This is my very first Live Well Wednesday post. I say this with much trepidation because I’m certain by Friday I’ll be deleting it and having another ‘first’ LWW post next Wednesday. I’m not exactly known for my staying power with the whole weight loss thing. Just check out the ‘Weight Loss’ category and mentally add up the times I’ve begun a weight loss plan in the last year and failed. It’s not pretty folks. Not pretty at all.
Sad thing is, I’m more in need of help now than ever before. When I joined in the May Day Weight Loss Challenge on Tales From The Scales last year I was somewhere in the mid-seventies (that’s KILOS folks, not pounds! Translates into something like 165 pounds, give or take) and thought I was horrendously overweight. I had a BMI of 28 which put me about in the middle of that category. I know, I know - BMI isn’t the best way to measure success. Most of the time I don’t pay attention to it. Unless, of course, I happen to dwell on the fact that as of three kilos/6 ½ pounds ago, I’ve officially moved up into the ‘obese’ category.
I’m not obese! Mirrors lie, right? I’ve got wubbly jubbly bits all over this not-yet-thirty year old body and it pains me. I have a folder on my computer on which I squirrel away the less-than-complimentary pictures. I make myself look at them and then I feel even worse. But at least if I succeed I’ll have one heck of a ‘before’ picture gallery!
Okay, deep breath. The current weight - 82.7 kilograms. 182.3 pounds. *Sob!* I don’t even know what my measurements are but its safe to assume I’m not wearing many cute and trendy fashions these days.
Last year during the May Day Weight Loss Challenge I developed a sort of walking streak. I’d just bought an iPod (thankyou Apple) and discovered podcasts so I’d load that baby up and just walk. Once I was out, I was fine. I could walk 45-60 mins at a moderate pace without keeling over. But give myself the opportunity to procrastinate, and procrastinate I did. After two months of walking almost every day (but not paying any attention whatsoever to diet, which saw me GAIN 2 or more kilograms during the time I was doing the Challenge) I gave it up. Because I’m stupid like that. And I haven’t walked much since.
Part of the problem with that is that it had been so stinking hot lately. High summer here can be brutal and nobody with a full quota of brain cells would walk anywhere except during the pre-dawn hours. And unfortunately, I couldn’t go walking that early. For a start, it’s just plain crazy. Yes, all you early walkers - you are ill. Stop now. You’re making me look bad, LOL. But a lot of it had to do with Talented Hubby’s rotating roster. He wasn’t always here to keep an eye on the kids and to be perfectly blunt, voluntarily waking up to drag my sorry behind around in the dark was always going to be a distant second to, oh I don’t know, peeling my toenails off with a pair of salad tongs.
And afternoons/early evenings are out. The hours of 3-8 pm are collectively known as the Tell Me Again Why We Had So Many Kids? hours. Also known as the Witching Hour(s). From the school run in the afternoon through to bedtime it’s go, go, go. When the little stinkers angels are finally in bed at 8:30, I collapse and self-medicate with chocolate/Doritos/whipped cream from a can (obviously off the menu now…*wail*) and whatever trashy ‘what’s big from the USA’ television show happens to be on (also - writers? Your strike killed my one best vice. I don’t know whether to be mad or grateful :P) I don’t move again for two hours and then I - completely logically, I tell you - rush around like a mad chicken getting the prep work done for the next school day. Ludicruous? Perhaps. Me-all-over? Sure is!
(This whole ‘mad chicken theory’ will be a subject for a separate post - stay tuned, LOL)
So what’s that rule they always tell you about exercise? Find a time you know will work for you and stick with it. So I did. My Basic Daily Schedule (soon to be uploaded to the new digs here) includes a daily 1hr, 15 min window carved out for this. Unfortunately it’s after 9am and the way the weather has been behaving, I’ve been cooped up at home. So I had to resort to alternative measures.
I bought an exercise DVD. I stared at it on the shelf alongside the TaeBo Cardio double pack (I can’t make up my mind whether to be impressed with Blanks’ enthusiasm, appreciative that he doesn’t appear to mind sweating on international TV screens or downright roll on the floor laughing until my head explodes) for a month and a half before opening it up. It hurt. But I could do it inside, directly underneath the air-conditioning vent. Only I didn’t.
Really, there’s no excuse. No matter which way you slice the bread, it has to be sliced, sigh. So on the plan. There’s always a plan. Because if you go into such things with no plan, well, you’re just gonna fall flat on your face. But I’m still wary of going too far with The Plan because I don’t tend to succeed very well whenever the D word is mentioned. There’s a whole bunch of great resources online and in bookstores and I get enthusiastic about them all (one at a time…usually) and then when I’ve signed up/bought the book I lose interest. Because like I said, my track record? It ain’t too good.
