Main Blog Updated: Ready for Summer: Update #2, Easter Sunday Park Workout Edition! With Pics! :D

Ready for Summer: Update #2, Easter Sunday Park Workout Edition! With Pics! :D

Main Blog Updated: Fight The Fat Remotivation Day 7 and Eve to Easter Midweek Update #13: Starting to Turn This Boat Around! And My Ready for Summer Freggie Pick for "Try Something New"

Fight The Fat Remotivation Day 7 and Eve to Easter Midweek Update #13: Starting to Turn This Boat Around! And My Ready for Summer Freggie Pick for "Try Something New"

New Blog Updated: Day 12 DDDY Challenge: Out and About and HUNGRY without the water

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Day 12 DDDY Challenge: Out and About and HUNGRY without the water

New Blog Updated: Face the Truth Fridays: Met Goal, Still In DDDY Challenge and My Big Accountability Button

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Face the Truth Fridays: Met Goal, Still In DDDY Challenge and My Big Accountability Button

New Blog Updated: Day 11 DDDY Challenge: The revenge of salt and, oh, the crappy sleeping is back I see, plus links to interesting posts from yesterday

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Day 11 DDDY Challenge: The revenge of salt and, oh, the crappy sleeping is back I see, plus links to interesting posts from yesterday

New Blog Updated: Day 9 Double Dog Dare You Challenge: A "calorie savings account" opened early in the week

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Day 9 Double Dog Dare You Challenge: A "calorie savings account" opened early in the week

New Blog Updated: Day 8 Double Dog Dare You Challenge: Thoughts on previous week and Today's Calories/Meals/Water

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Day 8 Double Dog Dare You Challenge: Thoughts on previous week and Today's Calories/Meals/Water

New Blog Updated: Double Dog Dare Day 7 Particulars--Repairing Damage Done

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Double Dog Dare Day 7 Particulars--Repairing Damage Done

New blog updated: Best of Plans, Not Best of Actions

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Best of Plans, Not Best of Actions

New Blog Updated: Day 4 Double Dog Dare Challenge: Scale,, Water, Calories, Etc.

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Day 4 Double Dog Dare Challenge: Scale,, Water, Calories, Etc.

New Blog Updated: Tracking for Day 2 of the Double Dog Dare

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Tracking for Day 2 of the Double Dog Dare

New Blog Updated: *The Challenge Particulars for Day 1 of the Double Dog Dare

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*The Challenge Particulars for Day 1 of the Double Dog Dare

New Blog Updated: Allan's "Math" Challenge: Eating at "160 x 11" Calories for 2 Weeks

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Allan's "Math" Challenge: Eating at "160 x 11" Calories for 2 Weeks

 

If you want to join the challenge, please go to Allan's blog to do so (see link at entry on other blog).

New Blog Updated: Yummy Big Breakfast The Day After Organic Co-op Pick-Up & Learning To Eat Less, bit by bit, cause I'm a Diet Marathoner, not a Sprinter

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Yummy Big Breakfast The Day After Organic Co-op Pick-Up & Learning To Eat Less, bit by bit, cause I'm a Diet Marathoner, not a Sprinter

 

 

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New Blog Updated: A lot more carbs on Saturday, a lot fewer clothes on Sunday...

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A lot More Carbs on Saturday, A lot fewer clothes on Sunday...

 

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Happy Sunday, and may this be a very health-bringing , fat-blasting week for you..AND ME!

New Blog Updated: Allan, Intuitive Eating, The Pleasure Principle, Gluttony, and How It All Ends Up!

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Allan, Intuitive Eating, The Pleasure Principle, Gluttony, and How It All Ends Up!

 

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Thanks...and be well!

Resisting the Bagel; Perking Up the Water

I had to get a thyroid ultrasound today, so I didn't have breakfast (appt was 11:30am, got done 12:30pm, humph) in order to not risk some reflux. Was mighty peckish when I got out, so I headed to a local bagel place.

There, I ordered an all-the-veggies-you-got scramble with ham and cheese. (veggies = mushrooms, onions, green peppers, tomatoes, spinach, and broccoli.) I had 2/3 of that. Had tomato slices instead of potatoes/grits/oatmeal as a side. Had coffee and water. Totally did not touch the lovely Everything bagel that kept winking seductively at me. Brought it home for hubby and me  to share tomorrow AM--or just for him. Haven't decided. Will see what I want after I get up.

