I have chosen to customize my Eating Plan. I am looking at a low Glycemic Index foundation of foods, because I was recently diagnosed with Metabolic Syndrome, or Insulin Resistance. This is a sort of pre-diabetic state that you can get into rather easily as you age, particularly if you put on half of another human being's body weight in five years or less. I am taking a diabetic medication called Metformin (Glucophage) to help jump start my body's insulin usage, but the medication will be pretty much useless if I don't combine it with increased exercise and decreased food intake, or at least decreased BAD FOODS intake.
The lower GI foods are compatible with helping to give my body what it needs to regulate the insulin. I am also exploring Detox options. I know that my body is toxic now, and with the thoughts of my father's recent, unexpected death from colon cancer running through my head, I am fiercely determined to turn my unhealthy eating habits around. It is not about the weight loss truly, though I will not be able to measure my success happily unless the weight falls off. (Blood work results will be my concrete measuring stick, but who cares what your cholesterol is, really? what you want to know, what I want to see, are those thin thighs and flat abs of my not so long ago forties. Seriously, I do care what my cholesterol and triglycerides show. They are not good now. I will post them in a later post. When I have summoned up the courage.)
I can eat a wide and brilliantly hued array of fresh veggies. It excites me to think of my options, and depresses me when I remember that I can't cook. I can cook, though, because I can read and I have a library card to check out cookbooks. It is more that I don't want to cook. And that is just one more life change I have to make.
My goals are to stop all Whites: white flour, white pastas, white sugars.
I was in a Fitness Challenge before, in Charleston, SC. (I was, I think, the oldest there and I won the Challenge!) Our trainer was Wendy, a woman in her forties with six pack abs that had men AND women in our group drooling. She loved salty thick pretzels from her native Pennsylvania. She gave them up, along with all Whites. She said the facial puffiness disappeared nearly immediately, and her body became lean and svelte. I have never been svelte. But I have been lean and I liked it. I'm heading back there now.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Three Point Five Down!
I weigh exactly three point five pounds less than I did at last week's weigh-in. Yahoo but not good enough to suit my wild craving to be Thinner Me NOW! Still, it is above the recommended average of two pounds per week, so I suppose I should be a teeny bit proud of myself. And, truly, I am. I am learning how to eat differently than I have my whole life and that is the true success.
As a Formerly Thin Person, I have never had to worry about what I ate, or how much. I grew up with a sweet tooth that knew no end of cravings, and a body metabolism that was remarkably forgiving of my late night Sugar Binges. I remember being a skinny nursing school student at Georgia Baptist in Atlanta. My equally skinny (but with more generous breasts and more voluptuous curves) roommate Lisa S. and I used to go to the snack machine in our nursing school lobby nearly every night. We had discovered that if we pushed Number Nine early in the month, just after the machine vendor filled it to the brim, we could put in a couple of quarters and the entire row of Chocolate Iced Honey Buns would drop goodies for us in the narrow silver bin below. We knew, on a cellular level, that what we were doing was technically stealing, but we rationalized that it wasn't our fault the machine was giving up her whole row of goodies for the price of one bun, and we were pathetically, chronically broke. We were also, for the record, hungry about ninety percent of the time. I gorged on those Honey Buns so much that now, nearly 30 years later, I cannot stomach the thought of one, much less an actual bite of one.
I started eating fast food with a vengeance the minute I left my mother - and her incredible home cooking - behind for college. No one could match my mother's homemade biscuits, soft and warm with hot butter and sticky syrup dripping down their sides. Her fried chicken was the best in the South, as far as I was concerned, and her mashed potatoes sent me into throes of ecstasy. I could eat plate after plate and never gain an ounce. I thought I was into the Holy Grail of Eating. I could eat it all and never show the effects. Because Mama's food was so irreplaceable, and because I never managed to learn to cook at all, much less like her, I decided that fast food was my answer. Cheap, easy, and quick. I never thought about the future, that some day I would pay for all those McDonald hamburgers, fries and shakes...or the greasy-delicious Kentucky Fried Chicken and biscuits.
I sit here today in wonder at my total lack of concern for how my body would look, feel and be once that Holy Grail Metabolism slipped out of my grasp. God help me. Lol. God help us all when people have to look at me in a bathing suit! LOl
For today, my goal is to drink water. Lots of water. And to journal my thoughts in prayer form. Help me, Lord, to love just a tiny part of myself again, and help me to lose more pounds this week.
