Week Four Results: A Reason to Live Healthy

A whole month under my belt and I’m now 12 pounds lighter! Woot! Another 3 pounds gone this past week. I’m nothing if not consistent. : /

The diet took a back seat this week to something much, much more important: the birth of our grandson, Gavin. He’s very precious and we love him lots! And I want to be around to enjoy him for a long, long time.

He was 2 days getting here, though, and that meant lots of time sitting and doing nothing. A hospital cafeteria isn’t exactly a treasure trove of diet friendly food, and there wasn’t much opportunity for meaningful exercise. There’s a Subway not too far from the hospital, so I ate lots of “Jared sandwiches” and walked up and down the stairs for exercise. I took a few strolls around outside, but it was very hot (heat index 105+) so they didn’t last long. But when you’re out of your normal element you have to get creative, right?

Hot topic for this week: I’m losing weight, but am I losing fat or muscle? This concern has plagued me since I started this venture. Do I need to eat less carbs and more protein? Should the settings on my elliptical be for fat burning workout or aerobic? Honestly, my muscle has been buried so far beneath fat I wasn’t even sure I had any. And on the off chance I did have some muscle left, I certainly didn’t want to be burning it instead of the copious stores of fat I have accumulated over the past few years.

So I decided to do a little research on the subject of burning fat vs. burning muscle—and what I found out was that you practically need a degree in nutrition, human physiology, or one of those other ultra-scientific subjects to be able to truly understand how your diet and exercise program is working for you. Either that, or a personal trainer, and one is about as expensive as the other. What I needed to find was a reliable source of information for cash-strapped folks like me.

Thanks to my mad internet browsing skills, I came across a great article at www.dummies.com (remember the Computers For Dummies books that came out when PCs became so popular?) that breaks down the myths of fat burning into an easily understood article. Click here to read. Be sure to read the Comments section, too—you’ll find a lot of interesting discussion there also.

I also found a body fat percentage calculator that incorporates several measurements to calculate your percentage of body fat. (I put a link in the Tools section.) According to its calculations, I’ve dropped 2.4% body fat since I started. I still have a long way to go, but I’m making progress!

You can get all ultra-scientific if you want, and I’m sure hardcore athletes and bodybuilders are real fanatics about it. But at nearly 50 years old, I know I’ll never work my way to a ripped physique. Even with a ton of plastic surgery. So for folks like me, the bottom line is you have to burn more calories than you consume in order to lose weight.

While I have made significant adjustments to the way I eat, in the month I’ve been tracking my diet and exercise I’ve learned I can fudge just a little and still lose weight. I just step up the exercise when I do. You have to ask yourself, ‘Is that helping of mashed potatoes worth an extra 30 minute jog on the treadmill?’

‘Cause I don’t believe you have to give up all the foods you love, just because you’re involved in a weight loss program. You just have to be sensible about what you’re doing and know that there is a price to pay for eating outside your regular menu: you either increase the exercise, or your weight loss slows/stalls. The choice is up to you.

Week Three Results: Keepin' On Keepin' On

I can’t believe it’s been three weeks already since I began this journey! It’s a worn out expression, but time really does fly. I’ve been trying to keep myself occupied with things like exercising, tending to my flowers and my herb garden, etc., to keep from just vegging out in my recliner with my laptop and eating myself stupid. And what a difference it has made: three more pounds gone on weigh-in day! That’s a total of nine pounds in three weeks! Woot!

The new “do” was a hit, by the way. Got lots of compliments from family and friends. And it has proven to be much easier to care for in light of all the recent sweaty workouts!

Well, this past week was nearly a carbon copy of the previous week: a veritable cornucopia of dieting booby traps. We had another carry-in at work and two more evenings of eating out. How much temptation can one girl stand, I ask you?! There was an awesome selection of fresh veggies at this week’s carry-in at work, which allowed me to nosh off and on all day with virtually no guilt. (We won’t talk about the handful of Triscuits I ate. Shhhh!)

Friday evening we ate at a Mexican restaurant, where it seemed nearly every menu selection was either wrapped in a starch-laden tortilla, smothered in cheese sauce, or fried. Or an unthinkable combination of all three. (Can you say chicken chimichanga?) I settled for chicken fajitas—what, you didn’t think I would get beef fajitas, did you?—forgoing the tortillas and just eating the meat and veggies. I tried not to think about how much grease/oil was used in the sautéing process and did my best not to feel guilty for enjoying the meal. If I’m honest, I have to admit to a little backsliding, though. My entrée came with a dollop of guacamole on the side, and I simply did not have the willpower to not eat it. Bad, I know. As penance I spent an extra ten minutes on the elliptical the next day. Is there an upside? Of course there is! I ate about a third of my meal before I was full. I brought the rest home with me, and BJ and I finished it up the next day.

