August 5, 241

So...

I'm beginning to get tired of this 240 thing.

I'm still, of course, sticking to the meal plan and have come back down to 241 since the family reunion. At this point, I just hope to see something in the 230s when I weigh in on Saturday. At this point, I have no plans to change my current plan.

After all, there was that family reunion interruption. I hate that it has interrupted or stalled my weight loss. I also hate that I can't eat as much cake as I want to without losing weight. Wait, where did that come from? Sorry, that was uncalled for.

Also I went to the gym on Monday night to lift weights. Every once in a while I feel my triceps or the deltoids, and Monday night was a good workout session - I worked out everything except the triceps. I should probably go again tomorrow or the next day, even though it could mean a disappointing number on the scale on Saturday.

I had a GREAT yoga session this morning. I made it all the way through the video as far as I ever go, through the and was ready to keep going, but the next pose was "Prayer Pose" which is way too advanced for me. I suppose the next time I make it all the way through to Prayer Pose and am ready to do more, and have time, I should fast-forward past prayer pose, or just practice some other poses for a while, build up strength in my thighs to maintain these lunging poses. There was definite improvement in my forward bend, which I put to use throughout the day picking clutter off the floor and shaving my toes. I love seeing progress with the yoga program. Consistency is the key to results, in yoga, weight training, and everything else. Consistency is the hard part, too.

I decided to take measurements today. Once I finished, I couldn't really see the point. Except, I did seem to notice that there is less lower belly sagging into the hip measurement, so my hip measurement went down some.

As for planning a little booklet of meals for myself to rely on during maintenance, well I haven't got very far. I designed one meal with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but I had a hard time getting enough protein in it to balance the carbohydrates and fat. Eventually I just added an egg white to the meal, and eliminated one of the slices of bread.

I have to go to the grocery store now.

Documentation of my foods for those who are interested in what I eat

Okay, last week I ventured away from the Summer Seasonal diet at ediets, but I didn't enjoy it. I just had a bad food week for the most part.

5 days out of last week I had eggs, toast, and blueberries (+ additional accoutrements). It was fine, it was a good breakfast. I would never have thought to put blueberries on eggs.

The grilled chicken cranberry salad had good ingredients but I thought they shouldn't have been put together in one bowl. Lettuce, grilled chicken, red wine vinegar, tomato, cucumber, and dried cranberries. Eh.

The crab quesadilla, I showed you a picture of. It was ok, not great.

An awesome snack was a 6 ounces of sugar-free pudding with chopped cherries mixed in. Wow, that was heaven! And I didn't ever even think about going back for more pudding. (I told you guys I had a pudding problem.)

The beef taco salad was actually good. I liked it.

The broccoli pizza was a good snack. Liked it.

The mexican layer dip, with the fat free cream cheese, was awful. Fat free cream cheese fails as a food substance.

The grilled steak with corn and potatoes was kind of a failure. I decided to just cook it all together in the frying pan. The steak got kind of tough and I don't know I should have been more into it, but I wasn't.

The grand prize for last week goes to the Tuscan tuna sub. That whole wheat hoagie roll was always welcomed by my appetite last week, and the tuna salad inside was more artichoke hearts than tuna but gawd it was delicious and I want to save the recipe for the days in the future when I have to make myself plan my own meals.

I'll have to share the recipe with you, too. Later, when I have it.

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As for next week, well I'm back on the Glycemic Index Plan (Convenience Version) which is good because I am already stocked with most of the staples and I already know most of the meals and I already know I love the food. I had so little to buy at the grocery store I was sure I'd come in under $100. I guess, what with all the dairy products and the organic tomatoes, well, this week's groceries cost me $115. Money is getting to be a BIG DEAL for me as the summer continues on without much income, and I think about getting health insurance. I hope I don't deplete all my savings.

Today's meals:

Breakfast - Tomato, Cheese, and Avocado on 2 slices wheat bread with watermelon and milk

Snack 1 - Cottage Cheese with canteloupe and sliced almonds

Lunch - Tofu and Black Bean Salad (flavored with lime juice and cumin) with watermelon

Snack 2 - Egg and Tomato Salad with 4 Wheat Thins

Dinner - Frozen Dinner with yogurt and nuts.

I'm substituting watermelon for some of the fruits because I have this big watermelon taking up space in my fridge I have to get rid of, and it's really good. Some foods just weren't made for singles.

I went to the grocery store at 3:00 a.m. and didn't finish preparing my food for the day until 5:30 a.m. so I'm late getting to work today thanks to this stupid diet.

