Monday, Sweet Monday

226.4 this morning.  I've lost 32 pounds on this challenge!

I decided last night that I was going to do Jillian 30DS this morning, so I put my workout clothes in the bed with me so they'd be warm when I woke up.  (I keep my bedroom at 55 degrees to save money on heating oil.) It was still tough to get out of bed, but I made it in time to do the video AND a 10-minute guided meditation on loving-kindness.  Level 1 is still a challenge, so I'm still doing it.  I like how the lunges and squats are tightening up my rear and I want to keep doing them.

As I was writing my breakfast trick yesterday, I thought that I'd like to write some of the other techniques/tricks that are working for me so far.

1.  If it's not going to be absolutely delicious, don't eat it.  I don't have enough calories available to waste on food that doesn't delight and satisfy me.  There's a Pinterest thing that rings true for me:  if you're not willing to eat vegetables then you're not really hungry.  If I'm restless and thinking that I want to eat, I'll wait until I can figure out exactly what I want instead of opening the fridge and trying thing after thing.  Sometimes that means, like yesterday, that I don't eat much in a day.  If I'm faced with something that I feel Meh about, I'll skip it or only have a little.  Like Saturday after drill - we cooked burgers and there was a turkey burger for me.  But it was awful!  I tried a few bites and then threw it away and had an angus burger along with the other guys.  I enjoyed every bite of that angus burger.

2. Savor every bite.  I learned about mindful eating in meditation class.  It's looking at your food, smelling it, experiencing it with all your senses.  Appreciating the work that it took to get the food to your fork, thinking about the chicken or the cow, etc, and all the steps between there and you.  If it's a vegetable or green, think about the sun on it as it was growing and the energy of the sun going into you.  Then touch the food with your tongue and feel it, letting a little into your mouth.  Then use all your senses to appreciate the feel and taste of the food as you chew and swallow.  It's slow and inconvenient, but that's the point.

3. Take a little bit.  For brownies and other things that I love, I'll cut a piece in half and then half again, so I have a very small piece on the end of my fork.  I'll savor the heck out of that tiny bite, and ask myself if that was sufficient.  It doesn't work for things that don't have a big, rich flavor like fudge fancy sugar cookies.  I do it for pizza, but always end up eating the whole piece anyway, and more.

4.  Weigh every day.  I do it in the morning first thing after I get up and pee.  Sometimes I weigh in the evening as well.  There's usually about a 2-pound gain through the day.

5. Push breakfast as late as possible.  I wrote about this yesterday.

6. Log everything I eat.  I do this mostly.  I give myself a free pass on most vegetables, but if I use butter, I'll log that.  I was religious about this for 3 months, and now that I know the calories of most of the things I eat, I'll guess at my daily intake.  Whenever I'm faced with something that I don't know the calories for, I'll look it up.  There's an MFP app for my phone, so it's with me everywhere.  There's no excuse not to know the calories in what I eat.

7. Weigh, weigh, measure and weigh.  I weigh meat and cheese because those are things where portion sizes are going to creep up if I don't stay on top of it.  I measure all starches.

8. Work on the emotional aspect.  For me, it wasn't as simple as eating to stuff emotions.  Being thinner isn't going to magically make me like myself.  If I don't change my head, an emotional upset will mean 50+ pounds back on unless I work on my emotional balance at the same time as I lose weight.  So I am.  I need to feel that I have value simply because I'm me, which isn't true now.  I feel like I have to be very accomplished and be perfect and then, only then, maybe ... people will like me.  I've given this one to a therapist and it feels like the right thing to do.  Last night I listened to a guided meditation on loss and healing and bawled through most of it, snot running down my face, starting when I heard, "Imagine a person coming toward you with kind eyes and this person says, 'I'm here.  I'm with you as long as you need me.'"  Hm.  The therapist says I have some grief work to do.  Maybe she's right.

9. Thirty minutes of activity most days.  I'm not rigorous about what the activity will be, but I can't make a huge time commitment for exercise.  I am not interested (yet) in pushing myself to my limits, so I sweat, but don't push myself until I burn. Sometimes it's 20-25 minutes on the elliptical, some days it's free weights and the weight machines at my work gym, sometimes it's a DVD.  I have to plan it or else it won't happen.  This weekend I didn't plan any workouts, and didn't realize until Sunday afternoon that I hadn't done any.  If/when I hit a plateau, I'll have to push myself harder on this.  I can feel the muscles forming, so there's improvement.  They're covered in fat though.  I still can't feel my hips when I'm laying down.  But I can see indentations on the sides of my belly!

10. Get back on the horse immediately.  Since this is how I'm eating for the rest of my life, there is no ON a diet or OFF a diet.  If I slip, I do not give myself permission to slip more.  When normal people eat too much, they naturally eat less for a while.  I want to be normal that way.  I think that's why I ate hardly anything yesterday after last week's orgy of food.  Yes, I'll ramp the calories up at some point, but per my scale, it will be maybe 1600 per day - forever.

What I'm working on but not doing so great at:

1. Letting go a little.  I feel like I have to keep everything under ironclad control or I'm going to magically, instantly balloon back up to 276 pounds.

2. Seeing myself the way I truly am.  When I look in the mirror, I see someone who isn't overweight.  Thanks to a suggestion from Mir, I've started taking pictures of myself to see what I really look like.

3. Letting myself be me instead of trying to be perfect all the time.  Nuff said.

OK y'all - have a great day!