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15 November 2007

I'm in week 5 of this diet, the week I'm supposed to add carbs. I have been really cautious. I ate a microwaved white potato Tuesday and tonight with dinner, but really have no desire to try that whole wheat bread in the freezer. I have been realizing that on this diet, I have completely eliminated low fructose corn syrup, which who needs anyway? And I've eliminated wheat, which is a known allergen for some people. I drink rice milk but also skim dairy products, like sour cream for my potato. It was tasty.

In the freezer I found some leftover healthy granola -- oats, nuts, honey -- and I've been defrosting and eating it a chunk at a time. I know I'm still eating less than 1500 calories a day, and at my weight, I would need twice that just to maintain. So I must be losing. It seems to be all coming off my face. Nobody except my family has commented on my weight loss yet. I can still wear the same black shorts I've worn all summer, and they don't fall off. But when I lie flat on my back in bed I can tell my stomach is noticeably flatter.

I was feeling so weak, and I had my hubby take my blood pressure; it was 102 / 65, which is way too low. So I stopped taking my blood pressure meds. This happened before when I dieted; below a certain weight, I guess I don't have high blood pressure. By the time I realize that and stop the meds, I've gone through a few days of feeling week and dead. I feel better today off the meds, but I still have no energy or desire to exercise.

The exercycle sits right there on the porch outside my window, waiting, but I cant' seem to make myself climb on board. This time, controlling my appetite and food intake has been the easy part, but the exercise is not happening. I worked with a woman who lost 75 pounds just by dieting, with no exercise whatever, and she looked great. She is in her 50s. I keep thinking maybe when I'm already slimmer I'll have the courage to go to Curves or some workout place where they make you do it. All you have to do is show up in workout gear and they put you on machines and stuff. There's always the loud disco music to inspire you. I might do well in that kind of environment. Cycling alone on the porch seems so sad and lonely.

I"m pretty sure if I bought a household bathroom scale now, I'd STILL be "off the charts" since they only go up to 250. So I'm not going to do that to myself. In 2002 I lost about 60 pounds, so I have an idea what being 250 feels like, and I think I'll wait until I get below that to actually buy a scale. There's a big free public scale at Publix, but I can't imagine climibing on that thing with people watching. that one goes up to 500 pounds, so at least I'd get an accurate reading.

We've been getting invites for Thanksgving but I don't think I will want to be anywhere there's all that food, and we might just make the smallest turkey I can find, and eat at home with veggies and salad. I saw that Doctor's wife Chocolate too! recipe for pumpkin pie at 112 calories a slice. Maybe I'll try that. I have to buy egg beaters but I think I have everything else. I'll use olive oil instead of the recommended canola. It has mozarella cheese in the pie, which sounds weird, but I like pumpkin pie cheesecake, so it might be like that. The crust is healthy oats and splenda. Or maybe that kind of pumpkin pie would seem too SAD for the holiday. Let me think: I could have turkey, sweet potato (without the marshmallows, thank you), baked white potato (fatfree sour cream instead of gravy), steamed veggies and salad (olive oil/vinaigrette dressing). That feels thanksgivingy.

I do have a lot to be grateful for this year.

Here's that recipe, so I don't lose it:


Pumpkin Pie

Serves 8 at 112 calories per serving, including the crust.

HEALTHY PIE CRUST:
1 cup quick oats
1/4 cup oat or whole wheat flour
1/2 cup Splenda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup Diet soda
1 tbsp olive oil

Spray 9” pie dish with cooking spray.
In small bowl mix the oats, flour, Splenda, & salt. Add diet soda, mix.
Mix oil with 4 tbsp warm water. Fork beat until frothy, then add to crust mix.
Press crust into plate bottom, moistening fingertips if needed.
Set crust in pie plate aside.

PUMPKIN PIE
3/4 cup Splenda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 can pumpkin filling
1/2 cup liquid egg whites
1/2 cup fat free shredded mozzarella…
4 tsp egg replacer
6 tbsp warm water

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Combine the first five ingredients in a small bowl.
Stir pumpkin into skillet & heat slowly.
Add the egg whites and cheese, stirring until cheese starts to melt. (If the eggs start to cook, remove from heat for a bit.)
Stir in the Splenda and spice mix.
Mix egg replacer well with the water, add, stir whole mixture, pour into crust.

Bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes. Reduce temperature to 350, bake 15-20 more minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.

11 November 2007

I am supposed to start adding carbs for dinner 3 times a week now, starting tomorrow, but the idea really scares me. I'm afraid if I eat carbs again my weight loss will stop, and I'm afraid i'll go back to being hungry all the time. I don't know. I have a loaf of excellent whole wheat bread and I'm going to break my carb fast with a slice of it toasted and a spoonful of peanut butter. Nuts are allowed on this diet, in moderation, of course. I plan to chew it slowly and savor every starchy bite. Today is the last day of the fourth week of this diet. I haven't "cheated" really at all. Today I had a slice of low-fat pepperjack cheese on my lunch salad, but I could have been eating cheese. I'm afraid of cheese too. We went back to church today for the first time in 3 weeks, and people noticed that I was losing weight. The jeans I was so proud to get back into are really baggy and unflattering now. I'm not going to buy anything new until I am a size 18. Then the next pair after that will be 14s, and I'll be home free. Today: Breakfast: apple, tea. Lunch: Green salad, slice low-fat cheese, low-carb italian dressing. Snack: A few mixed nuts. Dinner coming up: More salad (gag) and some sliced chicken breast. Grapes for dessert. How long can I keep this up? The trips to the grocery store are really challenging. But I can't believe how much crap I used to eat. Honey mustard sourdough pretzel bits. Tasty Kakes butterscotch crumpets. Tasty Kakes always remind me of the hurricanes of 2004, since we lived on a few boxes of those until the lights came back on. Today I bought potatoes for baking (for one of my "add carb" meals this week). Can't wait to try one of those with the slice of pepperjack cheese and the fat free sour cream (or maybe just this excelent olive oil I have). Maybe some of the homemade salsa.

10 November 2007

Yesterday I ate: bowl of plain whole oats with added raisins for breakfast. Large romaine lettuce salad with 1/2 cup of water-packed solid white albacore tuna for lunch; two tiny grouper filets with steamed veggies for dinners. Grapes for dessert. People are starting to tell me now that I look like I'm losing weight. I still don't have a scale, so I don't know exactly what my numbers are. The other weekend at a resale store they had a bathroom scale for sale, on the floor, so I discreetly stepped on it when no one was looking. But the scale only went up to 250 pounds and the needle went way over that for me. It was disgusting. So I refuse to buy a scale until I can fit within the parameters of one of those off-the-shelf Walmart scales; that means I'll have to weigh 250 or less. That means I might have to be 40-50 pounds into this weightloss before I can even register on a scale. I hate that. But I do like looking at my thinner face in the mirror. I have had a big double chin for years, and it's sort of deflating now. Sadly, it's leaving the baggy skin behind -- but I've decided not to beat myself up over baggy skin. I think it will either go away by itself, eventually, or I can have this thermal dermal thing I saw on one of the makeover shows where they just microwave your skin and it tightens up from underneath. They showed a woman with a sagging jawline improve in minutes, and she said it was painless. So there is hope that someday this chin will be just a memory. My black jeans are getting almost too baggy for me now. I will have to see what happens when I wash them in hot water and dry them bone dry; that should shrink them down to "slenderizing" again. I remember as a teen putting my jeans in the dryer to make them skin tight, because then they acted as a natural girdle, holding in my tummy for me. Heaven knows what that looked like from behind! Last night my husband told me the diet I'm on -- no refined white flour or sugar, nothing that ends in -ose -- is like the Atkins diet. So I'm going to check that out today and see. I felt proud. People have told me that's the toughest and most successful diet around, except you have to stay on it for life. I'd love to be able to tell people I was on the Atkins diet; I would sound so self-disciplined. I'm going over to the Atkins people now to see what's up. I'll just eavesdrop.

06 November 2007

OK OK OK. This is day #22 of this diet. I'm pretty much still dead right on it, with only minor variations, and I refuse to call that "cheating." Like last night I had two thin slices of chicken breast on my salad instead of fish-fish-fish since this diet calls for fish every single damned night for 42 nights. That's really a lot of fish.

