Healthy Eating Guidelines–Overview

As I mentioned yesterday, for the past couple of weeks at WW, we’ve been focusing on healthy eating & lifestyle guidelines. One of the great things about WW, and one of the reasons it’s been around longer than I have, is that there are no gimmicks—no pills, no pre-packaged food you have to buy/eat, no menus forced upon you telling you when and what to eat. Of course, that means that the person who chooses WW as their support group for losing weight must have much more self-motivation than people who go on a plan that provides your menus/meals for you. But that’s not what I’m talking about today. Today, I want to give a broad overview of the healthy eating guidelines that are from both WW and the USDA Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion.

Fruits & Vegetables
Recommended daily: 5 to 9 servings (depending on your weight; the more you weigh, the more servings of fruit and veg you should eat). Health.gov puts it this way: “Two cups of fruit and 2½ cups of vegetables per day are recommended for a reference 2,000-calorie intake, with higher or lower amounts depending on the calorie level.” (We’ll look more in-depth as to what constitutes a “serving” as this varies from variety to variety.)

Dairy Products
Recommended daily: 2 servings (3 if you are pregnant or nursing, over fifty years old, or more than 350 lbs). A serving of dairy is along the lines of 1 cup of milk (choose lower-fat to skim varieties), 1 cup low-fat/fat-free yogurt (watch this—most brands are packaging these in 6-ounce tubs now—also be aware of sugar content), 1.5 oz. of low-fat/reduced-fat/fat-free cheese, 2 oz. of low-fat or fat-free processed cheese (like the 2% American cheese slices at most grocery stores).

Liquids
Recommended daily: At least 6 eight-ounce servings a day. Water is recommended, but any fluid counts (juices, coffee, tea, sodas, etc.). Try to limit your caffeine intake (caffeine is a diuretic which has a dehydrating effect on the body), and avoid beverages with sugar in them. Alcoholic beverages do not count. Yes, the guideline on this used to be 8 eight-ounce servings (64 ounces) every day, but there is no scientific data to back this up.

Healthy Oils
Recommended daily: 2 teaspoons of heart-healthy oils such as olive, canola, flaxseed, sunflower. Avoid saturated/trans fats. We need fat in our diets, and these oils contain nutrients that we also need, such as vitamin E.

Lean Protein
Recommended daily: 1 to 2 servings per day. What constitutes a serving varies on the meat, and this is where most people get tripped up. A 10-ounce steak (one of the smallest sizes you can get at most restaurants) is actually about 3 to 3-1/2 servings of protein. A standard serving size of meat is about 3 to 4 ounces (or about the size of the palm of your hand or a deck of traditional playing cards). Beans, legumes, nuts, and seeds count in this category.

Grains
Recommended daily: Health.gov recommends 6 to 8 ounces per day of whole-grain foods. (WW doesn’t have a daily recommendation for consumption, just to “choose whole-grain products whenever possible.”) “Whole grain” is different than “multi-grain,” so be sure to check the labels. Try to choose products that have at least 3–4 grams of fiber per serving—that means you’re getting more complex carbs and fewer simple carbs (sugars). This category covers breads, cereals, rice, pasta, etc.

Sugar & Alcohol
Recommended daily: Limit intake. According to the WW guidelines, women should have no more than 1 serving of an alcoholic beverage per day (4 oz wine, 6–8 ounces of beer) and men should have no more than 2 servings. And I think we all know why we should limit/avoid sugar!

Sodium
Recommended daily: At least 500 mg but no more than 2,000 mg per day (based on a 2,000 calorie diet). Actually, a good rule of thumb is to try to match the number of mg of sodium to your targeted calorie consumption. For example, if you’re trying to keep your calorie-count to about 1,500, shoot for consuming only 1,500 mg of sodium. Processed foods are horrible for containing massive amounts of sodium. Don’t be fooled by the “lower sodium” starburst on the front of the package. Read the label. Most canned soups contain about 800 to 900 mg of sodium per serving (with 2.5 servings per can of condensed soup). I’ll have a lot more to say about this topic when we get to it—I’ve become sodium sensitive in the past few years and have learned a lot about it!

Activity
Recommended daily: Between 30 and 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity per day “most” days of the week (aim for five days). This includes what we usually call “exercise” (walking, running, swimming, cycling, sports, classes, the gym, etc.) but also includes activities such as housework, yard work, dancing, or any physical activity which increases your pulse and breathing for a sustained period of time. You can do it all at once, or in several 10- to 15-minute bursts.

So, which shall we tackle first?

