Back on the Wagon

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Okay. The Super Bowl is over. I love it that they were so evenly matched. I was happy the Rams won because they won it the same way they got to the Super Bowl in the final game that won their place there – a come from behind win. I switched allegiances several times during the game because I love a really close, nail-biter game more than anything. (My husband is still rolling his eyes because I liked the uniforms of the Bengals MUCH better than those of the Rams.)

We enjoyed our splurge dinner of chili mac with onions and cheese, thoroughly enjoying every forbidden bite. :0) Splurge mode is officially over now. I’m using cronometer.com to track my eating. I’m still trying to work out how to eat the foods that are supposed to be good for my husband’s and my various health concerns – building a master list of foods to INCLUDE as often as possible and ones to AVOID. I’m adding to it as I read more and reprinting the list so I can keep it on the fridge to remind me.

I have a yoga session on my calendar for today. I’m also going to include a walk out to our shop and back each time I take a break from my ‘find-my-desk’ project started yesterday and continuing until the emergence of an actual piece of furniture, rather than a pile of STUFF.

Shut Up

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As of this morning I’m half a pound away from regaining my 30 pounds off. Once I reach that, I’ll enter new territory. :0)

I’m feeling more confident about my food choices now. Cronometer.com is helping me SEE what I’m eating more clearly, particularly as to calories, protein, carbs, and fat. I’m determined to continue eating the REAL FOOD and STU’S CLEAN COOKIN’ frozen meals for dinners as long as my husband is happy with them. When two people are involved, eating is more complicated than it is when one person can decide to “only eat blue food.”

We tend to eat the same lunch each day (except for Lunch Bunch on Fridays), so I’m tweaking that carefully. I’m being particularly mindful about snacks – mid-afternoon and any after dinner “dessert”.

I’m pleased that, though I’ve been downstairs reading at o-dark-thirty several times in the past few weeks – the worst time to NOT eat for me – I’ve managed to not eat anything. :0)

Onward and downward!!!!!

Encouragement!

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Using the cronometer.com records and tweaking what I’m eating seems to be working. I had already found that I was eating an acceptable number of calories. Since I wasn’t losing any weight (or have been gaining and losing the same lardage for awhile now) I decided to tweak WHAT I was eating.

I started this 3 days ago.

I’ve lost 3.4 lbs since then, so this seems to be a valid approach. I’m ALMOST back to the 30-pounds-off place.

Hopefully, I can get to that point and then continue on to new territory.

Losing the Lardage

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The use of cronometer and tweaking resulting in losing a couple of pounds in the past two days, although FIRST feedback from the scales yesterday showed the opposite. This morning the scales were smirking at me a bit less – always a good way to start the day.

I listed the typical foods I eat everyday with the app to see where I was on sticking to 1200 calories or less per day – what cronometer suggested would result in less lardage. I found that although my calorie count was good, I seemed to be eating too much fat. Since my weight has been yo-yo-ing lately, I decided to try some tweaks to get my body’s attention.

This seems to be good strategy! Fingers crossed that the ‘downward’ trajectory continues!

Diet Tool

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I started using cronometer.com a couple of days ago – first to get some idea of

1. how many calories I should aim for each day to lose weight
2. how many calories were in my normal eating day now
3. how I was doing nutrition-wise

After I filled out the information, the website said that I should aim for 1200 calories per day in order to lose the lard. My normal eating plan now is right about there, even with snacks, so that’s good, but the nutrition part showed I was eating too much fat. I decided to tweak that, plus I decided to pare down a bit on what I’m eating.

Yesterday I left off the one slice of bread I’ve been splitting to make a ham sandwich for lunch. I pared down my mid-afternoon snack, cutting out the slice of ham and a slice of cheese and just eating a hard boiled egg.

When I weighed myself this morning, I was UP half a pound. ARRRGH!