Breakfast today racked up 652 calories, says my nutrition tracker. Good thing I didn't eat it all!

Will admit hat the cheese and ham made me thirsty and, being someone who really hates to drink plain water unless I've sweated up a storm and am dying for it, I was glad to have my package of TRUE Lemon products delivered (the lemon, lime, and orange kit). I'm sipping a tall and cool one with the lemon as I type.

Have any of you tried the fruit trick with water? You know, adding whatever fruit(s) you have handy--berries, tropical, kiwi, crushed apple, whatever--in order to make water more interesting? I'm gonna macerate some pear and try that next time I get some pears.

What have you tried?

Calorie Blooper and Scale Neener

My scale has a sense of humor.

Yesterday, I went 315 calories over my 1800 self-imposed limit level, but I weighed in back in the 264's (264.8). It's like it knew yesterday was weigh-in day and it played a trick on me, and today was done with the joke. ; )

Anyway, here's my food update for today:

Breakfast: egg whites with 1 slice 2% Kraft American cheese; two and 1/3 Diet-To-Go Apple Pancakes with Smucker's Sugar Free syrup; coffee, water.  It's under 500 cals, so it's fine, and got me the energy for my Pilates workout. ( Last week I had veggies with my pre-Pilates breakfast, and got some bowel rumblies as a result, so no broccoli/spinach/asparagus pre-exercise!)

Post exercise snack: sugar-free vanilla grande iced latte from Starbucks. (I gotta look it up, but it's like 150 or less).

Lunch: I had a yen for comfort food, so I got Cuban style black bean soup, boiled yuca (cassava, a starchy root vegetable near-and-dear to the Cubans), grilled chicken breast (not comfort food, but wanted protein), and romaine lettuce with salsa for dressing. Roughly 500, but I need to Spark it.

So maybe I'm up around 1000 or 1100+, which would leave me 600-700 for supper or supper/snack. I'm having a yen for apple and peanut butter, so I need to factor that in and still get my fruits veggies.

Since I exercised hard, I should have burned enough to make up for yesterday's overage.

A Good Dose of Energy, A Nice Bit of Calm--No Food Freaking Yet!

This will be my sixth day of restarting my healthy eating. The scale is pretty static, which is fine. I think I dropped a bit of water weight at first, and now the slower fat-burning should begin. As it should.

I am not eating low-cal, so I don't expect to see pounds MELT away. I am keeping to 1800 cals (more or less, I don't stress if it's 50 or so over or 50 or so under). This has been MAJOR for me, as I have not been able to do these many days of on-plan eating in a long, long time. Mentally, I just got to a place where I could begin again, and here I am.

Hydration is good, but I do think given it's summer-hot here, it could be upped. On training days, I work HARd. On non-training days...meh. But I did burn some cals yesterday after class doing a lot of lifting, bending, pushing, etc, with some housework. I had AMAZING energy despite too little sleep for too many days.

I think if I can just get to bed earlier and get some rest, I'll see the scale move swifter. I've noticed in the past there IS a relation between sleeping long and well and losing faster.

My Pilates trainer took pics of me yesterday. She often compliments my form and another trainer also comments on how I have good form. And they don't add "for a fat person". :)  (I do try hard, given the obstacles of my belly/other-fat.) My main problem is a shoulder hitch (my brother does the same, and I think it's from years of asthma--and asthmatics will understand what I mean about the "trying to breathe posture".)

She wanted to document me yesterday, and I let her take pics to show my hubby.  It was a new and strange thing to see myself in the poses. Of course, like many  obese women, I think of myself as NOT AS BIG as I am when I can't see myself. But the camera doesn't give room for self-delusion. This is part of the reason I take (and post) more pics of myself now. I need to be REAL and SEE what the damage of overeating is.

If you haven't taken "before pics", I encourage you to do so. They won't let you fool yourself if you're so inclined (like so many of us).

When she emails the shots to me, I'll maybe post some. It's tough. I mean, I'm wearing skin-tight capri-leggings and a paper-thin t-shirt. But, if it helps another fatty fatfighter get into the gym or Pilates studio, it'll be worth it. How often do you see a morbidly obese woman doing a teaser move on the Cadillac? Hmm?

