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Starting Weigh-In for SUMMER SLIMMIN' Challenge, Goals, and Preparatory Actions...

Got on the scale to document my starting weight for the Summer Slimmin' Challenge. (You still can join, so click on that badge to the left at the top of my sidebar.)

And here is the kick-off poundage:

267.6

I can see the crap I had Saturday--chorizo tapas, rolls with cheese butter, fried chicken, fried green plantains--took its toll. It was a lollapalooza of bad choices at a mediocre restaurant. That's 1.6 lbs up from last time I weighed.

My goal for how many pounds I wanna lose by August 6: 17.6

That should take me to 250, a weight I haven't been at since, like 2001--I'd have to check old records, but I know I was 254 after my appendectomy, and I had lost some weight, so I'm assuming I was 250 the year before (as I tended to gain about 10 pounds a year, give or take, and by 2003 I was 266.)

Well okay, so I started off fine this AM with a breakfast nearly half my usual breakfasty caloric level: 437

I'm aiming for 1800 a day the first week, 1700 the second, and then 1600 for the remainer of the challenge.

If I feel too hungry at the lower level of 1600, I'll let myself move up again to 1700 and then 1800, the latter being where I want to set the upper bar. I haven't been able to eat that few calories consistently for two months at a time in years and years, and I could NEVER keep it up, so let's see what the challenge can do to my mindset. If I am to sustain a lower weight--and my goal is to get to 175 one day--then I have to learn to eat less. I am hopeful. Ever hopeful.

One of the things I learned in the last couple weeks is that 2300 calories more or less is maintenance for me. I had weigh-ins that never moved more than a pound up or down on days I tracked my calories at around 2300.

So, if I eat more I will gain (and when I don't restrain myself, I naturally gravitate to eating about 4000 to 4500 calories, and yes, that's how you get to 300 lbs, peops!) So, if I eat 1800, that's 500 less than maintenance. Times 7 days means I will lose at least a pound  week--add in the water losses that come with dieting and I might make 2 lbs a week. Add in more exercise and I might make it to 3 lbs a week. Hence, I aim for the middlish ground, 2 lbs per week.

So, here's to getting to a size 22 by August 6 (or at least that's my estimate. I'm a bit snug in 24, and sometimes loose in 26 and sometimes perfect, so it seems to me that 17.6 lbs off should take me down to a 22 with some comfort in the fit, yes? At my highest I wore a 30/32, so this will be a nice change.

Other goals:

~~to blog daily and be accountable to my challenge-mates and readers

~~to post encouragement to other challenge participants (at least two a day)

~~to drink 8+ glasses of water (fruit essenced or plain)

~~to add 20 mins of exercise on non-Pilates days (I normally do an hour of trainer-supervised Pilates 2x a week), meaning pop in a DVD and do it or dance around the living room or march in place or whatever. Just move my butt for 20 mins on 3 other non-Pilates days for a total of 5 days with exercise.

~~to eat at least 6 fruits /veggies a day (the challenge only asks for a minimum of 5, but I want to set a wee bit higher bar for myself)

~~to eat/cook/prepare most of my meals at home (not to be tempted in restaurants, with the exceptions being, certainly, my anniversary on the 11th and my husband's birthday on the 26th)

~~to be more scrupulous with my food tracking/journaling. I am going to do it at Sparkpeople (where I have only been sporadic and non-comprehensive). My aim is to document EVERY SPECK of food or beverage that goes into my mouth and down to my tummy.

~~to blog my weigh-in on Sundays (although I may weigh-in for my own purposes more often.

I already requested delivery of vegetarian meals (I'll receive it sometime next Thursday) in order to simplify the caloric-watch for a few weeks, then I'll begin making my meals myself. I want someone else to portion it for me, as I really tend to just go nuts with portions. 3 to 4 weeks of pre-portioned meals should help get me in the mindset of "this much is the correct amount".

After that, I will weigh/measure at home to keep things calorically tidy.

Since the meal delivery won't start for several days, I will be shopping today to restock on fresh produce, skim milk, lowfat cheese, and whatever I need to make healthful meals for me and hubby until I get my pre-portioned vegetarian lowfat meals. I am going to make my shopping list as soon as I get off blogging this.

Z of Bottomless blog, who is hosting the challenge and created our cool badges, has already done her challenge-friendly shopping. Go see.

