Queen of the week

Despite my fears that I'll be losing yet another P25 this week, I didn't!! I actually ended up arriving later than usual and one of the girls had already left, and since I had told them I might have gained she had already claimed the other girl's P25 and I was to hand mine over. But alas, with my 1.8kg (3.9lbs) loss this week, she now owes me P50! I'm the week's biggest loser! Hurray!!!

Anyways, it wasn't and it's not smooth sailing. Why, oh why, is is so easy to change my mind and eat something that's not on the day's plan? Why is it so easy to eat more than enough? Why is it so much easier to sleep in that to force myself to get up and get some activity in in the morning? Why, why, why?

I start everyday with good intentions, but not much later I find myself drifting from the plan. And guess what? It's easier to keep drifting off than to rein myself in and do the right thing immediately. Case in point, I found myself mindlessly eating banana chips after lunch, but instead of stopping right then I told myself I'll do better the rest of the day as I finished them off! I know what I want, I know what I should do to get what I want, but Dear Lord, is it ever hard to stay the course?

Choice after choice is what matters, and as long as I make more of the right choices than wrong ones I know I'll make progress, no matter how slow. Just keep making choice after choice count, one bad choice should be followed by several good ones, no 2 bad choices in a row. Does this make any sense? It does to me, and that's what I'm aiming for.

I'm not looking forward

....to today's weigh in. I didn't do horribly this week. Not at all. I'm sure I haven't gained, but I just know that I haven't lost enough to the this week's biggest loser. Now that'll be P50 in total, and that's in 2 weeks...

What's to come? I better jump on the exercise bandwagon now that I don't have to do the daily hospital runs to check on my grandfather. Thank God he's well enough to be at home!

Food diary and structured eating - weight loss tools

Tracking food
Around the weight loss/health and fitness blog arena, many people blog their food daily, others keep food diaries elsewhere, while others actually have blogs where they not only blog what they ate, but also post pictures of everything they ate and even give out recipes to their favourites! Which by the way I think rocks and have always wished I could emulate.

Been there, but can't stay long
For a little bit last year I was on sparkpeople and it felt great to be able to visualize in numbers exactly what I was eating. I could tell roughly the amount of calories I was taking in and see the breakdown according to nutrients, etc. I've also kept a 'hard copy' food diary from time to time. But, all in all, I never last too long on it, or if I last a couple of weeks I have some meals, some whole days here and there skipped.
Going back and thinking about it, it is because I do not have a structured way of eating, if I may call it that. There are times when I cook ahead for the whole week, and that makes it easy to have some order or control over what I'm eating. The rest of the time I'm picking at different things and just making a whole mess such that at the end of the day it's difficult to even start writing down what I've eaten. Writing things down before eating them would be awfully hard, but possibly it may be a tool to make me think more about what I'm eating before I eat. Except I probably wouldn't even remember to do it all the time! So, fo rme food diarizing in any way is close to impossible long term.

So, how to I introduce more structure into my eating?
I really want less picking at any and every thing and changing my mind about what to eat at the last minute, which means I end up eating something I 'shouldn't' eat. I'm very experimental - I mean I like to experiment. I like to try new recipes and new foods all the time, which makes it hard to keep eating the same things all the time. But I've been trying to lose weight for a long time. I think it's about time I made some serious change and introduce some serious structure in the way I eat to see any progress.Here's what I'm thinking:

• I'm going to work out what I want to eat that I feel I can't absolutely go without for long
• Then I'm going to assess how I can make myself a weekly menu out of those items, taking into account their nutritional content
• Then I'm going to follow that menu week after week
• Review and change if necessary, but change only if necessary

This means I'm going to have to put aside my experimental ways for a bit; stop trying new things and only go with what works. I know many people have lost weight thay way, and really it doesn't take rock science to tell that consistency works a charm when it comes to weight loss.

So, my immediate future is going to include a lot of fresh juice, until I feel it's time to evaluate and make changes. I will be eating real food too!

