Back at the diet again as of May 2. I week in and though I'm only down 7 lbs, I'm okay with it. The weight was coming back on at an alarming rate and I was more than halfway toward gaining back all I had lost.
This is frightening really. So much work, deprivation and time goes into loosing weight. Yet, gaining it is so easy. I really can't go through this again, so this time around I need to find a way of loosing the weight that I can live with.
During the past week, I've pretty closely followed the Quick Weight Loss Diet that I originally lost so much weight with. There are long term problems with this diet plan for me though, so I've been reading and soul-searching for what is going to work for me in the long run. Here are my ideas:
1. Follow the basic tenets of the QWL plan. Mornings, rotate between 1 egg, 1 starch and 1 fruit and 3 oz. mozzerela, 1 starch, 1 fruit. Lunch and dinner should always have 2 vegetables, 1 protein, and 1 starch. I should have 1 fruit with lunch and another in the afternoon. I can have 1 serving of milk and fat per day. The question for me now is the protein snacks I should eat in the afternoon and after dinner. The QWL diet provides powder packets that make shakes, puddings, etc. for this purpose. I still have quite a stockpile of these items from the past times on this diet. But I'd like to find a substitute for these if possible, because one of the main changes I intend to make involves using less processed food products.
2. Use less processed food products. I'd really like to get them out of my diet completely, but not sure if that's doable for me. I've decided this time to forgo the delicious chip and other starch products sold by QWL. I almost ordered a batch today, but reconsidered when I remembered that one of the failures from past dieting attempts involved eating 3 bags of their chips with the justification that it was better than going to McDonalds...which I eventually did. One of my big concerns with processed foods are additives they use to make them taste good or make us addicted to eating them. I just may be more prone to this than others, but once I get the taste for something like the QWL chips or McDonalds...I just want more, and more. I wake-up in the morning thinking about it first thing. It's also a funny thing, but I really don't actually like the taste of McDonalds or even the QWL chips, but I crave eating them nonetheless. This weekend I read about a study that found people eat twice as much of something they don't like, as something they do like. This seemed to fit me exactly.
3. Do not eat things I really don't like. This seems like a no-brainer for most people, but not me. I don't really like the taste of McDonald's or some of the other things that I will eat too much of and even crave. If this study referenced above is true, maybe understanding this about myself will further help me stay away from this things. I really have to carry food with me when I leave the house, because for me, hunger is an overpowering sensation. When it happens, I just run to the closest fast food I can and order the absolutely most disgusting items on the menu, always with a dessert to cleanse away the taste of the food.
4. Drink water. I'm generally pretty good about this, but I think I need to be more strategic about it. I need 1 cup when I wake in the morning, another before and after lunch. I need to drink a cup before and after the afternoon snack, as well as before and after dinner. I'm hoping this will help me to feel full with the smaller amounts of food I'm eating.
5. Do not under any circumstance go to McDonalds! It is my true real addiction and like an alcoholic, I just can never have one taste. I somehow need to live in a world where it exists without succumbing to it's power over me. Even if I fail at following the eating rules defined above, I absolutely cannot fail to avoid this place. If I do or change nothing else, this is the one battle I truly need to conquer.
6. Exercise. The goal would be to do it daily, but I seem to either injure myself or get sick and mess-up my routine. So this time I will have no routine, only to move. I need to make sure I get up and do something small every hour or so. I need to go places to walk. I need to swim in my pool. Get on the elliptical at the gym. Walk around interesting places when we travel. I need to restructure the way I think about exercising to make it doable and enjoyable.
7. Do not eat at my desk or in front of the TV. I think this will help me define where I can eat, so I won't think of my work/entertainment zone as a place to snack if I get hungry.
8. Work for my food. I think I was raised with the mindset that food should be gotten fast and am used to immediate gratification when I'm hungry. I thought about this today as I prepared a fresh pineapple. It took work, but it was so much better than the fresh and very expensive already cut fresh pineapple you can buy at the store. If I put more time and thought into preparing my food, I hope to get myself into a different mindset from the hungry/instant gratification mode.
9. Call for help. I've promised my husband that if I breakdown and go to McDonald's, I will call Overeaters Anonymous immediately. I know and understand this is an addiction, but I'm loathe to sit at meetings where people hug and cry...not my thing. But this is it, here in writing, that if I breakdown again I will go to their meetings. Hopefully the spectre of this will keep me in line, along with the deep desire to really get at this.
10. Develop creative outlets. I've been writing and knitting lately and both help a lot. I also want to learn painting and do more sewing. The goal is to be so busy at these things I produce enough sell-able items for an Etsy shop.
Looks like this has developed into a Ten-Point Strategic Plan. Guess I better get at it!
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