Good Friday Food Diary

[talkingmountain]

Last week I realized that I can no longer feel the fold of fat on my neck when I turn my head. This is a momentous day!

The lbs have not really been coming off, but I've finally noticed a real change in body size. Down to an 18-20 from a 26. It's hard work to avoid that diet mentality that says the lbs have to go down for me to consider this as "successful!"

[f1jim]

Someone has to step up and give you a public whippin'. SactoBob sent me!!!
f1jim

[talkingmountain]

LOL thank you jim (& bob, vicariously!).

Today I ate pretty well - lots of berries & some veggies, all grains were whole, no vegan truffles at the coffee shop, no baked junkola, and got in a good hard walk for 45 minutes. Still got into some chocolate chips but having a trusty sweet potato on hand helped a lot.

I am reading David Kessler's book and finding a lot of material to digest (pun intended) there. It is such a relief to have someone that other people take seriously put into scientific terms what happens in my brain around certain foods! And to see that this is not just theory, but science that can be tested & proven.

All my life I've been told that when it came to eating, I was lazy, weak, lacked willpower, sneaky, hopeless, or all other assortment of negative descriptions. And what's more, there are thousands of us out there, secretly thinking the same horrible things about ourselves...

Thank you Dr. Kessler!

[talkingmountain]

accidental duplicate posting deleted

[talkingmountain]

Since I've gotten the hang of being meat-free, dairy-free, & cooking w/o added oils, my next demon to tackle are sweets. Baked sweets & chocolate, more precisely.

Several successful McDougallers have been kind enough to post helpful "self-talk" hints, so I'm going to summarize those here in hopes of having them at ready reference. Feel free to add more!

"I've had that food many times before. Now, I have a choice. Do I really need to experience it again? I already know what its like. Maybe I should try something else now that I know better." - MilesA

"That's not food, it's poison." - TominTN

"I am not going to eat [X] because I can see my arteries calling out in pain when I do"

"Do I want the taste now or a drop in my weight tomorrow morning?" - TominTN

"Wow! Sweet potatoes (or favorite healthy food X) are so good!" - TominTN

"I don't eat anything that [contains X -- dairy, oil diglycerides, white flour, etc]"

"Processed food products are not my friends."

(When seeing food ads) "Look at how they're trying to manipulate me." -TominTN

(When hearing or seeing misleading nutritional information.) "Lies, all lies." - TominTN

[Anna Green]

Hi, I love what you are doing, giving up the shame and taking on some positive thinking. Simple but powerful...

[talkingmountain]

Don't want to get whipped by jim again, so I'm putting down everything I eat today.

AM
Wholewheat cereal, blueberries, almond milk.
Coffee w/a bit of soy milk & 1 tsp sugar (sorry, not gonna tackle coffee till I've got sweets out of the way & am getting to bed earlier!).

Mid-AM
Cantaloupe & black seedless grapes (instead of Krispy Kremes heh heh heh). OK, smack me, I'm feeling a bit superior and I KNOW pride cometh before the fall!
Water (trying to remember to drink more... I like it, I just forget to).

Lunch
Leftover brown basmati/wheat berries/wild rice mixture topped w/leftover tabboulleh
Diet Coke (tsk tsk tsk. I know. No excuses. But here's how I've been successful so far without the usual "deprivation backlash" that has gotten me on every other diet attempt -- I am eliminating one thing at a time, and focusing on things that are problems for me. I drink one diet coke a day because I want the caffeine pickup. I don't even like the taste very much. I'm confident that I'll either be able to drop the caffeine or start making time to make iced tea instead, in due time. But my focus now is breaking my addiction to high-calorie-density sweets!).

PM Snack
Planned on having leftover cabbage salad but I ended up having abt 1/4 c chocolate chips & pb. Ah well. At least it's gone now.

Supper
Small bowl whole wheat cereal w/blueberries & almond milk.

11:45 am observation:
The 2 dozen Krispy Kremes someone brought to work are gone. The big tub of washed green & black seedless grapes I brought to work is still pretty full. The half a cantaloupe someone cut up & put out is almost all gone (I confess to snitching most of it...)

NEED EASY SUPPER IDEAS. PICKY FAMILY & WE'RE ALL SICK OF PASTA.

[talkingmountain]

5 a.m
Small bowl whole wheat cereal, blueberries, almond milk.

45-min SPIN class

7 am
Coffee w/a bit of soy milk & 1 tsp sugar

8 am
Usual oatmeal (thick-rolled oats, 1 banana, handful raisins, ~1/4 c garbanzos, cinnamon, cardamom, almond milk)

10 am
Desperately sleepy, got a sm bag of mini-pretzels & 1 can diet coke to help keep awake.

No lunch break

2 pm
2 cups red peppers w/hummos
1/2 sweet potato
1/2 can diet coke, again for wakefulness (gee, am I getting the point that I need to go to bed earlier???)

4pm
1/2 pkg pop-tarts (ick. it was just there and i wanted to chew on something to stay awake. at least it didn't taste good, that's progress!)

Now I'm feeling stressed b/c I can't think of anything to serve the family for supper. They are so darned picky and I get SICK of trying to please them, especially at the end of the day when I'm tired & not hungry myself! All I want to do is go for a walk and go to bed!

OK done whining...

[talkingmountain]

Well I've officially gone below the 200 lb mark, and have lost almost 50 lbs now.

I've been focusing on eating more in general, and allowing myself to have some sweets each day, but am trying to stick more to my own home-made sweets (no added fats, whole grain). This seems to be working.

Still, no one but me seems to notice that I've lost weight, even people I haven't seen in a long time. It's a little frustrating sometimes but I keep reminding myself, I wasn't doing this to lose weight anyway.

Saw Food, Inc at a sell-out crowd last week. Hubby & I had to sit on the floor to watch as all the seats had sold out hours before! Definite must-see, for anyone who hasn't seen it yet. Personally I think it's best seen in a theatre or at least a big-screen TV; I think a lot of the impact would be lost by watching the DVD on our regular 26-inch screen.

[toadfood]

Congratulations on that weight loss milestone! I predict that people will notice eventually. I did most of my weight loss for the year between January and March, but people have only just started to really comment on it. It's weird.

[Ege Bamyasi]

Congratulations on your 50 lb. loss! It's good to hear that you are becoming more controlled and disciplined in your food choices. I'm sure that you are going to get to where people do notice your weight loss. It doesn't sound like it will take much longer at the rate you're progressing. Keep up the good work!

[talkingmountain]

Thanks Toadie & Ege! Reading your posts and knowing that we're all in this together is a part of what helps keep me going.

[sksamboots]

Congrats on the 50

[talkingmountain]

Getting a bit braver with this stuff so I've tried to create a "signature block." Just making a post in my journal here to see what it looks like.

[Letha.]

Getting a bit braver with this stuff so I've tried to create a "signature block." Just making a post in my journal here to see what it looks like.

I like your signtature. You can clean up your ticker by erasing the [url=http://www.TickerFactory.com/weight-loss/wAnPgr9/] in the pasted code. It’s unnecessary for this forum and it visually shows up on your posts.
Letha