New Blog Updated: Why I'm Looking Eastward and Giving Switzerland a Dirty Look

Read it at "Two Years to Happy Weight After"


Please update your links and follows to the new blog. THANKS!

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Starting Weigh-In for SUMMER SLIMMIN' Challenge, Goals, and Preparatory Actions...

Got on the scale to document my starting weight for the Summer Slimmin' Challenge. (You still can join, so click on that badge to the left at the top of my sidebar.)

And here is the kick-off poundage:

267.6

I can see the crap I had Saturday--chorizo tapas, rolls with cheese butter, fried chicken, fried green plantains--took its toll. It was a lollapalooza of bad choices at a mediocre restaurant. That's 1.6 lbs up from last time I weighed.

My goal for how many pounds I wanna lose by August 6: 17.6

That should take me to 250, a weight I haven't been at since, like 2001--I'd have to check old records, but I know I was 254 after my appendectomy, and I had lost some weight, so I'm assuming I was 250 the year before (as I tended to gain about 10 pounds a year, give or take, and by 2003 I was 266.)

Well okay, so I started off fine this AM with a breakfast nearly half my usual breakfasty caloric level: 437

I'm aiming for 1800 a day the first week, 1700 the second, and then 1600 for the remainer of the challenge.

If I feel too hungry at the lower level of 1600, I'll let myself move up again to 1700 and then 1800, the latter being where I want to set the upper bar. I haven't been able to eat that few calories consistently for two months at a time in years and years, and I could NEVER keep it up, so let's see what the challenge can do to my mindset. If I am to sustain a lower weight--and my goal is to get to 175 one day--then I have to learn to eat less. I am hopeful. Ever hopeful.

One of the things I learned in the last couple weeks is that 2300 calories more or less is maintenance for me. I had weigh-ins that never moved more than a pound up or down on days I tracked my calories at around 2300.

So, if I eat more I will gain (and when I don't restrain myself, I naturally gravitate to eating about 4000 to 4500 calories, and yes, that's how you get to 300 lbs, peops!) So, if I eat 1800, that's 500 less than maintenance. Times 7 days means I will lose at least a pound  week--add in the water losses that come with dieting and I might make 2 lbs a week. Add in more exercise and I might make it to 3 lbs a week. Hence, I aim for the middlish ground, 2 lbs per week.

So, here's to getting to a size 22 by August 6 (or at least that's my estimate. I'm a bit snug in 24, and sometimes loose in 26 and sometimes perfect, so it seems to me that 17.6 lbs off should take me down to a 22 with some comfort in the fit, yes? At my highest I wore a 30/32, so this will be a nice change.

Other goals:

~~to blog daily and be accountable to my challenge-mates and readers

~~to post encouragement to other challenge participants (at least two a day)

~~to drink 8+ glasses of water (fruit essenced or plain)

~~to add 20 mins of exercise on non-Pilates days (I normally do an hour of trainer-supervised Pilates 2x a week), meaning pop in a DVD and do it or dance around the living room or march in place or whatever. Just move my butt for 20 mins on 3 other non-Pilates days for a total of 5 days with exercise.

~~to eat at least 6 fruits /veggies a day (the challenge only asks for a minimum of 5, but I want to set a wee bit higher bar for myself)

~~to eat/cook/prepare most of my meals at home (not to be tempted in restaurants, with the exceptions being, certainly, my anniversary on the 11th and my husband's birthday on the 26th)

~~to be more scrupulous with my food tracking/journaling. I am going to do it at Sparkpeople (where I have only been sporadic and non-comprehensive). My aim is to document EVERY SPECK of food or beverage that goes into my mouth and down to my tummy.

~~to blog my weigh-in on Sundays (although I may weigh-in for my own purposes more often.

