I didn’t do very well this week — a gain of two pounds! Ouch. The annoying thing is I really don’t feel I went off my diet. I didn’t splurge on cream sauces or treat myself to gooey chocolate fudge candy. No bags of Cheetos at one sitting or a half a pound of Parmigiano-Reggiano dipped in clover honey. If I had, I might think it was worth it.
But, just as I know I can lose weight by changing little things in my diet, I realize I can just as easily (correction: more easily) GAIN weight with those little, almost unnoticeable changes. I usually allow myself a single Toffifay candy in the afternoon but if I remember correctly, there were a couple days in there when I had two of them. Then there was that one evening I wrapped my cracker in thin slices of baby Swiss cheese rather than going au naturale. And I have been cooking with more butter than usual. Hmmmmm…..
Gifts of food, like this fantastic basket from Oregon Maiden Gift Baskets, do NOT contain "countable" calories!
Well, even though these “slips” probably accounted for some of it, they didn’t give me an extra two pounds in one week. The other culprit was probably water (my stand-by excuse for putting on weight!). Still, the small things really do count, and I can’t continue to fib to myself and say they don’t. That reminds me of a list of “calories that don’t count” I read. There are a million variations of this list on the web, but here’s mine:
- Small pieces of crackers or cookies (less than 1/2 the whole).
- Food I have to taste while cooking — just to see if it’s done right.
- Food or drink I take for “medicinal” purposes (including an energy burst or to prevent a headache).
- Food other people give me as a gift — it’s not fair to count these because I *have* to eat it to be polite.
- Any piece of food that has fewer than 10 calories (a cashew nut has only 8!) Note: 1/2 hour must elapse between pieces or they do count.
- Anything that can be drizzled on (even that fantastic orange-balsamic vinaigrette I bought at the Rendezvous Grill and Tap Room in Welches, Oregon last week (we had it in this sensational salad of fresh spinach with grilled pears, Oregon blue cheese and toasted hazelnuts and I just HAD to bring a pint home!).
- Spray “butter” — even if I pour it on. After all, it says there are no calories in a serving, so 20 servings would be 20 times zero = 0.
- Anything 1/4 of a normal serving or less (i.e., the bag says a serving size is 3/4 cup and I have a cup. What’s a quarter cup between friends?).
- Anything I eat the day after I had a great weigh in!
So, this week, to turn things around for me, I’ll watch the little things I do and remember that I want to lose weight MORE than I want to eat that extra Toffifay (at least a little bit more, which is all it takes!).
We tell stories about ourselves each time we speak!
I listened to an interesting sermon the other day by a Unity minister. She reminded her congregation of the incredible power of words and how, when a person tells a story, the story changes the listener AND the storyteller.
She wasn’t talking about Little Red Riding Hood type stories, but the stories we tell others about ourselves every time we say things like, “Oh, I’m the type of person who gains weight just looking at food” or “I’m so unlucky in love; I always pick the wrong person.”
Our subconscious mind is many times more powerful than our conscious mind. It HAS to be! Can you imagine having to consciously keep your heart beating regularly, digest your food, heal a cut, or do any of the other millions of things our bodies do without conscious thought?
If there’s a disagreement over what we consciously want and what our subconscious believes we can or should have, guess which one will win out? Our actions will be guided by our subconscious beliefs whether we’re aware of them of not.
For instance:
| We say and consciously think: | But down deep, we really believe: |
| I want to lose weight | I’ll never be able to get down to my ideal weight |
| I want to be in a great relationship | I’m not good enough to attract a really great partner |
| I want to be successful and rich | Money is the root of all evil and only bad people get rich |
| I want to enjoy perfect health | I’ve always been a sickly person and have inherited disease |
People never achieve their goals if they simply “want” to do something. They have to truly believe in their heart of hearts (which to me is another way of saying their subconscious!) that they CAN achieve them. Otherwise, they’ll either struggle against the current to force themselves to overcome their internal programming or, more likely, they’ll sabotage themselves and fail.
For a long time, I made all kinds of “fat jokes” when talking to others. You know the kind. The barista at Starbucks asks if I want whipped cream in my hot chocolate and I tell her, “Of course! Do I look like the type of person who would say ‘no’ to whipped cream????” Or, a friend says he’s joined a gym and I laughingly tell him that the walk from my car to the pizza parlor is all the exercise I want to do. I thought this sort of self-deprecating humor was “part of my charm” and I did get a lot of laughs.
But those jokes are part of the “story” I tell about myself, and that story — told often enough — becomes part of my identity, part of the inner beliefs I hold about myself. So, it’s natural that dieting is a struggle. I’m combating my own internal programming.
