Holiday eating

So I'm home for the holidays, and my diet hasn't crash landed but for completely unexpected reasons. I get home and see my dad who happens to be sick. Do I want to see him, yes. Did I want to catch his illness, no. I've been sick for the past 3-4 days. All I've been able to eat is soup and coconut water.... approx 2-3 cans of soup and one container of coconut water in 3 days. Needless to say I dropped past the 160 mark (yay) but not in a good way. As soon as I get better I expect to put weight on again. I feel as if I'm loosing muscle mass instead of fat. I want to be 145 or 150 and strong.
I started out the first 3 days of the vacation strong, I worked out with my mom every day and ate reasonable portion sizes of the stuff I don't normally allow myself to have (read bread). I then saw my dad, and went to a party where I had a horrible allergic reaction to the cats. (And yes I did know she had cats, that was stupid on my part). When I got back I thought I could just wash the clothes and get better but it didn't happen that way. I've been on my bum on the couch for several days unable to move around. I can't sleep at night for fear of an asthma attack and I don't want to go to a doctor before I'm truly sick because I don't want to pay for them to say "oh well wait and see if it gets worse". Hot showers have been helping but at this point I just feel horrible at night. I'm taking a decongestant and my nose won't stop running, I'm taking Advil for my horrible headache and body aches. It needs to get better.

I was supposed to cook Christmas dinner, which is always served around lunch time. I didn't have the stamina to cook much less the health so my mom had to take my ideas and do it. She does a good job cooking but I have a vision for it and it just sucks not to be able to execute it.
For dinner the menu was:
Honey glazed turkey
goat cheese stuffed mushrooms
bread free stuffing
cauliflower mashed 'potatoes'
giblet gravy
kale
string beans
cranberry sauce

all with limited amounts of sugar and as healthy as possible.

Chimichanga cheat

Today I decided to treat myself to a cheat day. I was doing well and didn't need one but really wanted one. This leads to me heading to the Mexican restaurant and ordering a chicken chimichanga for takeout. I decided to eat the whole thing in one sitting, 415 g of yummy with 87g of re-fried beans on the side. I really was full half way through but kept going and going and then it was gone. And then I was out like a light. I fell asleep for about 3 hours directly following and now I feel kinda gross. When I fell asleep I thought that I couldn't eat again every... and now that I'm awake.... I'm hungry again :(

Exercise

So before I weigh myself in the morning and be disappointed in the numbers on the scale, I want to take a minute to feel proud of myself for my exercise tonight. I was feeling tired, my quads have been hurting lately but I have been diligently getting on the elliptical every night this week. I had every intention at the beginning of the holiday to exercise twice a day but was only able to do it once. By the time I woke up it was already mid afternoon and I ended up studying or cooking instead (both good things). However, tonight I was going to give myself a pass on the exercise, but then I remembered the cup of ice cream I had earlier in the day.
I went to a place to study that serves vegan ice cream.... yeah like I was going to pass that up. I got a small which was about 5 oz of sea-salt caramel chocolate chip ice cream with vegan cookie dough added to it. I was in heaven for about the 10 min I was able to make it last. My study buddy got a good chuckle from me licking the bowl....

Any way back to the point. I got up around 2:30 put on my exercise clothes and headed to the little gym they have here in my apt complex. I decided I'd go 30 min on the treadmill instead of using the elliptical. (For the past several days I have been doing 50 min on the elliptical while I watch an episode of a Japanese drama :) ) I decided I was going to try for 2 min of running in intervals after a 10 min warmup. By 9 min in I was ready to go and started jogging (this is what I call running for now) but the point is I had the little number on the machine at 4.5mph. I did that for a full 3 min!!! then after a 2 min walk at 3.8mph I did it again only at 4.6mph. Another 3 min! I was able to do 5 min intervals of 3 min jogging and 2 min walking upping the pace of the jog by .1mph at a time. I did this for 20 min and then went up to a 5mph jog for the last minute. After this my cool down was a 2 minutes walking at 4mph then dropping back down to 3.4mph for the last 3 min. I want to take a minute to be proud of myself because I didn't think I could do this. When I first started trying to run I became winded after 40 seconds, and could push for 1 to 1.5 minutes but then I would need 2-3 minutes of walking before I could even try to attempt it again. To be able to switch it around is awesome! On the 4th cycle I was tired and my legs were getting a bit sore but I think I might have been able to push it for a 5th go. Maybe next time ;) 

Braving the cravings

For some reason I've been wanting to shove everything in my mouth. I'm having less control of myself than usual.