Weekly Weigh-In 10/25/09

I can’t believe I forgot to check in last week. Bet y’all thought I gained, huh? Actually, I was down 0.6 lbs last week and was down another 2.6 lbs this week for a total loss of 5.4 lbs in three weeks, or an average of 1.8 lbs per week—which is exactly what I’d determined I need to average to meet my goal of 250 by Christmas!

We’ve been talking about developing healthy habits—in food choices, activity, and other areas of life—at WW the last couple of weeks; so if I have time this week, I hope to be able to start sharing some of that—though this week is going to be super busy as I try to blitz and get as much of Ransome’s Crossing written as I can, proofread the galley of A Case for Love, and wedge a few hours of freelance work in there somewhere.

I know there were lots of folks who were interested in challenging each other to be down one size by Christmas. How are you doing? What changes have you made?

Goals and Rooms and Making Good Choices

I was down 2.2 lbs at my weigh-in Sunday. Yay! And that was with going out to eat twice this past week, both business dinners—one of which was at a restaurant where I could control what I ordered (a salad, and I took my own oil-and-vinegar dressing in a little jar in my purse), and the other a banquet at which I couldn’t control anything except for how much of it I ate. But by making good choices and watching my portions throughout the week, even having a cocktail and eating the entire dessert didn’t throw me off track. (And now I know that I should never drink anything with bourbon in it again, as it triggers an almost instant migraine for me.)

Something that I did after last week’s reality-inducing weigh-in (up more than five pounds) was to sit down and figure out both a short-term and long-term weight loss goal.

10 weeks to Christmas
Goal: 250
Pounds to Lose: 18
Need to average: -1.8 lbs/week

86 weeks to 40th Birthday
Goal: 170
Pounds to lose: 98
Need to average: -1.2 lbs/week

Now, I know I’m not going to have a 2.2 lb loss every week doing this—I know I won’t even have a loss every week. But if I can keep those weekly goal numbers (averaging between 1.2 and 1.8 pounds lost each week), I will eventually reach my goal. And being able to start each day with the thought in mind that I just need to lose 1.8 pounds this week has already started helping (obviously, by the results I had this first week of that mindset).

After posting the other day about the selfish part of losing weight, I couldn’t stop thinking about how my biggest problem is that I’m just not making good choices. So I made myself a very visual reminder:

As you can see, I’ve written some of the areas of my life in which I need to start making better choices for myself, from healthy food to distracting cravings to limiting TV time and managing my time better.

One of the greatest things about going to Weight Watchers is that there’s always some little tidbit at the weekly meeting that I can take home with me and think about during the week. Does it always make me successful? No. But that’s because of my choices, not their program.

This week, we talked about taking care of ourselves. The way the lesson approached it was based on this Indian proverb:

“Everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time, but unless we go into every room, every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.”

What do these mean when it comes to weight-loss?

Physical: how you feel physically (strong, healthy), managing your environment, keeping only healthy foods in the house, activity

Mental: preparation, planning, attitude, journaling, education

Emotional: your relationship to the food (i.e., comfort/boredom eating vs. eating to be healthy), mind games, support from others, recognizing and managing emotions, nurturing positive emotional states

Spiritual: motivation, enthusiasm, momentum, why you’re doing this, internal fortitude/strength when the other three aren’t working

As the proverb says, “unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.” All four of these aspects of our nature are tied together. If I’m not feeling well physically—if I’m sick or if I’m tired (or both)—or if I have allowed “red light” foods to creep back into the house, I’m more likely to make poor food choices. If I’m not mentally prepared, with my meals planned out in advance or with the appropriate attitude toward food that day, I’m going to make bad choices. If I’m bored or stressed or depressed—or even if I’m excited about something—I’m likely to turn to food to feed that emotion, because that’s what I’ve always done. And if I’m not spiritually strong, if I’m not taking time to connect with God and nurture my soul, I’m not going to have the motivation to make myself better, to love myself enough to want to be a better, healthier person.

Some of the suggestions our leader gave to help keep all four of these working together:

Eat Smarter: eating a healthy, well-balanced diet

Move More: as much as we couch-potatoes hate to admit it, study after study has proven that at least thirty minutes’ vigorous exercise each day helps make us physically stronger, releases endorphins that boost our emotional levels, sharpens our mental acuity, and helps refresh us spiritually.

Get Support: in the context of Weight Watchers, this one is actually “attend meetings.” But what it really means is to find a network of people who are going to support you through your weight-loss journey. I not only have WW and this blog and my FB friends, I also have a group of family who are all trying to lose weight—we’ve even started our own Ning forum to report in and encourage each other.