Today is my 27th wedding anniversary, so it's unlikely I'll post again (unless hubby takes a nap between activities, and he's so gung-ho over World Cup, I'm lucky to pry him away from the flat screren hahahahah). The World Cup was on in 1982 when we were first dating (the first month of our mad, mad love), so it is notalgic for me to have an anniversary with it.

My appetite feels calmer in the last couple days. I don't feel the raging mad desire to stuff. I hope it continues (but I know that's a wild wish). It's nice to eat 1/3rd of my usual breakfast calories and feel okay. I want to stay low for B and L, cause dinner will be our festive event.

I wish you all a happy Friday and a great weekend. Please treat yourself kindly. Eat beautiful produce. Drink lots of clean water. Hug and kiss your loved ones. And remember that no matter how much space you take up in this world, you are unique and valuable and worthy of love and appreciation.

later....

Fat to Fit Blog Hop Thursday: Journaling In Better Nutrition...can get tricky!

As my regular readers know, I got back to Sparking, which include using the SparkPeople Nutrition Tracker (a lovely online tool for food journaling). I have found it really useful, not just to track food, but to track holes in my nutrition, since it tells you as you enter your meals how you are stacking up not just in carbs/proteins/fats, but in assorted nutrients (and you can customize).

As a middle-aged, post-menopausal woman, I wanna know that I'm getting  enough calcium and vitamin D. And I wouldn't have realized I'm chronically deficient in zinc, folate, B-12, and potassium had I not sparked. (I can't eat shellfish/seafood, and I won't eat organ meats, and I limit my nuts/seeds for caloric reasons,  so I tend to have issues with areas where those are the major suppliers of particular nutrients.)

Thanks to Sparking that journal, I have been able to target my supplement intake to what I need, not just shove some in my mouth "just in case." I love doing the report after supper and seeing where I need to boost nutrients--and am most happy when I meet goals in most categories. But knowing where the holes are lets me know if I need a B-complex or just a B-12 dot, if I need to have more romaine or spinach, if I should add a beef dish, if I need to pop a Citrical-D max.  I do find that I have to take zinc. Period. I have almost never ever made my zinc nutrient RDA, so, yeah, I take liquid ionic zinc. It tastes truly hideous, but I do it, cause I suspect at the bottom of my chronic skin and thinning hair issues may be this chronic zinc deficiency.

Because I was low on potassium yesterday (I usually am, and most Americans usually are), I had some banana with dinner and coconut water with lunch on Wednesday. This morning, I added a banana-skim-milk-raw-cocoa-powder smoothie to breakfast to get magnesium/calcium/D/potassium (all nutrients that a lot of people fall short of, including me if I'm not careful with meal planning).

So, what is the tricky part in the subject header?

Well, no nutrition tracker that I've ever used is comprehensive for all users. If you buy stuff ready-made, you better have the ability to deconstruct that chicken salad or beef stew or whatever it is you bought to get the components (unless someone posts a generic you just go with).

Today, breakfast is a delivery meal from Diet-To-Go that I'm using to get me through the first few weeks of the Summer Slimmin' Challenge. (See badge on top of my sidebar for info).  While the Diet-To-Go site has some nutritional info, it doesn't give it for the major nutrients (just the "top label" ones, fat, sodium, carbs, protein, calories). It doesn't give me the nutrients in my Eggs Florentine with soy sausage and asparagus, which, given there's spinach, milk, and eggs in there, should be nice. I know it's high protein (44 grams) and low-carb (6, and hence me having the banana, heh, cause I didn't have toast), but not how much of vitamins, minerals, etc.

That diminishes the usefulness of my journaling (in terms of health), although I still will know the calories and major categories that most dieters care about.

Still, I want to know that I had enough folate or B-12 or magnesium. It matters to me.

So, the convenience of diet delivery meals makes for inconvenient food tracking. Hey, Diet-to-Go! Make it easy for Sparkers who use your food. Give us the lowdown. BETTER YET: Contact SparkPeople, you Diet-To-Go administrators,  and give them your meal titles/info and side dishes and the comprehensive nutrient breakdown, so that these can be added to the food database there. Who knows? You might get a lot more subscribers through that huge online community (of millions of fatfighters!)

Anyway, visit other blogging fatfighters/health-seekers in the Fat to Fit Blog Hop:

Go ye and hydrate, move, laugh, and lose!

Happy fatfighting this Thursday!