Plus, we bought the chicken pre-roasted at the WInn Dixie, and it was ready, and I was exhausted and didn't feel like even microwaving some fish. So yesterday was: smoothie for breakfast (unsweetened frozen fruit, nonfat unsweetened yogurt, 1/2 cup orange-pineapple juice). Yum, and filling. For lunch, a bowl of failed spaghetti squash. Took an hour to bake it -- luckily it's cold enough now in Florida to run the oven for an hour, if you get up early enough -- and no matter what anybody tells you, it tastes like squash. Looks like spaghetti (sort of), tastes exactly like stringy squash. It's NOT a substitute for pasta. Dammit. I put on a little olive oil and salt/pepper, and tried to eat it, but it was really quite awful. I threw away half the bowl, so ate about 1/4 of a spaghetti squash. Yuck.

Dinner was that mixed green salad with those chicken breast slices, and some oh-my-God too hot red jalapeno peppers. My husband swore the red ones were less hot than the green. I bit into one and almost passed out, cried, blew my nose, drank ice water, rubbed toilet paper on my tongue. Nothing helped. Eventually my boss called and I had to snap out of it and talk to him, and sometime during that conversation, I realized I was no longer in pain. And I was kind of HIGH. I guess that's the endorphin release from all that pain. It was nice. I regretted the pepper again this morning, if you know what I mean.

Then after the healthy dinner I ate some trail mix -- just nuts, raisins, dried fruit, nothing chocolate. But I felt bad about that. It probably added another 300 calories to my day. I thought it would make me feel satisfied and full, but it didn't. I do crave sweets sometimes, tho. I asked my husband, in bed, did I eat too much today? Then I realized just how pathetic a question that was. He hugged me and said, no, I'm sure you didn't (my chubby little darling)(he only thought that last part). He's wonderful. He's working so hard. He only needs to lose 10 pounds or so.

Oh, and yesterday (AND today) I started the day with a cup of weak coffee, which totally KICKS MY ASS because I'm so unaccustomed to caffeine now. I suppose this is taxing my liver, but I swear, I work as a home-based book editor, and I cannot sit and read copy for three hours without a cup of coffee. Green tea doesn't do it at all. I need the caffeine. I even put a packet of liver-poisoning Splenda in it, and it tasted WONDERFUL. I sipped it all morning. I sipped it long after it went cold. I loved it. Life's elixir. I might lose weight and live longer without coffee, but it is REALLY LIFE?

I lay in bed for a couple of hours, unable to sleep. I try to enjoy that time, to think of all the times in my life I would have killed for two hours of uninterrupted "thinking time," relaxing, being myself. I meditated, sang songs in my head, tried to remember the names of my elementary school teachers. I tossed and I turned. I vowed to not drink coffee again the next day (but already have). My life is so blessedly empty now, and once it was so frustratingly full. But I guess balance is what I really need.

Today: I started with the rest of the trail mix. May God have mercy on my soul. I'm afraid to look at the package to see how many servings that is. Then I opened a SECOND package of trail mix, just dried fruits this time (BOGO at Winn Dixie) and made some oatmeal with just a little of the fruit, bottled water, and topped with Rice Dreams rice milk. It's easier than finding organic milk, and no cows are involved whatsoever. I noticed that Winn has Almond Milk, too, but that has cane sugar in it. I bet it's pretty good, tho. There's even a chocolate flavor. Mmmm.

I did get thru my shopping trip yesterday without buying one bad thing. That means I had to walk past the cranberry/pumpkin seed bread made with white flour. The butter rum muffins, made with cream cheese. The soda aisle, full of sugary and poisony bubbly quenchers. Straight past. I bought grapes, tangerines, bananas, those regrettable jalapeno peppers, rice milk, dog food and the roast chicken. Good girl. Good girl, Lassie. Good Lassie.

I feel thinner. As you might note, I'm not owning a scale or looking to buy one. I think if I stay on this diet I CANNOT FAIL to lose weight. It's only about 1200 calories a day, the only carbs are fruits and vegetables. Eggs, fat-free dairy, fish, olive oil, occasional nuts and seeds. Fruits and veggies. Can that possibly NOT make me lose weight?

