No I’m not dead or in hiding. I realize a few weeks have passed by without any thoughts or updates. I was super busy/lazy one week and then I was ill in bed the next. And maybe I was a little bit unwilling to post. I feel like I’ve fallen off of the horse or lost direction for a moment or two. The respiratory illness left me tired and apathetic. Needless to say, there was no exercising. But today is Monday – and while I’m not terribly thrilled that it’s Monday it seems like a good day to start anew. I wish I had some real learnings to help me prevent this from happening again, but the only thing I have discovered is that I’m addicted to food. I do mean addicted. Like when I wake up in the morning for breakfast I’m wondering what I’d like to eat for dinner. It is a constant stream of thought in the background. At my absolute worst when Dru is not in the house I grab the box of cereal or cookies or whatever else is in the house that’s the least bit appetizing (peanut butter on tortillas anyone?) and eat it, like all of it – and since I can’t cold turkey food and there isn’t a methadone clinic (that I’m aware of) for food addicts and I’m not sick enough to get into one of those scary militant fat camps I guess I just have to do this the un-fun hard way.
I have decided to cut back again on my calories… I was eating 1650, this week I am going to go to 1450. Here are my thoughts on why… according to the many calculations I have done, based on my resting metabolism rate (RMR) and my personal activity level (PAL) only eating 1650 calories should be enough of a deficit to create a negative 7,000 calorie intake weekly into my body (lose 2 lbs). Unfortunately some weeks this works, some weeks it doesn’t. Not because I eat only 1650 calories a day and do not loose weight, but because 1650 feels like a lot of calories in the morning and I trick myself into eating more than I should, then when dinner comes around I’m starving and eat more and often end up above my limit. I snack during the day at work because well… I’m at work, it seems like a good thing to do, but it is causing me to fail at my end goal and to become incredibly unhappy and mad when stepping on the scale, which is not good for my mental health.
My end goal is not to loose weight; my end goal is to be healthy. However, I believe that I won’t be at my “healthiest” until I do in fact lose a significant portion of my weight. Snacking seems to be counter-productive and is mindless.
So new plan – 1450 calories a day, plus at least 30 minutes exercise.
By restricting my caloric intake hopefully not only will I pay more attention to the food I am eating, but appreciate it being all that is necessary to keep me going.
2 comments:
Terrific plan, however may I recommend gum? It has terrific benefits in that it keeps you from snacking (because let's face it, food + gum + in mouth = nasty) and it also burns calories. That is my trick to staying fit, the unfortunate part is I often don't have said gum so I often eat what I shouldn't. However, school prevents a lot of my would be snacking habits because I am at school and since I do not live here I have no where to go get snacks and since I do not have money, I can not buy them. So I am forced to live in a world of no gum and no snacks. Kind of sad really...
I've just looked at my past calorie data and tried to set reasonable guidelines. If my breakfast is more than 200 calories, for instance, I know I have to really skimp at lunch or I won't have enough calories left to have something remotely like a "normal" American dinner. I know that if I'm over 600 calories by lunch, dinner will be sad and will almost certainly not include dessert. It just kind of helps me budget all day, rather than feeling like I have all these amazing calories to eat.
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