldn't help but think about what a huge difference there is between what i'm doing and what i should be doing. don't worry, i wasn't gonna jump straight to 1700 tonight.
 
thanks steve, i plan to start slow raising them, but i couldn't help but think about what a huge difference there is between what i'm doing and what i should be doing. don't worry, i wasn't gonna jump straight to 1700 tonight.

Why do you fret about the difference between what you are doing and what I am suggesting.

Getting to where I am suggesting is quite easy.

Oh, and do you have a food scale? Digital preferably.
 
i fret about the difference between what you suggest and what i'm actually doing because 1-everyone says you know what you're talking about and 2-i worry a lot about doing this right anyway.

i don't have a food scale for the same reason why i was hesitant to start really counting calories and the same reason why i'm so worried about doing it right. my family has a Serious history of eating disorders. i've watched way too many people i love slip into anorexia and i have the same obsessive personality they do. i'm not sure that it's "lucky" but ever since i had my kids my problem has been with over-eating, not starving myself. you can see i've only been at this weight loss thing for a couple weeks and already i'm eating much fewer calories a day and i'm journaling several times a day... i'm not concerned that it's unhealthy so far, but i know how quickly it can become that way and i know the person doing it is the last one to see it. i already hear myself (and read it here) saying that my weight is just a number and it's controlled by my calorie intake, which is just another number, and i'm the one who controls those numbers. i know i sound spastic about all this, but to me it's really scary.
 
i fret about the difference between what you suggest and what i'm actually doing because 1-everyone says you know what you're talking about and 2-i worry a lot about doing this right anyway.

Okay.

Let me ask you this.

Where did you come up with the idea to start with 1200 calories?

i don't have a food scale for the same reason why i was hesitant to start really counting calories and the same reason why i'm so worried about doing it right. my family has a Serious history of eating disorders. i've watched way too many people i love slip into anorexia and i have the same obsessive personality they do. i'm not sure that it's "lucky" but ever since i had my kids my problem has been with over-eating, not starving myself. you can see i've only been at this weight loss thing for a couple weeks and already i'm eating much fewer calories a day and i'm journaling several times a day... i'm not concerned that it's unhealthy so far, but i know how quickly it can become that way and i know the person doing it is the last one to see it. i already hear myself (and read it here) saying that my weight is just a number and it's controlled by my calorie intake, which is just another number, and i'm the one who controls those numbers. i know i sound spastic about all this, but to me it's really scary.

I can understand that. The only reason I mentioned a food scale is, its the only way you truly know how many cals you are eating. Especially when it comes to cuts of meat and whatnot.

But it is not critical. Ball-parking it will do you just fine. Just make sure you track your body measurements, unless you think that is too obsessive too.
 
it wasn't my idea to start at 1200. i bought one of those scales that measures body fat% (even though i thought it was a bad idea) and i used the number it gave me to figure up my BMR. the number the online formula i used gave me was 1389- told me i need to take in 1910 calories a day. i decreased 1910 by 25% giving me 1432. so i was planning on aiming for 1400 but the first day i counted i ended up just under 1200 and i felt ok. i've heard a lot of times that 1200 is a blanket number that diet plans say to cut down to so i figure it's probably something like the lowest "safe" number of calories to aim for. so really my thought was to shoot for anywhere between 1400-1200. i figured as long as i didn't go over 1400 i'd still be able to lose some weight and as long as i didn't drop under 1200 i wouldn't be starving.

and thanks for understanding my worries about obsessing. a lot of people think it's dumb but to me it's very real. i hate myself for being fat (and at 180 and 5'6 i'm not really that big at all) and i know feeling that way can be the first step in the wrong direction.
 
and thanks for understanding my worries about obsessing. a lot of people think it's dumb but to me it's very real. i

if it's in your head and on your m ind it's not dumb -and shame on anyone that does think that :D
 
I hear your fear. Only you really know you, so that's why you need to listen to your feelings.
To sooth you a bit in your fear: as you've probably noticed, everybody here wants you to be more aware of what your body really needs from what you eat. I hear your concern about eating disorders. I've been close to three cases of anorexia, two of which have been hospitalized for long periods of time. In each case one of the treatments has been to educate the patients on what their body really needs and what happens if it doesn't get what it needs.
The following is just my opinion. (I have no medical education, so if you're really concerned about this, I'd ask a medical professional if I were you.) I don't think knowledge of what you eat or what you're supposed to eat to keep your body functioning is a risk factor for eating disorders. So don't be afraid to be aware of the facts.
Do you have a history of some eating disorder yourself? Don't answer if you think this is a too personal question.
What Steve is suggesting here, having a scale to know exactly how much you eat and/or counting your nutrients and calories, is aiming for you to get ENOUGH CALORIES from you food. For you to get ENOUGH NUTRIENTS from your food.
I can tell what happend to my nutrition when I was Stevied. My protein intake quadrupled. My previous intake was a sorry excuse for one. My fat intake tripled. Ditto. I had basicly been living on carbohydrates thus depriving my body of many things. Result: overweight, but undernourished. Life after Steve: less kilos, more energy. My nails actually grow now.. I have some muscles you can actually feel and even see..
Juliette
 
thanks juliette... i don't think knowledge of what i eat or what i'm supposed to eat is a risk factor either, what i do think is the risk is beginning to pay too much attention to it. it will be way too easy for me to go from paying attention to it in a healthy way to paying attention to it in an obsessive, "lets make todays numbers just a little lower than yesterday's" way. as for my own history of eating disorder, what i can tell you is this. my family would tell you that when i was 16-17 i was beginning to have a problem with it. i was 5'6 and about 108lbs. looking back at pictures of myself i can see that i was very thin (collar bones ands hips showing) but to me, that is the most happy i have ever been with my body. during that time though, i wasn't on any "diet". in fact, what i was eating or how much or any kind of fitness wasn't on my mind really much at all. i don't know where i would have gone from there, what i do know is that on my 18th birthday the ept test said positive. from there i had 3 children in 3 years and my body has never been even close to the same. this time last year i was a size 13 and was beginning to feel better about myself. now i'm a size 17 and i'm miserable.
so what do you guys think?
 
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