21 Day Challenge: Day 19

Hard to believe we are already on day 19 of January's 21 Day Challenge. Life has been full of things to do including birthdays to celebrate. I still have two to go. Those kinds of special occasions used to derail my weight loss plans every January. I'd make an "exception" and before I knew it the exception became my way of life. So far, that's not the case this January. My 21 Day Challenge goals are really making a difference.

I'm following the No S Diet which basically means no sweets, no seconds, no snacks except on days that start with S. That includes "special days" like birthdays. The flexibility of this diet has really worked for me, plus I've been walking an hour a day 3-5 days a week. The thing that I've noticed is that I'm learning to know when I'm hungry and it is time to eat. With the no snacks rule, I wait to eat until my stomach tells me it is time. Even on the weekend when I can snack, I'm paying more attention to my hunger. Hopefully this is a habit that will carry me through the days off between this challenge and the February challenge!

The weight is coming off slowly and I'm hitting my target goal. I can eat what I want for my meals, just no seconds. I'm trying to include healthy choices that actually feed my body which helps me stay satisfied longer. All in all, this 21 Day Challenge has made a difference on a number of levels! I hope you can say the same.

21 Day Challenge: Day 12

Yesterday I woke up with the blah Monday blues. Doesn't happen to me all the time, but when it does, I feel it before my feet hit the floor. I don't want to do the things I need to do, and that leaks over to the things that I should do like eat right and exercise. Days like this used to send me on a eat-what-I-want binge. But it didn't happen yesterday!

Instead, I focused on my diet goals. No sweets, no snacks, no seconds (except for days that start with an S--and it wasn't Smonday). The blah feelings might be linked do the fact that I was able to eat what I wanted over the weekend and Monday marked an end to that and back to the weekly restrictions. The fact is that I am totally satisfied physically during the week without snacks or desserts, and I think my blah feeling was tied to my mental and emotional connection to food. I often used it to help me through boredom or stress, not just to feed hunger. Mondays are busy and I didn't have food to pacify me.

Once I got past breakfast and lived until lunch without snacking, I regained my momentum. Losing weight certainly isn't about eating what you want when you want. Once I got my head on straight I changed my focus to the benefits I'll see down the road. My weight is dropping along with my BMI. I even went out for my hour walk in our balmy 40 degree weather. That's huge progress for me! I'm heading in the right direction!

Time To Weigh In

Hard to believe it's been a week already since I last weighed in. I'm already at the end of week two of my diet. Part of me looks forward to weighing in because I've been "good" and another part of me dreads it because I don't want to see bad news.

Before I get to that news, I have a couple of articles I'd like to share. The first offers informative and helpful tips on 50 Easy Ways to Lose Weight While You're at Work. You'll find all kinds of useful info to incorporate in your work day and weight loss journey.

A second article I want to share is an interview titled: What is the Philosophy of the Jenny Craig Diet. With Valerie Bertinelli's weight loss and bikini cover on People magazine at age 47, I thought some of my readers might enjoy this one. It really promotes a sensible approach to eating.

As for the results of this week's weigh in, you can read about them over at Diet News. Let me just say that it was once again, "Tape Measure to the Rescue"!

Lost 12 Inches in One Week!

Losing weight is a slow process and I know that, so a little over a week ago when I started the Weigh Down Diet, I decided to weigh myself AND measure myself. A week into the diet I stepped on the scale and had lost three pounds. Three pounds is excellent, but part of my brain doesn't think it is excellent when I look at the big picture and how much more I have to lose. I could feel a difference in how my clothes were feeling and I decided to re-measure to see what I had lost. My waistline was three inches less! Now it's the same number three, but for me, three inches seemed like so much more. On top of that, I had lost 1.5 inches off my lower abs and another 1.5 inches off my upper abs. My total inches gone came to 12! Now that is exciting.

As good as all that sounds, it gets even better. There are no forbidden foods on this diet. I'm eating bread again and have even enjoyed chips with my lunch. I'm no longer in bondage to the "don't eat that" mentality. THAT is something I can't even put into words. Instead of bondage I'm living in the freedom to listen to my body and learning the difference between true hunger and desire eating.

