New, From The Lizzie Channel!

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Right, that's it! I'm so sick of getting all enthused about a healthy eating plan and then finding the hidden flaws halfway through my first week. Like that all the recipes they give include ingredients like braised artichoke hearts. Or that they bury their heads in the sand over the rising cost of meat these days. It drives me crazy!

So I'm writing my own diet healthy eating plan.

I know, I know, where's the big revelation in that? Clue: There isn't one. Any doofus with a pen and a free afternoon could do it - I'm just a little slower on the uptake, LOL.

I do like a lot of the principles of The Total Wellbeing Diet. But there are some I don't. And to be honest, I have enough on my (rather large) plate right now to be coming up with healthy alternative meals on the fly. History shows that it just doesn't work for me - I need a plan. The Total Wellbeing Diet advocates four dinners of red meat a week (of about 200g, or a bit under a half a pound of meat per serve), two of fish and one of chicken (both in similar amounts). We haven't eaten that much red meat in any given week in years. We have a natural lean toward our own style of menu planning - and it is definitely not that heavy on the red meat. So I'm taking what I like about each of the plans that has worked for me, bundling it up with (what I think is) sound nutritional advice, adding a bit of common sense (I may as well shellac the carbs to my rear if I continue to eat them in the amounts I am), and going it alone.

I like the idea of this daily checklist (it's a PDF file), also from The Total Wellbeing Diet, but I'm going to make my own (surprise, surprise, LOL), according to the foods I like and need to eat.

I don't know how I managed to lose 400g (almost a pound) last week, I truly don't. I wasn't even close to trying. But as I was slipping into my size 18 (Aussie sizes) shirt yesterday, the first I've ever owned in that size, well, it really stank. No, not the shirt, the situation! Twenty kilos to lose is horrible. Once-upon-a-before-children-time I was about 125 lbs. Sigh. One thing I have discovered this week (that I can't believe I've missed thus far) is Melodee's weight loss blog, The Amazing Shrinking Mom. I've been reading Melodee's Actual Unretouched Photo blog for a couple of months now but only discovered Shrinking Mom via someone else's blog. This lovely lady is an inspiration, having lost over 50 pounds, and she mirrors so many of my struggles and concerns. The fact that she'd managed to succeed even with all those stumbling blocks really gave me the cyber-kick in the pants I needed to stop accepting my own excuses this week.

Something needs to give folks. And I'd really rather it wasn't my chair.

Cheers,
Lizzie