Build Helpful Habits: Again, “helpful habits” is a WW concept. The Helpful Habits are: prepare yourself, ask for help, manage your thoughts, manage your feelings, take care of yourself, manage your environment, monitor yourself, and learn from experience.

Or, in other words: TODAY I WILL MAKE GOOD CHOICES.

What are some ways in which you can make the four “rooms” work better for you this week?

The Selfish Part of Losing Weight

“Something very profound happens as you start losing weight. You start to realize that you have to identify as a little bit of a different person because you become, physically, a different person. Especially people who have a lot of weight to lose. They don’t like the idea of thinking,
I’m going to be a different person when I’ve physically lost weight.
It happens.”
~Fred Connors, Self-Esteem Expert

I heard that on the episode of X-Weighted that aired on Discovery Health this afternoon. I actually had to run it back a couple of times to get the full quote (how did we survive before the DVR?). I had to think about that statement for a few minutes because something in it resonated, but I had to chase it down to really be able to figure out why I identified with that statement (beyond the “people who have a lot of weight to lose” part of it).

I think that in the battle to lose weight, my resistance to change—dare I call it fear?—is one of the major factors holding me back. The truth is that I’m not really thinking about the physical changes in my body or in others’ perceptions of me if I start losing sizes (after two years, I’m only down about two sizes). It’s more about the lifestyle changes I must make to do this. I must eat less. I must choose healthier foods and bypass the foods to which I’m addicted (high fat/high carb). I must become more active.

One of my biggest cop-outs when it comes to why I haven’t lost more weight by now (and why for the past year I’ve been yo-yo-ing within the same ten-pound range) is because I’m doing this “by myself.” I had the best run of consistently losing weight every week when I was working full-time with several other people who were also on Weight Watchers. We had lunch together every day. We went to the gym together after work. And we went to Weight Watchers together every week. So I had that daily support and daily accountability. Even though I still attend WW with one of those friends, that’s only once a week, and for less than an hour.

But now that I’m working at home, I can’t use the excuse of not having anyone here who’s giving me support/accountability (i.e., “nag” me) about what I’m eating as an excuse. I’m not losing weight for anyone else. I can’t use the excuse of living alone as justification for why I’m failing/sabotaging myself.

I have to stop being afraid of/resistant to change. I have to make the choice—by myself and for myself—to do the things I know I need to do to get myself healthier, to respect myself enough to stop choosing to do things that aren’t good for me.

I have to want to do this. I have to want to do it for me. And that’s the selfish part of losing weight. I can’t worry about others’ perceptions of me—either of the size/weight I am now or about how/what I eat. I can’t worry about pleasing anyone else but me. No one helped me put this weight on. I did this to myself. Which means I am the one who needs to change.

Me. I must embrace the change. Because, honestly, if I had someone pushing me to do it, that deep-rooted stubbornness inside me would well up and I’d sabotage myself just out of sheer orneriness and the desire to do exactly the opposite of what someone was telling me I should do or needed to do (just ask my mom about the reaction I had when she once again asked me if I’ve ever read The Shack). By having someone else there, someone who’s being your food police or hounding you into exercising, you get to the point where you’re only making the change on the outside for those people who’re pushing you to do it. (Though I wish I could afford to hire a personal trainer like so many of the participants on X-Weighted do—someone who would encourage me to push myself just a little harder every time so that I don’t just settle into a routine and stop seeing progress.)

Losing weight is, on the surface, a physical and mental challenge—becoming physically active, making better food choices, choosing smaller portions, learning all the guidelines of healthy eating. But that’s actually only a small portion of what goes into losing weight. The biggest portion of it is emotional. Most of us who are extremely overweight got to be this way because there’s a large emotional element to it—whether it’s finding comfort in food, turning to food after a tragic event, depression or other clinical mental disorders that lead us to sabotage with food, eating disorders, and self-esteem issues. That’s not saying that every person who’s obese/morbidly obese has a bunch or even any of these problems. But there is such an emotional toll that constantly having to “watch what we eat” takes on the psyche that if we haven’t embraced the physical, mental, and emotional changes, while we may be successful for a while when we first start, eventually, we’re going to fall right back into our old patterns—because we never truly changed.

It’s one thing to say, “I want to change.” It’s another thing to really embrace it and make the necessary changes. I know one of my problems does come from living alone and working from home: I spend way too much time inside my own head, with my own thoughts, and thinking about myself. This isn’t healthy. So I’ve got to figure out a way I can still get all of my work done and yet have some kind of quality interaction with others—face to face—every day.

