Plateau

I am at a very plateaued place, and I am in roller coaster mode. Of course, I only have 5 to 10 pounds to reach the first final goal I set, but I have decided I would like to drop that goal by another 10 pounds just to see if I can do it.

I went through almost three weeks of up and down weight, and let me tell you, that gets very frustrating.

My daughter gave me a couple of ideas, and I think I am going to use the one where I add 100 calories to my current calorie count.  I have been trying to stay between 1100 and 1200, but I think I am going to allow myself, for the next week to reach 1200 to 1250 each day, and then I will drop that by 100 and see if it makes a difference.  She also mentioned varying what I am eating, but I really enjoy my salads at lunchtime, and I can actually eat more in a salad then if I have eggs, bacon, and toast, even though with those three items, I would be eating fewer calories; of course, I need to add the butter for the toast and frying the eggs, but still, food-wise, it is less food I am eating.  I will see if upping the calories for a week and then lowering them will help bring me off of this plateau.

So, it has been about a week of adding the calories, and I actually added almost 200 calories to my diet.  I am ranging between 1300 and 1400 calories per day, and guess what - it has worked.  I have finally begun to drop some weight again.  I will probably stay at this calorie target for a few more weeks and see if I still continue to lose a few pounds or ounces here and there.

I guess my daughter was correct when she said that your body can decide that you are starving it, and then your body retaliates by retaining weight to fight off starvation.  My goal was never to starve myself, but sometimes, I forget that my body knows better than what my mind is thinking.  Who knew you could lose weight by eating more.  Of course, not too much more because then I would really begin to gain again, and weight gain is not my goal.

Give Up Nothing

This refers to much more than just quitting because you do not think you can continue.  No, this is about the food itself, and then on yourself.

Give up nothing that you enjoy, or better yet, Give up Nothing That You Love; yes, I am talking about food.  Instead of giving up on food that you enjoy, either cut the serving in half or eat only what a serving is because if you force yourself to give it up, then you will get frustrated and see it only as something you are losing out on.

For instance, I love chocolate and did not want to give it up, so what I did was to look at serving sizes, the number of calories in the serving, and then decided what I could and could not live with.  I made changes.  I have gone to eating Peppermint Patties, the mini ones, and Unwrapped Mint 3 Musketeers that are also mini bites.  Each of these alternatives are only 15 calories per piece.  Could I live with that?  Yes, I could, and I do.  Do I eat only one?  Heck no, I have anywhere from two to four, sometimes five, depending on what I really want and if I have the calories for the number of pieces I plan on taking.  I titled this post “Give Up Nothing” because it really is about not giving up those things that you really enjoy eating.

What else have I not given up?  Eating out, but I am careful where I choose to eat out at.  Living in a small town, we have very few choices, and that does help.  I still eat at subway; you can always find something low in calories to eat at subway, and Pizza Hut, but my family has gone to eating the personal pan pizzas rather than buying medium and large pizzas.  If you have less to tempt you, then you will not feel like you have to eat more; besides, we never could eat an entire large pizza and always threw some of it away.  Of course, the other factor in that is that I cannot eat the red sauce because it makes me sick, but I can eat the white sauce and the BBQ, both of which I really enjoy.  The rest of the family enjoys the red sauce.

The other places around us are Sonic and Wendy's, and I never liked Wendy's food.  Sonic, on the other hand, well, have you looked at their nutritional menu?  Their hamburgers, although very good, are astronomically high in calories.  I can make a hamburger at home with almost 1/4 the calories, and much healthier for me.  In my house, we have gone to buying 90/10 lean ground sirloin; yes, it is more expensive, but we also do not eat beef that often.  We now eat more pork, chicken, turkey, and fish.  All much better choices for us and also leaner with less calories.  It is a wonder what you can do with those meats when you start looking for recipes on the internet.

So, as I said, do not give up what you really enjoy.  Look at what the choices are in that food group, and choose wisely and with your health in mind.  Calories count, but so does enjoying what you are eating.  You be in control of what you choose.