My NEW story about myself is that I’m the type of person who doesn’t care to nibble a lot, one who gets full just sniffing food, who loses weight no matter what she eats, loves being fit and trim, and who’s reaching her weight goals easily.
Next, I’m going to have to tackle those “old lady” stories. But I think I’ll take things one step at a time!
I was down to 195 yesterday, on my “official” weigh-in … and 194 today, but that doesn’t count (DRAT). That’s a three pound loss from last week, although it’s not quite as sensational as it sounds, since last week I was up 1.5 pounds. I’m really convinced this heat is causing me to hold water big time … and every now and then I just let go of it and lose!
But I do think I’m actually beginning to see a little bit of difference in the mirror. I know for sure that some of my pants are getting baggier (but they were baggy to begin with so it’s hard to tell). Despite some bumps in the road and very slow progress, I’m maintaining my downward trend and I’m supremely confident that I’ll succeed in meeting my weight goal of about 150 (although it won’t be by my birthday in October, that’s for sure).
I intend to take a few photos of myself to compare with the “before” shots I took last year. It will take a great deal of courage and self-confidence to post those pictures. I’d intended them for my eyes only and didn’t make any effort to suck it in, if you know what I mean.
Of course, I think that’s typical of a lot of these before and after photos you see. In the before shot, the person is slouched over, cramming a doughnut in her or his face, wearing sloppy clothes and looking generally unkempt. Then comes the “after” shot — standing up straight, nicely dressed and smiling. You can almost see the muscles cramping in an heroic attempt to keep gravity from doing its job.
Still, I find these before and after shots highly motivating. How can you look these pictures, from the British Children First site, and NOT feel inspired:
From the British Children First site
Or these, from the Digerati Life blog:
From the Digerati Life blog
Or these, from the online TCNJ Magazine:
from the online TCNJ Magazine
Want more? Click here to search Google images for before and after photos. Amazing, isn’t it? I can’t wait until I have some really impressive after shots to show off. For now, though, I think I’ll keep my before pictures to myself.
Farmers market
I gained weight this week. Lots of weight. I don’t want to talk about it.
Instead, I’m going to talk about why I haven’t had time to even think about dieting, let alone do it: I’m having a ball doing OTHER things.
First of all, I joined Toastmasters a few months ago and I’m enjoying myself at the meetings, polishing my public speaking skills (which, if I am honest, are fairly good), and making friends. The group isn’t at all what I expected it to be. My next door neighbors had decided to start a group in our town and they asked me to come to the founding meeting. I said yes only to be neighborly and half expected a bunch of old coots sitting around counting how many times they all stammered and stuttered and said “ah” and then engaging in incredibly boring networking.
To my amazement, the group is fun and supporting and very very informative. We’re a small group (about 20 members so far) but quite diverse. I’m one of the elders (but not the oldest!) and there are some as young as 18! I don’t think I’ve laughed as much at any meeting as I have with this bunch.
And, my public speaking abilities and self-confidence are increasing (although since the latter already borders on egotism, some may question the advantages of that side effect).
I’ve also become extremely interested in genealogy and spend an inordinate amount of time on ancestry.com tracing my family tree. For years, I resisted the urge to look into my ancestry because I assumed it would be a waste of time. My parents are both deceased and I missed the opportunity to find out about the history of either branch (my mother told stories, but I seldom listened).
I assumed — rightly, as it turns out — that the Polish roots on my mother’s side would be hard to trace. Her parents were among that huge wave of Eastern Europeans who arrived at Ellis Island in the early part of the last century. I’ve been able to track down their arrival dates, download images of the actual passenger manifests and ships, and find out (thanks to a death certificate purchased from NYC) my grandfathers’ parents’ names. Whether I manage to get any further than that depends on my ability to decipher some of the Polish names on the document, and find help with translations, etc. But even the little glimpse I’ve gotten of them and their lives has been fascinating.
Originally, I held out just as little hope for success tracking my father’s ancestry. I always thought of his people as Texas backwoods hillbillies who probably came over to the US in the past few generations and weren’t the type of people who left much in the way of “documents.” If the dead (and living) can hear, I apologize profusely for my ignorance and prejudice.
I’ve learned that they were an interesting group of people, many of whom came to America before the Revolution. Some fought in that war of independence and it’s a tickle to know I’m qualified to join the DAR (whether I will or not remains to be seen … but, like Mensa, it’s nice to know you COULD join). My great great grandfather fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War and was killed at the battle of Chickamauga. A generation before him and my family were slave owners on a plantation. You can’t imagine how that makes me — a staunch liberal and human rights advocate — feel. I finally know what my mother meant when she used to say to me “I love you … but I don’t like what you did.” These were, for the most part, otherwise good men and women and it still bewilders me how they could have had such a horrid blind spot that allowed them to think it was okay to own other good men and women.
