Ahhhhh carbs

Boy! Yesterday was much harder than I anticipated. And yet, I ate lots of good food that I like. The fish, as I mentioned was surprisingly good.  Dinner too, chicken with buffalo sauce and a big serving of spaghetti squash was great ---chaser of a hunk of meatloaf, and dessert of blueberries, very tasty and sort of filling, but not really.  I"ll have to do a bit more planning the next time I pull carbs out of the hat.  Today is happily 2000 calorie.  I THOROUGLY enjoyed my morning breakfast of a lite bagel with jalapeno cream cheese dressing, a glass of milk and a banana.  Lunch was happy too.  The only problem with today is dinner---for some reason we all decided that we wanted waffles. NOT a calorie friendly choice. I've had to eat quite lightly to accomodate for them, which is fine but a little tough.  But it's MY choice to have waffles and it was my choice to have a 2000 cal day. It makes all the difference in the world.

Tomorrow is vegetarian. I'll have to be careful here--all kinds of fattening things are vegetarian---my idea is to eat as many fruits and veggies as I can along with other stuff, but not to go bananas stuffing myself with cheesecake and nuts. Actually, today will be vegetarian too---I don't have the calories to add bacon to the waffles tonight. But I'm looking forward to not being hungry tomorrow.

Fish!

Oh wow. I'm glad I'm not trying to do a low carb diet for more than one day. I'm dying for some chocolate.  And I'm finding out that although I love cheese, I really love it with crackers or fruit or bread. Not just on it's own, and there's really a limit to how much I can eat (this feeling is still leftover from our gourmet pumpkin dinner).  Anyway, low-carb today has resulted in a VERY healthy lunch--grilled tilapia and a spinach and lettuce salad with blueberries, walnuts and a little cheese with an olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing. For some reason last night I just felt as though I wanted a piece of tilapia for lunch (we have some in the freezer from my bout with the flavor point diet). The thing that's weird, is that I don't like fish. I have never, and I mean NEVER eaten fish unless I absolutely had to. But I guess my body wants some it's low carb, sooooo ok! It would be great if fish turned out to be like olives, where I never liked them till all of a sudden I couldn't get enough.  I'd love it if I could get hooked on salmon.

So far, so fun

Ok!  I liked picking the slips out of the envelope--it felt good to be able to switch one of the days around to accomodate what was going on in my life.  So Saturday was a "not counting but in control" day--and I did just fine.  I tried some Hungry Girl nachos for lunch--super good.  And went to JB's for dinner because we were in salt lake---super mediocre food and I didn't eat most of it, although I did put blue cheese dressing and bacon on my salad. Was VERY sparing on sweets all day.  Sunday was fast Sunday---ate way too much of Catherine's loaded brownies, but since it was fast Sunday would still be well within a normal calorie range.  Today is 2100 calories---doing fine here too--looking forward to an interesting dinner---not low cal, but within range.  Tomorrow is "low carb no salt."  Okay---I've been looking up low carb stuff. This means bacon and eggs for breakfast!  Also a big spinach salad, some blueberries for a snack, also some nuts for a snack---oh crud! no salt. That means yummy lime and chili flavored nuts are out.  Oh well. Cheese is in, and that makes up for a good deal. In fact, I feel so good about what I'm doing that I might even break down and have a piece of the tilapia that's in the freezer. I"m not wild about tilapia, but it's good for me, and since I don't "have" to eat it, I feel better about it.

Lifestyle Eve

Ugh! Woke up last night with a well-deserved stomachache. It's rare that I overeat to that extent--I think it was the pumpkin dinner that did me in---loads of cheese. Fantastic, but apparently a little indigestable. I finished cutting up my slips, bought a bigger envelope and am very excited about choosing the first 6 slips tonight (6 because Sunday is fast Sunday).  I really think this can be workable. I might go to SLC tomorrow to help Lisa with some flooring--which probably means lunch out or Lisa will fix something--difficult on a typical diet, but I think I'll be able to incorporate stuff like that.

Happy Halloween

Fun Pot-luck day at work. Made better because I'm not beginning my diet till Saturday and made better still by the fact that there are days on the upcoming plan that I could incorporate a potluck.

I made an envelope (I might need a bigger one!) And the slips are all printed out. I'm excited for this venture. I was also thinking about something I learned in my psych class. People with OCD actually have slightly enlarged amygdalas (that control emotion---like fear). I read an article saying that with therapy and hard work on the patient's part the amygdala actually began to look more normal on the scans. Can that be true with weight loss? I don't doubt for a moment that something in my brain is more inflammed than a thin person. Almost the ONLY time I am ever satisfied with eating normally, is when I'm getting sick. Only then will I not want a third cookie. Obviously, my bout with weight watchers wasn't long enough for my brain to actually change. I wonder if it's even possible to heal? I'm rather thinking that the best I can hope for in this life is to achieve a sort of "happy management."