I will happily accept any encouraging remarks and rah-rahs to keep me on target. And I hope I can encourage you, too. It's a long haul and a tough fight, so let's be pillars for each other.

Let's do it! Onward and DOWNward!

Other measures to track for the challenge:
starting waist: 44.5
starting hips:   54.5

The Steak Dinner: Making Choices, Good and Bad

Five days of in-range calorie eating, five days of nearly perfect nutrition, and I got a mad craving to go out for steak. So...we did.

I sat and made concessions. None of the usual sides with steak, ie. mashed or fried potatoes or baked loaded, plus veggie souffle. Or that dreaded blue cheese and creamy dressing salad that steakhouses lure me with. :)

I started with their simplest salad and a vinaigrette (sorry, blue cheese). I had these sides: a baked sweet potato, plain, and sprinkled diet-friendly cinnamon on it ( not sugar). I had broccoli steamed, plain, no salt. I I had a couple ounces of merlot to balance its heart-healthiness against the saturated fat/cholesterol in red meat. I had unsweetened iced tea. I skipped the usual fruit tart or chocolate mousse (that I'd usually give in to at this particular eatery) and made do with a double espresso with Splenda.

That's what I did right. What I did wrong, besides eating too many ounces of NY Strip: I had not one, but two slices of French bread (it is a French restaurant, so the bread is really enticing). I used EVOO, not the butter they served with it.

What else I did right, knowing we'd be having dinner out: I had a moderate braekfast and a very light lunch that, together, totalled 650 calories. Enough to keep me from being utterly famished, but not so much that I didn't have some leeway at supper.

At the end of the day, after, yes, five days of great caloric containment, I went 500 calories over the maximum SparkPeople nutrition tracker allows me. I would have only gone 400 over, but I decided to have a coconut water to get in some potassium, and I had a fiber mix to push the meat through my system a bit faster. :)

I drank my water, good. I didn't make time to exercise, bad.

A day of good and bad choices.

After the restaurant, I asked hubby to drive to Barnes & Noble. I wanted to load up on health/fitness magazines, low-cal holilday cooking ones, too, in order to get myself motivated for the coming weeks of temptations.

It starts this week. Holiday eating. Lord, help us plan and help us make the better choices!

Tomorrow, a family birthday party will likely set all sorts of minefields. But I have set aside healthy snacks and beverages to take to minimize temptations/damages. Will I be perfect? Doubt it. But I will be...better.

Happy Weekend to all Fatfighters!

My Biggest Dieter's Mistake and Slacking Off Issue Right Now: Not Cooking

I am totally NOT giving it 100%. I'm not even giving it 80%. Shoot, I'm barely hitting 55%.

And my biggest step backwards, my hugest slack-off, from when I was losing--and even maintaining--is...not doing grocery shopping, meal planning, and home cooking.

Without question, this is my big hurdle to tackle this week. Without this, I might as well admit I'm gonna fail.

I've been back into getting take-out, eating out. This spells disaster. It has. I'm stuck at just nearly 8 pounds from my best during this blog's existence. And it's not budging. I thought I could do it with judicious eating out. I can't.

It got especially bad when I was sick (hey, now there's an excuse to order pizza or have hubb go to the local Mexican restaurant or Kabob place). And as I was coming back home after driving through Taco Bell post Pilates (talk about ruining a good deed with a bad one), I told myself this had to stop. I had to get my cooking mojo back on.

So, I committed to myself to go get groceries either later today (if I can get my second wind, as I feel mighty pooped) or after my ultrasound appointment tomorrow. But no later.

I have to admit. I have NO excuse not to grocery shop and plan and cook meals. It's just plain laziness. It's just bad old habits taking over again.

No. Gotta kick the take-out habit. Trying to regulate it (ie, promising to choose only healthful options) isn't working. I gotta just make my food. I have to control what goes into my meals. I have to turn that stove and oven back on. I have to stock that freezer and fridge and the fruit bowls. Period.

And you know, I'm not the only one who needs to do this. Read this a few minutes ago at Diets in Review:

Since 1965, women have gone from spending 13 hours per week cooking meals to the meager 30 minutes per day now, and in that time the number of overweight women has more than doubled, to 65 percent. Biggest Loser cookbooks author Devin Alexander pointed out that “Twenty minutes in the kitchen will save you three hours on the StairMaster.”