But I’m finally learning about them and the places where and the times in which they lived. They’re becoming real individuals who lived what we know as American (and European) history. I’ve even decided to start a website sharing what I know about them and about my experiences in searching for my “roots” (when I actually launch it, I’ll post the URL here!).
While all this is going on, I’m still reading and learning about the “new sciences” of epigenetics and quantum physics, particularly as it’s used to explain everything from self-healing and energy medicine to the “law of attraction.”
Dieting? Oh yes, I put on quite a bit of weight this past week and can only hope it’s just water and that I’ll emerge from the bathroom one of these days having dropped 12 pounds! I actually gained 3.5 pounds this week (EEK!) but lost 1.5 of it, so I’m at a net gain of “only” 2 pounds. And you know what’s to blame? Fruit. That’s right. Fruit.
Fruit isn’t suppose to weigh anything or have any significant amount of calories, is it? I mean, every book you read says that, instead of eating doughnuts or cake, have a piece of fruit instead. So I did. Well, more than a piece I suppose. A cup or two of grapes, five or six cherries, a handful of blueberries, a few strawberries, a peach and a cup or so of watermelon. Yes, that’s a lot — but it’s FRUIT, right???? Is that really supposed to come to about 350 calories???? Who knew? Well, now I do, so I’ll have to back off a bit. I have a feeling the only thing that’s really going to work is to STOP eating non-stop in the evenings. No matter what I eat, if I eat a ton of it, I’ll gain a ton of weight.
But this week, I’ve had other things on my mind and nothing can make me feel anything less than fantastic. I hope your week has been as good as mine (AND that you lost weight as well!)
During the past month, despite trying to get back on track, I’ve lost only two pounds — not the pound a week I’d planned for.
Even though I had a stated goal of one pound a week for the diet, in the back of my mind I really thought I’d blow that out of the water. I envisioned dropping by several pounds a week and actually “officially” switched my goal to two pounds a week a couple of months ago. Didn’t happen.
I have lost 25 pounds since I started on January 4, 2010 and while that averages a meager .83 pounds a week, I’ve gotten below 200 pounds for the first time in many years and I’ve managed to stay there for 7 weeks solid. Not a failure, although Weight Watchers sure won’t be calling me to act as their spokeswoman!
My blogging hasn’t lived up to my expectations either. This post makes the third in July (although obviously I’m cutting it VERY close!). That’s a far cry from my two or three a week posts I’d planned to do. Actually, when I started, I’d considered posting my progress every day (a la the blogger in the “Julie and Julia” movie) but journaling on a daily basis about what I was eating bored even me — it would have turned my readers into zombies.
I also had the unspoken expectation that the blog would “go viral” and that I would quickly have thousands of hits every day with an entire page of comments on my deathless prose. I looked into various programs to screen my messages without having to sit and moderate all of them — a task I felt would be far too time consuming for one person. The blog was supposed to make me accountable for my diet and give me a powerful incentive to do well. After all, I couldn’t disappoint my legion of fans!
I also had great expectations for my blog because I know what needs to be done to have a successful blog or website. I’ve helped clients develop sites that routinely get on the top of Google’s search engine “hit parade.” I’m familiar with social networking and blog marketing and have 40+ years experience of running my own business.
One thing I hadn’t counted on was my lack of time to handle anything but projects for my clients. When I’m not working on their sites, I like doing something totally fun and relaxing — preferably away from the computer! Marketing yet another site just isn’t fun, even though it’s my own. I originally thought I might add a few affiliate links to the site and generate a bit of income but I never really looked at this blog as a big money maker, so the financial incentive wasn’t there for me either.
I’ve always been something of an over achiever and love the sense of accomplishment I get when I do much better than expected. Conversely, I hate it when I “fail” to meet even my minimal goals. But I’m at a mature enough age to realize that we don’t get an A+ in every one of life’s subjects and there are times when getting a B- or even a C has to suffice. It means, at least, that we accomplished something, even if we fall short of the lofty heights we aimed for.
I’m getting a good solid C+ for my diet and my blog. I can live with that. I’m doing this for ME after all, and as long as I’m getting what I want out of the experience, I’ll keep going. If it ever gets to be more bother than it’s worth, I’ll stop. Hopefully, by then, I’ll have reached a reasonable weight, and my blog readers won’t be TOO disappointed to see me go!
See you next week … or so.
Recent Comments