This morning when I weighed, I was at 199! Woo-hoo!! I haven’t seen that number in a while!

I remember being somewhere around that when we moved into this house (3 years ago), and I dropped about 5 pounds or so, with leaving my mom’s house and all her sweets and breads, plus all the unpacking and moving, and carrying boxes of books upstairs. Then gradually, I gained it back. That was three years ago. I don’t remember how long it took me to top 200 again (I first did it during pregnancy), but I’ve been there for probably at least 2&1/2 years, and perhaps more. Yikes. Not good.

Oddly enough, I haven’t been particularly GTD-compliant. I went to my mom’s on Thursday (we were supposed to show our house, but that fell through… again!), and she was making her home-made hamburger buns. I had already had a bit of some new dessert she had made, so since I had “broken my diet already, this day is a bust,” and I ate I think 4 buns. Wow! Plus more of that candy!! Then on Friday, I went with my mom to visit a woman in our church who recently found out she has cancer, and is likely terminal; and then since it was lunch-time, we went to the local Mexican restaurant (delicious!!) and I gorged myself not just with the chips and salsa, but the fajita chicken nachos. OH!! It was so good! But afterward (both days), it didn’t sit well, and I felt pretty crummy. Then my lactose intolerance (or was it the Mexican spices?) kicked in, and *ahem* I preemptively lost all the weight I might have gained with one trip to the bathroom. So, I was tired of feeling like a moldy dishrag, so yesterday, I was perfectly compliant. And I meant for today to be another 100% day… but I forgot to take my lunch to church, so I ended up eating just whatever was there (trying to do good for the meal), and then I ate a bit of dessert… and then some of another of my mom’s new desserts (yes, that’s plural — I probably ate 5 different things). So, now I’m not feeling so great, and tomorrow the scale will probably reflect that. But TODAY, this morning, the scale said 199, so I’m happy with that.

… and I’m not talking about the country. I’m saying I ran. I actually ran. Because I wanted to. I actually wanted to run. How weird is that??

In trying to get my husband to exercise (because I think it will help him with his stress levels and fatigue and sleeping poorly), I decided to suggest a family walk this morning. Even before going, I had pictures in my mind of me breaking out into a run, and it felt good. So, we head out — and I had specifically suggested a brisk walk to my husband — he’s usually the one wanting to go fast while dragging me along — but this time, I broke out into a jog, and my husband dragged along behind. My kids started crying at seeing mommy running away from them… well, actually, the older one was a little perturbed but tried to keep up, while my younger son  just eventually collapsed into a heap where he was. So I ran back to them. I didn’t run much that particular time because my husband was dragging and my kids got upset. But it felt good. I also couldn’t run very far because I’m out of shape. But it still felt good to run.

So good, in fact, that this afternoon, I went for another run. It’s just down the street and back — I had intended to see how far it was by driving down the road and back — it’s probably at most half a mile each way. No, I wasn’t able to run the entire way. But I might build up to it! I ran until I was tired of running, then walked until I was tired of walking, then ran some more. I might go again tomorrow. So, yeah, I’m liking this diet!

[I weighed myself this morning, but hadn't lost any more. We'll see tomorrow what this running did for me. ]

Well, I haven’t posted anything since I started on the Atkins Diet, which actually didn’t last very long. I gave it “the old college try,” and lost quite a bit initially, only to have the weight creep back up — even though I was following the diet, and going even lower carb (more meat and dairy). And I wasn’t feeling well. So, I basically gave it up, and went back to my old way of eating. But I haven’t been enjoying that very much, either — it’s been better because I just fix what I want to eat, but I haven’t been losing anything — but I’ve felt better on it than I ended up feeling on the Atkins Diet.

In the meantime, my mom has been on the Blood Type Diet, and she has lost over 20 pounds (over the course of 3-4 months), and she says she just feels better. I’d read a bit about it, and rejected it because the guy bases it on the theory of evolution, which I reject. Then last weekend, our church hosted a series of lectures on creation, and the lecturer and his family (I’ve known his wife for years) stayed with us. This lecturer, a doctor who goes around speaking on the scientific basis of creation and the problems of evolution, swears by the Blood Type Diet. He and his wife tell me stories about how they were before they went on it, and the process by which they became believers. [He also said he could give me the scientific reasoning apart from evolution why it works.] So, I got kits to type my family’s blood, and also ordered The Genotype Diet, which should be coming in soon.