Harder Than I Made it Look

My daughter kept telling me that it looked so simple for me to lose the weight that I lost, but let me assure you, it is not an easy undertaking, but well worth the effort.

I may have looked easy from the outside, but inside it was a continual decision to stay with the program and the new eating style.  I had to want this and want it very much, but it also had to be something that I knew I could live with.  I could not take away the things I really enjoyed, and for me that really is chocolate and meat.  Now, my intake of red meat has declined, but I have discovered that I do not really miss beef because I have a decided preference for chicken, turkey, pork (a definitely favorite), fish (but I check which ones are lower in calories), and occasionally ham (the spiral pre-cut ones that are easier to serve since they are pre-cut).

From my point of view, it has always been a matter of what I eat and do not eat, but it is now measured out in appropriate portions.  At first, it was a pain to weigh everything out, but over the past year, it has become a habit.  Last summer, when I was on vacation, I took my scale along, but seldom weighed out my portions because I did learn that over time you can determine some portion sizes by the look of them.  Over the three weeks I was on vacation, I lost 7 pounds, so I did okay with not weighing out everything.  Also, you will be surprised by what you find actually already recorded in the MyFitnessPal database.  There were things there that I had not expected to encounter but found them anyway.  It never hurts to do a search, you will be surprised at what you find.

The keys to any weight loss program are determination, perseverance, a true desire to change the way you eat, and making it a lifestyle change that you can live with.  Did I ever think I could live on a weight management program that required I had to count calories?  No, I never did because I tried it over thirty years ago and it was a pain to look everything up in a book, guess about things not in the book, and try to figure out how many calories in a portion of a favorite recipe.  This app has made all of the possible, and I truly love having it as part of my life, and it really is now an integral part of my life.

So, the following pictures were done by my daughter to give and side-by-side view of both of our journeys over the past year, but the before picutres do date back to more than a year ago.  It still shows what progress we have made.

The before picture is from the summer of 2009, and the after is August of 2015.

I'm in Control

Now, I don't want anyone to think that weight loss is easy or that it will be the same for every person because it is not and will not be that way.  What has made this method of weight loss effective for me is the fact that I  am in control.  I do not have anyone planning out my meals or telling me what I can and cannot eat, but me; this one important fact makes this even more effective for me.

Before, when I tried dieting, I was told by someone else what I could and could not eat. I was told what I would have to give up.  I was expected, then, to not only give up things I liked and eat things I did not like, but I was also expected to never again eat the things I was supposed to give up.  What kind of real like expectation is that?  Well, it was one that I could never live with.

So, as I said, what makes this program, system, method, or vehicle of weight loss effective for me is that I - me, myself, and I - am in complete control of what I eat.  The program does not make the calls as to what I can eat nor does anyone else.  This is the one major point to remember if you should ever want to try this method - only you are in control, and you do not have to give up any of the foods you like.  What you do have to give up are the calories.

A good example of this occurred in the middle of June.  My cat, who was very special to me, and the only pet I had ever owned, became extremely sick with a major infection. Now the infection cleared up, but my cat did not recover.  He gave up eating and drank very little, and hardly slept, and not sleeping for him was extremely unusual because he slept more than he was awake during the day.  He became very weak, lost weight, and could only walk a short distance before he had to plop down and the floor and rest, and then it was hard for him to get up.  I finally had to make the call to have him put to sleep.  I was completely devastated, and afterwards, I needed something comforting, so my daughter and sister took me to Sonic where they purchased me a Triple Chocolate Master Blast; now it was only a small but it still had a total of 900 calories.  I enjoyed every delicious bite, but as an exchange for indulging, I ate less for supper and made sure I did not go over my daily allotted calories.  So, you see, you can eat what you want, you just have to make some changes to fit what you want into your calorie count.