Well, if you have any specific questions, feel free to ask.

Three Different Calorie Counts for Today's Food

I entered my food into fitday.com and myfitnesspal.com and both give very different numbers from the calorie breakdown at ediets.com.

ediets.com breakdown

Breakfast - 554
Lunch - 548
Snack - 186
Dinner - 568

TOTAL - 1856 calories

Fitday.com - 2207 calories

Myfitnesspal.com - 2222 calories

Hi, that's over 350 calories difference! Now, granted, I had regular tortilla chips instead of baked low-sodiums in my taco salad, but surely that doesn't account for it! And Myfitnesspal.com is all looking down his nose at me, all "You're only supposed to be eating 1340 calories." Honestly, I wonder if people who undereat like that have a HARDER time losing weight? Because after I awoke from my long deep nap (like 5 hours) I stepped on the scale today and saw 241 pounds.

It's not an official weigh, but in the middle of the day it should be MORE not LESS. 241 - am I losing weight too fast all of a sudden?

I suspect getting deep sleep, occasionally skipping meals, and occasionally having my cheat days, all play a role in my weight loss success so far? That, and of course, not eating so much candy every day. (I went into a CVS yesterday and felt like, while I was there, I should buy a candy bar. Although I knew, intellectually, that I should not.)

Well, it's out of my hands. Mine is not to reason why, mine is but to eat exactly what ediets tells me to and reap the rewards as they happen.

Oh, also, I realized that I'm having 2 eggs for breakfast every morning for the past several mornings. This recipe includes the whole eggs, yolk and all. I wouldn't ordinarily give myself that many egg yolks to eat in one week. I'll have to be more careful next time.

I wanted to blog about superfoods, as I read about them from - darnit - some blogger. I've just spent an hour trying to find this blog post, but I've forgotten who it is. I think I accidentally closed the window on this blog before I had a chance to bookmark it. Anyway, it was someone who had a lot of success by eating a lot of these 25 or so "superfoods." Like, she may have eaten ONLY the superfoods. Many of the foods on that list are foods I've been eating a lot of - tomatoes, almonds, avocado, blueberries come to mind in particular. I thought it was interesting and wanted to focus on "superfoods," pay attention to how many of them are in my diet.

Oh I found the article - not a blog post but a thread in a message board. I got some of the details wrong in my memory, so you can read it straight from the horse's mouth HERE.

July 23, 244.5

Hello. Ok.

MY WEIGHT

I haven't really been able to get a legitimate reading lately because I haven't had a clearly full night's sleep, and the only readings that count are the ones first thing in the morning, after a full night's sleep, and for the past two days I've gotten out of bed after only a couple hours. Still, it appears I'm hanging around 244.5 or dropped maybe to 244. Tomorrow I should be able to get a reading.

DAILY LIFE

I went to work today with some more people who hadn't seen me in a while - one of whom I was particularly interested in. Nobody appeared to notice anything different about me. Which, again, is fine. Possibly they notice and didn't want to say anything, and I say that's sensitive of them.

CLOTHES SHOPPING AND BODY ANALYSIS

On the other hand, after work I went shopping to get size 20 jeans. What a nightmare. Everything's boot-cut, and I was just too annoyed with the whole process of shopping to drive all over town looking for a pair of jeans that wouldn't offend the shape of my legs and flap around my ankles with every step. So I just broke down and bought two pair. They're spandexy, too, so who knows what'll happen to them in the wash. Maybe by the time I'm a size 18 clothing retailers will have some decent jeans at least available in the shops.

I also bought some t-shirts that I saw, and a dress (size petite! and I am tall - it's a little babydolly on me but still a classy royal purple fancy dress) so I need to wear a dress somewhere sometime now. Trying on the t-shirts and blouses, and the dress, I realized my body still has the same problem that drive me to start this diet in the first place 80 pounds ago... on oversized upper belly jutting out in the front. Apart from that, I could tolerate everything, even my fat arms don't really bother me. I keep hoping if I just stick with it, that fat will finally start to burn away and I can restore to a more typical version of me, but it is very stubborn! If I have to get down to 130 pounds, I WILL lose the fat from my belly and hopefully my cheeks will pull in some, too. Anyway, the t-shirts that I bought were really pretty cute and I just have to live with the body I have for as long as I have it. I considered that I would shrink into the t-shirts. Hopefully, I will shrink more proportionately.