My challenge for myself is to be down one size by Christmas. Since I went yesterday to C.J. Banks and tried on a bunch of clothes for the fashion show I’ll be participating in on Saturday, what that means is fitting into a size 20 top and a size 22 pants. And in a few weeks, I hope to have a little disposable income with which to go purchase a top and pants as my goal outfit to wear while I’m in Baton Rouge at Christmas.

Kaye and the Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Week

This week has been really tough emotionally, and as a result, I’ve ended up eating almost nonstop. And since I’ve been basically broke, that means eating stuff like potatoes (less than $2.50 for a 5-lb bag), white bread (less than $1 for a big loaf), store-brand frosted flakes cereal (less than $2 for a big box), and so on. I’m up at least four pounds from last week’s weigh-in. At least, that’s what my home scale showed day before yesterday, which was the last time I even cared to step on it. What’s happened that my emotions have taken such a nosedive and led me back into destructive eating patterns?

For the first time since 2002, I’m spending the third weekend of September at home, alone.

Every year since 2002 on the third weekend of September, I’ve attended the American Christian Fiction Writers national conference. This year, I was asked to serve on the conference committee, which was the group that determined which workshops would be offered at this year’s conference—including the Early Bird all-day session with Don Maass.

I had an absolute ball at the conference last year; however, there are a lot of bitter memories connected with stuff that happened right after conference—such as learning that my crit partner I’d gone up to spend several days with before conference and was staying with the night after conference before returning home had decided while we were at conference (and sharing a room with our third crit partner) that she didn’t like me—thought I’d been misrepresenting who I am for the two years we’d worked together, or something, and made my last day in Minnesota as miserable as possible; most of which I didn’t even learn the truth behind until several weeks later when she and our other crit partner “dumped” me.

I know what you’re thinking: Bitter much?

Yes, actually, I am. I thought I’d put this behind me. Thought I’d forgiven them. But the melancholy over not being able to go to conference this year has dredged up all of those hurt feelings from last year, and the two combined have not led to a great frame of mind for me this week. So I’ve been wallowing in feelings of being left out (ah . . . those feelings go much further back into my childhood) and knowing that the person who hurt me so badly last year is there, having a wonderful time, while I’m not there simply because the money didn’t work out this year—the first year I had books out and could have participated in the mass book signing event. The year I had friends and acquaintances e-mail me to let me know they were bringing their copies of my books for me to sign only to have to tell them I wasn’t going to be there. The year I had a couple of people contact me to see if I wanted to share a room. The first year I was going to get to experience what it would be like to attend as a published author instead of a wannabe.

How is it fair she gets to be there and I don’t?

I keep telling myself that it’s better I’m not there because I have a book due on December 1 and another one on February 1. Or that I have a couple of freelance projects sitting here that I need to get turned in by the end of the month so I can pay rent and utilities next month without having to borrow money from my parents yet once again. Or that there are a lot of other people, published authors even, who aren’t at conference this year with whom I’ve been communicating while everyone else is there—whether in directed-topic discussions on the ACFW e-mail loop or just regular back-and-forth discussions in a published-author group I’m in. I would be missing out on those opportunities if I were in Denver. (Well, since I usually take my laptop, I probably wouldn’t be missing out on much.)

When I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to be able to afford to go, I’d just gotten home from my trip to Denver in July for ICRS. I figured since I’d just been there, seen a bunch of my writer friends, as well as met with my agent, not getting to go to ACFW wouldn’t be so hard on me. But reading everyone’s blogs and Tweets and FB updates about preparations and packing, their excitement waiting at the airport to catch their flights, whom they saw in the hotel lobby once they got there, and little tidbits and/or teasers from the first couple of days has not helped in my effort to remain positive and happy for everyone who could go. All I keep thinking about is, If I were there, I’d be doing X right now.

Have I mentioned it’s rained here every day for almost a week? And that it’s forecast to rain every day for at least the next ten days? Not helping with the outlook!

What could I have done to prepare myself for this week? Well, having something fun planned for each day would have been great—of course, that usually takes money, and since I’m flat broke, as I’ve already mentioned, I wouldn’t have been able to do that. But there are other things I could have done just to get out of the house: go to the library at Trevecca to work every day; go to Barnes & Noble—or Borders—and work in the cafe and have a skinny latte for the price of those carb-loaded food items mentioned above; go walk on the indoor track at the community center (for FREE) or go ahead and do the exercise programs I’ve been recording off of Fit-TV (for FREE—or at least as part of the cable package I’m already paying for); volunteer at Second Harvest food bank to get my mind off myself and my own selfish desires and onto people who’re a lot worse off than I am; WRITE (I’ve only managed a few hundred words in the past two days); invite a friend over for a movie day or something; ANYTHING to keep myself busy and have something to look forward to instead of just wallowing in self-pity for a week.

