This is the time

felici

felici

Well-known member
This is the time.

I haven't read any one else's diary yet, so I don't know what's normal here, but I think just keeping an on-line diary will help me lose weight so I want to get started.

I am going to start by reposting my newcomers intro, so that I am starting this diary more at the beginning.

I think this title is a little more confident than my newcomer's post, so maybe that's a good sign too.

Is this my last chance?
I feel a little excited about registering here, and a little nervous too. I am excited because I just had the idea of trying to find a forum to help me lose weight about half an hour ago, and here I am registered! I joined another forum about 6 months ago that is mainly just fun for me, and yet has made a big difference to my life. This forum is about something massively important to my own life. Life and death. It's so easy to write that, but so hard to keep to my plans to modify my life so that I lose weight and have a better, healthier, longer life. Anyway, I am hopeful that this will be a significant help to me.

Partly I am scared about registering because every single time I have tried to do something different to get my weight down it has helped for a while, then I have stopped making progress and then had a backlash where I've ended up fatter. So I'm really in a bit of a bind. I must try again to push my weight all the way down, but I'm a bit scared about making myself worse instead of better.

Now I'm fat enough that it's a health danger. I don't have any scales here. My glass scales smashed a couple of months ago and I'm not sure that scales help so I haven't replaced them. Judging by how I feel and my recent behaviour I would guess I weigh about 96 kilos (211 lb). I am 5 foot tall.

I am in a position where my health is actually okay right now. No diabetes, high blood pressure or heart disease yet. I do have impaired glucose tolerance. My joints are not totally ok. I can't expect to run, but I can still walk to exercise ok. I have had breast cancer but it is not active. I am scared that all this fat will bring it back when my 5 years on an anti-oestrogen drug finish in a few days.

I am married. I have two children 13 yo and 10 yo. I think being this fat slows me down physically and mentally and that when I control my eating I achieve more in all other parts of my life. Another good reason to try again.
I work as a relief teacher. Just now I am working most days. There is only a week an a half left here for me to be able to work before school finishes for the year.

I just started thinking again about losing weight because I saw something about lack of sleep tending to lead to increased eating of sugary, starchy foods and I have noticed that in myself. I was thinking I'd like to talk about that in my normal forum but that it probably wouldn't be an interesting topic for most of those people. It seems quite possible to me that the increased pressure the average person lives with now, and the general tendency for people to be chronically lacking sleep might be a significant contributor to the current obesity epidemic.

The other thing I saw (also on my other forum), was something about research showing that scare tactics to help people stop smoking are actually ineffective for many who think that as they keep smoking despite the horrific consequences, that shows they are helpless and actually makes it more difficult for them to quit. I was thinking that I have been a bit like that about my weight recently, without considering that trying to frighten myself into it might have the opposite effect to what I wanted.

My current plan is to eat 3 well balanced meals a day and avoid simple sugars.
I will try to walk the dog most days.
Edit: I will take a water bottle with me when I'm away from home and try stop myself getting thirsty.
I will aim to get to bed by 11 pm.
It's past that now, so good night from me.
 
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This is also from a post in newcomers thread. It is a bit of background and overview of what I'm trying as far as food goes.

The first time I really went on a good eating plan was when I was pregnant for the first time. I got gestational diabetes and so went on a strict diet to control my sugar levels for a few months. I was worried that any mistake would hurt my baby so I did not deviate from it a tiny bit. It was interesting that I found it wasn't as hard as I would have thought. However I didn't think of myself as changing my eating in an ongoing way. I thought I was on a diet and I was looking forward to the day I could relax it. Anyway, since then, when I have tried to lose weight I have always tried something similar - but it may be that the differences were significant. I don't know. I have lost weight several times in the last few years at a speed I was happy with. I have been 14 or so kilos less than I am right now, within the past 5 years and for months at a time. However that is a long way from what I was aiming at.

Anyway, my current plan is to have protein, complex carbohydrates, and vegetables at all meals, be careful about fats and oils, and avoid sweet, sugary foods. That will lead to me losing weight I know. I don't know what weight it would get me down to, but I'm pretty sure it would change me away from being dangerously obese to being no more than overweight. I have thought that if I kept doing it and yet it didn't seem to be working any more, then I would go back to a professional (yet again). I know this eating plan works for me to lose weight - I just have to keep on and on with it.

