The Great Weight Loss Goal

Wow, it's been 2 months, almost exactly, since the last post. Incredible. Anyways, my afternoon (which started around 11:15 am) has been so boring that I've read enough "Modern Love" installments in the NY Times to literally make me nauseous. I'm not nauseated because of all the "love" talk because the columns are so varied, and almost none (none that I've read anyways) are about sickeningly-sweet love-love, you know? Just staring at the screen for the past 2.5 hours, reading words, has made me somehow motion sick. Hopefully their are kno typo's in this 'cause I can't bare two look at teh screne anymroe. It may have actually been that coupled with the 200 calorie splurge of icing and sprinkle covered Panera brownie, but whatever. I'll have salad for dinner and no ice cream tonight, I guess.

Which brings me to the topic at hand: my weight loss goal. I've been trying to seriously lose some fat since the beginning of this year. It's not been working. I tried calorie counting. Somehow 1500 calories a day turned to 1700 because, well, I splashed around in the pool that day or some stupid thing. Needless to say, it did not work. I was maintaining all 135 lbs, which did not seem so bad, though. Then my pms week brought 3 extra lbs with it, along with the realization that if I didn't get serious, I'd be "dieting" for years. Screw that. Let's get this over with and back to eating-eating. I already know from experience that maintaining my weight is not so difficult. Let's just get down to a weight I'll be proud to maintain, shall we? For me, I guess that weight would be 125 lbs. However, realistically, I'll be happy with anything below 130, 129.5 included. So after the devastating +3 lbs week, I cut way back to ~1200 calories a day. I am not self-hating, though, so I do allow 1500 calories on days that I seriously exercise (i.e. group groove or group power classes at the gym). Sweating must be involved. Either way, I'm well below the 1800 calories it takes to maintain my weight. So a week of this torture (actually, it only felt torturous for the first 4 days or so) yielded a weight loss of 5.5 lbs!! This works!! I was elated, since ANY weight gain or even lack of weight loss after that week would have resulted in me resigning myself to my current body type (slightly too pudgy for my tastes). I now have the willpower to go on! AND at this rate, it should only take me a couple more months; then I can stop! For those of you reading carefully and keeping track, yes this means 200 calories less for dinner tonight because of that stupid making-me-sick brownie, but who cares? I'm losing tangible weight, and that's enough to make me keep doing it.

Here are some diet helps I've found for people like me who want to lose weight (Like me = food obsessors, the never-thirsty, and the exercise-HATING who have very weak wills):

1. Lots of tea. Lots. Flavored teas with no sugar needed (because none will be added).
2. Lettuce and salads. They afford the ability to eat mass quantities without maxing out your calorie budget.
3. Many "diet" foods are just as good if not better than "regular." Thus, there is no need for the "regular" version to even exist in your life. These include: Baked Cheetos, Breyer's Light Slow Churn Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream, low sodium V8, Murray's Shortbread cookies.
4. Two things I have found to not be quite as good as "regular" but are totally adequate-tasting and worth the trade because of the calories involved: Light Bread (35 cal per slice vs. up to 110 cal per slice for regular) and Dannon Light and Fit Yogurt (60 cal per serving vs. up to 140 cal per serving for regular).
5. Weight Watchers SmartOnes frozen dinners are great for these reasons: when you are STARVING because you just got home from the gym and haven't eaten since lunch, they take 3 min. to make; they are 300 cal or less; they are totally filling enough to make up the bulk of your dinner (I always have to have something else, like grapes last night.)
6. Hide candy. If you're like me, you rarely think about candy unless it's right in front of your face, and then you think, "Hm, candy...why not?" That is not good enough to waste so many calories on so little. Just hide it.
7. Almost forgot...jeez...my-calorie-counter.com is a God-send. And now so many more features are included for free than used to be, like making your own calorie goals and adding up your calories for you.

Going to get some more tea. Tropic of Strawberry.