Baby Steps

Today, I didn’t know what to expect stepping on the scale. I had been not so good about writing it all down this week and know this can become a huge problem for me. To further complicate the issue, it has turned horrendously cold here and with today’s rain, it’s going to hamper my exercise routine. I might actually have to go to the gym to do my walking on a treadmill.

Not that I don’t have my own treadmill, I just don’t want to set it up in the back room where the expensive bamboo flooring is located. We’ve already seen what can happen when kids jump around in chairs on it...imagine what a large woman on a treadmill can do..oiy vey! Yeah, I say that a lot and I’m not even Jewish. LOL!

But seriously I have trepidation today as I go ready to step on the scale. The first time I stepped on, it showed a .4 pound gain. I was devestated then I remembered that normally weigh with just a t-shirt on. So despite the cold, my husband keeps it a cool 66 in the winter, I shucked everything except my t-shirt and underwear. And I was so glad I did so as the weight loss was 1.1 pounds. Yippee! I had managed to keep going down despite my backsliding.

Then I had to do my waist measurement. For those of you who don’t realize it, your waist measurement can be more important than your overall weight because it is a strong predictor of cardiovascular disease. Just to be sure you understand I’m not pulling your leg or anything, here are a few links to some articles on the subject:

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/529324

http://www.righthealth.com/Health/Body%20Measurement-s?lid=goog-ads-sb-8536643334

http://health.msn.com/weight-loss/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100173487

http://www.cutthewaist.com/

Those articles are very useful when trying to figure out just where your waist needs to be in relation to your weight. In general, a woman’s waist needs to be less than 31.50 inches for you to be considered healthy. I’ve got about 15.5 inches to go which seems like a lot when you look at it but when you consider I have lost 4 inches in 5 weeks, it doesn’t seem an impossible task. Although, I will say from here on out, unless I put my nose to the grindstone, it will be harder to get weekly numbers.

As of today, I have also lost 5.9 pounds in the same amount of time. It’s certainly not the 25 I had wanted to lose my first five weeks, but a respectable pound a week. One of my friends told me I wouldn’t need to have any skin reduction surgery if I went slow and steady. She may be right but I sure wish it could be 2 pounds a week or more. How about 5 even, that would be fantasitc!

But it is the reason I titled this column baby steps. Sometimes it will take a large number of small, incremental changes to equal the big ones. If we don’t make those small changes and keep building on them, we will never move forward. And I've obviously got a good start since I'm still blogging, still thinking about it and still moving forward.

Yeah, I might not have kept my diet diary for a week but I can guarantee I thought about every bit of food which went into my mouth and realized I was starting to stray. What I did do weekly was take my weight and my waist measurement and record them in my diet diary. So first thing this morning, I pulled it out and wrote down my breakfast. Then I wrote down my lunch.

Yeah, Baby Steps.

See you all next week!


Lynn

A Great Monday

Okay, so I’m blogging on Tuesday. Shoot me already...LOL!

Yeah, I should have done it yesterday but after the writing binge and the fact we went away for the holiday, I just couldn’t sit in front of this machine any longer than I needed to do so. Once everything was done, I decided to just relax and promptly fell asleep on the couch.

Now, as far as weight loss, I had a wonderful weekend. Holidays are always so traumatic for most but this year I decided to temp it all with plenty of exercise. I also didn’t restrict myself from anything as we went to a posh buffet at my husband’s uncle’s golf club in San Francisco. When my daughter-in-law asked how much I though member ship was, I told her it was more than she wanted to think about. The look on her face was priceless as I don’t think until that moment she understood just how well off my husband’s family is. It took me many years to understand just which fork to use but eventually I got over it and started to enjoy myself.

And on that note, the food was fantastic. I loaded up on the greens and added a lot of veggies so I would be full before I went back for the main course. It works as I only had a little of the turkey, beef, small amount of the mash potatoes and more greens. I did save enough room for the tiniest sliver of pumpkin pie as for me it is a must at this holiday.

The way I compensated for this massive meal was I allowed, notice I say allowed, my husband and his family walk me to death before it happened. His parents walk 3-5 miles every day and I went with them on most of those walks this weekend. The only one I missed was the one in the pouring rain as it was a cool rain and I knew no shower would get the dampness out of my bones. Still, all those walks made up for eating more than normal, the drive through food eaten on the way up and back as well as the lack of exercise on travel days.

