I've been training, in a moderate way, for four weeks, but I haven't lost a single pound. I feel much better though and I feel like I'm not so lumpy. Muscle toning is happening!
I'm pretty sure -- o.k., I KNOW -- the reason I've not lost any pounds is that I'm not controlling my diet very well.
Sure, muscle weighs more than fat and yes, I'm not 20 anymore...and yeah, I've heard all the platitudes of the good old plateau. Blah, blah, blah. You can only plateau if you've actually been seeing some downward trends. Or, heaven help me, if I actually gain weight and manage to stop it I suppose I could plateau...
Although I've changed a few things in my diet lately, I'm still too fond of cheese and butter, and the after dinner snacking is still plaguing me. Please don't get me started on chocolate!
Winter isn't helping. Even at my most fit I struggled to keep pounds off during cold weather. Not only is it harder to get moving in the early part of the calendar year, I find it too tempting to snuggle somewhere warm with a book and hot chocolate. I yearn for spring when I know all of this will be easier for me.
In the past when I started to get alarmed with the direction my weight was headed in, I'd quietly register with Weight Watchers and shed the troublesome pounds. I never once reached what that organization deemed to be my goal weight for age and height, although once I got a doctor's note so that I could aim for a weight higher than the stipulated stopping point.
Because I could never reach the "ideal" I had a long discussion once with my doctor in Ontario about the BMI and weight ranges and she was always surprised that at my best weight (translated to a dress size 8), I was still outside the traditional ranges for women. Far outside (on the upper side) . In fact, she stepped on the scale herself to see if it was broken!
Even though I didn't fit in the ranges, I looked great and felt great and I knew it!
Because of that discussion in my 20s, I moved forward with a healthy attitude toward weight loss numbers--especially those on the scale--as well as clothes sizes and measures of fitness. In the end, I know when I'm healthy...because I feel healthy. When I feel healthy things fit better, I breathe better, I look better and emotionally I'm much more content.
It's what I hope to return to by the time June 23rd rolls around. Tough Mudder will be hard, but I want to be looking and feeling good for it.
I'm not keen to return to Weight Watcher's. Besides, the closest meeting is an hour away. I don't want to pay $60 per month just for the companionship.
I spend a lot of time intellectualizing all of this. You'd think weight loss would be pretty easy. After all, the math is pretty black and white. Eat a little less than you need to get through the day, exercise to speed up and get the benefits of natural appetite supression!
I hate that my intellect doesn't prevail in this particular case! I suppose the missing ingredient is will.
Last spring when I found myself in the same quandry-- carrying around some extra poundage -- I discovered a website called www.sparkpeople.com Essentially it is like a Weight Watchers program but with a real bent towards exercise. The online tools allow one to record every aspect of diet and exercise. Best of all it's free, something I can certainly appreciate as we continue to build our earthship.
You do have to put up with endless ads, and a sometimes irritatingly rah, rah to fitness and diet. Plus, a lot of the suggested meal plans use products that have aspartame and other sugar substitutes that I won't ingest knowingly. I also steer clear of low-fat products as they are often that way through processing.
However, users can do whatever they want for meal planning and I've been impressed with the online tools for figuring out calorie content of an individuals own stand-by meals.
Although I'm not too keen to be a calorie counter, I think I might benefit from it, at least for a while. Like a person who overextends herself financially, just the process of recording daily habits may reveal some helpful trends.
So I've become a "user". In the next few days I'm going to look around the site again and gear up for recording both diet and exercise. I may share some of it here in an effort to be accountable and to motivate me to stick to it.
If you have some favourite healthy meals and snacks, I'd love to hear about them as I move forward.
Please share!!
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