Friday, March 4, 2011

What a difference a few calories make ...

One of the things I have had to learn about losing weight is that you have to learn about yourself and your personal habits. If your personal habits are not conducive to weight loss, you must change them. This week, I identified one habit that I definitely need to change. I am a mindless eater. If my mind and hands are idle, I tend to eat. I am not taking about gorging like Homer Simpson, but a slow, steady snacking that can lead to weight loss disaster. It is the kind of snacking that leads you to the kitchen and that fresh new box of thin mints during a commercial on TV. You come back with two Thin Mints to enjoy. The next commercial break, you come back with three or four. The next commercial break, you bring back the box to save yourself the trip next time, and by the time Survivor is over, you are pitching an empty Thin Mints box (can you tell it is Girl Scout cookie season?).

So last night, in a supreme act of will power I decided that I would not snack. I had my dinner, and then I kept myself busy. And you know what? It worked. I made it through the night without eating anything after dinner (but I did drink water!). So now, I have the task of making sure that I continue on this trend. No all-night snacking is my goal from here on out. I will not totally deprive myself, but I will actually pay attention to it from here on out. That being said, lets get to the week in review, shall we?

Workouts. Well, lets just say I have really fallen flat here. I have not done any of my weekly workouts. I haven't gotten on the bike at all, and the elliptical only once this week. I would like to say that I was super busy, but I was only moderately busy. It is amazing how quickly just being a little bit busy will cause us to drop things like workouts.

Water intake. I have found flavored waters to be a big boon here. Flavored fizzy water has reduced my intake of soda and shifted that consumption to water. What can I say, I am a fan of fizz. I also make my own non-flavored fizzy water with a doohickey I bought called a Soda Stream. It doesn't get the water quite as fizzy as store-bought water, but it is still great. All told, I am shooting for the AMA recommended 8X8oz formula, and coming pretty close on a daily basis.

Food. Portion distortion reared it's ugly head on me Wednesday at dinnertime when I ate WAY too much pasta. I also went out on my lunch and grabbed Chinese twice this week, and went to Subway one day. The other day, I ate a sensible lunch at school. Today is a day for a sensible lunch ...

Blood Sugar. With the change in meds last week, we were expecting my blood sugar to go up while I was on the starter dose. With this new med Byetta, you take a half dose for the first 30 days in order to adjust to taking the new medication, then go up to the full dose. My blood sugar, rather than having a jump as expected, went up only slightly, with my readings being less than 10 points above normal, and my blood sugar this morning was only 116, which is much lower than my usual 130-ish (my target range is 90-130, normal is under 100). And before you think it, yes, I know that this morning's excellent reading is because I wasn't snacking last night.

Now the payoff: Weight. I started out on this blog at 277, went up to 277.7 in my first week, and spent the next couple weeks drifting back down to 277. this morning's weigh in was .... drum roll please .... 275.6, for a loss of 1.4 pounds. This is the way I was envisioning my weight loss to be. Slow and steady. Hopefully I can continue the same trend!

8^) Jim

1 comments:

Rachel Boldman

Good job on the weight loss! I love what you said about mindfulness. Being aware is half the battle!

See you at Mamavation TV on Monday!

Rachel B.

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