So how can I redeem the rest of the weekend? Well, I’m going to shower, get dressed—in something more than the knit-pants-and-T-shirt uniform I’ve been wearing all week—grab my spiral notebook, and drive down to the Borders in Brentwood and, after perusing the store, sit in the cafe and enjoy a latte and see if I can write at least five full pages (about 1,200 words). Then, I’ll come home and watch my LSU Tigers romp all over the boys from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Geaux Tigers. Tomorrow, I’ll do two things: first, I’ll make myself get up out of bed and go to church—at the Episcopalian church downtown where I’ve been meaning to go for quite some time; then, I’ll go to Weight Watchers, even though I know my weight will be up and it’ll feel like punishment on top of everything else I’ve been feeling this week. But if I don’t go and get that reality check, how will I ever break this destructive cycle?

Starting Monday, I’m putting myself back on a schedule. I’ll be getting up, getting ready, and having breakfast at a reasonable hour (instead of sleeping until 10 every day) and then by ten o’clock each day, I’ll drive over to Trevecca with my laptop (but no internet card!) to get those freelance projects—and maybe some writing—done. Since all the TV shows start their new seasons this week, I’ll set goals for myself to get a certain amount of work done—and words written—before I allow myself to watch any of the new shows. And I’ll do at least one thirty-minute exercise video each evening. And by so doing, I should be able to shake myself out of this funk and get back to a healthy, positive frame of mind.

Weekly Weigh-In 9/13/09

Since my last weigh-in, I spent five days with my family, four of which were in the gorgeous mountain hamlet of Highlands, NC, for my cousin Sarah’s wedding. Because we’re such a food-focused family, there were many, many temptations while there. Though I was cautious with the choices I made, I never felt deprived the entire time. Of course, it helped, as I wrote in that Fun Friday post linked above, that I didn’t have the normal emotional stress of feeling like I didn’t fit in with the rest of the family nor the emotional turmoil that going to a younger cousin’s wedding usually has on me, thanks to having worked through some of my own emotional and spiritual stuff in the past few weeks.

Since coming back, I’ve been not only exhausted, but feeling like I had to rush to catch up with work I needed to do this week, including preparing to teach an all-day workshop for my local writing group on Saturday. Trying to plan out meals and/or cook this past week just wasn’t going to happen. But still, I don’t feel like I really ate too badly. And the scale somewhat agreed with me today. I was down 0.4 lb. from two weeks ago.

I’m making two commitments this week:
1. I will eat only what I already have in the house this week (unless I run out of salad stuff/frozen veg—that I will buy more of). I think I’m pretty much down to just chicken in the freezer, and I have some bacon and eggs, and soups for lunches. So I’m not going to run out of food. But I need to stop these almost daily trips to the grocery store to just pick up one or two things. That’s getting me into trouble not just with sticking to the food plan but also budget-wise.

2. I will walk the one-mile circuit of the neighborhood at least four times this week. And since we’re still supposed to be having temps in the low to mid-eighties all week, that means getting up early to do it. I’ve also set the DVR to record several promising-looking exercise programs off Fit-TV (several are 30-minute exercise videos based off of learning to belly-dance). But those would be used as an auxiliary to the walking, not a substitute for it. What I’d really like to do is walk in the morning and do one of those videos at night. But my only commitment is to the walking.

Later this week, I’ll get back into what I posted two weeks ago about frustration and start trying to answer, or at least delve into, some of those questions I posed.

Frustration

My posts are going to be a little different this week and perhaps for the next little while. As I mentioned in my last post, I didn’t make it to my weigh-in last Sunday. Being busy made a convenient excuse; the real reason why I didn’t go is because I knew I’d be up almost as much as I’d been down the week before (because of giving in to every single craving I’d had that week). So what was the point in going when I knew what the scale was going to say and it was only going to frustrate me further? Instead, I spent that time cleaning out the fridge and making up a menu to get myself back on track.

So when I weighed in yesterday, my official weigh-in number put me at two pounds above where I’d been two weeks ago. If I’d gone the week between, when I knew I was up about four pounds, this week’s weigh-in might have felt better, because it would have shown me down two pounds instead of up two pounds. But in a way, I think it was good that this happened, because it made me acknowledge the fact that I have had no forward progress in my weight loss in almost nine months. Yep, that’s right. I weigh within five pounds of what I weighed nine months ago—and depending on the week, I’m either over or under that number. But I’ve been yo-yoing within the same ten to fifteen pound spread for that long.

