Posts Tagged "weight"

What’s on your plate?

Posted by talda on May 12, 2010 in health | 3 comments

I am taking a novel approach to my healthier lifestyle I’ve been trying to achieve. So what is it? Oh, it’ll blow your socks off. Wait for it: I’m going to eat more regular meals.

I know what you’re thinking: why are you so late to the party?

So look, remember at the beginning of the this year I revealed that I was going to get “fit?” I worked out several times a week and “watched what I ate” but not really since I was on a fast for church and was only eating one full meal a day with tons of fruits and veggies to supplement and saw the weight begin to fall. I used to weigh myself weekly but then I noticed I became weirdly obsessed with the results, so much so I would be bummed if I hadn’t lost anything and downright devastated if I gain anything. So I stopped.

Then my dad passed away and I subsequently lost the desire to eat so I lost a little bit more weight [nothing beats the "bereavement diet"] and its really only been within the past few weeks that I started eating again, though I still average about 2 real meals a day. Three if I’m lucky. Not exactly the best thing but I’m working on it.

After a few weeks away from the scale, I hopped on it this week because I wanted to update my fancy new Nike Sportband I bought over the weekend to help track my caloric loss and mileage. Well, fancy my surprise when I realized I was up several pounds from when I last officially weighed myself back in March. In fact, I’m practically back to where I was in the beginning of the year. Naturally I wasn’t happy at all but I know why this happened.

For some weird reason, instead of sitting down and eating an actual meal, I’ll just snack. I’ve always been a grazer but lately my choices have been incredibly horrible. I’ll be hungry but instead of eating actual food, I’d down a bag of gummi bears. Or I’ll eat a bag of popcorn. Basically, I’d eat anything except something that would satiate my appetite which would only lead me eat more.

So I’ve decided that instead of snacking so much, I’m just going to eat when I’m hungry. Even if it’s just a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or bowl of cereal, at least it’ll be slightly more filling than a bag of gummi bears. And speaking of candy, I’ll be limiting myself to one bag of candy a week. No more multiple trips to Target for more candy. Once I start changing my food choices, I should be able to get myself back on track to losing weight.

Now where’s that bag of gummi bears?

The heavy truth

Posted by talda on Jan 11, 2010 in Everyday | Comments Off

I like to think that I’m a fairly healthy person. I wouldn’t say I’m in the best shape in my life but I do okay. That said, my relationship with my weight and general weight management has been pretty apathetic at best. Yes I care about how I look in my clothing and I really do like being active, I just can’t seem to motivate myself to actually get up and do it most days.

My weight has always fluctuated throughout my life as is pretty normal. I wouldn’t say that I struggled to keep it in check. I’d let it go and be happy, then look down and notice that my pants don’t fit exactly right or that hey, I really don’t like the fact that my tummy pokes out a lot more than usual. From there I’d make some mediocre attempt at exercising because I never really want to diet. Who wants to go through life NOT eating cake? Or even feeling guilty for eating cake? I prescribe to the “eat smaller portions of everything and move a little bit more” philosophy.

At my heaviest I weighed 160 pounds by my senior year of college, to which no one believes me. Thankfully I carry my weight well but that doesn’t change the fact that I know what I look like underneath all those layers of clothes and I wasn’t happy. I tried to watch what I ate my junior year, going as far as sucking down my fair share of Slim Fast drinks and trying to count calories in the dining hall but to no avail. By my senior year, I was finally motivated [read: FED UP] enough to sign up for an aerobics class and lost 20 pounds that first semester. What helped was that I was no longer in the dorms and responsible for making my own meals which largely consisted of variations of pasta and chicken and didn’t indulge in my weekly large pepperoni pizza with butter flavored crust from Hungry Howie’s [oh so yummy].

Yes I know that eating large pepperoni pizzas with butter flavored crusts BY MYSELF was not the best idea but man, I felt like a champ when I finished it. It’s like feeling empowered when you finish a pint of Ben & Jerry’s in one sitting but feeling quite piggish when you only eat half. Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m saying.

Anywho, my sisters have managed to lose weight and look great, however, I started to feel kind of frumpy when I stand anywhere within sight of them and since I stopped going to yoga once school started and am now not working, I’m not as active as I used to be and wouldn’t you know, my weight has slowly inched up towards my threshold. So it’s time for me to do something.

I made a real deal resolution in hopes of combating this: work out at least twice a week. I know it seems like a really low number but I need to create attainable goals to motivate and encourage myself to continue. Baby steps people. I plan on writing down my progress in a notebook and maybe doing a monthly check-in here on the good old blog in hopes of keeping me honest and motivated to continue. But, and this is a big but, take any weight loss within the first two months with a grain of salt. I’ll be participating in my church’s annual consecration fast so I’ll only be eating one meal a day with more fruit and stuff as snacks so obviously that will affect the results. That said, I’ll be tailoring my workouts to more stretch/yoga/pilates routines and only doing a cardio workout once a week. I’m not going to be eating enough to support a more strenuous workout program so I’m not even going to try. I want to do this right.

I’m hoping that by putting this out there into the world I’ll be able to stick to it. I’m optimistic that I will and am looking forward to beginning. Though I think I’m anticipating being able to eat breakfast and bacon again more. But aside from that, being able to work on myself both spiritually and physically? That’s worth more than eating bacon.