As a Formerly Thin Person, I have never had to worry about what I ate, or how much. I grew up with a sweet tooth that knew no end of cravings, and a body metabolism that was remarkably forgiving of my late night Sugar Binges. I remember being a skinny nursing school student at Georgia Baptist in Atlanta. My equally skinny (but with more generous breasts and more voluptuous curves) roommate Lisa S. and I used to go to the snack machine in our nursing school lobby nearly every night. We had discovered that if we pushed Number Nine early in the month, just after the machine vendor filled it to the brim, we could put in a couple of quarters and the entire row of Chocolate Iced Honey Buns would drop goodies for us in the narrow silver bin below. We knew, on a cellular level, that what we were doing was technically stealing, but we rationalized that it wasn't our fault the machine was giving up her whole row of goodies for the price of one bun, and we were pathetically, chronically broke. We were also, for the record, hungry about ninety percent of the time. I gorged on those Honey Buns so much that now, nearly 30 years later, I cannot stomach the thought of one, much less an actual bite of one.
I started eating fast food with a vengeance the minute I left my mother - and her incredible home cooking - behind for college. No one could match my mother's homemade biscuits, soft and warm with hot butter and sticky syrup dripping down their sides. Her fried chicken was the best in the South, as far as I was concerned, and her mashed potatoes sent me into throes of ecstasy. I could eat plate after plate and never gain an ounce. I thought I was into the Holy Grail of Eating. I could eat it all and never show the effects. Because Mama's food was so irreplaceable, and because I never managed to learn to cook at all, much less like her, I decided that fast food was my answer. Cheap, easy, and quick. I never thought about the future, that some day I would pay for all those McDonald hamburgers, fries and shakes...or the greasy-delicious Kentucky Fried Chicken and biscuits.
I sit here today in wonder at my total lack of concern for how my body would look, feel and be once that Holy Grail Metabolism slipped out of my grasp. God help me. Lol. God help us all when people have to look at me in a bathing suit! LOl
For today, my goal is to drink water. Lots of water. And to journal my thoughts in prayer form. Help me, Lord, to love just a tiny part of myself again, and help me to lose more pounds this week.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Malnourished Mamacita!
Arrrgh! I am hungry. I am hungry enough to forget the reasons I need to lose these stupid, ridiculous, fat-fat-fat fifty pounds. Isn't it ironic that, fat as I am, I'm still starving?! Starving for more, always, always more. More chocolate. More sleep. More time to write, to read the forty books stacked beside my bed, in the back seat of my car, under my pillow. (Yes. You read right. I have a dog-eared copy of Gift From The Sea under my pillow. Just in case I wake up needing some peace and calm.)
Today I was a very bad Fat Girl. I ate On The Run. That would be the Mickey D's salty ham biscuit. With Coke. I then proceeded to devour a hot, greasy sausage on thick white bread at the library snack bar. To make matters increasingly worse, while I waited in the Car Rider line for Caroline, I sneaked in a Reese's Easter egg.
Now I am bloated and sick, and very irritated with myself. But, looking on the perennial bright side, I am going to keep going, not give up on myself, and cook a healthy delicious dinner tonight. My real Challenge doesn't start till May 1. Now you see why. I'm a Slow Learner. I am Food Dyslexic. I need to give myself plenty of time to get used to the idea of No More Junk Food.
Today I was a very bad Fat Girl. I ate On The Run. That would be the Mickey D's salty ham biscuit. With Coke. I then proceeded to devour a hot, greasy sausage on thick white bread at the library snack bar. To make matters increasingly worse, while I waited in the Car Rider line for Caroline, I sneaked in a Reese's Easter egg.
Now I am bloated and sick, and very irritated with myself. But, looking on the perennial bright side, I am going to keep going, not give up on myself, and cook a healthy delicious dinner tonight. My real Challenge doesn't start till May 1. Now you see why. I'm a Slow Learner. I am Food Dyslexic. I need to give myself plenty of time to get used to the idea of No More Junk Food.
Five Star Alarm!
Last night I asked my daughter to take a "Before" picture of me in a two piece bathing suit. The results were nothing less than terrifying! I am hoping to be disciplined enough to take the Body-for-Life Challenge beginning May 1 2011. This is a twelve week Challenge, incorporating workouts, healthy eating and mindfulness in the pursuit, not of the Almighty Weight Loss, but of a healthy, strong, lean body. Wish me luck and keep me accountable, y'all!
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