When I'm home it's not such a big deal because there aren't too many bad things to eat, but going out is dangerous. It's amazing how many of our social gatherings are centered around food. I've been more or less isolating myself because of this, also friends who are not on a serious diet don't quite understand the struggle. The idea of "just don't eat it" seems reasonable unless you are in one of those cravings. I spent 2 or 3 days not very hungry and doing well, but the past two days have been pure torture. Yesterday I decided to make myself some cucumber chips by baking them in the oven to make this craving not damage my diet too much. The hours it took to make them(and the exercise) cooled my appetite for a bit so I decided to eat them the next day(today) but a mishap in the kitchen (i set them on fire) meant I only got a taste.
I also was at a coffee shop and really started craving hot coco with whipped cream luckily I took a peak at the calorie intake and realized I didn't need to drink away 350 cal... (that's more than most of my meals) so I dogged a bullet. Later in my office I couldn't help but swipe a mini babyruth from Halloween ( candy doesn't go bad right?). I don't even really like these! I put it in my mouth started to chew then realized I didn't want it and spit most of it back out.
I think I'm missing that mindless munching and want to eat until I'm incapacitated. I bought a bag of pre-washed kale so hopefully I can manage to make some kale chips and that will take away this carving.
I also need to make sure I go to the gym tonight after messing up today. I've been watching the drama MR. BRAIN (ミスターブレイン）while exercising but now I'm on the last episode and need to find something else similar to watch (something where each episode stands on its own). Going to try Hero next.

Struggle

I've spent the past week bouncing around 170. I thought I had broken through for 2 days where I was down to 169.8 and 169.2, but then I ate chinese food and bounced back up to the 172 range. It has gotten colder so my fingers have been freezing making it hard to get up and do anything.
I've noticed that one of the hardest things to overcome is the self sabotage. I get the feeling that I'm worthless and there's no point in doing this, putting in all this work. It feels like one slip up will make this house of cards tumble.
I've been feeling very unwanted lately, I'm starved for attention but in no position to get any. I wonder if I'm the only one out there with these feelings. Plenty of people are single and fine. Not pining away or really wishing they had someone to hold and kiss them.
I don't want to settle but I also didn't expect to be this age and with no romantic prospects. I feel like I'm in a bad movie where the key to my partner's happiness is the person they find soon after me. If it really was a movie then a handsome costar would be around the corner waiting to sweep me off my feet. And this is how I know this isn't a movie. He's not there.
I shouldn't rely on a man to fix my problems but I have yet to find the secret of not desiring one. One of the upsides to being fat was even though no one wanted me, my libido was in the toilet. Now it's up and I'm still unwanted.
I'm not normal so how can I expect to have normal? Is there a nice handsome guy out there who speaks Japanese and enjoys this brand of crazy?
I've decided to go back to square one. When I first started this thing my mom gave me some advice on what to eat from a 17 day diet book she read. What to eat each day:

+Liberal amounts of protein & cleansing vegetables
+two servings natural starch
+two low sugar fruit servings
+two servings of probiotic food
+one daily serving of friendly fat

Wake up and drink 8 ounce hot water with 1 lemon squeezed into it. Drink 7 glasses of water

So now I'm trying to bring up the amount of vegetables I eat and I need to adjust the probiotics too. I've been getting at least one serving a day but I need to fit in that second one.

Today I ate oatmeal with protein powder, fiber and honey in it for breakfast (around noon) and that held me until Lunch ( around 1700) which was a shake with protein powder, fiber, frozen strawberry slices, spirulina, and yogurt.

Dinner (about 2300) was one egg with two egg whites scrambled with cheese cooked with olive oil, string beans with pepper and some tomatoes and chilies from a can.

So I had protein and veggies, one serving of starch (which I will leave it at I don't want two)
My serving of fruit wasn't low sugar but i got one serving, one serving of probiotics and a serving of fat (I'm calling olive oil friendly)
I did drink my water and lemon for breakfast.

Hopefully I can keep this up for the next several days (until thanksgiving) and I will show an improvement.