Saturday night found us at Olive Garden, the mother lode of fat, calories, and carbs, what with all of the cheese and pasta on the menu. But the food is sooooo yummy! Calling on my mad surf-the-Net-with-your-phone skills, I scoped out OG’s website for nutrition information. I found that the dinner portion of their seafood alfredo (which is my go-to dish there) has a whopping 1,040 calories. Yikes! But, by saying no to breadsticks, eating only a small portion of their house salad and only half of my entrée, I was able to keep dinner to around 700 calories. This was way more than I would normally eat at dinner, but this was our official wedding anniversary celebration (we had gone to OG on our very first date) so I didn’t let myself feel too bad for my dietary indiscretion.

So what is the point of all of this, you ask? The point is, you can eat foods you like and still lose weight, you just have to exercise a little common sense and a lot of self control. In the not too distant past, I would have gone to that Mexican restaurant and eaten half a basket of tortilla chips and salsa, a whole dish of guacamole, and that starchy, cheesy, deep-fried chicken chimichanga. Instead, I chose the less volatile fajitas (which were very tasty, by the way) and let myself be content with a couple of tortilla chips with my dollop of guacamole.

‘Cause at the end of the day, eating right and slimming down is going to make me feel a whole lot better about myself than eating that damn chimichanga.



Talk about your exercise in self control!

Week Two Results: Carry-Ins and Eat Outs and Calories -- Oh My!

Another successful week – 3 more pounds lost! Yay! That’s a total of 6 pounds in 2 weeks. Another couple of weeks like these and I should hopefully be able to tell a real difference. Being able to see a difference on the scales is a true motivator. So is noticing a difference in the way your clothes fit. Keeping track of inches lost also helps as well. Since muscle weighs more than fat, if you’re replacing one with the other you may not notice so many pounds lost as you do inches lost.

This week I was faced with a couple of trials of the worst kind: a carry-in at work, and going out to eat. Friday everyone from my old unit at work brought in food as a send-off to those of us leaving due to a recent reorganization. The temptation to pig out was overwhelming! I did choose a couple of goodies I wouldn’t normally have eaten while dieting, but I kept the portions very small, like only one pinwheel rollup and one 2 x 2 piece of a breakfast casserole. I took some of my dill pickle rollups and ate a few of those, since I knew exactly how many calories I was eating with them. Did I want to eat more? You bet I did! Usually these events at work translate to an all day graze for me…with God only knows how many calories and carbs. But at the end of the day I could look back and feel satisfied with knowing that I didn’t succumb to temptation and stray (too far) off my regular eating regimen.

Speed bump number two came on Tuesday night, which was our wedding anniversary. Since it was a weeknight we decided to stay close when choosing somewhere to celebrate. We went to a local restaurant we hadn’t been to for a while. Going in I hoped I would be able to find some sort of grilled chicken or fish (go figure!) on the menu, with maybe some green vegetable on the side. I was surprised and delighted to find there were many! Using the rationalization that it was our anniversary, I went out on a limb and chose tilapia stuffed with crabmeat and shrimp, and steamed broccoli. I really, really, REALLY wanted a baked potato with lots of butter and sour cream, but all it took one was one look down at my thighs to squelch that craving. I also passed on the rolls and butter too, which wasn’t hard for me since I’m not much of a bread eater. The fish did have a bit of creamy sauce on it, so I tried to eat around that as best I could. The best thing, however, was me filling up on only half of the meal. I was actually able to put down the fork with lots of food left on my plate, and I brought the rest home for the next day. Not only did I turn a potential pitfall into a night of relative success, I was able to enjoy my special treat two days in a row! I’m still missing that baked potato, though….

This week I also boosted my exercise a little, which I hope will help things along. My 20 minute preset workout goes in steps from resistance 1 to 5, then back down. (The machine has resistance settings all the way to 10.) After only a week this routine started feeling a bit too easy, so I decided to push the 30 minute button and see what happened. This one starts at 3 and goes up to 7 – three times *gasp* – like three mini-workouts strung back to back. By the time I hit level 7 for the third time, I was really feeling the crunch. I felt like I was trying to run uphill with a dead body over my shoulders, and my brain was in full Danny Glover mode: “I’m too old for this sh*t!” By the time I was done, though, the display said I had burned 525 calories and over 90 carbs. Wow! What a boost from the 290 calories the 20 minute workout!

Annnnddd...After all of this focus on giving myself a body makeover, this week I decided that also includes my head. So, after four years of growing my hair, I decided to cut it all off. Yikes! I made an appointment at the beauty parlor and just did it before I could talk myself out of it. And am I ever glad I did! With all of the sweaty exercise I'm doing nowadays, it's so much easier to take care of. And I'm pretty sure the long hair just made me look that much shorter and fatter (at least it felt that way) so I got an added bonus in the process! So...whaddya think?