Suddenly, I could see myself as a cartoon character who’s built a wall across the road and since its completion has been walking into the wall repeatedly and not understanding why I’m not getting any farther down the path.

And I realized I have several options. I could just moan and complain, take a few steps back (i.e., indulge in my emotionally fueled cravings), gain a few pounds, and then see “progress” by losing those few pounds again—and keep banging into that wall. I could quit and just go back down the foothills I’ve climbed to get this far (i.e., forget trying to eat healthfully and regain the 50 or so pounds I have lost and then some). Or I could figure out just what that wall is built out of, how high and wide it is, and come up with a plan to go through, over, under, or around it and leave it behind.

I can’t go back. I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to face the diabetes and open-heart surgery that are guaranteed if I can’t get my eating and weight under control. But for right now, that’s not enough of an incentive to help me break those food addictions, because even though those are almost guaranteed for me if I don’t get healthier, they’re still theoretical because they’re not immediate threats to my wellbeing.

I’m tired of banging up against the wall and losing and regaining the same five or ten pounds. I’m feeling battered and bruised emotionally and spiritually from this constant pinging back and forth, from doing really well one week and sabotaging myself the next week.

I want to move forward. I want to overcome the wall. I want to conquer whatever it is that’s keeping me from continuing down the path. But first I have to figure it out. And that’s what I’m going to start using this blog for—my exploration into what it is about me that I need to work on that’s keeping me from being and/or feeling successful in my weight-loss journey.

So, first, I’m going to share everything that I wrote during my WW meeting yesterday. As someone who isn’t used to delving deeply into my own psychology to figure out why I do, think, or feel certain things, this was a cathartic task for me—and something that really got me to thinking about why I’m experiencing what I’m experiencing. And the reason I’m doing this is because I want to form an online support community for everyone else who’s feeling the same frustrations, no matter what diet/eating plan you’re using, no matter how much you have to lose, no matter how old you are, no matter what your initial motivation for losing weight was. If we’re going to be honest, let’s honestly look at the root causes of our weight problems and figure out how to overcome those.

Frustration
What is holding me back from losing weight? Why do I gain when I eat the same kinds of food “everyone else” eats? Why do I have insatiable food cravings that drive me to distraction until I fill them? Why can’t I kick the sugar and fat cravings? Why have I been stuck at the same weight for nine months? Why am I the one person in my generation of my family who was cursed with morbid obesity? Why was I singled out? Where can I find the daily support and encouragement I need? Why don’t I have the willpower to stick to eating healthy foods and making good choices? Why do I hate to exercise so much? What do I gain by giving up foods I’m addicted to? What can I replace those addictions with?

How can I mentally and physically prepare myself for a weekend around the family which will revolve around food?

What is it about me and my feelings toward myself/my physical appearance that is making me self-sabotage and do things that aren’t good for me? Where does the urge to binge come from?

Where can I go to get away from the house, to change up my routine, to put myself in a different frame of mind?

What motivated me to lose weight? What motivated me to join Weight Watchers? Why have I stuck with it for the last nine months when I haven’t seen any real progress?

What do I hope to get out of losing weight? What are the advantages of losing weight? What are the disadvantages of losing weight? What are the advantages/benefits of staying overweight? What are the disadvantages/hazards of staying overweight? How will losing weight affect my view of myself? How will it affect my relationships? How will it affect how people interact with me? How will it affect how I interact with others?

What am I afraid of if I lose the weight?

Do any of those questions sound familiar to you? What are some of the doubts/questions you’re struggling with that might be holding you back?

Cleaning Out the Fridge

I’ve been meaning to post this since Sunday evening—that’s how crazy my week’s been. I didn’t even make it to my weigh-in on Sunday afternoon! I think I may have been up slightly—as is to be expected the week after a major loss, but I know I’ve already taken that little bit off and am about where I was at my last weigh in.

After last week’s giving in to every single craving I had last week (one guess why I was having cravings), I knew that with as busy as this week was shaping up to be, I would need to make sure I had all my ducks in a row when it came to pre-planning my meals and shopping carefully.

So here’s the menu I came up with. Something very important for me was making sure I planned for three meals each day. I’ve gotten in the bad habit of eating breakfast really late (meaning I’m not getting my metabolism fired up early) and then eating a HUGE dinner—meaning that there’s no way I was burning all of that off. The only way for me to eat less for supper was to make sure I was eating more during the day.

The next step was to clean out the fridge. I don’t even want to tell you how nasty it was, especially up under the crisper drawers. Blech! I took out all of the shelves and drawers and cleaned it with food-safe disinfecting cleaner. Here’s the result:

Yes, that’s a very empty fridge! But when I’m trying to keep only about a week’s worth of food in the house, that’s what it should look like before I do my weekly shop. (Plus, there’s more in the freezer.)