I don't really want to eat for thanksgiving even though people tend to feel sorry for you if you don't go be with people. People are overrated and won't help me stick to such a strict diet. What I really want to do is treat myself to homemade vegetable (maybe meat) lasagna.
I plan on getting some zucchinis to use in place of the pasta, get some more cheese from the health food store, and possibly use some of the frozen meatballs I had made a while ago, along with frozen veggies.

wish me luck!

It's never too late

It's never too late to start again... at least that's what I keep telling myself.
At the end of the summer I realized I was very very close to tipping the scales at 200lbs. That scared me. I noticed a lack of energy, I couldn't stand for long periods of time without my feet hurting and exercise was getting harder and harder.

I started back with Calorie-Count on Aug 29th of this year, weighing in at 195.8lbs. I have weight myself every day since. Some people will say throw out the scale and you should only weight yourself once a week at most, but for me, it is a way to re-start my diet every day. If the scale goes up I know it could just be water weight, but I can think about what I ate and if I need to work a bit harder. If it went down I get almost instant satisfaction and will want to continue. One week at a time is too much to handle.

This go-around I'm pulling no punches. I have drastically changed my diet. No more simple carbohydrates for me, I haven't had bread in weeks. I upped my protein intake and found a great lactose free yogurt which I eat almost every day. I haven't had rice in quite a while either, my poor rice maker has sat unused for weeks.

I'm trying to only have a 'cheat' day once every 14-15 days. And even with the cheat day I don't want to go too wild. Usually I'll have more food then I usually do, or maybe a simple carbohydrate or two. For one of them I was missing the Mexican restaurant I had lived off of every day for several weeks. I would always order the Jalapenos Relleno but instead I went with a chicken burrito which has just rice beans and chicken instead of all the cheese and mole sauce. Another time I wasn't feeling well and ate chinese takeout. My splurge was the 5 or 6 spring rolls that I ate over the course of 2-3 days. I also had some white rice with my chicken and broccoli the first day but quickly realized it wasn't actually adding much, so I just ditched it.

As of now my calorie intake is hovering between 800-1000 most days, but I try to keep it under 1200. This seems very low and I've read that 1200 is the magic number you should eat every day, but if I eat most of my calories in vegetables, then this becomes very very difficult. I was able to get my stomach to shrink, so I can't actually eat many more calories. I've added protein powder to my diet, after a few days of fussing with it I think I can only add just under a scoop for my breakfast and then I have to get my remaining protein from other sources. I also have increased my fiber intake, which I must take with the protein powder as to not upset my stomach. In the last several days I have slowly been adding spirulina to my list of supplements. I do take my multivitamin every day.

After one month I weighted in at 185.8 a loss of 10 lbs which spurred me on to the next month where I clocked in at 177 a loss of 7.8lbs in that month to bring the total to 17.8lbs. Now I'm half way through the next month and weighing in at 170.8 which is a loss of 6.2lbs so far this month and a total of 25lbs.

I need to keep at it but I've noticed that my temper is shorter and I am having extreme hormonal fluctuation. I think this blog might turn into a bit of a way to let out some of my feelings while I go through this. I want to stay on the right track.
This post hasn't had much to say about food but I am discovering some wonderful things to do with the protein powder that I think I'll put in the next few posts.

Re-re-start

So I'm at it again... Trying to control what I put in my mouth!

This time I've enlisted the help of the Calorie Count website. I am able to for the most part input what I eat and it gives me total calories and nutritional information.

I have been ignoring the amount of sodium I consume because it is just too hard to control in most foods.

I have started making single sized dishes so I don't cook too much.

Unfortunately for me I am going home for the summer and leaving behind my rice cooker and slow cooker. I finally learned the best use of my slow cooker is to make tons and tons of shredded chicken.

I realized I just had to stuff the thing with chicken thighs (bone in most of the skin removed) half a cup of water, some spices (ginger garlic and pepper) and just let it cook down for 5 hrs (then I left it on warm for another 4 because I was sleepy) and the bones came out without any trouble it was awesome!

I've been thinking of ways to use it up in different casseroles and trying to add veggies to it so I'm not just eating meat and carbs.

over the past 3 weeks I've dropped around 10lbs which I know I should take as an achievement, but all I can see is I was so over weight to start with that 10lbs brings me back down to my old horribly over weight weight..

So for the top weight I want to be I have another 33lbs left to go which I'm not sure I can keep up over the summer.

But that's what the internet is for... letting me talk about my struggle in a semi anonymous way.