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bike

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20 min., 3.5 mi.
Total: 191.8 mi. Still in the Marshes. And not too happy about it.

OTOH, the scale this morning revealed I have officially lost 20 pounds. :D

At my rescheduled "are you dying of liver failure yet?" appointment with the ADD people, I got a copy of my labwork from when they took blood last month, which provides me with proof to wave in people's faces that cholesterol levels are far more genetic than weight-related. So nyah to those people who think I'm about to drop dead of a heart attack any moment now. :P

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So you're basically counting calories + exercise, yes? :D That's a lot! Congrats :D

Yup. Nothing more complicated than that, nothing faddish. I'm not even watching my fat vs. carb vs. protein intake. Well, I'm watching it, but not doing anything about it. XD

The bit that's different than the times I tried to lose weight before (which weren't that many, really, so I haven't yo-yoed)is that I'm not restricting calories significantly - aiming for 1600 net (after exercise calories accounted for) per day, rather than 1200 before exercise - so my body shouldn't be going into hyper-efficient starvation mode, plus I don't feel restricted and overeat. And I'm doing at least 20 minutes a day on the bike. I've occasionally forgotten to bike until too late in the evening, and I think twice I said the hell with it, but I've only missed it about once every two or three weeks, I think.

What I enjoy is eating a nice, filling lunch at work and seeing coworkers eating meals that consist of things like cottage cheese and carrots every day, and realizing that I'm getting better results than they are. But I'm aiming for permanent eating habits change, and not a diet.

On a sidenote, I've found that if I eat a big, filling lunch, my needs for dinner are drastically reduced. The unfortunate thing is when dinner becomes a social thing and suddenly I've had two big meals in a day, but as long as I just keep away from that ~~friendship~~ social eating business, a decent lunch works wonders for me and my otherwise stupidly large appetite! :D

My mum was of the light cottage cheese n' carrots lunch variety and it worked perfectly for her so I assumed for a long time that was all that would work, but my mum grew up naturally thin and with a different shaped body and different food tastes entirely, so it's not too surprising that the opposite works better for me, the girl who takes after her (very unhealthy) dad.

The advantage of being so antisocial is that on the rare occasions when a social dinner is sprung upon me, I don't have to worry too much about having too many big meals at once. There's special occasions like cons, and I decided long ago not to worry about what I was eating (other than lactose) on holidays and at cons, so the four rum and cokes and four full meals (I need to eat when drinking, or I get sick) I had that Saturday are completely guilt-free.

I'm mentally constructing a small manifesto for myself that I may or may not get around to posting, but it involves things like "Occasionally overeating is not bad; it is normal eating." Because one of the things I refuse to do is to let what I eat make me guilty or depressed. I've got too many other things doing that. (One of my other things is to get myself into eating small amounts of very good foods - I'd rather have, say, a good dessert every once in a while than subsist on sugar-free Jello. Or use whole milk instead of fat-free, or eat small amounts of very good ice cream instead of a big bowl of ice milk. Life's too short to eat tasteless, dull food. And I won't feel guilty about calories or fat content from dairy, since I need more of that sort of thing.)

I grew up with the cottage-cheese-and-carrots mindset - which isn't that bad nutritionally when you think about it - but I can only eat one serving of cottage cheese every few days. Any more and it starts getting icky to me. XD Plus, it goes along with a whole mindset of tuna, a tinned peach half on a leaf of lettuce, and foods like that which are so solidly mid-century that I feel old just looking at them. XD

I'm totally with you on not watching what you eat on social occasions. I've found the best way to approach them is just to eat what I want and pay closer attention to when I'm full so that I don't end up eating for the sake of eating, although I'm totally prepared to continue if something new and tasty comes my way after that point! :D If you see food as something to be enjoyed, it just makes logical sense to eschew daily vanilla in favour of the occasional inevitable tiramisu.

The only problems come when you're living a very social lifestyle, like I was last year at uni. I eat very decently when I'm just taking responsibility for myself, lots of veg and wholewheat carbs with lean meats and all, but when I'm at a restaurant, I can't resist the richest dishes on the menu! That would be where my plan to buy free weights and an exercise bike for next year comes in. XD Hopefully that'll also get me in better condition to deal with the stress of my final year at uni.

I was actually brought up on semi-skimmed milk and Diet Coke and suchlike, so I don't notice the taste difference between fatty and low-fat foods or drinks most of the time (the only exceptions being things like chicken skin or bacon fat), but after reading articles that declare low-fat eating to be useless, I'm tempted to go the Japanese route of including small amounts of fatty meat on a semi-regular basis into stir-fries and such. Meat as a flavouring really works for me, especially considering how expensive it is (although it's still cheaper than vegetables here).

The cottage-cheese-and-carrots mindset is no bad thing at all; my mum really enjoys those foods, and has made me the most delicious meals based around her diet (the reason I adopted it as my own to lose weight, though it was the one that was ultimately too restrictive for me). One lunch I remember is two slices of toast, one spread with mackerel tinned in tomato sauce, and one spread with cottage cheese and grapes. Very healthy, very tasty, light but filling, a great lunch. Nowadays I'd say it's better as a dinner for me, but I have no quarrel with the actual foods themselves - I just wish I could access them here!

And now, all this talk of healthy eating and exercise has left me so invigorated I'm going to put lunch on and head out for a bike ride. :D This is why I like talking to other people about weight loss issues, sometimes for empathy or entertainment for sure, but very often for encouragement. Conversation is a great motivational kick up the backside, I find.

Actually, I bet the low cholesterol is linked to the lactose intolerance--cutting back on cheese means cutting way back on saturated fat.

At least, I'm hoping so--I'm trying cutting back on saturated fat (while still eating full meals) in hopes of getting my own high LDL down. (HDL and triglcerides are both good, though!)

I don't cut back as far as expected on cheese - I go through a lot of LactAid - and I pick up a lot of saturated fat elsewhere, as CalorieKing shrieks at me nearly every day. I think there's a growing awareness in the medical community that a lot of it is genetically determined - my mom has very low levels of LDL and high levels of HDL, and is overweight (although not as much as I am), and she's not lactose intolerant* and also eats a decent amount of dairy. She's got high blood pressure, as did her father, but it showed up when she took a course of prednisone. Hasn't showed up in me yet, and I hope that with establishing a pattern of daily exercise, it'll help with that.

* Although she carries the recessive gene for it, because, as has been recently discovered, it takes two recessive genes for someone to end up lactose intolerant, so I got whammied from both sides on that one.

That's cool :3 I'm actually trying to do that as well. I started with 1500 calories but eventually settled for 1600 as I found that I couldn't last as long in the gym as when I wasn't "dieting".

Now my problem is: I went on a trip and that ruined the dieting so now I've gotten used to eating a lot. ARGH. I'm trying to get back to the routine of things. Haha :D Bento's a good way of portioning though ^^

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