March 2024
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How I Lost It Pt. I

No, this isn’t a post about how I finally went crazy. I’m saving that for next week when I run out of things to say for NaBloPoMo. Besides, I haven’t actually gone crazy yet, even if we all know that it’s just a matter of time.

My friend Maggie asked in a comment if I could share some pointers on how I managed to finally lose that ten pounds that I had been complaining about since forever. This gave me something interesting to think about while running on the treadmill today, so I figured that I would write some tips up. Something along the lines of, “always have something interesting to think about while running on a treadmill.”

Everybody and their personal trainer has written something about how to lose weight. If any of those books, magazine articles, etc. offered up the magic bullet, we’d all look like Victoria’s Secret Models and Lane Bryant would go out of business. The truth of the matter is, weight loss is hard. It takes dedication, will-power and a willingness to make life-long changes. Now that I’ve scared you all off, I promise some funny pictures tomorrow. Please come back!

These tips are just what worked for me, your mileage may vary. While reading these tips you might experience certain side effects, such as dizziness or loss of appetite. Tips void while prohibited.

General Ideas

The first thing to remember is that weight loss is a marathon, not a sprint (great! she’s talking about running already! get me out of here!). I lost ten pounds, but it took me about seven months to do it. It was really, really gradual. Unbelievably gradual. Almost frustratingly gradual. I knew that the numbers on my scale were getting smaller, but I didn’t always see it in the mirror. What helped me was to keep track of my weight using Physics Diet. Every morning, I get up, I do my business and I step on the scale. I then record my weight and body fat percentage at the Physics Diet website.

Here is my chart, dating back to when I started this whole weight-loss thing:


Chart.ashx.png

As you can see, I have my good days and my bad days. The Physics Diet site does some magical number crunching and gives you a general trend line, so even though your weight fluctuates, you can see the basic idea of how you are heading. Green is good, pink is bad. :p Even when it doesn’t seem like I’m making any progress, it’s nice to know that things are heading downwards.

I also haven’t made any changes that I don’t think that I can handle permanently. I want to be able to eat chocolate five years from now, so I’m certainly not giving it up now. I don’t have the money to keep going to a personal trainer, so I haven’t hired one.

Eating Habits

Do you see what I did just there? You thought that I was going to say diet, but I didn’t. I’m, like, totally messing with your minds!

The thing is, diet implies deprivation. It also implies short term, drastic changes. We want to avoid the three D’s: diet, deprivation and drastic. The three D’s are bad. I just made them up, but I kinda like the idea. What makes me crave chocolate cake like nobody’s business? Somebody telling me that I can’t have chocolate cake anymore. Also, thinking about chocolate cake. What can I say? I like cake. When you go on a diet, you’re telling yourself that you can’t have certain things. This is a really good way to make yourself want those things. Also, it gets you into the mind set of “well, once my diet is over, I can have cake!” Then you go back to your old cake-eating habits and (surprise, surprise) you put all of that weight back on (and then some, because you made up for lost cake-eating time).

So, I made small changes, changes that I could live with. Some of them were:

  • Stopped drinking anything besides water, coffee and tea. I’ll have the occasional hot chocolate (as a treat), but I don’t drink any soda or juice. I especially don’t drink much booze – which is chock full of calories and slows down your metabolism and bloats you. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy a nice, stiff drink, I just keep it to an occasional drink.
  • Always eating breakfast. It gives you a good metabolism boost and helps you to eat less throughout the day. I also eat a small (110 calorie) yogurt late in the morning so that I’m not ravenous when it’s time for lunch. Basically, I try never to let my body go into starvation mode. I eat a little bit throughout the day, to make sure that I don’t overeat during meals.
  • Drastically cut down on sweets. I’ll have a taste of something or I’ll share a dessert with Kristian, but I try not to pig out on candy like I used to. I’ve also found that eating candy when I’m hungry makes me crave more candy almost immediately. So, when my stomach growls and yells “candy! Give us candy!” I have a Luna Bar instead. They’re sweet enough to take care of my cravings, but they have a low glycemic index, so I feel full afterwards. I try and limit my sweets to once a day, less if possible.
  • Cutting down on eating late at night. I tell myself, am I really hungry? Or am I just tired? Then I have a big glass of water (a lot of people think that they’re hungry when they’re really just dehydrated). If I’m still hungry after that, I have a tiny snack, nothing sweet.
  • Savor the flavor. Instead of eating quickly, I try to enjoy every bite. Food tastes better that way, plus it gives my body time to realize that I’m full. Even though I’m eating less, I’m enjoying more.

Tomorrow… Exercise!

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