Okay, so you are in control, but you do need something else.  You need to be committed to seeing this through.  On my last blog I said you need determination, which you do, but once your are determined, you then need to be committed.  Remember, this is your life we are talking about and only you can make changes that matter in your life.  If you are not really willing to make a change, if you cannot be committed to the change, then this nor nothing else will work for you.  I wanted this, and I was determined to try to make this work.  I am now committed to this, and I have not been discouraged in such as way as to give up, and I have not failed.

When I started this, I did determine one other thing.  I was going to do this for me, and I was going to at least try to see if they platform could work for me.  I was very pleasantly surprised at how success it had been; how successful I have been to stay the course; how proud I am of myself that I have finally found something that I could make work.  I am completely in control of what I eat, and it has made some major changes in my life.

Those changes are what I will discuss in my next blog, but just to keep anyone who reads this update as to my progress, I will add that from April to June I lost another 18.4 pounds.  With the 51.8 from the previous months, it means I lost a total of 70.2 pounds since I began in November.

Is this platform working for me?  Heck yeah!  Can it work for you? Only if you want it to because that is the only way any weight loss can work.  You have to want it to work, but it really helps when you, and no one else is in complete control of what you are doing. Hey, it's your life, so who else better to be in control.

God & Determination

There are two things that helped me start and stay on the program I am now using.

God was the first thing I needed to begin and maintain what has become a life change for me.  God is the one who helps and encourages me to stay true to this eating pattern.  I know I can turn to Him whenever I feel discouraged, like when I hit the plateaus were I stop losing or go on a rollercoaster ride of gaining and losing.  I always know He is there for me, so I do not become completely discouraged and give up.

Determination was the second thing I needed.  Now, I have been determined before, but what I lacked was a platform whereby I could make a change and monitor what I was eating.  I have to admit that I have felt determined in the past, and the desire to lose weight has been with me for a very long time; the problem was that I did not know how to go about it.  Oh yes, there is the concept of just eating less, but how can you do that when you don't want to give up certain foods.  That was one of the major factors that stopped me many times before I even started.

As I said before, my doctor made many suggestions, and one of those suggestions was counting calories.  Now, anyone who is of the older generations and remembers what it was like to try to count calories will remember that you had record everything on paper, you had to look up foods in books, and you had a real hard struggle with meals that came from your favorite recipes or from restaurants. It was not an easy task and became frustrating very fast, and what generally happened was that you gave up.  Absolute frustration that leads to giving up puts an end to anything whether you have the determination or not, and even knowing that God is on your side may not be enough to keep you going in the fact of frustration so overwhelming that you do not know how to make something work effectively.  With that said, so ends any attempt at losing weight, and if you lost anything, you immediately gain it all back.

So what if you have determination and God on your side?  How do you go about gaining your GOAL?  That is where the platform came in for me.  MYFITNESSPAL was a God send for me, and the fact that I even stumbled upon it was great.  Here was something that would count the calories for me, and not even just that, it also had the calorie count for restaurants and fast food places.  I could also add my own recipes and it would give me a calorie count for my meals.  With that said, I past the first major roadblock in my personal goal to not only lose weight but to make a life change in eating that I could live with.  That fact was also one of the major roadblocks in my quest for losing weight.

If whatever way you want to use to lose weight, it has to be something you can live with for the rest of your life.  Any diet you choose is never going to be something you can live with because all of them are to last only as long as you are losing weight.  They do you cover what to do to maintain that weight lose.  Myfitnesspal has a setting for maintaining your weight, and for those who need to gain rather than lose, there is also a setting for that.

Let me, right now, warn anyone who decides to use this wonderful app to lose weight that it is not a magical app that make weight loss easy.  Weight loss is never easy, and anyone who convinces themselves or anyone else that is lies.  Nothing worth really having in this life is easy; there will always be struggles.  It might start easy or seem to, but you then hit areas in your life that make it much more difficult and that is where God and determination step in to help, at least for me.  You see, I know that my determination to succeed is coming from God and that God helped me find a platform that would work with my determination.

