wdarling

Well, aside from continuing to do well on my diet this week, I’ve practically been fasting the past two days. It’s not intentional though; I had surgery (septoplasty, a nasal operation) yesterday morning and couldn’t eat beforehand and didn’t eat afterward for about 24 hours. My appetite has been improving and today I had lunch and some light snacks. By tomorrow I should be on my regular schedule and diet as far as eating. My appetite was just not there yesterday, that’s for sure. I threw up a couple stomachfuls of blood and that certainly wasn’t very appetizing! And BTW, if anyone wants to know what it’s like to have septoplasty surgery, I’ve got a whole blog post about it over here. It was definitely a serious operation, more involved and traumatic than I thought it would be. It also sucks not be able to breathe through your nose — at all. However, once the doctor takes the stents out of my nose on Thursday, hopefully I’ll be able to breathe a lot better.

Well, my weekly weigh-in has me smiling — again. 222! That’s exactly what I wanted it to be, although I told myself not to be disappointed if it was a little higher. I’ve done well.

To see what affect this has had, I just put on a pair of “fat pants” that I got a few months ago. They fit, but not as well as I’d like, which was disappointing since they’re Lane Bryant, Size 18. I wore them but always with a longish shirt that would cover up where it was pulling funny. Good news! They fit much better now around the weight and belly, which was the problem area before. I will wear these tomorrow to work.

Yay!

I’ve found that resisting temptation has been pretty easy thus far. Just today there were three instances where I could have easily gone off track but pretty much said “No thanks” moved on: 1) bowl of hard candies in my office break room, 2) Hershey’s Kisses and Sweet Tarts at a team meeting at work, and 3) free beer and cookies at a volunteer meeting.

How was I able to say no? Well, my calorie limit is 1500 cal. a day and basically I wind up being ruled by logic. One Kiss is probably as many calories as a whole grapefruit. A grapefruit is delicious and takes five or ten minutes to eat. A Kiss is down your throat before you even realize it, and yet the calories are in your body. Now a bottle of beer, on the other hand, is probably as many calories as my whole lunch or the main part of dinner. So if I have a beer, I can’t have dinner without going over the limit. And dinner is more important than beer. I can eat four or five things at dinner or I can have some cookies and a beer. Of course the cookies and beer lose, on the scales of logic.

That’s really how it works. It’s true, I *can* eat some “junk” food, but since by and large such food is high in calories, I can only have a small amount of it — or else I have to sacrifice eating a lot of lower calorie food which would be more satisfying anyway.

This all plays into the fact I’m using cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) as the basis for my weight loss plan. A large part of CBT is forcing yourself to reason instead of letting your feelings overpower you and drag you to places you don’t want to go — depression, undue guilt, and even overeating. Here I’m using reasoning to tell myself that I can have a nice dinner and snacks or give in to an impulse to have a “treat” and then end up hungry. I don’t want to be hungry!

Tomorrow: This diet makes me feel like I’m eating all the time, much more than usual. But I’m only taking in about half the calories.

This is the first  I’ve heard of this particular problem:

Severe Weight Loss From Too Much Sugarless Gum 

It’s not just sugarless gum, it’s any product with sorbitol. Too much and you can wind up with diarrhea, (severe) weight loss and other symptoms you might not expect. It often affects diabetics and dieters.

I work doing medical and health communications work for Emory University and since one of our doctors is quoted in this article, it came to my attention.

I squinted and stared in disbelief this morning, but my eyes did not deceive me — I’ve made it to my first Mini-Goal, having lost a whole 10 pounds since Christmas. I was prepared to be disappointed but apparently my attention to what goes into my mouth has continued to pay off. My next goal is to lose another 10 pounds, which will bring me down to where I was about a year and a half ago when I lost my job, which sent me into a bit of a spiral, health-wise. If I can accomplish that by the end of February, I will be satisfied. If I accomplish even more, all the better!