Was I rewarded for this diligent behavior this weekend? You bet I was! I lost 1.8 pounds and another .5 inches off my waist. It doesn’t get any better than that!

Hope you all have a great week! See you next one!

Lynn

Positive Small Changes

I am sitting here today wondering why I feel so horrible about what I did last week as far as my journey. I succeed in cutting another 50 calories a day off my totals as well as increase my daily steps. I also cut off another inch from my belly which is a big Yippee! for me.

Yet, the scale didn’t budge. Or at least, I don’t think it did. I just replaced the batteries in my old Weight Watcher one and decided to give it a try. And I hated the numbers. Hated it more than the fact I was allowing myself a handful of smarties a day because if I didn’t, the whole bag would be in my stomach by now. And that would do no one any good.

I need to revel in what I did do right, not wallow in the one thing that didn’t happen.

I did record all my food this week.

I did exercise every day except one.

I lifted weights three times this week.

I did reduce my waist by another inch.

I did reduce my average calorie intake by another 50 calories.

I did write this blog again even though I felt like I didn’t accomplish one thing.

When I list them all out like this, it makes me realize how silly it is for me being worried that the scale didn’t move this week. I’ll have lots of weeks where the scales won’t move and lots of weeks where I’m going to have to remind myself of all the positive things I have done.

It might be hard but I have to do this for myself. Forget about everything else, remember to do it for me.

Until next week.

Lynn

Sticking To Just One

Alright, I told you all about my just one campaign, how I needed to change just one thing to get on my road to permanent weight loss? Well, I succeeded this week with my just one item which was walking every night. Notice I didn’t put a time on how much I had to walk, just that I had to do it.

Now, I’m lucky because my puppy forces me to go. So every night between 9 and 9:30, I get the DH and the puppy to walk around the block with me getting at least 15 minutes exercise which makes me feel invigorated. And I already can feel the pants being a little less tighter as well as other small incentives to keep going.

Next week, since this is almost a habit, I’m going to add another block which should add another 5 minutes to the routine. Also, I started to lift weights to help my arms during me sitting and watching TV. What better way to get my flabby arms tones? I get to feel the burn and watch my favorite shows! LOL!

Now, it’s time to choose my next item I want to change. And here I find myself tossing up two ideas at once. Do I want to write down all I eat? Or do I want to change how I look at breakfast? Well, I knew that one of my biggest problems was I had given up breakfast again up until about three weeks ago. Realizing this was one of my biggest errors in the weight lost regime, I had already started to add breakfast back into my life.

If I truly want to lose weight, I know I need to go back to the breakfast shake my naturopath had me on almost a year ago. The first couple of months, I had been on the weight loss kick when we realized that my allergy issue was overwhelming everything. So for about nine months, we concentrated on putting my allergies in a more manageable position. It worked as I haven’t had any real severe attacks for quite a while now.

So, in my eyes, we’re back to the weight loss track and I’m looking back on what seemed to work so well in that beginning. And one of those things was a breakfast shake made of skim milk, protein powder, flax seed and fresh fruit. Later I modified it to make it even better by adding orange juice instead of fresh fruit and ice making it more of a frappe than a shake. But the taste was more palatable and I looked forward to it daily.

The other item I did then was to journal everything I ate, not to point out what I had done wrong but to point out how to improve my weight loss chances. I found that journaling about life and what I ate made me very, very honest because I never knew who would pick up that journal to take a peek. I wrote down every bite and every drink. And no foods were really taboo except those we were trying to eliminate from the allergy mix. It ends up that I am not very allergic to any food but outside things, like cleaning chemicals.

So given these two choices for the one thing I wanted to change, I was in a quandary. Both were equally important to my overall goal but the real question was which one did I think I would stick to better this week. And this gave me pause to think for a few hours. But after much thought and consideration, I’ve decided to start writing down what I eat.

Now this can be very good for me as I see one of my issues is portion control. I eat all the right foods but sometimes I eat too much. And eating too much is what got me here in the first place. LOL!

See you next week when I give you a report on how well I’m doing with this aspect of my journey.

Until then…

Lynn