Just to give you some history, I have been beating this dead horse for 6 years. 6 years of stops and starts. 6 years of never quite hitting my groove. I have started, then deleted 2 other blogs on the topic, and I am not really sure why I do that.
What I do know is that when I read, and track, and pay attention to my eating and exercise, I do quite well. My body really likes strength training, I have learned to love a select few forms of cardio, and stretching is the devil, but I must do it. When I track my food, I pay attention to what I eat. When I plan a few days ahead and cook accordingly, I do amazingly.
I eat fairly well in my house. My son, who has autism, also has the gift of food allergies. (We're not talking GFCF diet here, autism people.) His eating precludes cow and goat dairy, garlic, corn, pork, spelt, and whole wheat. That means I can buy nutritionally deficient white bread, not delicious and textured 12-grain or multi-grain breads. It means I cannot buy most pre-packaged foods from the grocery store, with a few exceptions. It also means that I have had to transform myself from a hopeless meal preparer into a creative cook.
FOR INSTANCE: Here is a pot of soup I threw together in the slow cooker on Wednesday night:
I know, it looks delicious, right? Beef stock, lean ground beef, onion, mushroom, red potato, kale, tomato, bay leaves, white pepper, paprika, sea salt, and parsley. No recipe needed, this is the kind of stuff I really like to make these days.
That being said, when I decide to enter "Screw it All! I will eat what I WANT!" mode, then we have your no-veggies-to-be-seen, burger, pizza, butter chicken, potato chips, brownies, and cupcake type eats. That is much less common for me to do these days, and it tends to be a few things at a time, rather than a gorge fest. I am much more likely to decide I am going to have 2 pieces of pizza and track it than I am to order a small pizza and eat it all to myself.
So now I have talked about what I know works for me, and I talked a little about the food aspect of my life. I think the approach I will take will be to post pics of awesome food when I make it. I'm not so sure I want to be posting my daily food intake, but we'll see. I have started tracking it on my BodyBugg App on my Android though, as it helps me to make sure what's coming it does not exceed the calories going out.
As for my first goal for the year, I am going to start at a reasonable level. I have a wedding to attend in mid-May, so for that wedding, I am going to burn off 8 lbs. of fat. I want to reduce my fat levels, not my lean body mass, so the eating and exercise balance is critical.
I came upon this article recently, which talked about a woman in the UK who is considered too fat to be a model for certain plus-size labels; She is 5'11", and 175 lbs., and wears a size 10-12. I have no idea what clothing size I will be aiming for at the end of all of this, but having a similar physique seems inspiring to me. So I am going to aim to wear whatever size makes me feel like I have hit the finish line; I am going to wear a Size Awesome.
No comments:
Post a Comment