All-in-all it was a great week! I guess it helps that I don’t mind eating lots of the same foods over and over (such as my yogurt every morning and grilled chicken salad for lunch.) Kinda takes the worry out of wondering what to fix. And since I have to be at work so early (I leave the house at 5:45 a.m.) easy really works for me. But I only have one more week of this early business and then my schedule changes and I’ll have more time in the mornings. I may branch out then and see what other goodies I can find to add to my menu. : )

When I started this blog I intended to end each post with some quote or funny ditty about aging or weight loss…or both. It was only after I had posted my second entry that I realized I totally forgot. Imagine that! So, to make up for lost time, here’s three for this week.

Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age. – Victor Hugo

If it weren’t for the fact the TV set and the refrigerator are so far apart, some of us wouldn’t get any exercise at all. – Joey Adams

And this, as submitted to Reader’s Digest, is what happens to your diet when you don’t read the fine print:

Needing to shed a few pounds, my husband and I went on a diet that had specific recipes for each meal of the day. I followed the instructions closely, dividing the finished recipe in half for our individual plates. We felt terrific and thought the diet was wonderful—we never felt hungry!

But when we realized we were gaining weight, not losing it, I checked the recipes again. There, in fine print, was "Serves 6."

Week One Results: On My Way!

Well, I made it through Week One and I’m still alive…and three pounds lighter! Go me! Thanks to all of you for your words of encouragement – they really do mean the world to me.

The first few days didn’t really feel much different than usual, except for the notable absence of two of my best friends, Ben and Jerry. (I expect they’re probably holed up somewhere in Vermont, loudly lamenting their loss of revenue.) I have been eating Greek yogurt for breakfast and grilled chicken salad for lunch for weeks now, so I made no adjustments to those meals. This past week I was more cognizant, however, of what I ate for dinner; I’ve been sticking to mostly grilled chicken with either steamed vegetables or sautéed in just a drizzle of EVOO. (For those of you unfamiliar with Rachael Ray, that’s extra virgin olive oil.) I threw in some broiled tilapia one night, just to mix things up. I also love a good grilled salmon steak, but seeing as how it is more expensive than prime rib now, I can only look at it sitting there in the grocer’s meat case and sigh.

I can hear all of you asking yourselves, and yes, I do eat LOTS of chicken. I buy the boneless, skinless variety and dress it up lots of different ways. You can use dozens of different seasonings: garlic, sage, rosemary, citrus…the meat may be the same, but the flavor possibilities are endless. I also have an herb garden, so I take advantage of all of those wonderful fresh flavors.

And I gotta say, my husband is being a real trooper through all of this. For dinner he pretty much eats what I do, but I try to throw some type of starch in for him, like rice. (I could feed him rice ten times a day and he would be in hog heaven.) When we go to the grocery I ask him if he wants to pick up anything different for himself, and he always declines.

My sister was appalled to find out the amount of yard bird I feed my husband. “You feed that man a steak!” she scolded me the other day. So, I did pick up a couple of New York strips the next time I went to the grocery. I got home from work one evening to find he’d fired up the grill and seasoned both steaks. When I told him I was going to eat chicken (big shock, that one) he politely informed me both steaks were for him. I will say he didn’t eat both of them at one sitting, though.

No weight loss regimen is complete without exercise, so when I sent Ben and Jerry packing I revisited my old friend, the elliptical machine. It sits behind the recliners in our living room, facing the television. In the past I would put something interesting on the TV to watch while I exercised, as I simply don’t have enough self-discipline to work out without something to distract me. This past week, however, I took advantage of the text-to-speech feature on my Kindle (the best gift BJ has ever gotten me!); a good book and some ear buds, and I’m all set! I’ve started with a 20 minute preset workout – many days I do it twice – and with my Kindle the time just flies by. I can knock out about 290 calories and 50 carbs in one 20 minute jaunt. Even when I really don’t feel like exercising, I make myself do it anyway; I’m to the point that I’m tired of my ass being fat more than I want to sit on it.

A friend introduced me to a great online tool to help me keep track of my eating and exercise: www.myfitnesspal.com. (I added a link under the Helpful Tools tab – check it out!) It has a library of literally thousands of different foods – all you do is search for what you’ve eaten, then click on the portion size. It automatically populates calories, carbs, and fat and protein grams. The program also allows you to track your exercise and calories burned. If you set up a profile with your height and weight, when you total your food and exercise at the end of the day the tool will calculate your approximate weight at the end of five weeks, based on your entries that day. How cool is that?

So, with one week under my belt and some notable progress, I’m still pumped! I know there will be rough patches – days when I really want to pig out, when I don’t feel like exercising – that’s when I’ll be relying on my family and friends to kick me in the butt and get me motivated again.