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Check out my other blog: Diet News

Visit My New Diet News Blog

I know it's been a long time since I last posted here, and I do apologize. My roller coaster dieting has continued with its normal ups and downs, but I continue to head in the right direction. The reason I haven't been here much is that I have a new blog called Diet News. Stop by to catch the lastest.

The Priority - Diet and Exercise

Sorry I've been missing in action. The key word here is action. Life's been busy and freelancing plentiful. I've had a couple more inspirational stories accepted, a dark short story, and two articles on the craft of writing, along with plenty of articles over at LoveToKnow where I'm now overseeing Herbs and Vitamins along with Diet.

Along with that, I've made sure to put exercise before blogging. That's right. I'm exercising regularly and my diet is healthy. Last night I tried a new recipe for something called Brazilian Broccoli Mash. Since it's not my recipe, I'm not free to post it, but you can find it by following the link. I'm thankful there is enough leftover to have with my lunch today, so that tells you it's yummy.

Life is always busy, and losing or maintaining weight a challenge. It comes down to priorities. If I want to manage my weight, it has to be a priority, and while that means I may not check in here as often as I like, it's for the right reasons. I hope you'll do the same.

Does Your Eating Glorify God?

Here we are mid January, just three weeks into the new year and you may already be wondering what happened to your diet motivation. I've already had my ups and downs, and it's so easy to blame life, stress, and family when I make poor choices.

Conversation around the dinner table the last two nights has helped spur me to get back on track. Conversation centered on a sad story of a 14-year-old boy who committed suicide because his girlfriend just "wanted to be friends". We talked about training our children to know our real purpose in life.

I sat silent, pondering my purpose. We discussed the verse, "Whether you eat drink or whatever you do, do all for the glory of God." Our purpose is to glorify God. Even in the basics like eating and drinking. I pray God will help me recall that to mind each time I think I want to eat something. Does eating this glorify God?

New Year, New Approach

This is my first post for the New Year, and that tells you something. But what? When I disappear it is often because I've gone off the deep end with my eating and I don't want to face my readers. This time, that's not the reason. My workload has tied up most of my time, and let's face it, that takes precedence over blogging. However, I'm here now, and thank all my readers who have contacted me to see that I'm okay.

I'm really more than okay. I've started to exercise regularly again. That always makes me feel better. I've started thinking about my upcoming garden plan and adding a section for herbs. And for my eating...it could have been better over the holidays, but it could have been worse. We chatted about this quite a bit over at the diet forums.

Currently my plan, if you want to call it that, is to limit snacks between meals to fruit. I'm also trying to plan ahead to know what I'll have for breakfast or lunch so I don't grab something on a whim that triggers a binge. Eating healthy is a one day at a time process. Instead of saying I'm doing this for six weeks, I say, "I'm doing this today."

How to Lose Weight in the New Year

It's that time of year. Among the top group of New Year's resolutions you'll find that ever elusive goal--to lose weight or go on a diet. But what is the success rate? How many people are still on target by the end of January? I won't even tell you...at least for now. I don't want to discourage you.

Instead, lets make a plan for how to be successful. First, make a plan. Don't choose a diet that you know on the front end will be impossible for you. That's a plan for failure. Instead, consider the basics. The reason you gain weight is that you are taking in more calories you burn. That's what has to change. There's two three approaches:

• Eat less calories
• Exercise more so that you burn more calories
• A combination of eating less calories and burning more calories.

Whether the doctor tells you to lose weight or not, if you're carrying around extra body fat, you know it. You don't really have to go on a diet--let's face it diets end and weight comes back. Instead, it's time to learn a measure of self-control and discipline. Eat less and exercise more.

The All Or Nothing Approach

Have you ever followed a diet successfully for two weeks or more and then fell prey to some gooey or greasy temptation? Once you eat that forbidden fruit, do you spiral out of control eating everything you've denied yourself?

This is a pattern I've witnessed in my life, and often, once I start eating the wrong foods I continue to do so for days if not weeks. One of the reasons I think this happens is that the "all or nothing" approach sets you up to be either a success or a failure. There is no in-between. Once I fail, I figure I might as well fail big time and eat what I want before I start again. How crazy is that?

The all or nothing approach is not realistic or practical. Let's face it, life happens. There's all kinds of reasons we may go off our diet, or make an unhealthy choice. The sad thing is to let that one time throw us into a tail spin.

