Monday Morning Musings

So, I  keep hearing that in order to lose weight one must eat less and exercise. So, as I’ve not lost weight I’ve eaten less and less and still not lost weight.

In the winter it’s hard to get the exercise I need, but when the weather’s nicer I can do a two mile round trip to pick The Little Guy up from school. This past week I walked on Thursday and Friday. Then on Saturday we walked the mall back and forth for a couple of hours. That added some exercise too. I was low on calories and protein already that day, so we stopped at Jamba Juice for an afternoon “snack”. I got a Pomegranate fruit drink with added boosts of protein, fiber, and weight loss formulas. Can’t do a Jamba Juice every day though…

At the doctor the week before last I found that I need to eat more in order to try to lose weight. Apparently, part of my problem is that my body thinks I’m starving and won’t let me lose weight.

I’ve never been a big breakfast person, and I’m mostly not hungry at lunch either. But the doctor told me to eat anyway. It’s hard for me to eat when I’m not hungry, but I have to in order make my metabolism work the way it’s supposed to.

For the past week and a few days, my breakfasts have been a Yoplait yogurt and a couple cups of coffee. I should be eating more than that, but I’m still not hungry in the morning and that’s about all I can eat at that time.

I smoked for years. I quit at the end of April 2006 – so it’s been nearly three years now. I think though, that I still have the eating habits I had when I smoked. When a cigarette (or two or three or four) was more important than eating.  When car rides were measured in the number of cigarettes smoked rather than the actual time in the car. When I worked full time in the early 2000’s and my ride to work was a three cigarette trip…

After I quit smoking I gained a little, not a lot, but I wasn’t losing anything.  I was drinking a couple Mike’s Hard lemonades in the evenings though. So I thought that maybe that was causing me to not lose. I stopped having a couple of drinks and didn’t lose an ounce. So I decided that I could have my Mike’s again!

Last year I was diagnosed with an ulcer. Since then, I’ve gained quite a bit of weight. Now I really need to lose, so here I go with the new “diet” that isn’t so much of a diet.

I have to eat more that I used to, more than I am used to.  But I also need to eat smart.

Kate introduced me to SparkPeople.com, a free site where one can put in weight now and weight you’d like to be. The site helps you determine how long it should take you to reach your goal, and gives you range of calories per day you should shoot for.  It also lets you know ranges for carbs, fats, and proteins. And if there’s another nutrient you should track based on your own particular needs, you can track that as well. If you need to track sodium or sugars, or what-have-you.

SparkPeople can also suggest meal plans and provide you with a shopping list. You can add your own recipes at SparkRecipes.com and the program will help you figure out calories, carbs, protein, fats, etc for your recipes, per serving.

Turns out, my cooking has been pretty healthy and not over caloric, but my dinners just haven’t been enough for me to have my metabolism work correctly. So now I’m having yogurt for breakfast until I can eat some more and bring the breakfast portion to a larger proportion of my food per day. Lunch is generally a 1/2 cup of navy beans with a 1/2 cup of brown rice, a little salt, a teaspoon of olive oil and a splash of vinegar or lime or lemon juice. Warmed slightly. It’s a really filling, tasty lunch for me. I’m not doing the meal plans from the site, but only because I can’t eat as much for breakfast and I don’t need the variety that’s built into the plans. I can eat the same thing for lunch every day without a problem. Or I could change it up by having two hard boiled eggs, chopped with 1 tablespoon of regular mayo, and 8 saltines for lunch like I did yesterday. It was quite good. The egg salad could maybe have had an extra teaspoon of mayo, but the tablespoon to 2 large egg ratio is good.

Ah well, we’ll see what happens as this goes on. Hopefully I will get my metabolism going and I’ll lose the weight I need to use.