So, I’ve only once before in my life actually made an effort to change my diet. It was probably ten years ago or so. When I first topped 200 lbs I decided to get serious and “do something about it.” Mostly what I did was stop drinking regular coke and start drinking diet coke and got rid of french fries from my diet. That’s really about all I did. Over the course of about three months, I lost about 20 lbs.
But I didn’t keep it off, eventually I started eating fries again and started drinking root beer when the taste of diet soda started to resemble battery acid to me.
So even a “diet” that was mostly replacing coke with diet coke and swearing off french fries was too much to keep up for more than a year or so.
Geez, that’s downright silly compared to what I’m trying to do now.
Here’s my diet for the last two days:
Sunday:
– breakfast: one egg omelette, wheat toast, juice
– lunch: raw broccoli spears, two radishes, a carrot
– dinner: Ham sandwich with spinach “lettuce” and water
Monday:
– breakfast: One fried egg, small piece of ham, wheat toast, juice
– lunch: turkey sandwich on wheat toast w/spinach and water
– dinner: Two fried eggs, bigger piece of ham, wheat toast, water
Other than that I’ve eaten one piece of chocolate candy, about a dozen potato chips (major dietary breach there) and one dark chocolate hershey kiss.
Other than the candy and chips, that’s more or less what I’ve been eating for the last week. (Well, I did pig out one day and eat about 2/3 of a “panda bowl” with noodles and mandarin chicken for lunch while out Christmas shopping…, but I only had some veggie munchies for dinner!)
I’ve lost about a pound.
14 users commented in " Why dieting is hard… "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackBut can you do this for the rest of your life?
Well, theoretically I only need to keep this up until I lose 25 pounds or so, then I increase the calories to maintain weight.
I guess we’ll just have to see if I can.
Don’t discount water.
Rule of thumb is to take your weight, divide that in half and that’s the amount of water in ounces you need to drink throughout the day. Or crystal light if you can’t stomach water.
Dieting IS hard. From what I read, you’re pretty restricted there, Cosmic. But, you can do it.
The worst part of dieting is staying busy enough (especially when there’s not much to do outside) to not think about it.
It’s hard not to munch while watching TV, or reading.
It’s not easy. But, you can do it. I know you can.
Oh yeah…What Yup said.
How about the exercise, how’s that going?
I ring in at 200 lbs myself (I don’t look it, right?) and am thinking maybe I should go on a sympathy diet with you — what’s your target weight? I would like to get back to 180, personally.
I’m shooting for 175. I admit that with the holidays my exercising has been approached with less diligence than my dieting. I tell myself that I’ve been walking miles and miles while shopping. But I know that’s not the same thing. I have been getting a daily walk of at least 30-40 minutes each day. And I’ve been doing touch toes and some stretching. I have not been diligent about the pushups or the tummy crunches… Better start that.
BTW, eating lunch now. Ham sandwich with spinach, six whole grain tortilla chips with salsa and water. It’s pretty satisfying to be honest. I find that my desire to eat large meals has already diminished considerably.
For example… My typical Panda Express meal in the past, for a long, long time, has been a two-entree platter with noodles, mandarin chicken and orange chicken. And I’d eat pretty much all of it. The Cosmic Wife would usually order a “panda bowl” which is about 1/3 as much food as the two-entree platter. This weekend I couldn’t even finish the panda bowl. I think that’s gotta be some sort of progress.
Oh, one editorial comment. I have been very diligent about washing off my spinach leaves before using them as “lettuce.” I remember all too well the spinach e coli scare of a few years ago.
Yup, I have always had a problem with drinking water. That’s one reason I drank so much soda. This time I have been forcing myself to drink water as much as possible. I’ve kept a water bottle with me pretty much every waking moment. I dunno how much I’m drinking, but I’m drinking a lot. We have well water and I use a pitcher with a water filter built in, and I’m going through about two pitchers full each day, so probably around 40 ounces or so (The filter takes up a big chunk of the pitcher so there’s not that much water in it when you use it, unfortunately). By your measure I need to increase that by about another 60 ounces. Wow… dunno if I can do that.
One of the rules of dieting is to drink a full glass of water before you eat. I need to start doing that.
I am finding water easier to drink lately. It’s almost to the level of actually satisfying my thirst. If I could get to the point that water was something I drank when thirsty (instead of soda) then that would be a major lifestyle improvement right there.
I’m not gonna embarrass myself with how many sodas I was drinking each day. Let’s just say that this diet is gonna save me a pretty good bit of money…
My employer keeps a wide variety of sodas for us, for free. I was up to about a 6 pack a day. I decided to quit about a week ago… hoping to go on the water myself.
Once worked at a place with free soda and free popcorn. The free popcorn was revoked when the owner couldn’t find a coffee filter one day and realized the staff was using coffee filters as popcorn containers.
So you didn’t blink at 6 pack a day… what were you at?
Heh… mebbe 3 12 oz cans and one 20 oz bottle a day? Sumtin lik dat.
I’ve become a huge fan of (unsweetened) cold tea as my “cola replacement”. It is more interesting than water, has a bit of caffeine, and is available for free at work in convenient plastic bottles that I can drink in meetings.
I was always too lazy to drink coffee, and diet coke’s carbonation was causing, er, excessive issues
Got on the scale this morning… was 200 pounds exactly. That’s two pounds less than yesterday morning. Maybe the scale’s not accurate.
By the way, I measure myself after getting dressed, but without shoes. At the Dr. office they measure me with shoes. On their scale when I went in for my last checkup, I tipped their scale at 211 pounds. Since I didn’t weigh myself at home until a few days ago, I don’t know what I weighed on the home scale when I started the diet. I should have started weighing myself earlier.
I’ll be back at the Dr’s office Monday morning, and will be able to weigh myself on their scale again. Then I’ll know exactly how much, if anything, I’ve lost.
Still, it’s nice being on the verge of getting that first digit back into a “1″. This time I hope to keep it there.
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