So how much have I lost?  Well between January to April, I lost another 26.8 pounds, and I was not ready to stop there.  Was it easy to shed those next pounds?  Heck No!  It was a struggle, but once again God and determination were on my side.  Between that 26.8 pounds and 25 pounds I lost before that, I have seen a total loss of 51.8 pounds; I first-time achievement for me.

I was not done at the point; I still had more to go before I would reach my goal, but I was not going to give up, become frustrated, or lose heart even as more changes in my eating had to change to continue on my personal road to success.

Dieting

The most horrendous word in the English language is 'diet'.  To me, it is a word that breaks down into two words: 'die' 'it', and most time diets do die.  No diet is meant to be lived on for the rest of one's life, and in order to lose weight and keep it off, at least for me, it has to be something I can stay on as a new lifestyle.

This is me at what is probably my heaviest, and I must admit I was never proud of it and have wanted to do something about it for a long time.  I just did not know what to do.  It was not until last November that I became very determined to try something if I could find something that would work.  To date, I found that pills, regimented diets, and regular diets did not work for me.  My doctor suggested those foods you buy, but I could not afford that, and I knew they would have too many foods I could not eat.  I cannot eat tomato based sauces or recipes - tomatoes make me want to throw up because of an encounter I had with stewed tomatoes when I was a child, plus they give me bad heartburn as in the case of sauces made with tomatoes, canned tomato pasta, and canned tomato sauce - nor can I eat anything too spicy.  I also dislike most vegetables and especially most of the cooked ones with the exception of cauliflower, glazed carrots, and corn.  Other vegetables I prefer to eat raw if I eat them at all.

The next thing my doctor suggested was sending me to another doctor who would put me on a calorie diet.  See, there is the word again - diet, and again, we were talking about money I did not have.  So, I decided I would look for something I could live with on my own.

The first thing I found was a calorie program that started me at 1200 calories, and I knew that was not something I could start out at.  It was dropping too much too soon and meant instant failure.  I wanted something that I would not fail at and something I would be able to live with over time.  So that program led me to an ad for another program called My Fitness Pal.

Now, My Fitness Pal can be used three ways.  There is the on-line program, an app for your cell phone, and an app for iPad.  Better yet, it started me with 2200 something calories, so I thought I would try it.  One of the best features is that you can scan the bar code of the food you are eating or type in the type of food it is and it gives you the calorie count without having to look it up in a stupid book that only lists the most common types of food.  Second, you can put in your own recipes and it will figure out how many calories are in a serving, and even better, if you find a recipe on-line or on Pinterest that you want to try, you can copy and paste  the URL code and it will match the ingredients (most of the time) for you and also give you a calorie count for a serving.  The one glitch with recipes by other people is that they do not always tell you what constitutes a serving size.  It will say it serves 4 but does not tell what the portion size is and you usually cannot figure out the actual size of a serving until after you make the recipe.

Okay, so I decided I would try this app and see what would happen.  The first thing I discovered was that I certainly exceeded my daily allotted intake, so I had to make some adjustments to what or how much I was eating.

Now, this app is very nice because you can go back to the beginning of your records and see how you have done over time.  In the first month - November to December - I lost 15 pounds and that includes having Thanksgiving dinner, and from December to January - the dreaded Christmas food season - I lost another 9 pounds.  That was a total of 25 pounds in two months.  It was a very good beginning, and, for me, I found it very easy to do; now that does not guarantee it will be as easy for everyone else, and that is something I will address in on coming blogs..  The one surprising thing, but it should not have surprised me, was that for every 10 pounds you lose, your calories are dropped.  Of course, you could tell the app that you did not want to drop the calories, but that simple fact is part of the reason you can keep losing weight.

Overall, I felt very happy with myself because I had finally found something that worked and that I was able to live with because I chose what foods I would and would not eat and nobody became the food police saying 'No, you can't have that,' unless it was me that said it.  Donuts, for instance, I found out how many calories one donut had and decided to avoid them unless it was to have it as a treat, but if I chose to eat one, then I have to give up the calories someplace else during the day.  Do I eat donuts now - no, and I find I do not miss them, and they now have ended up tasting too sweet.