Well I hope this forum makes a difference. I think it should. I looked for it yesterday after first thinking I should look for some weight loss success stories to help me feel that being a reasonable weight was an achievable thing for me. It looks like a good place for that.

I'm interested to find out more about this Cohen's Lifestyle program. It seems to be a special focus at this forum. I am not looking to change my own plan at the moment though. What I am hoping for the most, is that being a member here might help me in a few weeks (or next week, or tomorrow), when the going gets tough, or if I start to drift from my plan.
 
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This is my first proper diary entry.

I have been a member here for about 36 hours.

I started back on my good eating plan as soon as I joined. I thought I would record yesterdays as it is fairly typical for me when I am eating what I think will work for me.

Yesterday that was
Breakfast:
HiFibre muffin, margarine, teaspoon of jam
Boiled egg
2 weetbix SoGood Splenda
Tomato juice
White coffee

Lunch
Chicken sandwich on wholemeal bread (margarine)
Pumpkin soup
Apple
White Coffee

Afternoon snack
An apricot, Small bunch of grapes

Dinner
Giant salad
Lettuce, beetroot, carrot, capsicum, cucumber, tomato, olives, mushrooms
Corn
Grated lite and tasty cheese
Low cal Italian dressing

Diet Apricot Yoghurt
Glass of SoGood

This is different to what I would have had in that I served my family salad, without corn or cheese and made them nachos. Also I didn't eat the baddies I have been having after dinner. I am kind of unsure about mentioning past bad foods because I don't want to remind some other reader about things they may be trying to avoid. Also it's different because I did have the yoghurt, and SoGood.

I am not ready to give up the jam on my muffin yet. I have been doing it for a while with no morning sugar cravings. My breakfast maybe could have one less serve of carbohydrate too. I probably will need to be a bit more careful about this when I am not usually going off to school in the mornings.

My recent efforts (in the past 2 years or so), have been to just try to avoid sugar without trying to balance my meals so carefully, though I have been careful to make sure I have some protein at each meal (to try to stop myself from eating badly because I'm hungry before the next meal). I recently saw a nutritionist who explained that making the effort to add vegetables and complex carbohydrates to each meal would help me keep my blood sugar levels up in a fairly stable way, so that I didn't go through highs and lows all day and didn't feel so inclined to grab the quick and nasty or have massive snacks. Since then I have been trying to add in the veges (breakfast and lunch) and complex carbohydrates (dinner), that I was missing. It took me a couple of weeks to work out how and get used to the idea of needing to change things that I thought were ok, but now I'm doing it and finding it does work. Recently I have tried to avoid the really nasty (in that they lead to bingeing) foods in the evening by eating cereals with some sweetness, but lots of fibre. (Like SportsPlus, or Sultana Bran). Last night I just had the SoGood. If I had been hungry I might have had some cereal too.

Today my breakfast was the same as recently except I controlled the margarine to 1 tspoon.

I have made a sandwich ready for lunch and left off the margarine this time. Next time I cook chicken for lunch I will trim the fat before I grill it, and leave off the apricot marinade, which I have noticed has sugar as the primary ingredient. Maybe I will oven bake it with some herbs.
I will take the sandwich to school because I am working this afternoon - and technically that starts at 12.00 noon. From what I was told that means I start with lunch time, and it's easiest to take it with me and start my working afternoon with lunch! So I will take a carrot and some snow peas to be my veges, and a nice piece of fruit - an apricot or peach. However I will also take a can of pumpkin soup as a back up because I have been caught out many times at schools where I have ended up getting much less lunch time than I thought (sometimes less than 10 minutes), and I don't want to miss my veges, or feel deprived. I don't think the soup is as good as fresh veges, because it might have fat added and may have less fibre - but I will keep it as a back up for now because I think it's better than nothing and seems to have helped me get more control so far. I won't eat before I go though because that causes its own set of problems.

Tonight I am planning to make a vege and salmon spaghetti for us all. I will try to keep the actual spaghetti in mine to a controlled level instead of a plate full. I won't mix mine in the pan - just put spaghetti on a plate then add toppings. Maybe I can add a salad (even though there are veges in the dish), so it doesn't make my serve look too mingey.
 
