8/25 weight loss thoughts

Ok, the nitty gritty on what I'm doing to live healthy:

1. A quick note about all this writing: one reason I'm doing it is to help manage my own attitude. I've started weight loss and given up before. I don't want that to happen this time! And I've been so encouraged by the people who have commented. Thanks to all of you! Facebook has been an especially good place for this. So, in some ways, attitude management is my most important thing.

2. Monitor caloric intake. In round figures, if I want to lose about a pound a week I can eat about 1500 calories per day. The cardinal rules everyone prescribes for dieting are true for me: I have to watch my portions and I have to track what I eat or I will cheat.

Fortunately for me, I'm pretty happy to eat pretty much the same stuff. Then I don't have to think about it too much. I get my servings down and know what to expect. Most everyday I eat:

+ 2 servings of Honey-Nut Cheerios with skim milk, a cup of orange juice and a cup of coffee for breakfast.

+ 5 Whole Wheat Ritz crackers (1 serving) for my mid-morning snack around 10.

+ 1 serving of pita chips, 1 serving of hummus, a mozzarella cheese stick and 10 baby carrots for lunch.

(I add a little variety here and mix in popcorn, cashews and deli ham and mandarin oranges on a tortilla, so I'm on about a three-day rotation.)

+ 1/2 can of pineapple

+ Supper varies greatly depending on what's going on with the family and what Christine is fixing. We have done a great job of adding a lot of salad in at supper time. Sometimes we just do a big chef's salad. Other entrees include pizza (1 slice), loose hamburger sandwiches, pasta and salmon.

+ Also, I almost always drink a glass of wine with supper.

+ I eat a mint and chocolate Skinny Cow almost every day ;-)

+ Other snacks include yogurt and 100 calorie packages of popcorn.

+ I have no problem drinking water and usually drink at least 64 ounces a day.

Addendum: I've also been trying to approach my eating somewhat from the 'Weigh Down Diet' perspective which applies a lot of spiritual principles to weight loss. Here's a shot at boiling-down the basic approach to eating: God made our bodies to know what they want and need to eat. Learn to listen to your body and don't eat when you are full. Simple, right ;-)

I will eventually write up more on my study of 'Weigh Down'.

3. Exercise: In some ways, exercise has been the easiest piece for me and what I most had on the ball before starting this (hopefully last!) round of weight loss. Because I work from home, I have more time to workout. No time is lost to commuting. I commute from my bedroom to my office ;-)

So I have taken on exercise with a will. Since the Paris Air Show in June I have been getting up at 6 am to do cardio six days a week, either 30 minutes to walk the two miles around our neighborhood or 40-60 minutes biking 8-10 miles. I have been tracking my early rising at HabitCal and, of the 25 days so far in August, I have only failed to get up and work out when I was supposed to 4 times. Most of those times (if not all), I was able to make it up in an evening session or by moving stuff around.

I've been doing 100 pushups twice a week for about a year. At some point I added 100 situps and 100 air squats. Now I do that workout twice a week, usually Tuesday night and sometime on Saturday. I'm in the process of mixing up the kinds of pushups and situps I do in each set, mostly just for variety.

I do yoga three times a week for about 30 minutes. I really like this amount of yoga. I don't think I'd like doing it everyday, at least not with DVDs like I do now. I like that it's a different approach to fitness. It's also really good, obviously, for my flexibility and for my back.

Plus, I count about an hour of mowing a week as a calorie-burning exercise :-)

So, if you add all those up, I'm exercising for 30 minutes 12 times a week. Definitely not something everyone could do, but I can, so I am.

FYI, here's a link to my August weight loss contract. I'll be revising it and re-upping for September.

My new mantra: I'm living healthy now. I'm enjoying the benefits now. I'm in a really good place. (And the weight will come off in time.) I'm trying not to get too focused on the weight loss, on some target 3-digit number. I'm making a real lifestyle change. It's working so far and I plan for it to keep working!

What do you think?