My little video I made recently about my weight has received some attention by viewers, and I thank you all for it. It’s been shared a few times on facebook, and I’ve heard a few comments back about weight loss, and viewer’s own efforts into dieting, and I can’t help but think of my husband. I love him very much, but he is very over weight, and I am concerned for his health and long- term longevity (is that redundant) if he continues to tip the scales to a point where he can’t be weighed on a normal household scale which doesn’t read past 335.
I’m still struggling/stuck with my dieting. This is by no means an easy task. In the 6 weeks I was laid up, I gained 10 pounds. Yes. 10. Why? Well, for one I wasn’t exercising. At all… because I couldn’t walk. For another it was the holidays and I did indulge – many a time- in hazelnut cake and the whole box of Ferrero Rochers that my husband bought me. ( bad husband!). I love hazelnut, what can I say, and I know the error of my sins.
I shot up from 155 2 days before surgery to 165 7 weeks later. I’m back down now, but not by much, because I’m still lacking in exercise. Although my diet has been brought back to normal. I’m also not allowed to lose weight during my radiation treatment. So I am now officially stuck at 161.8 for the next 6 weeks.
But, the whole point here of my diatribe today is to discuss what I eat, and how I learned better. Every now and then, articles would pop up on Yahoo, entitled Eat This, Not That! I read those articles- a year or two ago when they were appearing almost every week. Very very interesting reads about calorie-saving alternatives to typical meals, especially at restaurants. Mind blowing, really, some of the calorie counts in things you wouldn’t expect to be quite so fattening.
While at a bookstore the other day, we picked up an Eat This Not That book. They have several out there, and if you want to lose any weight, be it 1 pound, or 100.. if you want to gain a better understanding of what you’re really eating when you order something at a restuarant, or just want to have an idea of what’s a healthier pick out of all the processed foods at the deli counter, get just one of these books and read every word.
The articles on Yahoo are what first tuned me in to the fact high fructose corn syrup was probably ruining my waist line. Now, granted, I chose to do absolutely nothing about it at the time.
But a year or two later, when I decided to lose the weight, that little article I had read still stuck in my head. And when I actually started reading labels, I was shocked! HFCS in itself maybe isn’t so bad. But considering that it was in practically every. single. damned. thing. I was eating, it’s no wonder I managed to put on 30 pounds in 2007 alone. No wonder I went up 70 pounds in 6 years.
I was a huge huge huge Snapple addict. Any time of the day, you’d be hard pressed to find me without a raspberry iced tea snapple in my hand. And not the “diet” one, either. I love raspberries, and Snapple’s motto is what….. ? “Made from the best stuff on Earth”. So how bad could it possibly be. Probably 40 of my 70 pounds bad. I also was a huge potato chip eater, and usually I’d eat a whole damned bag (a BIG bag) at night while watching TV.
Just cutting those 2 things out alone probably got me losing 10 pounds.
Now, I wasn’t a huge fast- food eater, but I definitely did visit the drive through. I’ve had a few Culver’s burgers, but I don’t care for the other major drive through chain’s burgers. But their chicken sandwiches- ESPECIALLY Burger King’s was a real vice for me. And fries, of course. And why not “super size it” for only a quarter. Yum…… no, not really.
Not when you realize, in part to Eat This, Not That!, that most of the “white meat chicken” you’re eating is barely made from chicken at all.
And the book had this to say about processed, fast food burgers: Burger patties inf fast food chains (or suffice it to say any frozen, prepared, processed burger patty) is made from the scrapings of meat that normally gets discarded when it’s still clinging to the bone. This meat is then processed to be deemed “clean for eating” “With an approach similar to what you might use in your bathroom – by using ammonia”
The beef product is forced through tubing where it is exposed to ammonia gas. The same ammonia that can cause severe burns on your skin, blindness if your eyes are exposed to it, and respirtatory problems if you breathe it in. Ever walk into a barn that’s been closed up for winter, and the horses are in all night. Maybe the stalls hadn’t been cleaned on Sunday at all, and it’s Monday morning. Get that whiff of ammonia that makes your eyes water and you kind of gag a bit? Now, if that doesn’t make you want to run out to the McDonald’s and a nice burger, what would?
I confess, in the recent weeks I had a Culver’s butter burger. Not once, but twice. I’m never going to eat a drive-through burger again.
This book is really opening my eyes, and I hope that I put some of this information to good use when I can restart dieting in a few weeks. I’m already doing a lot of what this book says is healthy- like eating Greek yogurt, fresh fruits, and avoiding processed foods as much as possible.
I guess it won’t work for everyone, but I do believe that making small, simple changes in your diet can help.
Of course, it is very frustrating, but important to remember, that even though you make what you might feel is a big change (even just saying “OK, I’m ready to diet now”, or cutting out your big food vice), the weight doesn’t come off overnight. You will NOT drop 20 pounds in a week. You won’t see a magical change to a great new you in the mirror in a month.
I can tell you from my own long, drawn out, and incredibly frustrating, personal experience, that true weight loss- losing actual body fat, not just water weight- but real fat, is a very very slow process.
It’s easy to feel unsuccessful when you expect to lose 10 pounds in week 1, and you actually lose only 1. But 1 pound a week of weight loss per week is average. Actually it’s ideal. 2 pounds a week weight loss is on the high end of normal/average loss. Now, if you’ve got 50 pounds to lose – you see why you’ll need to commit a full year to dieting. More if you make mistakes, and hey, everyone does. Maybe less if you throw in exercise 3-4 days a week or more. But a diet change alone can and will allow you to lose weight. It’s just a creeping, slow process. Not a big drop all at once. And you must, must, must stay positive and keep to the commitment.
Enjoy and Good Luck.