I already requested delivery of vegetarian meals (I'll receive it sometime next Thursday) in order to simplify the caloric-watch for a few weeks, then I'll begin making my meals myself. I want someone else to portion it for me, as I really tend to just go nuts with portions. 3 to 4 weeks of pre-portioned meals should help get me in the mindset of "this much is the correct amount".

After that, I will weigh/measure at home to keep things calorically tidy.

Since the meal delivery won't start for several days, I will be shopping today to restock on fresh produce, skim milk, lowfat cheese, and whatever I need to make healthful meals for me and hubby until I get my pre-portioned vegetarian lowfat meals. I am going to make my shopping list as soon as I get off blogging this.

Z of Bottomless blog, who is hosting the challenge and created our cool badges, has already done her challenge-friendly shopping. Go see.

I will happily accept any encouraging remarks and rah-rahs to keep me on target. And I hope I can encourage you, too. It's a long haul and a tough fight, so let's be pillars for each other.

Let's do it! Onward and DOWNward!

Other measures to track for the challenge:
starting waist: 44.5
starting hips:   54.5

The Steak Dinner: Making Choices, Good and Bad

Five days of in-range calorie eating, five days of nearly perfect nutrition, and I got a mad craving to go out for steak. So...we did.

I sat and made concessions. None of the usual sides with steak, ie. mashed or fried potatoes or baked loaded, plus veggie souffle. Or that dreaded blue cheese and creamy dressing salad that steakhouses lure me with. :)

I started with their simplest salad and a vinaigrette (sorry, blue cheese). I had these sides: a baked sweet potato, plain, and sprinkled diet-friendly cinnamon on it ( not sugar). I had broccoli steamed, plain, no salt. I I had a couple ounces of merlot to balance its heart-healthiness against the saturated fat/cholesterol in red meat. I had unsweetened iced tea. I skipped the usual fruit tart or chocolate mousse (that I'd usually give in to at this particular eatery) and made do with a double espresso with Splenda.

That's what I did right. What I did wrong, besides eating too many ounces of NY Strip: I had not one, but two slices of French bread (it is a French restaurant, so the bread is really enticing). I used EVOO, not the butter they served with it.

What else I did right, knowing we'd be having dinner out: I had a moderate braekfast and a very light lunch that, together, totalled 650 calories. Enough to keep me from being utterly famished, but not so much that I didn't have some leeway at supper.

At the end of the day, after, yes, five days of great caloric containment, I went 500 calories over the maximum SparkPeople nutrition tracker allows me. I would have only gone 400 over, but I decided to have a coconut water to get in some potassium, and I had a fiber mix to push the meat through my system a bit faster. :)

I drank my water, good. I didn't make time to exercise, bad.

A day of good and bad choices.

After the restaurant, I asked hubby to drive to Barnes & Noble. I wanted to load up on health/fitness magazines, low-cal holilday cooking ones, too, in order to get myself motivated for the coming weeks of temptations.

It starts this week. Holiday eating. Lord, help us plan and help us make the better choices!

Tomorrow, a family birthday party will likely set all sorts of minefields. But I have set aside healthy snacks and beverages to take to minimize temptations/damages. Will I be perfect? Doubt it. But I will be...better.

Happy Weekend to all Fatfighters!

My Biggest Dieter's Mistake and Slacking Off Issue Right Now: Not Cooking

I am totally NOT giving it 100%. I'm not even giving it 80%. Shoot, I'm barely hitting 55%.

And my biggest step backwards, my hugest slack-off, from when I was losing--and even maintaining--is...not doing grocery shopping, meal planning, and home cooking.

Without question, this is my big hurdle to tackle this week. Without this, I might as well admit I'm gonna fail.

I've been back into getting take-out, eating out. This spells disaster. It has. I'm stuck at just nearly 8 pounds from my best during this blog's existence. And it's not budging. I thought I could do it with judicious eating out. I can't.

It got especially bad when I was sick (hey, now there's an excuse to order pizza or have hubb go to the local Mexican restaurant or Kabob place). And as I was coming back home after driving through Taco Bell post Pilates (talk about ruining a good deed with a bad one), I told myself this had to stop. I had to get my cooking mojo back on.