After typing their blood, I got online to see what each blood type should eat, and what we should avoid. Fortunately, I only have to keep up with two types — my friends have three or even all four types in their family! And a lot of foods are both on the “beneficial” and “avoid” lists for both types (although a lot of foods are “beneficial” for me and “avoid” for my husband). I think I can do it without a problem. I won’t be able to eat tomatoes (which I don’t like anyway, except in things like ketchup, spaghetti sauce, pizza, etc.) or wheat, but in a lot of ways, once you cut out one of the “avoid” foods, that lessens the temptation for the other “avoid” foods. For example, cutting out wheat means no bread, no pizza, no pasta, etc. (except for specialized foods like “rice pasta”) — so no pizza crust means no pizza sauce and no sausage and no pepperoni and no cheese. In a way, it would be harder for me to eat pizza without meat and just vegetables than to just say “no pizza at all.”

But this is going to be tough for my husband. He has already bemoaned several things on the “no” list that he can’t have, or should have only occasionally and in moderation (particularly things like pizza, sausage-biscuits, Italian beef sandwiches, salsa, etc.). The funny thing is, he even looked longlingly at the corn I ate at lunch today, and he’s not even a big corn fanatic! I guess now that it’s on his “avoid” list, he wants it. But I don’t think he noticed that coffee is on his avoid list, and this is the point that is going to be most interesting to me. I’ve long wanted him to give up coffee, because I didn’t think it was good for him (oddly enough, I can have it, although I can’t stand the stuff!), and he has even said stuff in the past about going off of it, but just has never managed to do so. I don’t know whether I should tell him now that he can’t have coffee (for fear he will just say he won’t do the diet at all), or if I should just let him figure it out in the morning when I don’t have coffee ready for him. Or cereal bars. I’m not really sure what to fix for breakfast in the morning — he can’t have oats, wheat, dairy, or pork, so there goes oatmeal, biscuits, sausage, bacon, waffles, muffins, etc. Like I said — this could get interesting!

I’m sort of doing the Atkins Diet, from a book written in 1997, so if what I say is out-of-date, that’s why. My husband and I have been wanting to lose weight — since starting this blog a year ago, I’ve increased rather than decreased my weight — so he’s been reading all sorts of books, and picked up this one at a friend’s house. I never thought I’d go low-carb, but I’m in the middle of reading it, and more important, in the middle of the 14-day Induction Diet, and I see the results. I don’t want to continue eating this way all of my life — far too much meat and not near enough vegetables — but I am amazed that the weight is dropping off, pretty much effortlessly, and I’m not thinking about calories, while eating things like cream and butter, nor am I hungry. The only times I’m hungry is (about an hour or two after I used to be hungry), it’s lunch-time and I haven’t prepared my food yet. Silly me.

We started this the Monday before New Year’s Day, so I’m nearing the end of my 2nd week. I’ve lost about 10 pounds. I’ve exercised a little. Sometimes a very little, or even nothing above my normal (in)activity — climbing the stairs to get on the computer, going downstairs to check on the kids, doing laundry and cleaning house, etc. Yet I’ve still been losing weight. And I’m not hungry.

In the book, Dr. Atkins has a diagram of a right triangle and says that is the typical American diet, which is unbalanced by having too many carbs (in addition to a lot of unhealthy food like refined sugar, flour, rice, etc.). And if you go immediately to a “balanced” diet (represented by a rectangle on top of the triangle, still sloping), you still have the unbalanced base underlying the rectangle, so you’re still unbalanced. He says that what needs to happen is that you, basically, go unbalanced on the other way (extreme low carbs), so that the two unbalanced sides balance out, and then after that, you can start on a balanced diet — a diet which will truly be balanced without the underlying imbalance, but a perfect rectangle made of the two unbalanced triangles.

It seems to work.

I’m ten pounds down, without being hungry, without counting calories, without restricting myself from anything but breads and the like and fruit — basically anything with sugars (even natural sugars), or high carb content. But I don’t feel deprived, and I don’t really miss the sweet. Yeah, I’ve fudged a little bit — I’ve had a little bit of some things with sugar, like a ketchup-based sauce (there’s sugar or high fructose corn syrup in the ketchup, but nothing else in the sauce had it); and I’ve had some extra carbs (because I didn’t keep close count, I’m not sure how many days I went “over”; but I know that the two days I ate at my mom’s house for supper, I went over, but not by much). But I’ve still lost. Amazing.

Big-time!

Tomorrow is another day, and I’ll get back on the strait-and-narrow on Monday.

It’s been easy to cut calories since I started counting them–very easy. And the weight slipped off just like in the formulas (3500 calories equals 1 pound). A family sickness gave me the excuse not to work out (had to hold my baby practically all day), but having reduced my calories kept my weight going down even without working out. So I haven’t done that in a couple of weeks. That’s bad. I’ve also not been writing down my calories–but I justified it by saying that I knew most of what I ate, and figured out what I didn’t, and kept a running tally in my head. Maybe I was fooling myself. But I do tend to eat the same things in a row (make one meal and then eat left-overs; or make pancakes one day and eat them for several mornings in a row), so it’s an easy thing to tell myself that I know what I’m eating.

