Weight: 158.2
You already know this, but I am going to say it anyway. For several years, my diet has been pretty dang good. I mean, I eat proteins and veggies with every meal, in about the correct proportions (half a plate of veggies, a palm sized serving of protein). My most common dessert, by far, is a piece of fruit. I've eliminated wheat, cheese, and added sugars from my daily diet. Just eliminating those three foods eliminates most junk. I don't eat any packaged foods, as a rule. We almost never eat out. I cook almost everything I eat. So when I told a co-worker that I adopted a new motto, "If it's not on my plate, don't eat it," he said, "So what are you going to change, you already barely eat anything?"
Well, that's not true, but I guess it can seem that way. I have a pretty robust diet. I am sure I eat about 200 more calories than he does for breakfast, for example.
The fact of the matter is this: in spite of my pretty-dang-good-diet, I've had a hard time with this last ten pounds. I had to change something. In the last couple of weeks I changed two things. I started eating lunch and dinner much earlier in the day, to accommodate my very early breakfasts (I sit down to eat my breakfast at about 4:20), and I adopted my new motto, mentioned above. These two simple little changes have made a huge difference.
The biggest difference is I am never hungry. Because I am never hungry and because I can't eat anything that is not actually on my plate, I am not snacking at all. By moving my lunch up to 10:30 in the morning and dinner to 3:30 in the afternoon, I am getting all of my meals in: 1) before I get hungry, 2) several hours before I go to bed, and 3) before I get home from work. Think about it. That whole, grab-a-snack-when-you-walk-in-the-door-after-work routine is OVER! As I am finishing my dinner at work, I think to myself, "This is my last food for the day," and it is. I don't even think about eating when I get home. I am completely sated, I have no cravings, because I've recently eaten dinner, and I'm content with that. It also makes meal choices and serving size decisions so much easier. I pack my lunch and my dinner in the mornings, right after I eat breakfast (which happens to be my biggest meal of the day). So I am well fed and rested when I am making my meal decisions for the rest of the day. When I walk out the door I have, in my hand, a bag containing all of the food I am going to eat for the rest of the day. Easy peasy! This makes staying on program so much easier.
The whole, "Don't eat it if it is not on your plate," thing has made a difference, too. A much bigger difference than I thought it would, given my pretty-dang-good-diet. It's little things. I have a fruit bowl every morning with my breakfast that usually consists of fresh pineapple, strawberries and half a banana. Every morning, when making my fruit bowl, a few pineapple chunks would go directly from the plastic container to my mouth, they never saw the bowl. Did that decrease the amount of fruit I put in my bowl? Well, no. It just increased the amount I ate. Another example, when cooking dinners for the week on Sunday, when I took the roasted chicken and veggies out of the oven I would snarf up a few of the charred sweet potatoes. Did that reduce the amount of food I would eat for lunch an hour later? Well, no. One of my very favorite snarfs (is that a word) was the caramelized bits of spices (combined with coconut oil and chicken fat) that would end up on the cookie sheet after roasting the Best Chicken Legs Ever. The recipe for the chicken legs is simple. Place the chicken legs on a cookie sheet covered in parchment paper. Coat with coconut oil. Then sprinkle liberally with (in this order) salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika and cinnamon. And then, if you like a little spice in you life, sprinkle on a little cayenne pepper. Bake at 400 degrees for an hour, flipping the legs over after 30 minutes.
I take the instructions, "sprinkle liberally" pretty seriously, since I like foods that are full of flavor. Therefore, a byproduct of the process is a significant amount of spices that end up on the parchment paper. While the chicken bakes, the coconut oil melts and I am sure the chicken releases a bit of fat, and it all combines with the spice and kind of gets burnt onto the parchment paper. I know this sounds totally disgusting, but it actually tastes really good. Yes, I'd eat it. I guess I am a spice fiend. God only knows how many calories were in those fat laden little bites of goodness.
So that's the type of thing that I would eat, rather routinely, that were not on my plate. I'll also admit to the occasional off program foods. Some dark chocolate here, a mint there. There were some days that I would go completely off program and go out to eat for lunch or dinner and maybe have a drink or two with my meal, but those days were not the real deal breakers, it was the picking at food that wasn't on my plate that was sabotaging my program. That ended on Sunday.
I am now eating three times a day, and that is it. Nothing, except water, gets consumed between meals. For two or three days I was stunned by the number of times my impulse was to pop a little bit of food into my mouth. Wow, I had gotten into a really bad habit. A week later, those impulses have subsided, though I won't say they are gone. And in a week I have lost 1.8 pounds. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but when you have only 10 pounds to go and you've been struggling to figure out just how in the hell you're going to get them off, it's huge!! The best part is, it has been relatively easy. I am encouraged, no that's not right, I am downright excited, by these changes. I have complete confidence that this formula will get me to goal in a relatively short period of time. It has put a brand new pep in my step!!
My trainer gets here in 34 minutes. I better change my clothes and get warmed up. I know she's gonna kick my ass, so the more warmed up I am when she gets here, the better!! Have a wonderful day!!!!!
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