I notice that if I eat something carby (I accidentally had a little square of health food store oatmeal cake which was sweetened with something, but only because a friend put it in front of me while I was distracted, on the phone at his house) then I'm starving for the rest of the day. It's not worth it.

It pains me to think how out-of-control my eating was. I was on the Anything At All That You Want diet. I was eating Wendy's burgers, even FRIES, Frostys, Chinese buffet once a week (TWO plates full, including the ice cream for dessert); munching on cookies at night. McDonald's sausage biscuits for breakfast. Then I ate potato chips once and was up all night vomiting. That was sort of the inspiration for this diet. I decided I just couldn't eat like that anymore. Plus, I had outgrown even my fat clothes, and I'm not in a financial situation to go funding a new wardrobe at this size. So I had to lose.

And it gives me something to be happy about every morning when I wake up. Today, I say, I will eat only what is on My Plan. Nothing refined. Nothing processed. I MUST be getting thinner. I can wear my favorite black jeans now, and they're even sort of baggy, but they're a size 24. My double chin seems to be shrinking, although I'm still huge by most people's standards. I don't care. I am what I am. I'm Popeye the Sailor Man.

I'm changing my eating habits, for good. This might be my last chance, or I'll develop fat-related ailments and then die. I already have high blood pressure, low thyroid, high cholesterol and depression. Maybe at my ideal weight I could stop at least taking the BP meds and the cholesterol statin stuff. I don't think my thyroid's coming back. And maybe, at my ideal weight, I'd like myself and my life and do active, fun things and not have to be depressed. Maybe. I have tried weaning myself down to 300 mg. Wellbutrin a day, but I'm not sure it's worth it. Not yet. It does make me somber and teary when I miss a dose.

Today I rode the exercycle on my front porch for 10 minutes, almost. It has been so long, the fan on the front wheel was kicking dust up into my face. I got that overheated, exhausted feeling that means "you're burning calories, girlfriend! You go!" I stayed on until it was the full 10 minutes (from the time I decided to ride, which means I might have lost a minute finding my shoes and stuff). Still. I stared at my cell phone clock the last two minutes, praying, come on, come on.

I came in and tried not to collapse on the bed, tried to walk around and do stuff to calm down, but then collapsed on the bed and talked to my parrot. I feel sooo tired from the exercise. BUT IT WAS A START! I could technically do 10 minutes twice a day, and that would be TWENTY MINUTES of riding a day. Then up to 15 twice a day, for THIRTY minutes total. That's actual freaking exercise. I would not be the sedentary dieter anymore, but the physically active, more activity/fewer calories kind of dieter. Imagine.

Oh, Imagine.

One more thing: my $10 worth of motivational subliminals. Buy two, get one free! I downloaded them from eBay. I got weight loss and confidence, and then the free "attract money" tape. It's someone mumbling in the background and the more audible sounds of rainfall and "distant thunder," which is actually sometimes closer than I'd like. I play all three on rotation in an endless loop as I sit at the computer, many hours a day. Because why not? Then I fall asleep listening to each one once. I need to set up the tiny stereo on my dresser, so my husband and I can listen to it without the eMachines computer's endless whirring whine in the background, as we fall off to sleep. I think we could both stand to be thinner, richer and more confident. But I just feel too tired to do that. And I have to see a client this afternoon. I want to nap.

I wish I knew what the downloads were whispering to me, but I am trusting that it's something POSITIVE.

Today I release my regrets. I realize that I did the best I could managing my food intake, and I didn't do well. But that was the past, and now I actually AM managing it well. It's under control. That can only help me. I release the past. I look forward to being slender and active. A new me!

01 November 2007

I do not currently have any buddies. My weight, however, has shown a dramatic 100-POUND decrease, since I changed the numbers. i have no scale, and I'm not interested in getting one. I will know as I lose weight. I have to do it from the inside out this time.