My suggestion is to follow the new day approach. Each day is a new beginning. We have a clean slate. Don't carry failures or success from the previous day with you. Take each day as a new start and make the best of it. Have a plan to give you direction. For example, on Saturday I made an Asian salad of greens that have been marinating and will be perfect for lunches this week. I won't have to figure out what I'm eating for lunch, when I'm hungry and the Christmas cookies are an easy target.

Whether you're trying to lose 15 pounds fast, or working to get your cholesterol down, it is accomplished one day at a time. Today is a new day! A new start! Enjoy it!

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Strategies Not to Gain Weight Over the Holidays

I've given more thought to the problem of weight gain over the holidays and how to avoid it. It's not as easy as saying I'm going to be on a diet. I've been there, done that. I've even successfully eaten sensibly on Thanksgiving day. My real problem... well that's what I want to talk about. The first step is to identify the real problem. We all have weak moments, and today we'll take a moment to discuss what they might be. If we can identify the problem, we'll be more aware of the places we may encounter it so we can customize a plan to thwart the potential pitfall.

Not everyone struggling with their weight makes poor diet choices under the same conditions. However, many of us cave in for one or more of the following reasons:

*from habit
*peer pressure
*boredom
*stress

My first suggestion to help combat all these reasons is to have quiet time of meditation/prayer everyday. When we think we can overcome these weak moments in our own strength, we may be successful for a while, but when our strength runs out we'll crash and burn. That's not a good plan. Look back at my post on the Healthful Benefits of Meditation. Medication helps to beat the stress of the holiday season which in turn can lower the risk of stuffing your face with holiday goodies by succumbing to external pressures.

During your time of meditation, give attention to your diet. It helps keep food in the right perspective. And as you think about food and your diet, don't just focus on the holiday season. In reality the time frame is just weeks in the year...such a short amount of time to wreak such havoc with your weight. And not just your weight. Think of your health. Taking time to meditate can help you keep food in it's proper place. Instead of making food the central focus of all you do, make it your health. If you don't meditate regularly, make it a habit now.

Tips to Stay on Your Diet for Halloween

With Halloween a little more than a month away, now is the time to make your plan to help you through that time when extra sweets may tempt you to forgo your goals to eat healthier and/or lose weight. For me it isn't much of an issue. We haven't had trick-or-treaters grace our front porch in years and I've quit buying candy under the pretense that we MIGHT have a child or two plunge their candy sack my direction. Just in case someone might think to trick-or-treat in our neighborhood, we have started a new tradition--we go out for dinner.

But for those who know they will have those little goblins, princesses and other costumed kiddies ringing their doorbell here are a few tips:

Tips to Stay on Your Diet for Halloween

*Put leftover candy in a hard-to-get-to place
*Wrap it in your swimming suit
*Place sugarfree gum on top to provide an alternative at the time of temptation

Another idea, buy low-calorie sugar-free treats when you buy your Halloween candy so you have another option. Other possible treats to have on hand could be:

*fresh berries
*sugar free popsicles
*sugar free jello, or pudding
*apples
*Crystal Light
*Swiss Miss Sugar Free Hot Chocolate

You get the idea. We have time between now and October 31st. Let's make a plan. I'd love to hear any other ideas people have out there to help avoid the Halloween candy pitfall.

Does Comfort Food Comfort?

We laugh about it, joke about it and even fantasize about it. Comfort food. It means different things for different people. It could be chocolate, a bag of chips, or even the salt then sweets combination. The real question is, why do we call it comfort food? Does it really comfort?

It reminds me of when Eve stood before the tree in the garden staring at the forbidden fruit. She wanted it something awful. Why do you think that was? I think it might have to do with the fact that she wasn't supposed to have it and for some reason she thought she deserved it. Does that sound like comfort food?

When Eve took the fruit and even shared it with her husband it might have tasted delicious, but did it really do her good?

I've talked about moderation and I still believe it best not to try and cut out any one thing from your diet totally. As soon as you label it the "forbidden" food it can tend to make you want to dwell on it--obssess--until you cave and eat. Sounds like another trick up the old serpent's sleeve.

So go ahead and eat comfort food if you must, but count it in your calories. And as an alternative, keep healthy snack choices on hand. Having better choices handy can help you choose health rather than comfort.

Donna
Check out more articles and classes on writing at the Inspired Author