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...

Again with pants sizes

Remember when I was all excited about the size 12 pants I picked up at H&M?  I've worn them a couple of times now and they're a great pair of summer pants - light and cotton and super comfy.  The catch?

Please excuse my pale, hasn't-seen-the-sun-in-10-years abdomen.

They don't fit anymore!  They're too big!  And it's not like I've lost gobs of weight or anything, but I guess I've lost enough since I bought them that they don't fit. 

Of course I'm excited about this - I rather like shrinking out of clothes.  But I can't help but feel frustrated that these particular size 12 pants are too big, while many other size 14 pants I own and other I try on in stores are still fitting (or are even a bit tight), while most other size 12 pants (including H&M pants) don't even come close to making it over my hips.

Honestly, I'm jealous of men and their pants sizing: waist sizes.  Why can't women's pants be like that?  Most jeans are and that seems to work out just fine.  So why is it that any non-denim pants have to be sized starting at 0 and going up by two? 

I just don't get it. 

(Although now I'm tempted to try to find these pants again and try on a size 10, if only for the ego boost!)

A student loan update

Remember this post?  Well, I've made a little progress on the loan front. 

I got a nice, fat pay cheque a couple of weeks ago that included all the overtime I've accumulated since starting the new gig.  That allowed me to put $1,500 on the first (and lowest) of my loans.  The result?

BEFORE: $1,912.78
AFTER:    $   370.74

Oh yeah.

By my calculations, that brings my overall remaining debt to $13,429.19.  Much like my weight, slowly but surely this is going DOWN!

Up-Down Challenge Weigh-in #17

Good news on the scale today: 191.6 lb.  That's a loss of only 0.6 lb, but it's a loss. Woot! 

I'm still 1.4 lb away from a new book and 1.7 pounds away from breaking the 190 lb barrier, but I'm getting there!

In other news, I finally joined the gym at work.  My goal is to work out each day I'm at work, so that's four days.  Mondays and Fridays I want to do running intervals and Tuesdays and Thursdays I want to do weights.  Then on Wednesdays, when I'm home, I want to do an endurance run. 

I did an endurance run today, in fact.  I did 5 km in total, alternating between walking and running.  That amounts to 3k walking and 2k running and I got through it with minimal pain.  With any luck I can start adding more to my running segments, and eventually get up to 3k running...then 4k...then that elusive 5k I want so badly to hit. 

But I feel really good today.  And after an awesome dinner, I feel all-around...AMAZING, if truth be told.  Today has just been really good.

Another awesome Wednesday dinner

Today has been a great day.  I weighed myself and had a great workout (but I'll post on that later) and I made a wonderful dinner (if I may say so myself).


So what did I make?  I made fish tacos topped with mango salsa, served with garden salad on the side and cupcakes for dessert.  Although I confess - I bought the cupcakes.  We're trying to be healthy and having a couple dozen cupcakes around the house would be all kinds of bad news.

I also discovered how much I love my little juicer; it's not electric or big or anything, it's just one of those little ones that you squish the fruit on.  But I used it to get fresh lime juice for the fish marinade and for fresh lime juice and orange juice for the mango salsa and it was awesome.  I've been on this kick lately to make from scratch as much as I can and the whole juice thing works for me.

And now I am really REALLY full and we have leftovers for dinner tomorrow night, so all in all, a big dinner WIN.

Up-Down Challenge Weigh-in #16

As promised I weighed myself today and...

192.2 lb - that's a loss of 1.8 lb!

Sure I've been gaining and losing the same couple of pounds for about a month now, but this still feels good.

And I've come to the realization that saving money for every pound lost is not really working, mostly because I want to pay down my student loans and I'm putting all my extra money there.  But the other thing is that I feel I need a more immediate reward for losing.  So...here's my new thing:

For every two pounds lost, I get a new book. 

This is a big deal, as I'm a huge reader and I've got a massive list in my Kobo library of books to buy.  The unfortunate thing is that, this week, no book; I've only lost 1.8 lb.  But to keep this working for me, I'm going to let my losses be accumulative. 

So if I start this amendment of my challenge at 192.2 lb, then once I reach 190.2 lb, I get a book.  If it takes me eight weeks to do so, well then it takes me eight weeks.  If I gain?  Then I have to get back to 192.2 (or less) before I can start counting any loss towards the 2lb requirement. 

I'm thinking this will work for me because, man, I love me a book!  In the meantime, I'm going to sleep well tonight knowing I'm that much lighter. 

Yay!

Dinner tonight

It's Wednesday so it's special dinner night for the Beau and I.  We have some whole wheat tortillas that need eating, so tonight we're having chicken quesadillas and Mexican rice, with salsa and homemade guacamole on the side.  Yum!

Oh, and I picked up Oreo ice cream sandwiches for dessert.  Not the healthiest thing, but it's special dinner night, you know?

I'm going to weigh in shortly - I'll do it before dinner, methinks.