I have been so very busy! I have not had a chance to blog about the diet. So I will just discuss some stuff in general and a few things in detail.
Good news!!! I got on the scale today -my eleventh day on the diet and saw a number that made me quite happy!!! I saw 186.4. I *GULP!!!* started this diet at 191.5. Earlier this year I was down to abut 178, but it's been such an emotionally challenging, time-zapping, and fairly awful year that I just let myself go. So I am very sad to see 186.4, having said "SO LONG!" to the 180s in January, but thankfully I have sailed far-far-away from the 190s and hopefully I am only temporarily stuck in the 180s.
I found online a BMR calculator like this one and calculated my daily need for calories to be 1948.32 to maintain my current weight. So at 1,200 calories a day (or as close to it as possible) I am having a daily deficit of just under 750 calories. I found that one pound of fat is 3,500 calories so I calculated my weekly weight loss to be at about 1.5 lbs a week.
Obviously, my BMR will continually change as I lose the pounds, but based on a 1.5 lbs per week loss, I estimate that by the end of December I should be at 160. I truly hope and pray I do see those three digits in that order again by then! I was about 160 lbs when I got pregnant with my first daughter and I've been dreaming of seeing those numbers on the scale once more! Sure I'd love to see even less -145 would be AWESOME (about what I weighed when I got married and could wear a two piece bathing suite with confidence) but 160 would be just fine with me. And truthfully, I just want to be really healthy and a good size like 8 again. I realize the numbers aren't as important.
This week I went from 1,500 calories a day to 1,200. It's been a bit rough, but I am extremely glad I eased into the diet. Had I gone from about 1,900 a day to 1,200 it would have been too much and I would likely given up by now. My biggest struggles are my sweets-addiction, (not) drinking enough water (I've been having FAR TOO MUCH Diet Coke!) and finding low calorie options to eat with my family.
I've noticed too that I am able to look at food and know it won't be worth the calories and just skip it. Like cakes and cookies. Sure I can have one, but at what cost?! If I am down to the end of the night and I have enough left then I'll go for it, but I am doing well at having control in the mornings and afternoons. I had my woman's Bible study group today and like I said in a previous post it's very hard for me to control myself then. All the sweet and savory treats, the social eating and the coffee -coffee and sweets just go together for me. It is truly hard to have just coffee when I see such tempting sweets all around. But I did great today!
I got a quarter of a chocolate muffin and took a small bite. I did not like it very much, it was "alright" but I knew the quarter had to be at least 150 calories (it was a jumbo muffin to begin with) and that's 1/8 of my daily calorie intake goal. I did not eat it. I know the old me would have ended up nibbling away at it eventually and needlessly consuming 150 extra calories -just because it was there and sorta good. That wedge of "so-so-ness" would have cost me 1/23.3 a pound of fat I want off of me. No thanks. I am feeling very encouraged by my new outlook and resolve to just pass up a sweet!
Last weekend I had a lot of struggles with food and did not do as well, but if there's one thing I have learned about diets and me on them is: I have to have a healthy tension of discipline and grace. If I am too strict and too harsh on myself with it I will surely fail, surely gain it all back and then some, and feel self-defeated and too discouraged to try again. If I am too lax and keep thinking "Oh well, tomorrow is another day" I will never lose the weight I so desperately seek to shed! The healthy tension I am striving for this time around reminds me of how it is with God. We have to hold equally on to God's grace and God's justice -we can't remain in Him if we chose to only hold on to one.
On the days that I have come close to thinking "Who am I kidding, I am never going to really lose much weight and I will never really keep it off, so I'm just going to enjoy this food and screw the diet..." I have had a great resolve to just come back to that ugly voice in my head tempting me to just ditch all my hard work and sacrifice with "If I keep thinking this way I won't ever lose the weigh and keep it off and I want to lose it and keep it off more than I want this food." Thankfully, this is working. It hasn't always in the past.
Yesterday we went to the beach for a fun family get-away. It was going to be about 106 and the coast was only about 130 miles away and about 30 degrees cooler -a "no-brainer" option for us! :-)
I did well on my calories in the morning (aprox 210 calories), but I am not sure about the afternoon/evening. For lunch I had half a croissant sandwich -probably 500 calories. The croissant was good, but I know I'd rather have had a bowl of fruit or two bowls of veggies for the same calories it was worth. For dinner we went to a restaurant and I got a shredded chicken topped with coleslaw sandwich and the whole family shared a plate of amazingly good garlic fries. The white bread of my sandwich was nothing special so I grabbed a fork and just at the inside and I had a good amount of the fries, but probably half the amount I'd normally have. I felt disappointment creep in and then I told it to get lost, because I had made good decisions and all the hard work of building a sand castle and running around at the beach had probably burned off an extra 300 calories alone! There is no way to know for sure, but I bet my daily total yesterday was no more than 1600 calories, and that's still significantly better than I had been eating just two weeks ago! :-)
Future Steps:
I know, I know, I know I need to REALLY start a REGULAR exercise routine. I know that if my goal is to be healthy I will NEED to exercise too. And I do enjoy physical activity. It's just a big challenge for me to make the time for it. But by this time next week I will start some kind of daily exercise. I will! :-)
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