So, I committed to myself to go get groceries either later today (if I can get my second wind, as I feel mighty pooped) or after my ultrasound appointment tomorrow. But no later.

I have to admit. I have NO excuse not to grocery shop and plan and cook meals. It's just plain laziness. It's just bad old habits taking over again.

No. Gotta kick the take-out habit. Trying to regulate it (ie, promising to choose only healthful options) isn't working. I gotta just make my food. I have to control what goes into my meals. I have to turn that stove and oven back on. I have to stock that freezer and fridge and the fruit bowls. Period.

And you know, I'm not the only one who needs to do this. Read this a few minutes ago at Diets in Review:

Since 1965, women have gone from spending 13 hours per week cooking meals to the meager 30 minutes per day now, and in that time the number of overweight women has more than doubled, to 65 percent. Biggest Loser cookbooks author Devin Alexander pointed out that “Twenty minutes in the kitchen will save you three hours on the StairMaster.”

Yes. We've become a nation of eater-outers, not home-cookers. Let's be real. At home, you have to measure out the oil and butter and dressing and cheese and portion the meat and chicken and tofu or whatever. You just don't get this plate, like magic, from the Kitchen Fairy. You can't say, "Well, maybe this mashed potato isn't so bad, or these veggies weren't doused in too much butter." At home, you can't fool yourself. You know exactly what's in there, cause YOU put it in there.

I love to eat out. As I told hubby yesterday, after we left the gynecologist (where he held my hand during the painful exam), when he commented how he likes buffets cause he serves himself (and he has VERY little food at buffets, cause his appetitie is pretty small for a tall feller, and they definitely MAKE money off him, cause he never eats 10 bucks worth!), I like being served. I LOVE having someone bring me yummies and take away dirty plates and ask me if I want coffee and dessert.

It makes me feel like an Empress. Or, okay, a Princess. :)

I think a small part of it's 'cause my parents were not eater-outers. Eating out was this amazing thing to me. I'd see sidewalk cafes in NYC when we visited Manhattan and it was so alien. A thing only special people did. Not poor people like us.

I never sat down in my first Chinese restaurant until I was 16, and that because a friend's dad invited me out to eat with his family. I found it astonishing. And it's the same today. I get this wild thrill at heading to a sit-down restaurant and having whatever my heart desires.

Sit-down restaurants are like small vacations. Drive-throughs are me just not wanting to do any work. Either way, they both are about self-spoiling. For me, anyway. Luxury. Not wisdom or self-control. Indulgence.

My parents never modeled this. This is just ME. Spoiling myself. Acting all rich, right? No...They were homey types, simple folks who worked very hard at low-paying work and who watched pennies like hawks watching field mice. Cooking at home was economical. No takeout, except for a walk to the bakery to get bread. That's what poor folks did and do, especially poor immigrant folks who have a hankering for their ethnic flavors, do. Eat at home.

For me, eating out is a huge luxury. It's what rich people do. What my parents could not do.

It's crazy how much money we waste eating out. Really shameful. We could be putting that towards retirement or paying off our car note. Seriously.

It's a bad economy--a perfect time to figure out how to eat well without spending a fortune. It's a challenge, but not insurmountable. For the $5 or $6 bucks that cafeteria or eat-out turkey sandwich costs plus whatever beverage you get and maybe that bag o' chips, you can make two to four lunches at home (depending on what you eat).

So, the Princess needs to haul her fat butt to Whole Foods and get what she needs for a week of meals. I love eating out too much to nix it altogether. But man, even if I reduce it to once or twice a week, that's better than what I've been doing. Every single dinner and most lunches out. Crazy. Foolish.

Oh, man. Back to the basics.