So last week I knew I should have done better, but Friday was our 5th anniversary, and my husband and I planned on going out on Saturday to celebrate….to Outback Steakhouse. So, looking forward to that, I really should have scaled back on my calories (1300 per day maximum–but that presupposes that I actually counted my calories this week, which I confess I did not do very well), so that I could indulge last night without going too much over an average of 1800 calories for the past 7 days. Except for the Bloomin’ Onion (YUM!) and the fruit smoothie I had, the meal was pretty good–I had a side salad, and for an entree, had grilled chicken over wild rice. And I didn’t eat all of my entree. I can’t say for sure that the entree was necessarily healthy (possibly prepared with lots of hidden butter, and almost definitely too much sodium), but it was a lot better for me than the deep-fat-fried, batter-dipped onion as an appetizer!

But I need to get better. The first weeks were too easy, and now I’ve slipped. Plain and simple. I need to tighten up–go back to day one and start writing down and start exercising again. I’ve got goals, which I need to review, and make sure I hit my markers. Fifty pounds is not going to come off of me this year by wishing–only by doing. One month is already gone from this year, so I have eleven to go. Hopefully, I haven’t put back any of the 8 pounds I’ve lost (but I’m not going to check my weight until tomorrow morning), so one pound a week is very doable, and I can probably do it faster, especially if I kick back up the exercise.

It’s kinda frustrating to my brain, too, because I actually liked doing the exercises, and was feeling better and stronger, so I’m not really sure why I quit it so easily. Do I just like looking and feeling the way I do? Not really….but truthfully, part of me must like it better than it likes working out and controlling my mouth.

Tomorrow is another day……

I’m not a vegetarian. I’ll admit it–I like meat, and I’m proud! But meat is expensive, and I don’t think it’s the healthiest thing you can eat. I’m also pretty frugal (some say cheapskate, tightwad–those aren’t perjorative terms to me), and reducing the amount of meat you eat is about the best way to cut your budget. So I’ve had this recipe for meatless “hamburgers” for several years now, having first read it in The Tightwad Gazette, which is the bible of frugality. (If you’re looking for ways to cut corners, I guarantee you will find it here.) While I’ve been tempted to try it, it just never seemed like the right time, or I’d forget, or not have one of the ingredients on hand, or my husband was home and I wasn’t sure he’d like it….. But today, everything worked out just fine–I have everything, I remembered everything, and I was stuck home with the kids. This recipe is amazing! I might tweak the flavor a tad (I didn’t *quite* follow the recipe, so that might account for some of it), but it was really good! The most amazing thing to me is the “meatiness” of the burger–even though there is absolutely no meat in it. In the book, Amy Dacyczyn (pronounced “decision”) said that this is one of the two vegetarian recipes they developed that pleased the die-hard carnivores that tried it.

So here it is (and I’m hoping I’m not breaking copyright laws, or at least, that it will be overlooked by the plug for the book, because it is about the most amazing book I’ve ever read on pinching pennies–and making it fun!):

Lentil Burgers2 c. cooked lentil-bulgur mixture2 c. bread crumbs1 c. chopped onion½ c. chopped green pepper4 Tbsp. mixed Italian herbs (basil, oregano, thyme, etc.)4 cloves garlic (4 tsp. powdered garlic)2 eggs (or soy flour subst.)½ c. milkMix first six ingredients (lentil-bulgur mixture is made of equal parts lentils and bulgur wheat—simmer one part of this mixture with 2 parts water for 45 minutes). Mix in eggs. Add milk and mix well. Chill ½ hour. Make into patties and fry 10 minutes per side, or bake on cookie sheet at 350º for 10 minutes each side.That’s it! You’ll need 1/2 c. each of lentils & bulgur wheat for the quantity in this recipe; to substitute soy flour, use 1 heaping tablespoon of soy flour & 1 tablespoon of water for each egg. I’d be willing to bet that you could use water in place of the milk, or use soy milk, or use a little extra soy flour with more water, and these would be vegan burgers. I used onion powder and omitted the chopped green pepper because I figured my kids wouldn’t like the texture; and I just used “Italian seasoning” because I had that on hand, and it was easier than pulling out the individual spices. This quantity made 8 good-sized burgers that didn’t shrink, so could be stretched even further, especially if you have kids. And they were filling.