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You're a brilliant writer and very well educated. I think you'll have no problem achieving your goal. I too don't weigh myself often. I believe in results - basically the kind I feel. I do however regret not weighing myself on 'day one' just for accuracy sake. I know i was heavier than 371 but can't prove it so I go with a factual number.

Anyway, I agree, any diabetic-type diet is a great weight loser AND a healthy diet even for non-diabetics.

I'm looking forward to reading your progress.

Best of luck to you.

and welcome to the diary section :)
 
:) Thanks for your welcome Trucker. I really do appreciate it. I was thinking that it would be good to have a starting weight as you said. I will try to weigh myself at my shopping centre tomorrow.

Congratulations on your own wonderful success story too. It really is amazing and inspiring to know that you have turned things around to such an extent. :)

Today worked out ok for me. I forgot to take my fruit to work. I needed to change my evening meal in a hurry, and ended up making something I've often made and then realized half way through that it has too much fat in the sauce. I got a bit hungry and was eating the bits of my dinner that were ready before I had a proper meal. Then I ate some almonds while I was waiting and in the end I felt overfull by the time I ate the meal. Something is wrong with my sinuses and I feel as though I'm not really on the ball!

On the plus side. I really noticed the support joining the forum had given me, even though I was away from it. There were pieces of tempting looking birthday food in a couple of places at work, and I was feeling tired and off, and had forgotten to bring my peach, but when I remembered that I had started my posts here and my diary and had other people respond to me, I felt a definite boost - like I was straighter and stronger. Tomorrow is not the day I'm changing - I started yesterday. I didn't manage everything I wanted for today, but I feel that I was headed in the right direction the whole time. This afternoon I rushed out of the house again after work without a drink or snack and felt some pretty strong tugs towards my danger foods, but managed a healthy snack instead. I also ended up very tired just before I needed to get dinner. I thought I'd had enough sleep so I think it was due to a combination of sinus and change of diet. A couple of days ago, that would have been enough to set me off looking for some quick food related gratification. Instead I thought, no I belong to this forum now and I will just lie down for a little while.

I'm ready for bed now and I'm not craving anything. I probably won't be going to work tomorrow, so I'll spend a bit of time on a to do list to make my plan easier to achieve.
 
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welcome to your diary - glad you found your way into this forum.. Im sure that you will get all the support and encouragement that you need... you're off to a great start already..
 
I read your diary and I subscribed to it. Welcome to the boards!!! I definitely think that you're on your way to the weight that you want to be. I was a little nervous about joining too...but it really has helped me already stay focused..and I've already gotten GREAT advice and a few links to help me with my "journey"! Welcome!
 
Welcome to the forum! You're in the right place :) Since coming here only a month ago I have lost 7.5 lbs. I know that I would not have done it without the encourgement of the people on this forum. You're off to a good start :)
 
I weighed myself at the shops. 96.9 kg with sandals on, 96.2 without! I may have weighed more than that before, but I have never weighed myself when it's registered more. Any time I have thought my weight could be more than that I have changed my eating for a while before I weighed myself! It has been a couple of days this time too, but 96 or 96.5 is probably about what I started on.

Today’s mistakes

Went to bed late. I don’t remember the time, but definitely past my planned time – maybe by 1 – 1 ½ hours.

Rushed out the door to take daughter to school, and though I intended to the shops on the way home I forgot to take water. Didn’t consider how long I would be or be prepare for what to eat if I become hungry. Rushing also made me forget to drink my tomato juice, again. I really shouldn’t try to actually post anything on the net before school – even if I’m not teaching.

Sat at computer and finished the post I left half done this am as soon as I came in from shops. Only it was already lunch time, so by the time I was preparing lunch I was already really hungry.

Somehow didn’t manage to prepare meal that would be quick to reheat, before leaving at 4.50 to take my daughter to netball – not home until 6.40 so didn’t eat until after 7.30 despite making a very quick meal. I was pretty hungry by then - it wasn’t controlling, but better avoided I think.

Changed my plans for dinner, twice and ended up carefully preparing and eating something I used to think was right and forgetting to include carbohydrate until afterwards (lucky I made too much potato for my husband).

Didn’t walk. :(

Things I have done right today.

Eaten lots of good food – not eaten outside my plan.

