400 Days of Dieting

I chose to title this post dramatically to remind everyone that losing weight is not a short-term experiment but a very long-term commitment. If you give up after a few days, you won't have any success. Also, even when you have reached your goal and think you are done, you still need to be vigilant.

Being about 15 pounds from a personally acceptable weight for my height and age, I am still quite actively dieting, counting every calorie and averaging them daily. My current average is 1541/day. My current weight is 175, and I still have the "love handles". I spot them when I look in my "rear view" mirror. I suppose, though, that when (I don't say "if" but "when") I reach 160, I may try for another ten pound loss or so!

The pounds are dissolving very slowly; however, I don't feel frustrated because I can see the results in my mirror daily. It's a good feeling to put on clothing, look in the mirror, and realize that how baggy it is. It goes right in a box of donations to Goodwill. This works out well too, since one of my sons works there!

I've made mistakes along the 400 days by letting myself go and then having to suffer to get back to where I was before the mistakes. I find that I "prime the pump", so to speak, if I fill myself too early in my day. I tend to lose management of my appetite too easily if my tummy empties when there are still several waking hours left. That's odd, but that's how it works for me. I can resist food more easily if I'm running more empty than full. The last meal of my day is the biggest by far. Then I go to bed full, and fall asleep before my appetite tells me to grab a sweet or a fatty thing. I will certainly have to be cautious for the rest of my life. You can't go up and down the scale repeatedly without hurting yourself. It's very easy going up and very hard going down.

Using the technique of mindful eating must continue as well. As for the Celiac Disease, I must admit that I dearly miss toast, sandwiches, pizza, crackers, and the occasional cookie or small piece of cake. I suppose I will always miss them.

Take care. Here's to the next 400 days. Time to get more little pads of paper for my calorie counting.

I Lost 40 Pounds

In the last two weeks I have noticed that my weight loss is slowing down. I spoke with a nutritionist about that, and she told me that now that I am getting so much closer to my "goal" weight (I don't have it set in stone, though; I realize that it's emotionally healthier to accept what I can reasonably achieve and feel satisfied with it), my weight loss will not be as swift as when I was obese (wow, I'm not obese anymore). Proportionally, my daily caloric intake to maintain current weight is much closer to my future caloric intake required to maintain a more ideal weight than when I was 40 pounds heavier. 

I admit that I feel a little disappointed that the pounds are not "melting" away as they did in the first 150 days of my diet. I figured that I was losing the equivalent of one stick of butter every four days, and I impressed myself with that. Now it takes me about a week to lose that, still not too shabby. I want to keep it off, so naturally calorie counting and averaging is as important now as it was on Feb. 6, when I started my diet. My current average is 1544 calories per day. That number is much closer to the calories I'd need to maintain the goal weight. Then I'll need about 1943 calories per day. When I began my diet, I would have needed closer to 3,000 calories per day, but at that time I was eating only about one-half the calories I needed for maintenance. It makes sense that I was losing weight so quickly because maintaining my obesity required so much more food consumption. I expect that I will reach my goal around the winter holidays, and maybe into the year 2012. Come back and visit to see how I'm doing.

The Average Advantage

If I ever write a book based on this blogspot and this diet, I will name it The Average Advantage. It is just so. Averaging my caloric intake day by day keeps me feeling positive about the diet, and I think we all know how important it is to continue feeling positive about what dieting does to us emotionally.

If I did not figure out the average every day, I would focus on the daily calorie totals. I might even be thinking of a caloric maximum goal for myself, such a 1500 calories. Then, on days when I would go over that total, (knowing myself) I would say such things as:  I failed; I really messed up this time; this diet isn’t going to work; I’m so weak; it’s no use; I’m giving up; I may as well eat all I want, because I’ll never stick to any diet; it’s better to enjoy all the food I love, since I’m going to die fat and sick anyway. However, when I go through my daily morning routine, I see that the average has not moved very much. In fact, as the total number of days of my diet increase, the average tends to stay within a few points. This is a “growing” fact; now that I’ve concluded day 79, I must have either 80 calories more or 80 calories less than the previous average in order for it to move up or down by just one calorie! And you can’t feel discouraged by that tiny amount.

To illustrate, on day 60 my average was 1548 calories (although the total calories on that day was 1477). On the next day, I went to a restaurant buffet and pigged out, bringing my daily total to 2101 calories. Ordinarily that would worry and discourage me. However, when I figured out my 61-day average, it was only 1557. That’s nothing to worry or discourage me! Furthermore, on day 62 I ate only 1456 calories, bringing my average down again, to 1555. That’s how the averaging works. On day 79, my average was 1544. I worked it down by having fewer than 1544 calories several times between days 61 and 79. It’s not difficult at all!

Another “average” thing is infrequency of weigh-ins. I’ve been averaging about 22 days between weigh-ins. In the past I’ve been discouraged when weighing myself almost daily. You know how diets are. Sometimes you’ll lose two pounds between frequent weigh-ins, and other times you lose not an ounce. Once in a while you’ll even gain weight. That can make you feel pretty bad. However, if you weigh in about every 22 days, you’ll find you’ve lost an amount that makes you feel pretty good. Then you can run an average on that weight loss, figuring it from the beginning of your diet. I’m still averaging about a one-pound weight loss every four days. This diet is very good for me emotionally as well as physically.

Next time I write an entry, I will give you another recipe. It’s all vegetables, filling, and very low in calories. In fact, it’s a vegan recipe I invented while my vegetarian son visited over the holiday weekend. I think you’ll enjoy it.

Tonight I ate two Girl Scout cookies and I don't feel bad about that. My calorie count for the day is still under my average! 

16 Pounds Down; 68 to Go

Today I weighed myself at the hospital, on the same scale I weighed myself on February 7, the day after my diet started. I was very pleased to see that I had lost 16 pounds in 64 days. Since I'm such an "average" freak (you'll have to decide on the meaning of that), let's see how that works out mathematically. Dieting 64 days and losing 16 pounds means that I lost one pound every four days on the average.

Frankly, that seems like way too much. If the body of a 63-year-old woman my height requires 1943 calories a day to maintain a healthy weight, and my average consumption is 1554 calories per day, then I'm eating only 389 calories per day less. That's not really very much. Reckoning that a pound of body fat equates to about 3500 calories, it should take me about nine days to lose a pound. I'd be satisfied with that. I'm not exercising enough to cause many extra calories to burn. I'm wondering if the large weight loss is just because my obesity required many more calories in maintenance; in fact, one website said I would need over 3,000 calories a day to stay large. By that reckoning, I'm eating WAY less than I would need to stay big. Is that how "nature rules"? I'm sure that at some point, my calorie intake will more closely match maintenance calories.

I will continue to keep my average about the same as it is now, and I'll have to count calories well into the future so I don't bounce back again. I'll also continue to eat a well-balanced diet. Now that spring has finally sprung and my garden is calling me, I'll be getting more physical activity as well. My goal every growing season is to make my garden more spectacular than it was the year before, and that means working harder and longer than the year before!