Since Jan. 8, I’ve lost 7 pounds. That’s about two pounds a week. That’s cool! I can live with that! In fact, I will live longer now, statistically speaking. Kinda makes you think, doesn’t it? I’ll live longer, be healthier, and happier. Those are pretty good goals to have.

My secret? Counting calories. This is for the specific purpose of thinking before I eat, and knowing how much I’m actually consuming. It’s way too easy to just eat handful after handful of junk, and never realize how you’re just loading up on calories like that. But when you write stuff down, you can really see how much you’ve been eating (and for me, how little in the fruits-and-veggies categories I typically eat). This has helped me make a conscious effort to improve my diet, and it’s given me a dose of willpower to help stave off the munchies. Eating with a purpose, instead of just eating because it’s there or because you’re bored.

I feel like I’m melted and poured into them, but I can actually put them on and button them, which two weeks ago, I couldn’t! Today is my weekly weigh-in day, but I forgot to weigh myself before I ate breakfast, so I decided just to skip it. I haven’t been exercising this whole past week, so probably just lost one pound anyway. Maybe I’ll remember in time tomorrow. The good news is that yesterday I didn’t eat too much at lunch, because (unfortunately) my husband had a fever so the whole fam stayed home. (Didn’t want to “share the love”!) I didn’t count calories yesterday, per se, because I ate a lot of tidbits instead of real meals. But I kept sort of mental track of it, and think I stayed about 1500. Even if it was as much as 1800, I’d still be a lot less than my former typical 2300 calories per day. So we’re all good! (And my husband is feeling better today, after sleeping some 13 hours last night.)

As much a fan as I am of counting calories (it’s a whole lot easier than I thought, and really gives me a feeling of control!), I am an even bigger fan of eating healthy. (If you check out my pages here on the right, you’ll see that I am no health guru–I need to lose probably about 50 pounds; my problem hasn’t so much been eating a lot of bad food, as it is eating too much food in general, plus too much not-so-healthy food.) But even before I decided to control my eating and my weight instead of allowing them to control me, I tried to eat generally healthy–I ate out very little; used whole grains a good deal; didn’t eat much fried food. I will admit that my biggest problem is sweets; but I do have some high-calorie favorite foods (like my home-made stuffed pizza) that I would eat too frequently and always too much.

As I’ve been reading other people’s blogs about losing weight, it really surprises me how many people will eat artificial foods instead of real food. That’s just not healthy–I don’t care how much lower in fat and/or calories it is. I used to work with a woman who probably weighed 300 pounds, and all she drank was Diet Coke. That’s low-cal, so it’s good for you, right?–or at least better than regular Coke, right? I have to say I am just really suspicious of all artificial sweeteners. Sugar may be bad for you, too, but at least it’s naturally bad, not artificially bad. I’ve heard that consuming artificial sweeteners actually makes you want sweets that much worse, because you taste sweetness, and your body expects it but doesn’t receive it; then because your body is primed for sugar, it begins to crave it. That might have been this woman’s problem. And she drank a 2-liter a day. So it might have been 10 calories compared to 1000, but it wasn’t healthy. Water would have been a much better choice.

There’s a similar phenomenon with other “diet” foods–foods that are not healthy for you, and are just low-fat or low-calorie concoctions similar to typical junk food. So instead of eating real junk food, you’re eating fake junk food. This makes sense? So when it comes to food, I’d choose regular sour cream (you know, the ones that just say “cream” on the ingredients list) vs. the artificially low-fat or non-fat sour cream (made from who-knows what chemical concoctions). Full-fat foods are more satisfying, anyway; and you can use less of it to keep your fat and calorie intake down.

You can lose weight and be in worse health. You might not suffer from certain obesity-related illnesses, but you may be slowly poisoning your body with artificial ingredients that they put into “diet” foods to make them palatable even though they’re low-cal and/or low-fat. Have you really looked at the ingredients list on some of these foods? If there’s even one ingredient on there you can’t pronounce, you should put it back. Same for anything that says “hydrogenated”, or if it has “trans-fatty acids.” Normal foods (you know, stuff that grows out of the ground, or animals that eat stuff that grows out of the ground) are easy to pronounce and generally healthy. Nutritious and good-tasting, too.

So instead of using fake foods as a crutch to get you from eating full-fat and high-calorie junk foods (cookies, chips, and other fried foods and sweets), why not make a complete change, from cookies to apples for your sweets; and from chips to celery with peanut butter for the crunchy-salty snacks? You can scarf down a couple of cookies or one large apple for the same calories; but the apple is healthy while the cookies are not; and it takes a lot longer to eat the apple than the cookies, which means it’s likely to be a lot more satisfying; and the apple is a lot bigger than a couple of small cookies, so you’ll be fuller. Eat more and lose weight–what could be better than that?