Yesterday I ate green tea for breakfast, then one of those ricotta/cottage cheese/spoonful of peach yogurt bowls of stuff. It was good. Lots of supplements: mega vitagel (all you need and MORE!), milk thistle to cleanse my liver, flax seed oil for whatever that does fat-wise. Something. Mobilizes fat, I think. Something in the intestine maybe.

I made bean soup for lunch (2 cans beans, 1 small can rotel diced tomatoes with jalapenos, low-sodium V-8 juice, simmered a long, long time) and it was good. I still have some for lunch today. I felt I was doing well. THEN the landlady stopped by to see my laundry piles on the floor, and gave us a PUMPKIN BREAD LOAF she made herself, for Halloween. It's like, I have removed all temptation, I am home alone most of the time now with no snack food to bother me, not on the road grabbing burgers. I have trained my hubby not to bring me candy with the rented videos, not to pick up ice cream at Walgreens. But then a pumpkin loaf walks up to the door, and there it is.

It was a tough struggle. I have 18 days into this diet, which is technically a 42-day commitment. Nearly damn half way. Pumpkin loaf is emphatically NOT on the "allowed foods" list for me. Yet there it was. I thought, just one little slice wouldn't hurt. My daughter, who was on the phone when the loaf arrived, said one little slice wouldn't hurt. It's made with a vegetable! I've used that excuse before. But no. I knew I wouldn't stop at one slice. And even if I somehow could, it would be a tiny leak in the dam. A slippery slope. A bunch of other metaphors. It would make it twice as hard to not eat something with both white sugar and refined white flour again. I'm not even eating sugar or flour at ALL at this point. Then I would.

And it would mean that my 42-day commitment meant only that I'd "try" and not that I'd do it. Then my daughter said, You are stronger than that pumpkin loaf. And I felt she might be right. But honest to god, the struggle of not eating it made me cry real tears. My husband offered to throw it away for me, to drive it over to someone else as a gift, anything to make me stop crying. I said no. I told him he could eat some, but I would not. He said he'd never do that in front of me. Instead, he cooked me some grouper filets (pan fried in a little olive oil) and steamed some mixed veggies, which I ate with a little leftover saffron rice. I realized that one reason it had been so hard was that I hadn't eaten my real dinner yet. After dinner, the pumpkin loaf seemed so much less interesting. It was still sealed in its baggie. I had a handful of red grapes before bedtime.

During the night, I awoke to find myself in bed alone. I saw the light from the refrigerator go on briefly, then off. I heard the sound of a pumpkin loaf sliding out of a baggie. At least he spared me the satisfied sigh. In the morning, I told him to take the rest of it with him to work, to hand out to his friends, and he did.

So I'm awake and ready to work at my computer now, and I just had a glass of tomato juice and I'm making a cup of green tea. There's nothing in the house but me, a grapefruit, and that leftover bean soup. I'll be OK.

Oh wait, one more thing. Over the weekend I wore my black jeans that I haven't been able to squeeze into since last spring. I'm still a size TOO, TOO LARGE, but now at least I don't have to wear those stupid polyester stretch-waist pants I've been living in. The black jeans make my ass look good, big, but good. I have a full length mirror on my bathroom door now, first time in many years I've let one of those into the house (came with this apartment) and I look at my naked body sometimes. I'm very droopy, breasts pointing downward after 3 years (cumulative) breast feeding + 20 years of overeating. I have a gut. Wide hips. But it's not a hideous body, just a bulky one. I hate my double chin and upper arms. No, wait, I LOVE my double chin and upper arms. I love and nurture them. They'll be good to me as well. I love all of me. I am sexy. Old, saggy, but sexy as hell. I get angry sometimes when I think of those classified personals ads I used to read, the men I used to talk to, those men with beer bellies and bald heads, all wanting a woman who looked like their daughters. A woman who looked like good breeding stock. I've already bred my chillins and I done lost my figger, but I"m still sexy as hell. Oh, what they missed out on! My husband seems to respond to the warmth of my body, my smooth skin, something that radiates off my upper chest -- heart chakra energy. It turns him on. He couldn't care less about chins, arms, lumpy thighs. It's all paradise to him. Thank God for him. And thank God I can wear my old jeans again.

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