"I'm not hungry, I just feel like eating"

And THAT, dear friends, is a big part of my problem.

There are many habits you learn as a child that you may think you outgrow but when you actually examine your habits you realize you've been doing it that way since you were knee-high to a grasshopper. (I do love that expression). And so is the case with me: I've always been a fast eater and an over-eater. I was always a little chubby as a kid but I grew up in the country, in a time when you shoved your kids outside after breakfast and only let them back in when it got dark. Lunch would happen, of course, but it was usually whatever the parents could cram down my throat rather than a formal affair. So being a fast eater and a heavy eater didn't matter as much because I was running around outside burning it all off.

It caught up with me in high school, when we moved further into the country and much further removed from neighbours. Suddenly I didn't have friends' houses nearby to walk or bike to or a swimming hole to spend all summer at.  And then my PCOS blossomed and suddenly none of my pants fit and I had this tire around my stomach (which is still there, BTW). Despite this, my eating habits didn't change.

And in university, of course I put on weight. I mean, my meal plan let me eat at fast food restaurants every day, every meal if I wanted and there was no one to tell me differently. Sure, I knew it was bad but this was also the late '90s and early 2000s, so the fast food industry wasn't yet the despised beast it is now, but rather a decent outlet for an occasional lazy dinner.

Even after university, when I started making a better effort to eat well, I kept up with the fast eating and eating when I felt like it, whether I was hungry or not. I'm not even sure why I became such a fast eater. I was an only child until I was 10 so I wasn't competing for food with several siblings. And when you're a fast eater you finish your reasonable portion and still feel hungry you so go in for seconds and when your body finishes digesting you're suddenly stuffed to the seams and, more often than not, in a bit of pain. I speak from too many years of experience but - and here's the rub - I keep doing it. Egad.

I know I need to slow down and I know I need to cap how much I eat and how often I eat but, honestly, it's really hard. I've been doing this since I was a wee lass and it's not easily switched off even when I know it's bad for me and that it is the main contributor to my weight and body image issues.

So this is the big thing for me to tackle this year: eat slower, eat less, eat when hungry and STOP when I'm full.

Breakfast of champions

For the longest time I didn't eat berries (or much fruit, for that matter). Since starting WW and knowing that all fruit is 0 points, I've become more open to fruity goodness - and it's a good thing. I've discovered I love strawberries, blueberries and raspberries. Lately, I've been on a strawberry/blueberry kick, as evinced by my (slightly blurry) breakfast. 

1 cup spoon-sized Shredded Wheat, 2/3 cup skim milk and liberal handfuls of berries make for a delicious breakfast - all for only 6 points!

How much exercise is that cookie worth?

I came across this interesting blog post on Chatelaine and looked at the article on Marie Claire that it referenced and the idea intrigues me: put exercise labels on junk food, as well as calorie labels. The idea is that telling people how much exercise they'll have to do to burn off the junk food they're about to consume will encourage them to make healthier choices and not eat that doughnut.

The Marie Claire article cited a study that showed sales in pop dropped after people knew how much exercise was required to burn it off. I find this fascinating and knowing how much exercise that cookie will cost me is much more helpful than knowing how many calories are in it. I think that people (me included) vastly overestimate the amount of calories they burn when exercising. I know that the calories burned counter on cardio machines is often wrong (in an overestimating sense) but seeing 453 calories burned after 45 minutes of exercise feels...paltry. And knowing it's likely less feels even worse.

Of course, arguments will be made against this idea because people can burn more or less calories depending on their fitness level. But I think that people who are fit already avoid junk food or at least indulge infrequently enough to not need to worry about burning off the bad food. With obesity rates rising in children and the sedentary lifestyle becoming the rule, I think it's a good idea, especially with food and beverages that people think are healthier. Would a parent be less likely to give a child a huge glass of Sunny D if it would take an hour of exercise to burn it off?

And that's what I'd like to see: how much exercise it would take to cancel out the "healthy" foods we're led to believe are better for us because the TV says they are high in calcium or made with whole grains or are fat-free. I know a Big Mac is bad; tell me how bad that fat-free popcorn is or the sugar-free yogurt.

Goal:Food

Check out my new notebook:

Isn't it cute?  And it's an EcoJot one so when I bought this little guy, another one was donated to a child in need.  Win-win.

