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Last updated 08-26-07
My new way of life breaks down eating less than I burn off, keeping track of
what I actually do eat so I know that I am really doing this, and looking at the long run instead of focusing on
short term successes and failures. This isn't really just a diet, it's my new normal.
I've found that as I've gotten to different lower weights, I have to change the way
I've been eating and exercising in order to keep losing. My more recent ways of doing things are
at the top of this page. Scroll down if you are interested in seeing what I was doing when I first
started this undertaking.
This is what I do during the work week.
Breakfast: 1 or 1 1/2 ounces high fiber cereal or oatmeal. About half a cup of skim milk.
Snack: A small banana
Lunch: Either a sandwich of two slices of diet bread, 28 grams of sliced turkey, and fat-free mayo, or about
8 ounces of homemade pasta salad with roasted veggies, dressed with a little olive oil, vinegar, garlic, and herbs.
Either lunch, about 200 calories. Also, 3 pieces of sugar free hard candies, about
30 calories total.
Snack: 1 cup of skim milk
Exercise: A walk of 3 1/2 miles, on a hilly street. Typically takes me 1 hour, 15 minutes.
In inclimate weather, 40 minutes on the elliptical. I exercise either 4 or 5 times a week.
Dinner: An entree of around 300 calories. A piece of fruit. Sometimes, some carrots
dipped in hummus. All around 500 or so calories.
Dessert: Varies. Sometimes a sugar-free pudding cup with Cool whip. 4 or 5 ounces of sugar free,
low fat ice cream. A weight watchers chocolate muffin. Between 100 to 200 calories.
Misc: About half a gallon of home made iced tea, sweetened with 2/3 cup of Splenda. About 80 calories
or so.
This all boils down to about 1200 to 1400 calories a day. I no longer
take fiber suppliments or vitamins. I just don't like taking pills! I am eating more
and more meat free meals. I find that I like vegetarian cuisine, and it tends to be lower in calories.
On the weekends, I'm alot less structured. I like to drink on
Saturdays, often to the point of being drunk. Sometimes, my husband and I will go out and eat.
I don't really focus on my calorie counts on the weekends like I do during the week. As I get to a
lower weight, I am suspecting that my carefree weekends are having more of an impact. I've been focusing
on trying to keep Sunday a fairly lean day, eating less than 1500 calories. I think this is the
nudge I've been needing to get off of a long stretch of maintenance.
As I've gotten closer to the 200 pound mark, I've found that I've had to make some changes to the way I'm eating to keep up my weight loss. I'm doing some rounding off with the numbers because at this writing I am at 205.5, but I do feel that is close enough to make 200 the breaking point for this discussion. So for now I'm going to divide the menus into the 200 and over, and 200 and under categories. I am also going to add in the exercise I typically do and when I do it. I feel that exercise in a crucial part of my weight loss plan. I have read that 90% of all diets ultimately fail. Of the people that do manage to lose and maintain a weight loss over a period of years, 90% of those exercise regularly. I really doubt that I would have success I am having were it not for the exercise that is now part of my daily life.
Exercise: 1 half hour on the Elliptical (which is a cardio machine).
Breakfast: 1 and 1/2 ounces of some type of high fiber cereal.
Snack: 1 cup skim milk, 1 piece of fruit
(typically a banana).
Lunch: Diet TV Dinner, such as Lean Cuisine or Healthy Choice. Usually
between 280 to 320 calories each.
Snack: 1 cup skim milk. Very rarely, 1 ounce beef jerky and/or 4-5 prunes.
Exercise: 2 1/2 mile walk, with a couple of fairly large hills along the way.
Usually takes about 40- 50 minutes. If the whether is inclement, then 1/2 hour on the elliptical instead.
Dinner: My big meal of the day. I eat pretty close to my bedtime, and
I don't see any point in going to bed hungry. Most nights I'll have a salad made of about a
cup of salad greens, an ounce of baby carrots, 2-3 radishes, a stalk of celery sliced,
some other type of vegetable such as a chopped up red pepper, a couple of ounces of fennel or broccoli cole slaw
(without the dressing). I dress it with with a 20-30 grams of low calorie diet dressing. Then I'll have
some sort of moderate entree, some of which can be found in my
Diet Recipes page. Then I'll finish with a serving of fruit. Typically I have an apple, orange,
or a grapefruit.
Dessert: 1 cup skim milk mixed with 1 scoop of Citrucel Fibershake (chocolate).
I count this as a dessert rather than a supplement simply because it tastes so darned good!
You can read more about how I feel this product in my Diet Reviews
page.
I also take a couple of fiber pills a day, and a couple servings of Benefiber, which I have mixed in with the
skim milk I drink during my snacks. I also take a multi vitamin.
On days when I follow this diet, I usually eat between 1400 to 1600 calories, and about 40 to 50 grams
of fiber.
Another change I've made is that no longer track my daily calories in Fitday.
One thing I think is very important is to adopt a lifestyle that one can keep for the rest of ones life.
I simply don't see myself logging calories for as long as I live. That said, I think that the time, over
eight months, that I spent logging my calories was very, very important. It taught me what the amount
of food that was eating daily were translating to in terms of the calories I was taking in.