~

Crazy Mad At Myself

I'm still fighting off the blues, but on top of that, I'm ticked off at myself for not being fully, utterly committed. I still am stuck in that cycle of eating relatively well for two meals and then going nuts during a third.

Usually, the nuts meal is dinner. Yesterday, it was lunch.

I had gotten myself a perfectly adequate turkey and swiss on multigrain sandwich for lunch after my Pilates class--which went well, as I was breathing so much better and could fully exert myself. Here I was, driving home, sandwich in tow, and--boom!-- I get this raging craving for something madly, Chinesely salty. I'm like this possessed person. So, I take a right when I spot a local Chinese eatery and got a takeaway: the pepper steak combo--that diet-destroying thing that comes with fried rice and an egg roll and soup.

Oh, man. I ate it all.

The poor sandwich was relegated to the fridge.

I felt really not great after. I had a hard time waking up, and ended up sleeping 13 hours.

And I woke up bloated and with dark circles under my eyes. I don't normally suffer from dark circles unless I have sinusitis or other nasal allergy flare-up. But I notice that eating a lot of Chinese food (sodium, MSG?) makes me get dark circles. Hmm.

So, I look like crap, feel like crap and am very pissed off at my total lack of self-control.

I don't know what switch in me has to be pushed, but clearly, I am not committed in my will as much as I am in my mind. My mind wakes up deciding to go, my will decides to be a promiscuous food whore.

I am not giving up, but I am wishing there was an easier way to flip that switch and get going on this.

So frustrated. But not surrendering.

~

What NOT To Do When You Blow It and Reassessing That "Cheat Days" Thing

Both JC and Lyn have some advice for those days when we simply blow it--scarf down the three or four slices of pizza, attack the brownies, go for the supersized burger meal, go mad with the chips and nacho cheese, etc.

Do not say, "Oh, well, I blew it. Might as well have X, Y, and Z, too."

JC wants you to get rid of the negative language. Don't even think, "I blew it!"

Lyn wants you to remember that every bite counts, even the ones AFTER the occasion of "blowing it." A slip is not a license to keep slipping. And a cheat day may sabotage you by giving you that very sense of "Well, I might as well as..."

I think both make good points. We always have to analyze our verbiage/mental script. If saying "I blew it" becomes a magic chant that lets us go binge worse or keeps us from stopping a bad choice, then it must be removed.

And if a cheat day becomes an excuse to blow all the week's progress, then a cheat day is NOT an aid to weight loss. I have seen a blogger here and there use a cheat day as an excuse to just go hog wild and eat everything in sight. That's not the purpose of cheat days, as I understand them. It's a day to enjoy a particular meal or treat that we'd normally eschew. Let's say, instead of a plain roasted sweet potato, we go for the sweet potato casserole. Or instead of the grilled chicken, we go for the chicken cordon bleu. And yet, always with an eye to keeping the rest in check.

But cheat days do tend to become the ultra feast--the fried foods, the shake, the chocolate cake, the gravy, the extra cheese, the garlic rolls with extra oil. In other words, instead of being a way to hold off on a daily donut by allowing oneself a donut once a week or once a month, it becomes a day to give into every indulgence.

That can't possibly help. It just feeds the binge monster.

If you have a cheat day, and it's not working for you (ie, it's sabotaging you), try a cheat meal or a cheat ITEM in a meal. So, you have the healthful meals on a Saturday, but you allow yourself one indulgence (fries with your grilled chicken, or full fat dressing on your salad, or cookies instead of sugar free jello.) That can work. :)

Hey, we all gotta find what will ultimately work for us. But keep an eye on if these two things--language and cheat days--are actually an obstacle you need to knock down.

I can't do cheat days. I am someone who will go hog wild. Whenever I managed to lose a big chunk of weight in the past, it was by incorporating some kind of treat I looked forward to DAILY, but always a smaller portion or a less-fat/no-sugar option. I can't go a week without a treat; I can't say "CHEAT DAY!" either. It's a middle ground for me.