So I had my list and I had a clean fridge, and it was off to the grocery store. When I got home, here’s what the fridge looked like:

And here’s the freezer:

I’ve gotten to the point where pretty much the only vegetables I’ll buy are fresh or frozen. I have some canned stuff as backups or for those times when I don’t plan far enough in advance and need something quick.

I’ve stuck to the plan pretty closely this week so far—moving a couple evenings’ meals around based on time needs. The only parts where I’m falling down on the job are the mid-morning and mid-afternoon snacks. I just haven’t been hungry enough at those times to remember to eat them.

Activity hasn’t been easy to get in this week either—and my body is definitely complaining about sitting at the desk too long this week with back- and neck-aches.

We’ve started a new family weight-loss challenge, setting goals for what we’d like to accomplish between now and Christmas. I said I’d like to lose another 20 pounds, but really I’d like to be down to a size 20. And to that end, as soon as I have time, I’m going to go down to Cool Springs to C.J. Banks and get a pair of size 20 jeans, and perhaps a cute top or jacket, also in a size 20, as my goal outfit. I know most people would choose a dress or a suit or something, but since I spend almost all my time in jeans these days, that’s what’ll be the outfit I’ll actually want to wear in Baton Rouge at Christmas. I’ll have a lot of work to do to get down to that size (I’m still between a 22 and 24 right now), which means stepping up the exercise and no more weeks where I indulge every craving I have. Of course, I’m hoping to hear something soon that will allow me to financially be able to afford to rejoin the YMCA, which will allow me to work with one of their trainers to put together a workout program that’ll challenge me and get this weight off. After all, I only have nineteen months to take off about 90 more pounds to meet my goal of being at my goal weight by my fortieth birthday.

Weekly Weigh-In 8/16/09

As promised, I’m back to my weekly weigh-in updates, which I’m going to make myself do whether the scale shows a loss, a maintenance, or a gain. Fortunately for the week in which I’m recommitting myself to this, it’s a post I want to write.

I lost 4.6 lbs at my weigh-in yesterday. That means with combined with the 0.6 I lost the week before, I’m down 5.2 pounds in the last two weeks, and it puts me back to where I was in late April/early May before I fell off the wagon and gained at least ten pounds. With a current weight of 263.6 lbs, it means I’ve lost a total of 52.4 pounds since Fall 2007.

Looking at that from one side, losing 50 pounds in just under two years really doesn’t seem like that much progress. But for me, having lost 50 pounds in a little more than a year (or averaging slightly less than a pound a week) and then “maintained” the loss for six months—as in, I never re-gained more than 10 pounds and when I did, once I got over all the bad ju-ju in my head, it made me want to work that much harder to take it off and start losing again—is quite a feat. I’ve never been in the position in my life in which I’ve been consistently either losing or maintaining a lower weight than where I was the year before. Just the opposite. Prior to the past twenty or so months, I’d always weighed more than I had the year before—with the exception of the few months before my back surgery in 2003 when I lost weight doing low-carb.

I joined Weight Watchers in April 2008, after having lost about 20 pounds on my own, mostly through going to the gym almost every evening after work. This is the longest I have ever stuck with a commitment to eat right and lose weight. And last week, I added the activity component into it. When I was working full-time and not only had the regular income to be able to afford it but had the coworkers to go with, I went to the gym three or four times a week after work. Several years before, when I still worked at the newspaper, I would go to the gym after work almost every night and swim for an hour—though that was really more for relaxation than exercise (and it was while I was in graduate school, and I saw the efficacy of exercise then as I came up with the hidden-identity plot for Stand-In Groom while in the pool). Committing to exercise is hard for me because I not only hate getting hot and sweaty—and then there’s the whole pushing myself until I’m breathing hard and my muscles are tired—but because it’s so hard for me to cool off afterward (we’re talking standing under the cold water in the shower with the bathroom door open for twenty minutes kind of hard-to-cool-off). But I’m doing it. And I’ve started doing it at night, about an hour after supper, when the munchies hit. That time when, even though I’m not hungry, I’m starting to prowl the kitchen for something sweet, because over the years I allowed myself to get into the dessert habit and now that pattern is so ingrained in my brain that I feel like I need something sweet after dinner to be satisfied (which of course leads to needing something salty, then something else sweet, then something sour, then something sweet . . . ). So I started exercising then instead. And it’s a great distraction, because after exercising, all I want is water.

This week marks week 2 of my recommitment to exercise. What are you committing to this week on the journey to being a more healthy you?

