(no subject)

[the_rck]

I headed out to see my doctor this morning. It was miserably cold out, so waiting for the bus was no fun. (Of course, when is it ever?) Very few people had cleared the snow off their sidewalks, so walking was a little challenging. Scott put out snow melt on the front walk. That meant the snow was kind of slushy, and I expect it will freeze solid as it gets colder later today.

The appointment was fine except that my doctor wants me to diet to lose weight. To be honest, I'm not at all sure where I can cut calories. The main luxury, calorie wise, is my morning coffee, and I kind of need that. I can't think of another way to get the caffeine I'm dependent on. My doctor suggested that I see a nutritionist, and I was supposed to set that up when I checked out, but the secretary didn't mention it, and I didn't think of it. I was too focused on getting to the lab for my blood work.

I went in fasting so that I could do the fasting blood sugar and cholesterol/lipid tests. I asked for a check on my thyroid because I've been having cold flashes.

After I had the blood drawn, I went to Totoro and had a chicken teriyaki bento and a Pepsi (I'd missed my morning coffee and wanted some caffeine). From there, I walked down to the central bus station. I stopped along the way to buy stamps, but the machine in the lobby of the post office was out of stamps, and I couldn't afford the time to wait in line. Scott will have to pick up stamps later.

One of Cordelia's classmates is coming over after school because her mother couldn't be home right after school. I expect the girls will do homework and read. This girl occasionally comes over before school when her parents have early meetings, and she and Cordelia simply don't interact with each other. I'm not sure how much of it is them not particularly being friends and how much of it is them both being too reserved to start anything.

Tomorrow is a professional development day for the teachers, so there's no school (it's supposed to be really cold again, so there might not have been school anyway). Assuming nobody's sick, I'll once again have three kids in the house. I wish the girls were more willing to play with the seven year old boy. I'd like the chance to do my exercise programs, and I won't get that if he's busy with the Wii all day.

Comments

[evalerie.livejournal.com]

If it would be helpful, I would be happy to type in what I did to lose my pregnancy weight after Kendra. It was pretty accessible and common-sense.

[the_rck]

I'm interested. It may not work for me, but I'm curious. I am already exercising more.

[evalerie.livejournal.com]

Ok. Here's what I did (posted in two parts because Live Journal says this is too long)....

1) At meals, I ate the same foods as always, but only 2/3 of what I usually would. For example, I was in the habit of having three servings of dinner, so I switched to two. At lunch, I put a portion on my plate that was about 2/3 the size of what I would usually eat. My family already ate healthy meals that aren't high in fat or calories, but if we hadn't already been doing that, I would have done a lot of reading of Nutrition Facts labels in order to choose healthy meals that had low-to-medium calories and fat. All foods were allowed, but the idea was to eat slightly smaller amounts, and to focus on the healthier choices more often. Also, I drink water with meals, avoiding the "liquid candy" of juice and soda. Nonfat milk would be fine too, and a good source of calcium.

2) I kept veggies around the house and allowed unlimited snacking on them if I was hungry. My favorite was to heat up a small bowl of frozen corn kernels, stir in some salt, and in two minutes it was ready to eat. Baby carrots were good too. I didn't eat these veggie snacks with any sauces that had fat or calories, usually just plain or with a little salt. Fruit generally has more calories than vegetables, so these snacks were vegetables and not fruit.

3) If I was *really* hungry, I would eat a small serving of leftovers, or other healthy meal-type food.

4) I limited sugary desserts to one serving a week. That serving had to be reasonable-sized, not big. I was dealing with systemic yeast issues at the time, which was part of the reason for this rule, but I think strictly limiting desserts also was the single biggest factor in getting the weight to come off. Sugar was allowed if it was an ingredient in a food-type item, such as storebought spaghetti sauce, but not if it was the main point of a food, such as a brownie. I limited any food where the main point was sugar to just the one serving a week.

5) I encouraged myself to occasionally do a "hungry morning," where I let myself be mildly hungry (*not* super hungry, just mildly hungry) while I was distracted by another absorbing activity. I only did this when the kids were in school. I found that parenting while hungry was not a good combination, but computing while hungry was fine, and so were business meetings while hungry. After one of these mornings, I would eat a normal meal, or 2/3 of normal size, but not an extra-big meal that would undo my good work of the morning.

6) No eating extra amounts of food as a reward for having been good, or for any other reason. Except that plenty of plain veggies were allowed.

[evalerie.livejournal.com]

7) I started exercising more. Since then, I've read that the key to weight loss is really eating fewer calories, not exercise, so I don't know if exercising helped me to lose that weight. But exercise is so important that I am still glad that I did it. I recently read that each minute of exercise on average extends your life expectancy by seven minutes. I think that is totally neat. I am not an enthusiastic exerciser, but that statistic helps keep me motivated to keep exercising.

8) I aimed for slow and steady weight loss, not a big loss all at once. Sudden weight loss leads to ketosis, where the body starts digesting its own muscle and messes with the brain. I wanted to lose fat, not damage my body.

9) I started weighing myself every day. I weighed myself wearing only underwear, at a consistent time of day, after my shower and before breakfast, so that the weighing would reflect my actual body weight, without adding the variable weight of whatever I'd eaten or of my clothing, so that the measurement would be consistent from day to day, to keep accurate tabs on my weight loss. I've noticed that every day my weight goes up and down by several pounds throughout the day, just from normal eating and drinking, so having a consistent way of weighing myself was important for getting accurate information. I've read studies that say that frequent weighing helps people both to lose weight and to keep it off. To my surprise, I found that I geekily loved seeing what my weight was doing each day, especially when I had lost a half-pound or whatever amount it was. But I'm a numbers geek -- I don't think other people would find this as interesting as I do. I still weigh myself every day even now, years later. I usually can predict exactly what the scale is going to say before I step onto it -- and I'm geeky enough to think that's neat. But I generally don't tell people that I weigh myself every day, because I think they would think it's weird, and also because I aim to be relaxed about food and eating, and to encourage that in others.

(That's how I lost my baby-weight from Kendra, my second pregnancy. I lost the baby-weight from Arlo, my first pregnancy, when he brought home a relentless stream of illnesses from daycare. I'd catch many of the bugs from him, and while I was sick I didn't feel like eating and would lose a few pounds. Afterward, I aimed to not eat extra, so that the weight would stay off. Of course I wouldn't recommend getting sick on purpose, but when it accidentally happened it melted away the weight from that pregnancy. When I was pregnant with Corbin I was so sick *during* the pregnancy that I didn't gain any extra weight that I needed to lose afterward. This is definitely not recommended -- maternal infection during pregnancy is statistically associated with autism in the baby.)

I found that these steps were easy to live with, and the weight really did come rolling off when I did this. Afterward, I needed less food than before I lost the weight -- so even now, years later, I still eat only two servings of dinner rather than three -- though now that I've lost the weight this is enough food that I feel full after meals, while when I first started trying to lose weight I used to be a little hungry after the same amount of food.

I do a lot of reading about food and nutrition as a hobby, but am no weight loss expert or dietitian, and I have no idea if this would work for anybody else. It's something I invented, and it worked well for me, but I have no idea if it would work for anybody else, or if anybody else would even want to try it.

Whew, this got long! Before I wrote it I'd have expected just a couple of paragraphs.