DISCREPANCY

I just joined myfitnesspal.com just to see what it was about. I entered that I wanted to aim to lose 2 pounds per week, and they budgeted a diet of under 1400 calories for me. Ediets, on the other hand, has me on 1850! And projects weight loss of 2 pounds per week. That's quite a discrepancy!! Of course, I've been losing on ediets, and it's possible they have been adjusting my intake already based on my weekly weight loss, which was a big jump of 4 pounds last week, which the computer may have interpreted as being too much, although it was the tail end of a plateau.

EXERCISE

I meant to get exercise, but having had not enough sleep makes real physical exertion unsuitable. Maybe tomorrow.

MEAL PICTURES

Pictures are fun. Here's tonight's dinner - that silly crab quesadilla. Tonight, instead of attempting to fold the tortilla over all that stuffing, I just put all the stuff on one tortilla, put the other tortilla on top of all the stuff, used a little more cheese on the top and bottom. There was also less stuffing than yesterday because I forgot to include the onion. I have also got twice as much as cantaloupe as I'm supposed to - that looks more like 2 cups than 1 but I ate it anyway, silly me.

Of course, I post this not because I particularly liked this meal, but just to document my diet a little more illustratively.

CRAB QUESADILLA

2 whole wheat tortillas

3 1/2 oz canned crab meat

3 tbsp salsa

1 oz cheese

1/4 green bell pepper

1/4 red bell pepper

1/4 c. chopped onion

1 Roma tomato

chives and coriander

2 tbsp reduced-fat sour cream

TOMATO & AVOCADO SALAD

2 Roma tomatoes

1/3 c chopped avocado

1/4 small red onion, chopped

squeeze of lemon juice

1 CUP CANTALOUPE

eating it all

Just ate dinner. I'm pretty disappointed in this crab "quesadilla." This recipe calls for a ton of veggies to be folded over with a tiny 6" tortilla and a measly one ounce of cheese. :-/ Needless to say it was just a big mess, and I'd hardly call it a quesadilla with only one ounce of cheese.

Oh well.

Now I have to make food for tomorrow because I have to go in to work tomorrow.

Tonight I went to hang with my parents, and I told my parents that I was concerned a little about how I would transition into regular life without being the dieting hard-ass I've been for the past 4 months, without just regaining. Dad said, "Just don't binge eat." Which, I must say, is a riot coming from him - he's the one who was the bad example for me growing up. Mounds up his plate, then goes back for seconds. Pile up the salt and butter. Whatever there is to eat, he's not one to be moderate. However, his body can handle it. I don't know how much binge eating I did. I ate out, I cleaned my plate, I'd get seconds on stuff I liked, I'd treat myself to drinks and/or dessert, I enjoyed candy and sweets without restricting myself. Bingeing, though? Maybe sometimes, but not so often that I remember it. Then I came home and marveled at how I was eating a pudding cup. Mmmm, tasty pudding. Back in the day, before the diet, if I did go grocery shopping, I might buy a six-pack of pudding, but if I did, I'd know it would all be gone before I went to bed that night. Ice cream sandwiches, Ben & Jerry's pints, and cupcakes - same way. But I didn't go grocery shopping often, and if I did, I might occasionally disallow myself from buying the binge items, because I knew that there would be no self-control, no stopping, with certain foods.

The diet told me to buy fat free pudding, but I opted for sugar-free instead, because I felt I'd be less likely to lose my cool and inhale all the pudding in one night. So far, so good. Sometimes over the course of the day I feel hunger but it's not out of control. Besides, as I've said, I've undereaten for the past several days. By the time I go to sleep tonight, I'll have eaten all the food in my meal plan for today - 1850 calories. I call it a victory.

I'm afraid I've been tracking my weight at fitday.com, but over at Stephen's blog I discovered myfitnesspal.com. Over there his food chart is divided up by meal which makes more sense of it than one big list of a bunch of food I ate today. But I'm not prepared to make a transition to myfitnesspal.com at this time.

So here's the link to my fitday, fwiw. http://fitday.com/fitness/PublicJournals.html?Owner=hazel7373

Pictures of Meals

These are a couple of breakfasts.

Yesterday was a potato, ham and green pepper hash with berries (since I was out of grapefruit - it was supposed to be half a grapefruit) with soy milk and diet Dr. Pepper.

This morning it's 2/3 cup part-skim ricotta cheese (the recipe called for fat-free but they didn't have it at the grocery store) with raspberries, whole wheat toast, and skim milk. I did the count on it - 480 calories. I wonder how much difference it would have made to have had fat free ricotta instead of part-skim.