Archive for April, 2008
Eating For Comfort and Choosing A Plan
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008Oddly, it wasn’t until AFTER becoming obese on Richard Simmons Deal-A-Meal program that I truly began to eat for comfort. This survival mechanism more or less solidified my place on the obesity wall of fame. WTF? Heck, if I’m gonna be fat, I might as well derive what little pleasure there is in it, right?
I am convinced that every person’s dietary needs are different, as well as their metabolisms. This is why the diet industry is so dangerous. There’s this assumption that a person who is x-number of pounds overweight needs to go on y-diet plan. As I’d learned from some of my other diet failures, this cookie cutter mentality can have disastrous results (more…)
How Many Calories Do You Burn While Clubbing A Woodchuck?
Saturday, April 26th, 2008
Today’s activity: killing the neighborhood nuisance woodchuck which had the misfortune of being found trespassing in my yard. But for some reason, no matter where I looked on the activity list on the Daily Plate website and calorie counter, woodchuck clubbing was nowhere to be found! Oh well.
Here’s how the saga unfolded. The dogs did their usual mad dash into the back yard and went into the all familiar hysterical bark. Jenniffer, who is now living with me again (see the post titled Scenes From Our walk: Buffalo Blight), screamed for me to come outside. I ran out to find the three doggy children had surrounded a good sized woodchuck and were all taking turns trying to get a bite in. I immediately grabbed the biggest tree branch I could find (about 3″ in diameter), and ordered Jen to call off and grab Precious to get her out of the mix. Precious could use the experience, but this critter was a bit too big and too pissed off for her to handle without getting seriously hurt. The boys have had previous experience at this. Buddy has 5 prior kills to his credit.
How Richard Simmons F*cked Up My Life
Friday, April 18th, 2008
Now before I start ragging on Richard, I want to make it clear that I take full responsibility for being a gullible stupid fool to buy into his BS. Richard is living out the American dream of marketing a product and making a killing off end-of-their-rope morbidly obese people. Good for him. I hope he enjoys his fortune. But I, for one, will forever kick myself in the ass for buying his product. Shame on me for buying the snake oil. Shame on me for being sucked in by all those teary eyed testimonials. Shame on me for thinking I was FAT to begin with. Oh what I wouldn’t give to weigh 161# today.
Up until that fateful day in January 1992, I had NEVER been on a diet. I had seen the failures of dieting all around me. I had friends in high school who practically starved themselves to death, I’d seen relatives try every plan and pill out there, I saw my best friend’s mom constantly running back to Weight Watchers or whatever program she happened to find… just to get skinny, get fat, get skinny, get fat over and over again. I was thoroughly convinced that diets were faddish scams designed to keep people in “the system” much in the way our social welfare system works. I often said to myself, “I’ll never go on a diet!” So what changed? What sick message penetrated my brain to cause my reason and logic to lapse? What the hell was I thinking?!!!
I suppose it doesn’t matter much anymore. Whatever it was that made me so uncomfortable and miserable at 161# is gone. This is going to sound strange, but I’m more comfortable in my skin and with my body image at age 41 and 244# than I was at age 25 and 161#! Why is that? For crying out loud, back then I was terrified to wear shorts in public! Now I could care less what other people are thinking. If only I weighed 161# today, I might actually look good in those shorts! WTF!
The Daily Plate
Wednesday, April 16th, 2008It seems there are a whole slew of diet tracking websites out there nowadays. The one which seems to fit my need is called The Daily Plate. There is a logo with a link to my personal profile in the right column of this blog.
A few years back, I was using another tracker which I really liked, but for the life of me I can’t remember the name of it. I think it was a paid service though. The Daily Plate is a free service which has a premium upgrade, but everything you really need is included in the free version.
I like the “meal” feature where you can combine certain foods into a saved meal so you don’t always have to enter the individual ingredients. I also like the “My Calorie Breakdown” pie chart on the right. For those of you aiming for a certain window of carbs vs. proteins and fats, this gives you a visual. I thing a good starting point is a 40/30/30 breakdown. I’m gonna shoot for a 50/25/25 breakdown. Under the daily food diary there is a “% of daily values” which is based on the USDA Carbo-death chart, for those of you who believe the government is your friend.
What’s cool is you set your daily calorie intake goal based on your weight, height, current activity level, and how many pounds per week you’d like to lose. Then as you add your foods in during the course of the day, you’re given a countdown of the remaining calories left to eat. You can also track your exercise, which then deducts/adds calories into the respective columns. So basically, the more you exercise, the more you can eat so long as you don’t surpass the daily calorie threshold which you set for yourself.
Since The Daily Plate provides pretty much the same information, and then some, as I was writing in my Food and Activity Logs, I’m only going to use this service to track my food and exercise as to not be redundant.
One Last Hurrah!
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008I can see that things are going nowhere. I don’t have the discipline to just eat less and exercise more. Even though, overall, I AM eating less than I was when my husband was around to stuff me with huge restaurant meals and double sized servings of his home-cooked meals. My food choices pretty much suck! Let’s face it… when given the choice between healthy and satisfying, satisfying wins every time.
I’m more inclined to gravitate towards the foods which make me feel full for several hours rather than the ones that make me want to gnaw my arm off an hour and a half after I eat. But unfortunately, Richard Simmons f*cked up my metabolism so bad, that I can no longer eat under the old “2 or 3 meal a day” system. That system is what my favorite satisfying foods are designed for… people who are busy, on the go, or can’t be bothered with meal planning.
The other issue is expense. I usually eat off of the McDonald’s dollar menu. Plain and simple: I eat cheap, feel full for hours, and am satisfied. But, the nutrition content, and the combination of salt and fat in these foods are counteractive to the efforts of a zero metabolism person wanting to lose weight.
I’ve decided to give it a go, again, with my modified LA Weightloss diet plan. I’ll write more extensively on that another time. Unfortunately, I may have to hold up a mini-mart or the local gas station to pay for the f*cking food! I am totally convinced that real food prices are a government conspiracy to keep poor people fat and in need of Medicaid, just so they can get their socialist votes to keep the politicians in business. I did some real food shopping last night, and the f*cking bill came to $83.58!!!! Mutherf*ckers! Well, the utilities are just gonna have to wait.
This is terrible that I have to choose between eating healthy and paying my other bills. Ramen noodles = 14cents, asparagus = $3.47. Tell me that’s not a f*cking conspiracy. To prove I’m not crazy, here is a New York Times article supporting my conspiracy theory: You Are What You Grow.
On to other things….
My last hurrah for an all out diet of high fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated soybean oil was yesterday.
Monday 4/14
woke up: 9:17am
breakfast: 11:30am
• 1 cup All Bran Strawberry Medley cereal w/skim milk
weigh in: 2pm 244#
lunch: 5pm
• 1 Italian sized plate full of spaghetti w/meat sauce & zucchini
nap: 7:30 - 8:45pm
dinner: 10:15pm
• 1 Mighty Taco bean & cheese burrito
• 1 Super Mighty burrito w/ sour cream
• 1 medium Sierra Mist
Dairy Queen medium twist cone w/ sprinkles
To bed: 4:00am