On the other hand, saying "I blew it" is not a trigger for me the way it's for some. Saying, "I blew it" is usually followed by, "What can I eat for my next meal that takes me back on a better path?"

Neither changing our verbiage nor stopping a slip is easy. But they are alway part of a lifelong weight correction plan.
~~

Sharing Some of My Art Collection

--L'Amore by Sara Butcher


The last couple eating days have been weird, not to mention sleeping and everything else. Had to move all the stuff out of my kitchen and dining room to put new flooring, and scrub the floors on my hands and knees, clean the fridge, etc. I could barely walk yesterday and today. Everything from the waist down hurts! The lack of adequate sleep and odd schedule has me eating off plan. Plus, Thursday--pizza binge. Again. I can easily say that's my number one trouble food. But I didn't have anything in the house to make it and it was late and, yes, the only restaurants open late round here are pizza joints and Denny's and IHOPs. And only pizza delivers.

So, today, I woke up after sleeping 9 hours. Nice! And I had a healthy 300 calorie breakfast of egg white and spinach frittata and a raw tomato with parsley and olive oil. Fresh-ground coffee to die for. And I got to enjoy my nice new floor.

Still moving like a hobbled senior citizen, but, that'll pass.

Since my eating has been crap two days running, and I'm breaking out, and I'm holding water, I decided to offer you something much nicer to look at than my ankles at present. :)

A few things from the art I've collected since last year. (Which will have to tide me over for a while, since we got our tax bills and the budget just DIED!)

First, a piece that was my Christmas present last year from hubby. I commissioned it from Sara Butcher, an enormously talented young artist who specializes in Christian (ie, angels and such) and Fantasy (ie fairies, wizards, etc) art. My watercolor came out so nice, a friend of mine commissioned art, too, and than another recommended Sara to her boss, who had her sister memorialized as a stunning angel by Sara in a watercolor. (Makes me emotional to think about it, and it's so lovely a tribute.)

My painting is called "Warrior's Guardian"--the title was chosen by Sara. (click the link to see a LARGER, better image).I merely specified what I wanted in the panting (ie, a large, black-haired angel with a dragon and a knight in each hand.) Here she is:



I spent a mini-boatload on a fabulous golden frame with a pattern that matches that on the angel's bodice. It hangs here, in my office. And when I look at her, I feel so good and calm. She's therapeutic. She's also doctrinally trinitarian. Those of you who are trinitarian will catch what I mean. Everyone else, just notice the pattern of THREEs in the painting--in the buds, the layers of the skirting, in the rings of light, in the birds, etc. There are various sets of three, including, of course, the three central beings: the dragon, the knight, and the angel.

The first image way up top, that's L'Amore by Sara, and I bought that ACEO because it reminded me of hubby and myself, him fair of hair, me dark, and lots of love, love, love!

Another gifted fantasy artist is Carmen Keys. I bought an original watercolor that she'd already painted (not to my specs) because the expression on the elvish lady's face reminded me of my mom, who happened to love both that lavender color and lilies. It's called, fittingly, "DREAM OF LILIES"



I spent a second mini-boatload framing her gloriously. Took a long time to find the right matting colors to suit the color scheme. Probably the toughest color selection for professional framing I've ever had to do. But it came out splendidly. (I need to one day take digital shots of them as they hand on the wall, cause the frames and good matting actually accentuates the beauties of the works.)



At left is an adorable small painting (and ACEO), also by Carmen Keys, and it's called "Afraid of the Dark." I suffered badly from that phobia for years. I'm much better now, thanks.
At right is a cute "sweater fairy" I bought from Natalie Ewert. I wish I could afford some of her Queen of Hearts originals in her Alice In Wonderland series. Love those!