But it's not just an adorable notebook with cupcake-like owls on the front; it will also be my food journal.  I've read countless times that a big factor in successful weight loss is keeping a food journal.  I've scoffed at the idea under the premise that I can keep track of what I eat on my own, but the real reason I haven't logged my eating habits yet is because I'm scared of what will end up on the page.  It's not that my eating habits are bad, it's that they could be better.

Which is why I've started a food journal. 

GOAL:  To keep a food journal for the rest of the year to evaluate my eating habits

STATUS: Started on August 3

PLAN: Keep my journal with me at all times (or as much as I can) so I can accurately log what I eat

I'm going to use it to see not only what I eat and how much but how I feel after.  I get gurgly tummy more often than I'd like and I've wondered if I might be lactose intolerant so this will help me keep track of what dairy I eat and how I feel after.  And, after each weekly weigh-in, I can look back at what I ate over the week to see how that has influenced my weight loss (or gain). 

The siren song of the diet book

Despite owning (and loving!) my Kobo, I still make time to wander around bookstores and browse through the printed merchandise.  Lately, I've found myself veering towards the health/fitness/weight loss section of the store and checking out the diet books.

I've bought a few in the past and always failed miserably at sticking to any of the plans, partly because of laziness but also because of the impracticality of so many of these books.  But that doesn't make it any less tempting to keep looking for "The One" that will be the answer to all my weight problems.

Though as I look at more and more of them, read reviews, see what people are saying, I'm discovering that the ones that actually have useful, healthy information (i.e. not fads or force you to cut out food groups or only eat 600 calories a day) all seem to espouse the same thing: portion control.

Portion control is where I massively fail and this can be chalked up mostly to my own laziness in not measuring/weighing my food better.  But I'm also finding it difficult to even find a good resource that tells me how big a serving should be.  For some people, saying a serving of chicken should be the size of a deck of cards will work.  For me, not so much.  It's not that I don't know how big a deck of cards is; it's that my brain doesn't work so well with the size visualization.  What I need to find is a resource that gives me weights or volumes of serving sizes.  Really, just give me ounces and cups and I'll be good to go.  I have no problem scooping out my cereal with a measuring cup and topping it with a properly measured serving of skim milk; but saying a "medium-sized" anything is a serving size trips me up every time.  Medium-sized compared to what?  (Big- and small-sized, right?!)  When I don't have a point of reference, I'm useless at figuring out that kind of thing.

So when I find the diet book that just lists the proper portion sizes in an easy-to-measure way, that will be my golden ticket.  And it may already exist and I just need to find it...

Up-Down Challenge Weigh-n #3

Good morning!  I know I'm a day late with my weigh-in, but I have a good excuse: yesterday was my birthday!

I did manage to find time both to work out and to get on the scale, though, so I do know what my weight is.  And since inquiring minds want to know, here we go:

Starting weight: 200.2 lb
Week #1: 197.6 (-2.6 lb)
Week #2: 195.2 lb (-2.4 lb)
Week #3: 196.0 lb (+0.8 lb)

Crud.

You know what?  I'm okay with the weight gain, for a few reasons.  Firstly, it's only 0.8 lb, which isn't a whole lot.  Secondly, I slacked off on my workouts this past week, largely due to being at work late and not getting home in time to work out in decent time before bed.  And third, it was my birthday weekend, filled with wine, delicious brunch, sushi, beer, cake and all the good things that come with a birthday.  (Plus, for Valentine's Day we ordered in Indian food, which is good for you, but not if you eat more helpings than a normal person should.)  Finally, I knew that maintaining a 2.5 lb/week weight loss pace just wasn't realistic.  While I'd prefer not to gain at all, honestly it's not unexpected. 

All this means is that I've got to make more of an effort to get back on track, which shouldn't be that hard since the past three weeks have felt, well, easy.

So here's what I've got to get back to this coming week:
- more salads, less delicious Zafrani gosht
- regular workouts
- really focusing on servings/day of each food group

And since I've got a beautiful day off stretching in front of me, I'm going to finally determine how many servings I need each day and I'm also going to finally look into that 5K run I've been talking about.  By figuring out a run date, I'll have no choice but to start training for it, which will help my workouts.

While a great birthday present would have been weight loss, I'm happy to say I still have a fantastic birthday, celebrated with lots of people I love, and a little weight gain on the side can't take away from that.