Cosmopolitan

I’m telling myself that this could be water retention and not to worry about it. I’m going for the WEEK’S eating – not just one day. Since I’m supposedly a ‘mature’ woman, not dependent on instant gratification, I will see where I am at the end of the week with these changes.

It WOULD be encouraging to see some progress by the end of the week…

Macros and Exercise

Trish’s Treasures

The short version is I have 5 pounds to re-lose before I’m on track again. An indulgence here, a bite there, and here I am. I would be disgusted, but I did it, knowing exactly what I was doing, and I enjoyed every bite of falling off the wagon.

Now that we’re officially into 2020, I’m starting to pay attention to my eating again and exercising.

Penn Fitness Warehouse

The weather is helping in my efforts to do my exercising. The highs are in the low 50’s now so I don’t freeze my parts while doing my 35 minutes on the elliptical trainer in the garage. I take my MP3 player and earphones out, turn on the trainer, start my music, hit ‘User 1’ and ‘Start’ and I’m in the zone for the duration. My husband says I do it ‘too slowly.’ (He doesn’t do it at ALL, so I’m ignoring his opinion.) I’m doing it every day (when I’m being good) and I’m doing it in a way that doesn’t cause my joints to complain or ache, so I’m declaring a win.

 

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In the afternoons, I am trying to do half an hour or so of Gentle Yoga stretches. My husband gave me a mat that he got for camping out a million years ago. It’s much thicker than the normal yoga mat, and I love the extra cushioning. Oddly enough, the only area in our house that is large enough for me to fully stretch in all directions is our living room. I again ignore my husband’s ‘helpful suggestions,’ doing my own routine of slowly stretching everything in all directions, breathing into each position, based on the guidance I received from Cat Kabira in the “Gentle Yoga” DVDs. I can really feel a difference if I do this every day. I feel looser, able to stretch in all directions more and more over time, lessen aches and pains due to other activities. If I’m lucky, I can do my practice without the help of our animals, who tend to want to lie down on top of me.

Since even at 72, I’m a little kid at heart, I reward my efforts with actual gold star stickers I bought on the net, putting one for each exercise on my desk calendar. It’s a bit embarrassing that I do this, but not enough to stop. I will always be motivated by gold stars…

Pinterest

I am doing a combination of intermittent fasting (not eating after 9 in the evening until about 1:00 or 1:30 the next afternoon) and then following my macros in the keto plan. A great website called Cronometer.com is helping me record what I’m eating as it applies to what I’m SUPPOSED to be eating for the day. My biggest problem at this point is that I tend to eat too much protein and not enough fat. I have read that eating too much protein can throw me out of ketosis. I’m working on adding more fat. I’ve tried eating an avocado each day, but I really don’t like them, so I’m trying to find other alternatives. I’ll keep reading on the net and see what else I can eat to make my eating match my macro.

Once I re-lose my 5 holiday pounds, I can hopefully get into new territory on my weight loss efforts. My best thus far is losing 43 pounds and 45 inches. My goal is another 30 lbs or so (until the BMI charts are happy with me) and whatever inches go with that. My goal is to be as healthy as I can for whatever my current age is for as long as possible. My husband and I both have health issues that improve as we follow the keto plan, so I’m hoping that 2020 is a great year for us.

New Counter

My son told me about Cronometer.com  this morning. I checked it out, signed up for a free membership, entered my information and will see how it goes.

Cronometer.com

I was able to set up a profile, add my goals, list the food I’ll eat today – plus the exercise I’ll be doing – all within about 10 minutes. No muss, no fuss. It told me how much more I needed to burn than I ate in order to reach my desired lard loss each week, and it was easy to see how many calories I was eating, how many carbs, etc. They actually gave me more information on nutrients than I need to know (I think), but it wasn’t distracting or annoying.

If you’re looking for a good way to monitor your progress, check this out.  (I just checked MyFitnessPal.com again after several days. They’re free, but they still haven’t fixed the main page, so I’m looking around. I’m hopeful that Cronometer.com will be my new home.)