Took an antiallergy tablet and decongestant early on and topped it up, when I started to feel a bit woozy after lunch. This helps me think more clearly. I have many memories of eating in a half asleep blur – always very badly.

Bought a little notebook for my purse, to be more organazized and maybe forget less things, and be less stressed?

Looked for a good water bottle to buy, in the two most obvious places. Will have to keep looking.

Bought water, seeing as I forgot to take it with me. Bought an apricot, and had that and some of the nuts from my shopping trolley for a snack. So that turned out ok.

Remembered to weigh myself, so that my starting weight’s fairly accurate.

Remembered to buy some of the food that will help me keep to my plan:
Nuts, tomato juice, diet yoghurt, mangoes ( to share tonight), watermelon, low fat, low cal dips, lean meat, diced preserved peaches, topped up my standard salad veges.

Came home in time for lunch. Made myself a yummy lunch. I had some lite cheese and wholemeal crackers with tomato. Also I cooked a few little mushrooms with a little lean bacon and 1 teaspoon of margarine. That is heaps less fat/oil than I have been using with mushrooms, but I think it actually tasted better. Bonus.

Remembered to take water when I went to collect my daughter from school, and when I went to netball. I was actually a little thirsty and finished a 750 ml bottle by 4.00 pm. That’s 750 ml more than I have been drinking. I hardly noticed that I was drinking it – I reckon my body has probably been hanging out for it. It should help my skin too.

Remembered to take snack food to netball. Didn’t eat it though. Did remember to have some SoGood before we left, and felt better for it.

Thought about when I will walk tomorrow! It will be a squash to fit it in but can be done in between all the after school stuff and beginning to cook. I don’t know about getting sun on my skin though! Maybe I can pull my trousers up a bit and sit in the sun at lunch time or while I’m supervising outdoor play. Unless I’m very lucky the rest will have to wait.

To Do A lunch time muse.

Walk (getting urgent)

Cook chicken for lunches

Semi-prepare dinner because my daughter’s has a netball game this evening. Hmm. That could be a danger area for me tonight. I think I’ll try to take a hot drink, and maybe have a quick snack before I go – a glass of SoGood – and maybe carry some plain wholemeal crackers, or some Rice Thins. Maybe I should leave some of them in the glove box. A bottle of water in the car would be good too. Probably it would be good to have 2 water bottles just for me – one ready in the hall cupboard with my bag and keys and sunglasses ready to go out (or to remind me to go to the fridge if it’s hot), and one in the kitchen – being washed, or in the fridge.

Get sun on the rash on my leg (long story, but dermatologist recommended it, and I don’t feel comfortable trying to take the other kind of glucosamine again until the rash is completely gone, and I am starting to notice more aches and pains without glucosamine, which is not good for encouraging exercise!!) That will be hard to manage most of the time so I will do it now while there are no other bods around. I don’t think my husband could resist having a go at the idea of me sunbathing in very little clothing. At least it is sunny now yet not super hot. I could take my little notebook and use the time to plan, or maybe drowse a bit and rest, so my mistake with the bedtime has less impact.

Some nice things

Yummy smelling watermelon at the shop. Mangoes on special.

I have a new little handbag with no shoulder strap and put it down next to the watermelon, did all the rest of my grocery shopping before I noticed I had left it behind, rushed back and it was still there!!

I had some good fun on the net last night that really helped me destress after feeling physically off and bothered about something from school in the afternoon.

Such a nice comment from trucker last night and then some more welcomes this morning at this site.

Finding cute little decorations to give my daughter’s school teachers as Christmas gifts. I love to buy decorations and can’t justify buying more for my house this year. My daughter and I went shopping for them after school – and we both cooperated and didn’t fight at all!! Good for us.

My little sunbath. I thought I was burning after 10 minutes and came in, but what a lovely 10 minutes. Instant relaxation. Instant dry penetrating heat like in a sauna. A breeze, rattling the fronds in the big cottom palm and rushing through the leaves on all the other trees out there, but gentle on me. My back yard is very pretty. Green and multileveled. A group of big bluish purple agapanthas was nearby, next to a rose bush covered in little goldy orange flowers, white buds on a tree nearby and on a yucca… Forget about writing a to do list! I used the note book to shade my eyes. I felt so lucky!!
I must remember to keep trying to do this!