My most recent commission--the artist just sent me the final image via email yesterday--is one based on the character and setting of my Novel-In-Progress. The character is named Selah, and the background skyline is in Miami. The novel is an urban fantasy. But here is Hanna Sandvig's conception of Selah (who lives in a magical, multi-dimensional pseudo-monastery with a particularly attractive and mysterious guardian angel, a place where no one ages and many secrets are kept):



As previously, I specified what I wanted (the scar on her cheek, the color and style of hair, a red blouse, a ghostly moon, a "Gothy" feel to her outfit, a misty environment, an ancient looking stone edifice), but it's Hanna's talent that brought her to life. You can tell that Hanna has a strong "anime" sensibility. Hubby and I occasionally watch anime, and I wanted something in that milieu.

While I couldn't afford new art from Melanie Weidner at this time, I did order several prints from her collection, which you can start to view at the previous link and here. Some prints that I ordered are "Deep Breath," "Opening," "At Home," "Gathering Strength," and "Between Us." I also got the prints set of "The Passion of the Earth" series.

If I were flush with millions, I'd have a house full from top to bottom of art. I really love watercolors best of all, but any really beautiful piece--a collage, an oil painting, a sculpture, etc--they can really make me just feel like bursting. And sometimes light me up when I feel dark. Or give me hope on a hard day.

I have several more fairy/fantasy/angel pieces, but I don't have them all scanned/photographed. I also have three silly-fun Monster By Mail small pieces by Len Peralta (who started doing these to raise money for his latest child's birth, and she was born days ago!) You can see Len creating my "Botticelli's Birth of Venus Zombie" and my "Tormented Female Novelist Alien at South Beach Cafe" at YouTube. The latter features a fun, bouncy tune. Len also did my Halloween present to my husband--a sort of vampiric alter-hubby.

If you want to buy something really special for a loved one, consider art. You support an artist and you get something gorgeous. Win/Win. Even if all you can buy is a $15 print, it's a lovely thing. And some artists, like Sara Butcher, are doing philanthropic stuff for the holidays. (Sara is giving $1 from each bookmark sold to the homeless.My angel painting is offered in bookmark form, and I ordered some. Also, a gorgeous one called "Blues of Winter" is a terrific choice. Cool and graceful for the season.)


What do you collect that makes you happy and feel a little "bigger" inside?

Scale Tale: Ticking Slightly Downwards, even with Cuban feast digesting in my gut

Hello, all. Yeah, I've been scarce. But I did want to come and report for the challenge.

Not the most exciting report. Mr Tanita says:

275.2

That's a loss of 0.4 pounds. Almost half a pound. I'll take it!

My face is breaking out, which may mean company's coming. We'll see. But I had some good days, some iffy days. Yesterday, after visiting a relative at the hospital, my sister and I went for Cuban food. I had a points-accumulating feast of:

1 tamale (Cuban style, with onions on a leaf)
1 cup garbanzo soup (oh, how I adore garbanzo soup) into which I dumped about a third of a cup of white rice to thicken
1 large slice of toston (fried green plantain) with salt
5 ounces or so of masitas de puerco con mojo(fried pork chunks with garlic-sour orange-olive oil sauce)
2/3 cup of congri (rice cooked together with black beans, aka 'moros y cristianos')
and 1 serving of coconut flan


Yes, it was delicious and comforting and my sister and I reveled.

I'd had a breakfast of about 400 cals, and then this calorie-rich lunch. So, dinner was a scoop of protein powder mixed with water and some coconut water (to balance the salty restaurant meal a tad).

I don't regret it, btw. I am unrepentant.

But today, I'm being very, very good.

Hi to all my blogging fatfighters. I'm praying for all of us to end the year at a lovely deficit. The only time we wanna have a deficit, huh? :)

Overeating Ogre: The Bocaditos Got Me!

Well, dang. After being so good for several days, the Overeating Ogre overpowered me this weekend. What the heck?

Yes, a family get-together sent me into a bingey tailspin.

Thing is, I planned for it. I froze bottles of various flavors of Crystal Light to drink, I made platters with Israeli salad and hummus and whole wheat pita.