Healthy Cottage (aka Shepherd’s) Pie

In my quest to not be so bored with the foods I’m eating, and needing to eat at home every day this week (due to the low bank-account balance), when I made up my menu for the week, I was pretty much stuck with using whatever I had on hand. One of those on-hand items was a one-pound package of ground lamb. I’d bought it a month or so ago, thinking I’d do a Greek-style stuffed bell pepper, or maybe even figure out how to do some kind of gyro. Obviously, this was during the time when I wasn’t making my meal plan for the week and then shopping off that list. Because I never figured out what I wanted to do with it, it sat in the freezer for a month.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that I watch a lot of shows on BBC-America. This includes the program You Are What You Eat a show in which a nutritionist goes around to help people break their poor eating habits and start eating healthy diets and exercising, typically putting them on a “whole” foods diet (lots of fruits and veggies, beans, fish, and some whole grains). I don’t always agree with the extreme to which she makes people give up things like chocolate or cheese, but the basics of what she’s teaching people are good. Plus I have my DVR set up to record both half-hour episodes every day, so I typically put those on to watch at night while I’m doing my exercising.

I also have a very dear friend who’s British. Not only have she and I recently talked about cottage pie (at a Weight Watchers meeting) but I’ve now heard it mentioned or seen it on TV several times in the last couple of weeks. So when I looked at that pound of ground lamb in the freezer, with the bag of cauliflower sitting right next to it, I had an epiphany: I could make cottage pie with mashed cauliflower on top instead of mashed potatoes. So I put it on the menu for Wednesday night (which is Top Chef night, so I always try to have something more than just a protein and two veggies for dinner, which is my usual fare). Wednesday afternoon, when I remembered that’s what I was supposed to be cooking for supper, I started looking up recipes online—it’s one thing to have eaten a dish before (many years ago) and something totally different to try to prepare one that’s going to be tasty. So I found a recipe for an easy shepherd’s pie and pulled another one for mashed cauliflower (because I wanted to make sure those were tasty as well). And here’s what I ended up doing:

Healthy Cottage Pie

1 chicken-flavored bullion cube
1 cup(+) water
1 16-ounce bag frozen cauliflower

1 pound ground meat
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 small or 1/2 large onion, chopped
1.5 to 2 cups cooked/steamed bite-sized mixed vegetables
Herbs and/or spices to taste
1/2 cup beef broth
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
Dash flour or cornstarch, optional

1 pat (about 1/2 Tablespoon) salted butter
Skim/fat-free milk
Salt and black pepper

1/2 cup grated 2% sharp Cheddar cheese, optional

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. In a large saucepan, add bullion cube to 1 cup water and bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring to ensure bullion dissolves thoroughly. Add cauliflower and enough water to cover. Return to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and let simmer. (8 to 10 minutes, or longer if you want really creamy mashed cauliflower.)

While cauliflower cooks, in a large skillet over medium heat, sweat onions about 5 minutes, or until softened and beginning to turn translucent (onions should not brown—if they start browning, reduce heat). Crumble raw ground meat into skillet and cook until meat is no longer pink. Drain off all fat, and return to skillet. Season to taste (I used some Tony Chachere’s salt-free seasoning, but not enough to make it spicy in the end product). Add vegetables, beef broth, and Worcestershire sauce. Let liquid come to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer. If you would like a slightly thickened “gravy,” you can add a little flour or cornstarch at this point, being sure it is completely mixed in and doesn’t clump.

Drain cauliflower and smash lightly with fork. In a blender or food processor, combine cauliflower and butter. Pulse to puree. Add milk, 1/2 tablespoon at a time, if necessary until desired smoothness is achieved. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Let stand.

Transfer meat and veggie mixture to a 3-quart casserole dish. Spoon mashed cauliflower on top. Spread to cover evenly, but leave surface of cauliflower rough (or add texture with tines of a fork). Bake 30 minutes or until cauliflower has browned nicely (golden brown). If using cheese, sprinkle cheese over top after about 20 minutes of cooking.

Let stand about 10–15 minutes before serving. Makes 4 to 6 servings.

The way I made it, with the ground lamb and no flour or cheese, portioned out into 4 servings, per serving breaks down like this:
Calories: 345
Fat: 18g
Carbohydrates: 21g
Fiber: 9g
Protein: 24g

Obviously, ground lamb is one of the higher-fat meats. If made with ground turkey (and no flour/no cheese), here’s how it would look for 4 servings:
Calories: 272
Fat: 11.5g
Carbohydrates: 21g
Fiber: 9g
Protein: 21g