Yes. We've become a nation of eater-outers, not home-cookers. Let's be real. At home, you have to measure out the oil and butter and dressing and cheese and portion the meat and chicken and tofu or whatever. You just don't get this plate, like magic, from the Kitchen Fairy. You can't say, "Well, maybe this mashed potato isn't so bad, or these veggies weren't doused in too much butter." At home, you can't fool yourself. You know exactly what's in there, cause YOU put it in there.

I love to eat out. As I told hubby yesterday, after we left the gynecologist (where he held my hand during the painful exam), when he commented how he likes buffets cause he serves himself (and he has VERY little food at buffets, cause his appetitie is pretty small for a tall feller, and they definitely MAKE money off him, cause he never eats 10 bucks worth!), I like being served. I LOVE having someone bring me yummies and take away dirty plates and ask me if I want coffee and dessert.

It makes me feel like an Empress. Or, okay, a Princess. :)

I think a small part of it's 'cause my parents were not eater-outers. Eating out was this amazing thing to me. I'd see sidewalk cafes in NYC when we visited Manhattan and it was so alien. A thing only special people did. Not poor people like us.

I never sat down in my first Chinese restaurant until I was 16, and that because a friend's dad invited me out to eat with his family. I found it astonishing. And it's the same today. I get this wild thrill at heading to a sit-down restaurant and having whatever my heart desires.

Sit-down restaurants are like small vacations. Drive-throughs are me just not wanting to do any work. Either way, they both are about self-spoiling. For me, anyway. Luxury. Not wisdom or self-control. Indulgence.

My parents never modeled this. This is just ME. Spoiling myself. Acting all rich, right? No...They were homey types, simple folks who worked very hard at low-paying work and who watched pennies like hawks watching field mice. Cooking at home was economical. No takeout, except for a walk to the bakery to get bread. That's what poor folks did and do, especially poor immigrant folks who have a hankering for their ethnic flavors, do. Eat at home.

For me, eating out is a huge luxury. It's what rich people do. What my parents could not do.

It's crazy how much money we waste eating out. Really shameful. We could be putting that towards retirement or paying off our car note. Seriously.

It's a bad economy--a perfect time to figure out how to eat well without spending a fortune. It's a challenge, but not insurmountable. For the $5 or $6 bucks that cafeteria or eat-out turkey sandwich costs plus whatever beverage you get and maybe that bag o' chips, you can make two to four lunches at home (depending on what you eat).

So, the Princess needs to haul her fat butt to Whole Foods and get what she needs for a week of meals. I love eating out too much to nix it altogether. But man, even if I reduce it to once or twice a week, that's better than what I've been doing. Every single dinner and most lunches out. Crazy. Foolish.

Oh, man. Back to the basics.

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Crazy Mad At Myself

I'm still fighting off the blues, but on top of that, I'm ticked off at myself for not being fully, utterly committed. I still am stuck in that cycle of eating relatively well for two meals and then going nuts during a third.

Usually, the nuts meal is dinner. Yesterday, it was lunch.

I had gotten myself a perfectly adequate turkey and swiss on multigrain sandwich for lunch after my Pilates class--which went well, as I was breathing so much better and could fully exert myself. Here I was, driving home, sandwich in tow, and--boom!-- I get this raging craving for something madly, Chinesely salty. I'm like this possessed person. So, I take a right when I spot a local Chinese eatery and got a takeaway: the pepper steak combo--that diet-destroying thing that comes with fried rice and an egg roll and soup.

Oh, man. I ate it all.

The poor sandwich was relegated to the fridge.

I felt really not great after. I had a hard time waking up, and ended up sleeping 13 hours.

And I woke up bloated and with dark circles under my eyes. I don't normally suffer from dark circles unless I have sinusitis or other nasal allergy flare-up. But I notice that eating a lot of Chinese food (sodium, MSG?) makes me get dark circles. Hmm.

So, I look like crap, feel like crap and am very pissed off at my total lack of self-control.

I don't know what switch in me has to be pushed, but clearly, I am not committed in my will as much as I am in my mind. My mind wakes up deciding to go, my will decides to be a promiscuous food whore.

I am not giving up, but I am wishing there was an easier way to flip that switch and get going on this.

So frustrated. But not surrendering.

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