My children didn’t fight tonight!! No one did.:eek: :D
 
Thanks Stan. I thought it might be because my thirteen year old boy had a sore knee. Perhaps that stopped him before he started teasing and rough housing. Though mind you he still managed to wave his arms around in a silly, young jointed sort of way and whack his dad in the nose! :eek:
 
Well today I ate food on my plan and nothing else. I went for a walk. I took my water to work. I forgot to take it on my walk so I bought some, again. I am even on track for my 11.00 bed time for once. These are my core plan goals for the day.

This was not a well controlled weight loss day though.

I think the main reason is to do with what happens with my children and me.

After I came home from school today I had to fit in a doctor's appointment. I think that was unavoidable. Um, no. That was avoidable. I should have called up about it earlier and made it yesterday when I was not working. That is nothing to do with my kids. Also I had to go to buy fresh fish. Now I am thinking "Why did I not buy fresh fish yesterday when I was in the same shop? It would not have tasted any different!" Okay so I had mucked up and not used my time as well as I could have.

Also, I had agreed to drive my daughter and her friend to the shopping centre as soon as I arrived home, and collect them after my doctor's appointment, which was pretty inconvenient. Then, I ended up having a big discussion (at an inconvenient time), about my 13 yo son sleeping over at the house of a girl I have not met, with two other girls, in a tent. Also my girl is upset because she can't find the santa skirt we bought for her a month back, which she hasn't worn yet, and I can't find it either. So by the time I get to the shop to buy fish for dinner it is already late. The girl at the fish counter can't find the right code for something else I want to buy and we stand waiting endlessly, and it's late and I'm hungry and I start noticing bad food and have to walk through all the Christmas food while I am hungry and the queue to leave is too long. Then while I am preparing dinner my son comes and says his computer has totally stopped working. I say I can't check it now I am getting dinner ready. I feel strong about it. It is late and I am hungry but I am happy, and the salad looks good and I have remembered to microwave a potato. Then he says his computer is okay but what does "postal" mean? I say why do you need to put your postcode on the computer? It is part of your street address, they do not need that. This program does. I need to check. I cook the fish while he is making impatient snorting noises that I find very stressful, then I finish feeding the children. I have not eaten. It is 7.30 and my eating that I have been looking forward to is receding. It takes a very long time to sort the computer thing out. I don't really want him to put the address on the computer, but I let him. By then it is about 8.20 - time to cook my husband's fish - and in his case, chips. Then when I give that to him I say to my daughter - are you ready for bed - no, I see she is still watching the end of "My name is Earl", which I have completely missed. Fair enough. The station never keeps to schedule. I sit down in front of my food. She comes in and says "I'm ready for bed now." I take her. I say "I will not lay down with you tonight, I need to have my dinner. I will just give you a kiss and a hug and come back after dinner if you are still awake." She does not argue and gives me a nice kiss. I feel empowered by this. Still it is 8.45 pm by the time I sit down to the meal which I originally thought I would eat at around 6.45 and I am fruuuuuustrated. Then my husband comes to ask me how to work the video to watch the show we recorded yesterday.
- I don't want you to do it, I just want you to tell me how.....Which button is play...
- That is the TV control.....
- Which one of these is the video control...
- The grey one goes with the grey box and the black one goes with the black box, you need the black box...

I shovel down my food and do not really enjoy it, and then afterwards feel a familiar dissatisfied, wishing for more sensation.

Lucky I am doing good eating now, and remember what I have written to someone else - that I find it useful to have a diet yoghurt to stop myself going off the rails at the end of my main meal. So I have one. And it works.

I did remember to have a So Good and a serve of wholemeal crackers between getting home and going to the doctor's. It didn't seem like enough to me in advance, but I'm sure that helped. I ate the crackers in the car and was surprised how nice they tasted just by themselves. I remembered to put my emergency crackers in the car too, but dropped them, and later trod on them! More dog food. Oh well, time to pack some more.

I would like to remember that although putting my walk together with the shopping felt like a very bad idea in the middle, in the shop, while my sinuses were throbbing and it was getting much too late, the walk home was still good. Just the air cheered me up as I came out of the centre. A little warm breeze at just the right temperature, and a good walking feeling. I purposely walked all over the verge next to the car park because it's under the trees and lets me walk on lots of fallen bark and leaves, and I exchanged friendly words with a random lady walking in one park and met my lawnmower man in the other. It is a relaxing thing walking like that.