Here’s another bit from the Initial Assessment document I wrote up. According to the program, it’s important to assess why you want to lose weight. Sometimes you may find that not all the reasons really have to do with weight, but may relate to other parts of your life. Anyway, without further delay…

Reasons for wanting to lose weight:

• To fit into my clothes without looking stupid.
• To fit into my pants.
• To be able to wear my tights w/o wrecking them, getting sores.
• To alleviate back and hip problems.
• To make it easier to carry myself around.
• To take up less space in bus seats, plan seats, etc.
• To reduce my risk for Type II diabetes.
• To look younger, less frumpy.
• To look more attractive.

I wanted to continue posting things I wrote up as part of my Initial Assessment, which starts out the CBT program I’m following.

Here’s what I wrote about eating habits. Mind you, this describes my habits before I started the program. Still, I think it’s useful to remember what habits I’m trying to move away from.

Eating pattern:

I generally eat breakfast and dinner at home. For lunch I either eat something I’ve brought, either leftovers or something specifically bought for lunch, or I go out to a school food vendor or a local restaurant. I also have snacks at work, either things I bring in from home or things others have brought to the office. I drink a cup of coffee and often have a bagel or something in the morning. For dinner I normally either cook or put together a cold meal. I eat my leftovers as well, since often when I make soup or something there’s enough food for a few days. At night I usually have some type of snack, sometimes very late.

Amounts eaten:

My breakfast is usually fairly small, like toast or a bagel and coffee, some fruit. For lunch I sometimes overdo it, making up for breakfast perhaps. The worst is when I go to Saba and not only eat too much (salad/soup, major entrée, plus an alcoholic beverage) but spend too much ($15-20). For dinner it varies but I don’t think I go way over. I do, however, eat too many snacks and sometimes large quantities, like big bowls of popcorn.

Food choice:

I’m usually vegetarian and eat a lot of fruits, vegetables and grains. I eat a lot of carbs. My biggest problem is probably the fact I don’t eat that much protein, which I need to work on. I have a major sweet tooth, which I normally address by keeping sweets out of the house and drinking a lot of diet (no sugar) soda. I however have a couple of sweets a week, like a cookie at work and something at weekly breakfast with my friends.

Loss of control:

There are certain situations where I tend to go overboard. These include buffets, parties, visits home to family, holidays, and visits overseas. Sometimes I am just so tempted by delicious foods I don’t often get to try, so I’ll eat a bunch of pastries or chocolate cake or cream puffs or fatty meat. I hope to avoid this sort of thing in future by exerting some control, being more selective about what I really want, how much I can really “afford” to eat, and eating more slowly.

What I’m doing now:

I’m already on the 1,500 calorie/day diet and doing well at following the recommendations given in the book. I’m doing breakfast at home, lunch at work (but no more Saba unless I pick something reasonable to eat), and dinner at home. In addition I have an afternoon and evening snack allowance.

Other problems:

I’ve never done the whole puking or diuretics thing. Yuck!

Did my weekly weigh-in this morning and found I’m on track. So far I’ve lost 6 lbs. What’s funny is that this is about all the weight I lost the entire time I was working out at the gym for eight months straight. And I did this in two weeks just by following a calorie regime.

I’m not starving myself either, but just learning to eat reasonable portions and consider calories instead of just the contents of the food. At this point I even seem to be developing a rhythm, with breakfast, lunch, dinner and three snacks (morning, afternoon and night), with about the same amount of food, calorie-wise, each time, and I feel satisfied after each meal, now that my stomach is getting used to it.

Later this week I’m going grocery shopping and stocking up on all the foods that I’ve found to be the best choices as far as “repeat” meals, like grapefruit, cottage cheese, yogurt, eggs, etc. I hope that by keeping all these things in stock I will avoid the temptation to just grab whatever food is handy.

I think thought this NPR story was pretty interesting:

Hotel Maids Challenge the Placebo Effect

One of the big mistakes people make, I think, is to put “exercise” in one compartment and “regular life” in another.

What do you do when you’re really hungry right before bed? And you’ve totally maxed out on your allowed calories per day? And you know it’s a very bad idea to eat right before bed? I’m thinking that drinking a cup of tea would be good. Any other ideas?