Basically, it taught me how much I really need to eat in order to lose weight. I still track my
calories, but now I've learned how to do it internally. I still strongly recommend that anyone
who seriously wants to lose weight to track their calories, and to do so for a fair amount of time.
I know of many maintainers who do make the logging of calories part of their normal, daily lifestyle.
I think it it truly an matter of personal choice as to whether permanent calories is needed for permanent weight loss.
And there is still a chance that if I am unable to keep up my weight loss, I might go back to tracking
the calories.
Breakfast: 1 and 1/2 ounces of some type of high fiber cereal. 1 cup of skim milk.
Snack: 1 cup skim milk, 1 piece of fruit
(typically a banana).
Lunch: Diet TV Dinner, such as Lean Cuisine or Healthy Choice. Usually
between 280 to 320 calories each.
Snack: 1 cup skim milk. If hungry, 1 ounce beef jerky and/or 4-5 prunes.
Typically, though, the milk is enough.
Exercise: 2 1/2 mile walk, with a couple of fairly large hills along the way.
Usually takes about 40- 50 minutes. If the whether is inclement, then 1/2 hour on the elliptical instead.
Dinner: My big meal of the day. I eat pretty close to my bedtime, and
I don't see any point in going to bed hungry. Most nights I'll have a big salad made of a couple
cups of salad greens, a couple of ounces of baby carrots, 4 -5 radishes, a stalk of celery sliced,
some other type of vegetable such as a chopped up red pepper, a couple of ounces of fennel or broccoli cole slaw
(without the dressing). I dress it with with a couple tablespoons of low calorie diet dressing. Then I'll have
some sort of moderate entree, some of which can be found in my
Diet Recipes page. Then I'll finish with a large serving of fruit. In the summer,
this is typically around 650 grams of watermelon, which weighs in at a couple of hundred calories.
When I can't get watermelon, I mourn, and eat grapefruit, apples, canned peaches, or whatever I can get my hands on.
I also take a couple of fiber pills a day, and a couple servings of Benefiber, which I have mixed in with the
skim milk I drink during my snacks. I also take a multi vitamin.
On days when I follow this diet, I usually eat between 1600 to 1700 calories, and about 40 to 50 grams
of fiber.
I've lost enough weight that other people are telling me that they can see the change
in how I look. I love hearing this, but I also feel a little nervous when someone remarks on my
weight loss. The reason is simple. Usually, in the very next breath, the person will
ask me "How did you do it?", and then look at me with hopeful eyes. I just know that what they want
me to say is that I've found some wonder diet or pill or supplement or *something* that made it easy.
And I know they are going to be disappointed when I give my answer, "By eating less and exercising more."
I know that some people have good result using named diets such as Atkins or South Beach
or whatever. But I think that in the long run, people who are on these plans have a good chance of
gaining back what they have lost. The problem is that diets are by their nature restrictive.
Restriction is not fun. When someone gets to their goal weight, they want to get off their diet right
away. Then they go back to their old eating habits which is what got them fat in the first place.
My "plan" is to simply eat fewer calories than I burn off in my daily activities.
I started by taking baby steps. I used to eat big ole "Hungry Man" tv dinners for my
lunch at work everyday; now I eat Healthy Choice and Lean Cuisine. Instead of stopping off at
Jack In the Box and having a couple of hamburgers and some egg rolls for dinner, I go home, make a salad with
low fat dressing, have some sort of a modest entree, and finish with fruit of some kind. And instead
of having big bowl full of sugary cereal for breakfast, I actually weight out a portion of either Raisin Bran or
Mini Wheats.
This brings me to the next big step I took. I started tracking my calories
in and estimated calories burned using a program called Fitday, which is available
free on the web, or as a $30 downloadable PC program (the PC version has a few more features and is a bit easier
to use, but the free web version gets the job done just fine).
This program also has an activity log, and will estimate how many calories you burned off
on any particular day. When I first started out, I was dead set
against officially counting calories. I mean, what a *drag*. And weighing out food
to get accurate calorie counts? This seemed to anal beyond words to me. I didn't want
to obsess over food this way at all. Gradually I came to understand that if I really did want to lose
weight, I really did need to know what, and how much, I was putting in my body. Yes, it's a pain in the
ass, but then, so is being fat.
One feature of my new diet, or Way Of Eating (WOE) is that I do give myself "off" days. If I happen
to over eat one day, I don't freak out, I just know that I'll have to make up that calorie restriction some other
day. No foods are forbidden to me, because I know that if I decide I can't have "Whatever" food,
then I will start to crave it like mad. Basically I am following a low calorie/low fat model, but if I really
want to have a high calorie fatty meal, I do so. It makes it easier for me to know that while maybe
I can't eat the way I used to all the time, doing so from time to time doesn't mean that I've busted my diet or
have failed in some way.
I've also taken to regularly exercising. I have an elliptical trainer
at home, which is basically a cross between a treadmill and a stair climber. One does not have to
lift one's feet when using it, so it is low impact. I usually get on it for a half hour or forty
minutes a day, when I get home from work, taking the weekends off from it. I also have a home gym
weight machine, but truth be told I don't like using it as much as the elliptical, and I am more prone to just
blowing this off. I've also recently started taking walks when I get home from work.
I walk just over two miles round trip, and I'm surprised at how good the results I seem to be getting from this are.
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