School was funny today. I was teaching 5 year olds at a school I've been to a few times but with a different assistant and children. The children were good and the assistant was helpful and lovely and kept joking around. Also there was a chicken in the yard. The man over the street had come and asked if we would like it in with us today, and we did. It was a brown one, very pretty and a little speckled, and very tame. It scratched and scratched and pecked in the gardens, and pecked at the children's fruit scraps and came running up making chook, chook noises when it saw me with a little bucket of wheat. Then when the children sat down outside to eat their lunch on some mats on the lawn, it came running right over again making the same noise. "It wants to eat our lunch, it wants to eat our lunch!" "No," said I. "It will be all right, I'll get it some more wheat." So I did, and it pecked at it nicely a couple of times then zap - quick as lightning - it poked its head in among the children and hooked itself a piece of bread from the sandwich one of the girls was holding! :eek: We were all laughing and laughing. I didn't get enough time to eat my lunch comfortably but I ate it anyway, and all that laughing more than made up.
 
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Challenges for today will be.

Finish work at around lunch time. Not sure of the exact time. Want to go to some shops in the area of that school to pick up some shirts I have on lay-by. Need to make sure I take lunch anyway and eat it before wandering around the shopping centre!

End of day. My husband cooks "something special" on Friday nights. That is potentially awkward because I am waiting too long to eat, and because what he wanted to cook for tonight has too much protein and too much fat. I will tell him that I'd like to make myself the prawns. (Just microwave 3-4 and add lime). I will eat some of his squid. (Too hard to separate). I will ask to just have a sliver of steak. (So I don't miss out, but I don't overeat). I will microwave myself a potato instead of the chips he would cook. I hope.
I will have some dip and free salad veges before "dinner", and a salad to go with it.
 
Hello and welcome... looks like you got everything all planned out and besides the fact that your family comes before you when it comes to eating it looks like your going to do just fine.
 
Hi. Thanks Ashley. It's good to see that you have been hanging in there and making progress too. :) If you lose what you have already, four more times, you'll be at your goal! Good luck!

I have been feeling pretty good about my eating this week. I haven't really been hungry or getting cravings, except when I've been waiting too long to eat. I think I will really have to keep paying attention to cope with that. Hopefully if I think about it a lot for a while I will develop some better habits and not need to focus on it as much.
 
Thanks Ashley. It looks to me like you have been progressing well. :) Four times what you've done and you're there!! You seem to have a very busy life - good on you for taking control.

I have been happy so far with what I'm doing - not feeling hungry or getting anywhere close to a craving - except when I'm waiting too long to eat - I still need to put a lot of effort in getting organized enough to keep that bit controlled.

You know I could have sworn I already posted something like this, but I cannot find it! Nor can I find the long post I was preparing after it. Oh well, not the first time that's happened. I will post this NOW.

Edit: something funny going on with my link. First I cannot find the post, then it turns out I have posted it, and also posted the redraft 3 times! (Deleted 2). This will have to do for tonight. I thought it would be ok to stay up as I can sleep in but I have probably over done it. It's so easy for that kind of plan to not turn out - I mean maybe I won't be able to sleep in after all. Also now I think about it, being too tired before I go to bed has given me problems in the past, so I probably should try to keep to the 11.00 bedtime even on the weekend. I haven't even managed an actual 11.00 so far!! Close but not actual.

Anyway it was a pretty good day. I stuck to my plan for dealing with the challenges and it worked pretty well. My husband was supportive. I will try to remember that he is just trying to help when he forgets what I have already told him about eating lots of salad and worries that it is too much, like he did again tonight. :D Poor darling, that is the food he sees me eat the most even when I am eating a whole bunch of other bad stuff he doesn't notice, or maybe doesn't even see because I'm hiding it, so he thinks the salad is doing the damage. I will make it work this time. I have so much in place to keep in the groove - and this site! This is really meeting a need for me. :)
 
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Hi, Just wanted to pop in and tell you that you're doing great :D:D:D I hope you continue to overcome the struggles!!!!! :D

Have a GREAT day!
 
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