Okay, I hope I don’t jinx myself by writing about this. You all know I’ve hinted that I am dieting. But I’ve started plenty of times in the past few years, and nothing ever stuck, so I didn’t really want to write about it again, unless I was pretty sure I was going to stick with it.
The motivation? First of all, the ortho doctor said out loud what I pretty much knew. That it would be really great if I could get down to 140 pounds. You all know that that is not a weight I have even aspired to in forever. But the thought intrigued me. And then my lab work came back. And my cholesterol levels were elevated. Ooh, that just made me mad! Come on. Who eats healthier than I do? So I start looking up causes of increased cholesterol levels. None of the factors applied to me except the last one. Weight gain. Strike two.
Then one day shortly after that I had to do some insidious chore, making millions of stupid copies, and I couldn’t really do any chores in between, so I started looking for something to read, and I decided to go back and start reading Shelley’s archives. Shelley started her blog on the first day of her final ‘diet.’ Not too many people have done that. So I really enjoyed reading about the determination that it took in the early days, and the frustrations, and the successes. You really need to pare things down VERY CONSISTENTLY to actually lose weight.
Well, Shelley started out doing a doctor supervised ‘shake’ kind of diet. And that gave me a little idea. So I made a plan.
I didn’t want to drink shakes all day long. And I didn’t want to calorie restrict so severely that I would re-gain everything when I went off of it. And I really really did not want to eliminate any particular food or food group. I did want to include a bit more protein because experience has taught me that protein keeps me from getting hungry. But I did need some structure and some basic rules. And here’s the reason that I call it the ‘me diet.’ Because I know me, and my particular circumstances, and so while this might work for me, it isn’t for everyone.
My particular circumstances:
- I am a ‘woman of a certain age.’
- I am a POW (previously over-weight)–some studies indicate that a lower calorie level may be necessary for people who have previously been very overweight.
- I have a sweet tooth.
- I am very short. Haha. I don’t know what this has to do with it, but I feel sure that it is partly why it is so hard for me to lose weight.
So here’s what I’ve been doing for the past 3 1/2 weeks.
- Breakfast: My choice. Try to keep it under 200 calories. I almost always have some type of grain product, like my Bare Bones Scones, or Baked Oatmeal.
- About 11am. Protein shake 140-170 calories. I’ve told you my little experiments with this. But the rule is I can’t manipulate it to be more than 170 calories.
- About 2pm, coffee break, and a Quest protein bar. Only Quest for now. Because they do not have sugar in them and they have 20 grams of protein. And they do not have that aftertaste that some SF protein bars have. 170 calories.
- Dinner: My choice. Try to keep it under 300. So usually it is some kind of meat and vegetables. Everything is pretty simple. Just the veggies. And usually just the meat. But it is my choice. If I wanted I could have…well I could have anything under 300 calories. That’s just usually what I do want, because I know it will satisfy me.
- So if I have made good breakfast and dinner choices, I still have 150-200 calories left for a snack. Totally my choice again. Usually my snack is not particularly nutritious, just enjoyable.
Don’t try to add up the calories and think that I am eating too much or too little. Like I told my BF, that is by my count. It does seem low, but by my count I did not usually lose weight on 1300 calories.
So that’s it. I don’t plan to eat this way the rest of my life. In fact I already have an outline for how I will change it up a bit, probably after I get back from Haiti. But in the meantime, I have learned that a bare bones protein shake really can keep me satisfied for quite a while. One interesting thing that I learned is that the higher calorie shake that I chose (because it came in chocolate mint) was higher in fat content, and so it keeps me satisfied a little longer.
There is no snacking in between. Oh, except baby carrots while I am cooking dinner. And I bought some tomato juice because I noticed Shelley had V8 juice for when she got too hungry. I’ve only drank it once or twice.
Probably the biggest changes are the complete lack of walnuts, and less fruit than normal for me. Again, I made no rules about eliminating these foods. It just happened that they were not the choices that I made. And the smaller breakfast, which I had thought about for quite a while, but had been unable to make myself put into practice.
The results? I’ve lost at least 7 pounds in 3 1/2 weeks. I say about because I actually didn’t weigh myself on the first day. So it might be a little more than 7 pounds, but for sure not less. Oh, and in this same time period, I had four days of celebrating my birthday, and 3 other ‘off plan’ meals at special dinners or lunches. I managed to control myself admirably at most of those meals.
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