Today starts the 6th week of the new me. A little scary to say that since it assumes that I won’t just stop doing this at some point and gain back all the weight I’ve lost and more. But there is a confidence this time, or maybe a calmness that I’ve not had before when I’ve made other attempts to lose weight, eat better and exercise more. Especially in the last week, when I chose not to exercise as many days as I did choose to exercise. Yes, I was concerned, but I wasn’t in a panic that I was blowing it again. I am a little worried about being too relaxed about it and actually stopping, but I haven’t had that self loathing that usually accompanies a lapse in either eating well or exercising. And I’ve certainly had lapses in the eating department. At least once a week, for one meal, I’m just ignoring the diet completely and eating whatever I want; almost always because we have gone out to eat. But as I told Mindy today, as long as I can focus on the weekly average of calories, I think I should still be OK.
I hit what feels like a big milestone this week, even with exercising less. I’ve now lost over 16 pounds as of my last weigh in yesterday. Getting down under 230 was going to be a nice thing to see and I was concerned since I had not exercised as much if I would lose anything, much less get down to below 230. The previous week had been a tough one when I lost only 0.6 pounds, but this week I lost 5.6 pounds! Pretty amazing, but there was something else that was different this week; for the first time I came in under 2000 calories per day on average. 1609.13 to be exact and I feel pretty good that I tracked all my calories and it isn’t just an artifact of ‘lost’ calories that were consumed but not counted. So anyway, having lost 15 pounds feels pretty good and I’m looking forward to the next big number, which in my mind will be 20. At 2 pounds/week, that would take until April 4, but if I my current per week weight loss rate was sustained, I would hit it some time next week. I’ll take anything in between at this point and though I can’t quite figure out the logic of how/when my weight is coming off, I feel pretty confident that it will continue coming off fairly quickly for a while yet as long as I stay under 2K calories/day on average and exercise at least 5 time/week. I’d like to keep it at 6 just to be safe.
One thing that I though about early on is my changing relationship to food. What has come as a bit of a surprise to me is that I’m enjoying eating now more than I did before. There are multiple reasons. The most obvious and, in my mind anyway, most banal is that I’m more hungry now when I sit down to eat than I was most times before. I’d known before from the occasional missed meal or extreme physical workout how good food could be when I was really hungry, but I’m experiencing that almost every day now. To be sure, sometimes I get tired of grilled chicken and steamed vegetables, but even that is much more enjoyable than it would have been before. More philosophically, I’m feeling better about WHAT I’m eating and don’t have this guilt every time I sit down to a meal. I didn’t really realize it before, but I guess I knew somewhere inside me that I was doing my body harm just about every time I sat down to a meal and it was eating away (sorry) at me more than I realized. Finally, I’m ENJOYING and appreciating the food I eat so much more now. It brings home that something that you have too much of loses its value and ceases to be something about which you care about any longer. When I was eating all the time, and knew that I would be eating a bunch more after dinner, I didn’t really give my dinner, as I was eating it, too much thought. It was just what I ‘had’ to eat in order to feel justified in eating the chips, cookies, donuts, crackers and whatever else as soon as Camryn went to bed. And that made me feel guilty as well. I was waiting for her to go to bed so I could indulge myself in all the junk that I either went out to the local grocery store to buy after putting her to bed, or what happened to be left over from the previous night when I’d gotten two or three things to choose from.
The biggest difference though is in sweets. I have always had a weakness for sweets and it was a given that I would have some every day. Now, it is only a couple times/week and when I do have them, I really enjoy them. I actually sit down with a cookie and a glass of milk or cup of tea and enjoy it. I actually think about how it tastes and how good it is. Its so much different than sitting down in front of the TV with 3-4 cookies which I eat in a few bites without hardly noticing. It helps me to appreciate and enjoy it so much more than before.
I hit what feels like a big milestone this week, even with exercising less. I’ve now lost over 16 pounds as of my last weigh in yesterday. Getting down under 230 was going to be a nice thing to see and I was concerned since I had not exercised as much if I would lose anything, much less get down to below 230. The previous week had been a tough one when I lost only 0.6 pounds, but this week I lost 5.6 pounds! Pretty amazing, but there was something else that was different this week; for the first time I came in under 2000 calories per day on average. 1609.13 to be exact and I feel pretty good that I tracked all my calories and it isn’t just an artifact of ‘lost’ calories that were consumed but not counted. So anyway, having lost 15 pounds feels pretty good and I’m looking forward to the next big number, which in my mind will be 20. At 2 pounds/week, that would take until April 4, but if I my current per week weight loss rate was sustained, I would hit it some time next week. I’ll take anything in between at this point and though I can’t quite figure out the logic of how/when my weight is coming off, I feel pretty confident that it will continue coming off fairly quickly for a while yet as long as I stay under 2K calories/day on average and exercise at least 5 time/week. I’d like to keep it at 6 just to be safe.
One thing that I though about early on is my changing relationship to food. What has come as a bit of a surprise to me is that I’m enjoying eating now more than I did before. There are multiple reasons. The most obvious and, in my mind anyway, most banal is that I’m more hungry now when I sit down to eat than I was most times before. I’d known before from the occasional missed meal or extreme physical workout how good food could be when I was really hungry, but I’m experiencing that almost every day now. To be sure, sometimes I get tired of grilled chicken and steamed vegetables, but even that is much more enjoyable than it would have been before. More philosophically, I’m feeling better about WHAT I’m eating and don’t have this guilt every time I sit down to a meal. I didn’t really realize it before, but I guess I knew somewhere inside me that I was doing my body harm just about every time I sat down to a meal and it was eating away (sorry) at me more than I realized. Finally, I’m ENJOYING and appreciating the food I eat so much more now. It brings home that something that you have too much of loses its value and ceases to be something about which you care about any longer. When I was eating all the time, and knew that I would be eating a bunch more after dinner, I didn’t really give my dinner, as I was eating it, too much thought. It was just what I ‘had’ to eat in order to feel justified in eating the chips, cookies, donuts, crackers and whatever else as soon as Camryn went to bed. And that made me feel guilty as well. I was waiting for her to go to bed so I could indulge myself in all the junk that I either went out to the local grocery store to buy after putting her to bed, or what happened to be left over from the previous night when I’d gotten two or three things to choose from.
The biggest difference though is in sweets. I have always had a weakness for sweets and it was a given that I would have some every day. Now, it is only a couple times/week and when I do have them, I really enjoy them. I actually sit down with a cookie and a glass of milk or cup of tea and enjoy it. I actually think about how it tastes and how good it is. Its so much different than sitting down in front of the TV with 3-4 cookies which I eat in a few bites without hardly noticing. It helps me to appreciate and enjoy it so much more than before.
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