But then I saw some traditional Cuban "event" foods that just harkened back to childhood, and I went to town. Mostly, the bocaditos did me in. It's these egg-bread mini-sandwhiches with a paste inside made from pork/ham/cheese/pimentos that even as a kid would send me into a feeding frenzy.

Well, I acted like I was 12 and fed away. Dang.

And the thing is, they weren't as good as the homemade ones by my mom or eldest sister (who made/make it with real pork and ham and cheese and not deviled ham spread or cheap stuff). But they had comfort food/nostalgia food all over them.

The salt and carbohydrate overload showed on the scale: 4.5 pounds up.

Yes, yes, I know. I didn't GAIN 4 lbs of fat (I think .5 pounds gained might be believable.) But I'm still bloated and ticked at myself, after doing so nicely for days.

Life goes on. "All is forgiven," says Our Lady of Weight Loss. "Move on, my child."

I'm moving on!

So, it's back to the hard work of NOT pigging out today.

BTW, thanks to all of you for celebrating my losses. Sorry to have let you--and me--down. But hey, it's a journey and there are potholes on the road.

I hope you all are doing WAY better than I did this weekend. :)
~

The Villainous Hard Crust and the Binge

Well, I bit into a really hard bit of roti crust a couple days ago, and it hurt. Then I bit into a crunchy plantain chip yesterday, and it REALLY hurt. Something felt "not right." I got this bad throbbing pain. Took a ginormous strength Motrin, which helped loads. Put in an emergency message to the dentist. (I've got an appt today.)

Like a fool, I went into comfort, creamy, don't have to chew food binge. Boston Market mashed potatoes, creamed spinach, gravy overload, mac'n'cheese. Yeesh.

So, while the scale said down 2 pounds Saturday, today it says one. All that salt didn't help, either. Egads.

But, the correct approach when one screws up is...?

Yes, you got it. You pick yourself, dust yourself off, and get BACK ON A SANE PLAN. (I hadn't immediately cut back to "dieting" calorie counts last week. I just began scaling back from my usual feasts. I'd say, according to my diet/food journal calculations, I brought my consumption down from about 3500 calories to 2600 calories Wed-Sat. Yesterday, It was higher. Hey, it's progress of some sort.)

So, today, after my scrambled eggs, apple juice--I prefer fresh-squeezed grapefruit and orange, but those give me a little itchy in the throat feeling, at times, and I can't have that at the dentists's. Especially since my allergies are already icky. Spring pollens!--and ginger peach tea with Splenda, I calculated how many calories I need given my height, weight, age. I came up with 2397. Huh. I thought it would be more, given I'm barn-sized. I remember seeing a chart a couple years ago, and it had the "maintenance" calories over 3K. Surprise me!

I used an automatic online calorie needs calculator, and that gave me 2391. So, really, pretty close to the one I did by hand with pen and calculator.

Note that your needs go down as your weight goes down. And your need goes up as your exercise level goes up. I put in the "sedentary" level, cause I'm still not gung-ho on the exercise. So, if you're a movement enthusiast, you get more calories. If you're sedentary and slim, you get fewer. Makes sense.

My goal for this week is to stay at 2000 or fewer, as I work my way to a daily quota of 1600 dieting calories. Let's see, that would be about 40 points max for this week (using WW system). (Note: WW wouldn't approve of 40 points, that's way over what my weight category would permit on the Flex system. I'm just using it as a quick mental way to calculate my allowance in a 2000 calorie limit.)

Okay, so, the Princess Dieter needs to get her dental thing sorted out. Meantime, I'm going to keep to healthier non-chewing options: organic unsweetened applesauce and cottage cheese for lunch, protein drink and yogurt for snacks, maybe a nice soup for supper and some carrot juice.

I hope you calculate your caloric needs today, and subtract from it so you're on your way to less of excess and more of the real, healthy Queen that you truly are.

~ ~ ~