I’m not a fan of fad/mass-anything and this includes most recognised weight loss plans. I have never tried Atkins, South Beach, Ultimate Weight Solution, F-Plan or any other plan that requires more than an automated response. Some folks swear by these plans but I could never really warm to them. Also, Dr Atkins is clearly evil. Reduce your carbs! Pffft! I even have reservations with Weight Watchers - why take something simple and turn it into a mess of points/branded products and must-attend meetings? Also, Weight Watchers meetings usually cost something like $18 per week where I am and that’s after the registration fee which is around $33. Don’t even get me started on Jenny Craig - ‘food additional’ *shudder*. I guess the only thing that really sits right with my logical brain is calorie counting. I know, it sounds contradictive to what I just said, but it’s finite. There’s no grey. And that tends to be about the only way I succeed with this ‘weight loss thing’. Even when I’m counting, I give myself a generous ‘budget’ of 1600 calories. So that’s what I’ll be doing this time around. Today was the official first day and no, I didn’t go so well (um, Nutella? Stop thwarting my plans!) but at some point I just have to stop that ‘oh gosh I did a bad thing and must begin again NEXT week’ and just start again TOMORROW.
There’s a groovy little (free) online calorie/diet diary down here - CalorieKing.com.au for us Aussies (not to be confused with the US version, CalorieKing.COM which I don’t think is free) and I wax and wane with my enthusiasm for that but I realised this week I’m becomming very legalistic about the whole thing (fretting about the calorie content of salsa!) so now I’ll just use it for their food database, which is based around one of those little pocket calorie counter books (which I also own). Remove as many steps as possible. I don’t need a computer to lose weight (Live Well Wednesday participants nonwithstanding, of course, LOL).
Instead of itemising each and every calorie, I broke down my 1600 budget into meal budgets. I’m allowing 350 for breakfast, 350 for lunch, 450 for dinner and a collective 450 for snacks (3 x 150). It does NOT need to be exact. I can add up the figures for that particular meal as I go in my head. For example, let’s look at breakfast. I look at the cereal box and see 125 cals for a serve. I know my lite milk is around 40 cals for a third cup. A cup of tea made the way I like it is another 50 or so. So far I’m up to 215 - and this is a rough guess. That leaves me room for a piece of fruit and everything together is a solid meal for me. I didn’t need my calorie counter book, the food database online, or a calculator. I don’t need to write anything down because I know if I stick to my meal calorie budgets I’m right on track. And then I can forget about everything until the next meal. At morning tea, I already know my cup of tea is 50 so I have room for a 100 cal snack - a piece of fruit, a serving of yogurt, even a muesli (granola) bar. And forget about it until lunchtime…and on it goes. As long as I don’t seriously undercut on the calories and choose healthier foods (lots of fruit and veg, etc), I can’t really go wrong. If I don’t lose as much weight as I’d like I’ll cut a snack out and reduce the meal calorie budgets until I am (I was particularly generous with my dinner budget). Or I’ll track for a couple of days just to make sure I’m not shortchanging myself, calorie-wise.
I think this will work okay for me. I only need to worry about the meal at hand. I even went so far as to check the fast food places on my usual ’shopping route’ and pick out in advance a meal or items that would fit into my lunch budget of 350 cals. Did you know you can get a Lean Beef Burger, a Garden Salad, ranch dressing (oh, another nemesis, sigh) and a diet coke for about 325 cals? Subway salads are massive and at 135 calories for a roast chicken salad I can afford extra meat. Wendy’s Chocollo (low fat chocolate soft serve) without the cone is a reasonable snack at something like 100 cal for a small serve. There should not be any logical reason for feeling deprived.
If I have the guts to stick with it. And therein lies the problem. I do need accountability. The second I start giving myself some slack I trip up. And there’s a difference between the flexibility of something like what I just described and ’slack’ which, if not watched carefully, translates way too easily into procrastination and laziness for me.
As for exercise - as I already have the time carved out for a workout, I’m going to pressure myself into actually taking it. I’ll go easy for the first couple of weeks I think but the ultimate aim is to do 45 mins cardio daily in the form of either a walk or an exercise DVD (mornings) and then every second day do a short weights/resistance tube workout in the evenings.
And I will try as hard as I possibly can to be succinct on this subject next week, LOL.
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