The Plan

I ran out of time last night. I'm rather excited about this plan. I feel more ready for a change and since this is really my idea, maybe I can escape some of the colossal resentment that weight watchers triggered.  I'm going to do this diet travel envelope style. That is, I'm preparing a real envelope that will contain slips of paper.  Every Friday (because I make the shopping list on Friday) I will pull out seven slips and that will be what I do for that week. Goofy, I know, but it's striking me as a fun thing to do.  Since all diets basically boil down to--move more, eat less--I expect to get bored and irritated with this as well, but I'm hoping that the variety combined with success combined with a little committment ( the commitment isn't much yet) will allow me to stick with it. Plus blogging. I learned on weight watchers that I can't do without blogging. As you know, I tried not blogging hoping to cut through the addiction by not focusing on food as much--sounds good, but doesn't work.

So!  Here's what's on the slips.  MOSTLY calorie counting--anywhere from 1500 to 2100 calories (right there is a little variety--what kind of day will today be?), I'm also bringing back the flavor point diet--I have all the days on slips from 1 thru 42.  Sometimes it's real relief to not have to think about what you're eating, but just have it mapped out for you, other times it's a relief to be able to count because that allows me to eat whatever I want.  There are also days where I don't count, but it's a vegetarian day, or high fiber, or high protein or low carb day---I'll have to be careful not to go nuts overeating---a person can pack in a whole lot of vegetarian calories, but the intent for all these days is to keep calories reasonable (even tho I won't be counting), but to add some good things to my body.  For every 10 slips of "diet" I have a FREE day. That's just what it is---if I want to lie on the couch and eat donuts all day I can. Not that I would ever do that----I would lie around and eat cheese and popcorn. :) Some weeks I might not pick out a FREE slip, other weeks I might get lucky and pick out several. I also have a number of "controlled but not counting" days. The object there is to simply live naturally as though I already weighed 150 pounds. Hopefully, I've hit about the right balance of these (roughly 1/4 of the days are flavor point---I might make those a little less) but if not, I can tinker with the plan. Starting in March my hero Hungry Girl is coming out with her diet. I love HG receipes--if her diet sounds good I'll incorporate it here.  I even have just a few fad diets in the mix, just because they appeal to me for some reason---not many, and I don't intend to do any for more than one day, but what fad diets do is to make me glad to flee back to a "normal" day of calorie counting.  I've discovered faddiets.com--hilarious!  So, I've got the cookie diet (6 cookies plus a 300 cal dinner), the ice-cream diet (1250 cal through out the day and then a bowl of ice-cream), Jared's subway diet, The "Lazy Zone" diet--this is a seven day plan based on the Zone. It's actually very healthy but lays out a rigid food plan (which is what makes it a fad). I include it because it involves some McDonald's hamburgers and parfaits, but I'd only be picking out one of the days.  There is a week-long fad diet---the WW2 ration diet.  Again, pretty healthy--WW2 rations plus fruits and veggies. If I pick that one out of the envelope I'll decide if I'm in the mood to dedicate my whole week to that.  In addition to these things every 10 days or so I've added a double exercise day. Also days that are no salt or no sugar.

I think I'll stick pretty closely to whatever I pick out for each specific day--but I'm open to switching things around if it makes sense. If I have a free day--I'll put it the day I have the potluck at work for example. Planning out a week in advance will also help (I hope) me to determine whether or not any upcoming event really warrants an exception to the plan---is it Christmas Day for example?

A few things I haven't worked out yet are rewards. I'm determined to throw out the scale. I think I'll weigh in on Jan 1 just to see, but the scale simply doesn't work for me. No matter what it says, good bad or neutral I manipulate the information as an excuse to overeat. I'm not worrying about vacations (esp. the upcoming DisneyWorld trip--I figure I'll burn off whatever I eat.)  Anyway, I AM going to buy a pack of stars to put on the calendar each day I do well. Maybe I'll buy myself some new piece of clothing each month I do well overall--except that I'm not really motivated by clothes. Perhaps the calendar will be enough--it's visual, and at the library it supplied an amazing amount of motivation.

I'm excited to see what the first week will look like. And I'm excited to regain a little control. All my clothes are getting tight.

The white queen

I'm reminded of Alice in Wonderland where the white queen keeps running and running just to stay in one place. That's weight loss (or non-weight loss) for me for sure!  Still, as I've mentioned before, I'm not much worse off than I was in 2011. And I'm ready for another goofy plan. Well....maybe not so goofy---I'm trying to incorporate all the things I like. I'm going to start on Saturday--which is good, because we're coming into the holiday season.

One of the BIG problems that any diet has is BOREDOM!!!  It's unbearable to me to count points or calories for any real length of time---although I do like the control it gives me.  I can't even READ about people doing this---my favorite guy, Sean Anderson--of "losing weight everyday" fame blogged faithfully for two years and lost over 200 lbs by eating 1500 cal a day. He was beautifully faithful and I still love reading his blog, but every now and then I just want to shout, "SEAN! Eat the second helping!!"  Crazy! It's not even ME that's being deprived. I enjoyed my week on flavor point, but things like that or Jenny Craig or Nutri-system simply aren't practical for everyday real life.

SO---I'm taking a leaf from my other blog--the travel envelope, where I randomly go places every month or so. For some reason the randomness of that type of travel really appeals to me and makes the whole venture more exciting.  I'm going to do the same thing with my new plan.