Track

How to get back into a mindset of eating more healthfully to lose weight?

Well I finally acknowledged that I need to reduce calories to around 1000 per day.  Facing that fact is daunting but oh well, that's the way it is.

How can I stay full on fewer calories?  

  1. For more fiber, fill up on vegetables and fruits.  

  2. For staying full longer, choose protein over carbohydrates.  

  3. For less bloat, choice more vegan and organic, avoid dairy and GMOs.  

  4. For more nutrition, take supplements and have more raw food.
  5. In the beginning, use homeopathic appetite suppressants to help reduce hunger.

To help with the filling up on more vegetables and fruit part of the equation, I decided I need to buy a good variable speed blender. 

So that, sorted.  Now I just have to start tracking what I eat to be more conscious of keeping the calorie counts low.

p.s. America's Test Kitchens likes Vitamix best, but for half the price advises the Breville Hemisphere Control is good too, and much quieter to protect hearing.

Tacks

A man who had gastric bypass surgery spoke to me about weight loss today.  He spoke about the way he exercises everyday.  He has a FitBit gadget to count his steps and exercise each day, and tracks it electronically.

When I asked him how he keeps track of what he eats, he replied flippently that he doesn't have to keep track because he knows he always eats less than 3000 calories per day.

My reaction was shock!!! and then angry resentment.  "Yeah?  Well 3000 is easy, how do you keep track of less than 1000 calories a day?"

I have spoken to Weight Watchers women who have kept their weight off for many years too and they have all confirmed to me that they have to stay below 1000 calories a day.   It's the simple truth.

3000 calories a day I am the weight I am now.   3000 calories a day I contintue to gain quickly. 

To lose weight I have to eat around 600-1100 calories a day. Maybe 600-1100 calories is a lot to people living in desolation, who go to sleep hungry every night, but its not a lot ot the majority of Americans.

I'm not sure what I need to do to maintain a slim figure but I'm sure it is to stick around 1000-1200 calories a day.  That's not much food.  

Stop lieing to me world!  Stop saying its so easy.  It is constant vigilance, rigorous tracking to make sure I'm eating around 1000 calories/day.  Ok, I'm done with my rant now.

 Yes I'm a lovely highly fuel-efficient machine.  That's why if I feed myself the glut of most American diets I become obese very quickly.  I'm elegant, fuel-efficient, and green.  That makes me lucky in terms of biologic evolution.

Near

I'm so near to meeting half of my weight loss goal, of losing 50 lbs, that I can taste it.  I'm late too,  I wanted to met this goal by August, whereas in my 2-year plan the goal for November was 156 lbs. I have these weird reactions to getting close to a big goal -- I tend to hover over that weight for too long until I just get really frustrated and really make a big push towards losing enough weight to just meet that goal and then continue losing at a more normal rate again.  It's almost like I'm afraid to meet that goal.

So the goal I next want to meet is 170 lbs.  This morning I'm at 172 lbs.  I just want to meet and then get lower than that weight by 5-10 lbs so that I can feel secure that I have finally met that goal and surpassed it.

I started walking around a track with people at work. It's fun to have someone to talk to.  But sometimes they couldn't make it so then I was bored just walking around by myself so started lightly, slowly jogging half way around the track just to see if I could.  The next week I started walking 2 laps, running 1 lap, etc.  I discovered that going around the track 8 times is 1 mile. So I made sure to run 8 laps.

This week I walked 2 laps, ran 2 laps.  Again I ran only 8 laps total,  so just one mile, but the workout was definately harder.  And my body is so sore.  I get sore in places it never occured to me a person would get sore from running.  I get sore mostly in my upper body, my arms, back, and my lungs!  My lungs feel so good after running.  They feel clean.  I love that feeling, but they feel scrubbed out clean, like the way my teeth feel after being cleaned by a dental hygenist.

I hope that running will help me meet and surpass my weight loss goals faster.  Fingers crossed.  Weight Loss Target Date Calculator.

The basic guide for figuring out how many calories you need each day is to take your weight and multiply it by 10.  So if you weight 220 then you need 2,200 calories to maintain that weight.  If you weigh 170 you need 1,700 calories.  Here is a  Calorie Needs Calculator.  Running burns 115 calories per mile.  Walking burns 80 calories per mile.  Active Calories Calculator.

One more thing.  I've been thinking that for the first year, when I was in the category of obese, people really couldn't tell that I was losing weight.  It's only now, now that I'm in the category of overweight that people are starting to notice.  And that's ok, it's what I expected, but it is more encouraging to have people notice now.