When I was 13 I noticed I was overweight. That summer, while visiting King’s Island, my inner thighs rubbed together until they were raw. I noticed it.. but I didn’t know what to do about it.
When I was 15 I went on the cabbage soup diet with my mother. We made up a huge batch of tasty soup and then noshed on that AND ONLY THAT for the next week or so. About 3 days into it I was bored. Shortly after I went back to “normal” eating.
Through high school and my first year of college I wore a size 18.
Honestly I didn’t really yo-yo diet in my childhood. I just kind of .. ignored.. my weight. I was heavy.. I should lose some weight.. I had other things to think about .. and I didn’t really know what to do to lose weight.
When I moved to California I weighed 275 lbs. I couldn’t find anywhere that carried clothing in my size. So I decided it was time to do something. My first year here I went vegetarian and joined a gym. Over six months I dropped 50 lbs. Then I plateaued and got busy and tired and went back to eating meat (and everything else) and stopped going to the gym.
A few years later I tried Atkins and found that if I don’t get any carbs I’m a bitch. I don’t like craving something and being forbidden that thing.
Last year(2009) we did Nutrisystem. It worked for a while(I lost 30 lbs).. but eventually we got bored with it and went back to buying fast food.
All the while I was dissatisfied. I felt that every diet thing I did was a gimmick. I knew there was a better way but I couldn’t figure it out.
I don’t -know- that I’ve figured it out.. but I’m making my best guess. I’m not a doctor, nutritionist or biologist. I’m a Software Engineer. Frankly I feel silly saying “I’ve figured it out” when really all I have is a bunch of hype that sounds good. Regardless I -have- found that if I stick with my guesses it works more consistently then if I don’t.. and I also found that I stick with things more if I blog about them. Lastly I find myself wanting to write about the things I think I’ve figured out.. and the recipes I’m finding/cooking and doctoring. So here I am.
The Plan:
– Fix Eating
– Fix Exercise
– ???
– Profit
No amount of “exercise” will fix bad eating choices. You can eat WAY more calories in 20 minutes than you can EVER exercise off in 20 minutes. So first up is fixing my eating.
First off (and I know if you’re a dieting person you hear this all the time) this is a lifestyle change. The food I’ve been eating and the way I’ve been eating it are killing me. A “quick fix” diet that I follow for a while will work.. but if I stop with that diet and go back to what I was doing before then I’ll just end up where I am now and have to start the whole process all over again. So.. whatever I do it has to be what I want to do for the rest of my life.
If I’m going to stick with this then there have to be a few “rules”.
– I do not want anything to be forbidden. Something that is forbidden is something you lust for.. and eventually it’s something you binge on and feel bad about. So nothing is forbidden. I’m ok with limiting quantity.. but not with forbidding altogether. This does mean that the “close-to-forbidden-but-not-forbidden” items are going to be hard to control… but I’m serious.. nothing forbidden.
– -I- need to make sure that I’m not putting myself into a situation that will lead to me overeating mindlessly. So if I’m snacking in front of the computer/TV I need to makesure the portion of the snack I put in front of me is the size of the snack I want to eat. Otherwise it’s totally possibly to mindlessly eat the whole bag of potato chips.
– I should not be forced to eat or repeatedly consume something I don’t like.
Current plan to fix eating:
– Control portion sizes. If nothing else Nutrisystem taught me that my portion size is out of control. When -I- serve me a bowl of soup -I- serve about 3x as much soup as I should. I need to get this undercontrol.
– Dinner should have 6-7 oz of meat at most
– The bulk of my food should be vegetables.
– Cook and Eat whole foods.
– Avoid processed food and restaurant foods.
For several years I’ve said that I’m going to crack the “losing weight” nut and then write a book titled “Results Typical”. When I decided to start this blog I decided to call it Results Typical and hope it’s a prophetic name.
Ironically it’s only after I started this blog that I found out that the phrase “results not typical” was banned by the FTC from commercials. Typical.