The tale of the first P25

Week 1 weigh in was yesterday. I'll confess that I didn't really do much to earn a significant loss last week, and so all I was hoping for was anything but a gain. I would have been simply happy to have maintained my 116.4kg (according to my friend's scale that we're using for the weigh ins) - my scale gives lower reading by a whole 1.4kg.
Anyway, 3 out of 4 of us showed up for the weigh, one phoned in a gain, and the last person may not be participating. So I was very scared that I'd register a gain so I let the two girls go first and they had both lost! Then it was my turn.....(drum roll)..... a loss! Albeit a mere 0.6 kg, but hey, that's a pound and a third! So, though I had to turn in my P25, rather than receive two, I was chuffed that I didn't have to pay P50.

So, yeah, that's how the P25 went. I then went home and made myself some chicken and vegetable cobbler, love. The plan is to indulge myself on Tuesdays after the weigh in, but then get serious from Weds till the next weigh.

I want next week's P75!

Productive day

I've always wished I could take my 'weekends' off during the work week. It is annoying that you have to take annual leave hours to do anything of a personal nature during the week, considering that we have so few of them and that that's the only time you can access most services. That is why I'm so thankful that I get to benefit from American holidays; I get to run all those errands that I can't do on normal days without cost.

1st Holiday of the year
Yesterday was terrrific, I was the most productive on a holiday I have been in a while.
Usually on holidays I take the chance to sleep in, on a week day! But yesterday I got bright and early and took off with a long list of errands for the day. And as luck would have it, most took way less time than I expected, and I suppose I have to thank the fact that it's mid-January for that. I got my car registration done, did my banking, dealt with the guys doing customs clearance for me for a purchase I made in South Africa, made an insurance claim for my cracked windscreen, visitd my son's new school and paid the school fees, etc.

Yet I have so much more to do. Can't wait for the next holiday, plus do I love that we get half-day Fridays?!

Weigh in today
Today we have our first week's weigh in. We did the initial weigh ins last Tuesday, and I weighed more than I wanted to - if you know what I mean. However, I did not make a solid plan for the week, I just had a rough idea of how I was going to handle things, that is, food. But obviously that meant I was susceptible to picking the wrong things, the wrong amounts, at the wrong time. Yep. So, I'm not at all sure if this week I'll register a loss, but I hope to have lost at least a fraction of a kilogram, because otherwise it's double penalty for a gain! I have a plan though, which though I still have to polish up I did half the time last week but not at all during the weekend. Must work on it.

So, here's to a decent weigh in - meaning a non-gain weigh in...

New Year, New Ways

No new year's resolutions
I know we're almost 2 weeks into 2011, but the year is still new, right? I did not make any new year's resolutions, but that does not mean I do not have any aspirations. Quite the opposite actually. There's so much I'd like to accomplish this year. In terms of health and fitness, finances, work, etc. But I didn't want to embark on any projects as new year's resolutions, because from experience, as soon as the year loses it's sparkle, so will my commitment to the projects.

What are we to do then?
I already have plans for some of my projects, others I'm still working on or yet to sort out the details of. Due to the uncertainty on the job front, some I can not project to far into the future, but wherever possible, the plans are for the year.

Wait, I lied...
I did have one resolution - To start going to church regularly, and I made it the first Sunday. Last Sunday I couldn't since I was out of town. But this is one I know I can't tire of as I tire of counting the days into the new year.

What's new?
On the health and fitness front, my friends and I have FINALLY started working as a group to motivate each other to lose weight. There are currently 5 of us, weight ranging from 65 to 115kg, quite a difference, hey? But the bottomline is that we all want to drop some serious poundage and we need each other to cheer us along and drag us on days when we don't feel like putting the effort it takes. It's even on a friendly competition level with weekly prizes for the biggest loser, making it even more fun.
The best thing about it is that I know for the next 6 months, at least, I'll get to see my friends very regularly, which is something we have always failed at.

So, here's to a resolutionless but prosperous 2011!

Happy 2011!

I thank the Lord for blessing me so richly in 2010 and look forward to all the blessings 2011 will bring forth. My health and fitness may not have improved as much as I'd hoped in the past year, but I've learned so much that I'm still thankful for all the attempts I've made. For 2011 I'm going to focus on being the best I can be at all that I do. That's the gift I'm giving myself. Resolutions never seem to work for me, so I'm not making any. Happy New Year to all!