Saturday, August 7, 2010

Week the First

Tomorrow morning will mark one week back on track to lose weight and get back into a somewhat better shape than your average walrus. Fascinating how much better I feel already overall. I forget how good my body feels when I'm actually giving it things that it needs as opposed to stuff that I want. More energy, and more mental energy.

Dunno if I've lost any weight 'cause I'm not looking at a scale yet (some things are just TOO depressing for words, thanksmuch), and certainly if I have it'll be mostly water weight, but noticing that my jeans are a bit looser. Especially in the arse. Had to tug them back up several times yesterday, too. Funny how something that most people would consider an annoyance is, under some circumstances, a real pleasure! *grin*

So ... it's been a week of eating very low carb (VLC), taking a mult-vitamin every day, drinking 3-4 liters of water every day, eating masses of shrubbery every day (mostly green, leafy, crunchy stuff), tracking my intake at Fitday every day.

Not worrying about the scale because I know that this way of eating works. It works for losing weight and it works for my body. My body likes to eat like this. Meats, small amounts of cheeses, bare minimum of dairy, lots and lots of fresh shrubs. I did this once before, last year, and lost 50 pounds. I also lost the need to take a heartburn pill before bed every night, and the blood sugar swings that have been part of my entire adult life.

It's a diet I can sustain without too much effort for a number of reasons: It doesn't take much work or thought. I know what I can and can't eat. What I can eat is lots of the kinds of food I actually like! Pretty sure I was born a carnivore, actually. Even as a kid I was all about the "Gimme the meat, man! The bloodier the better! I'll gnaw it right off the bone, nomnomnom!" Yeah, okay, I was a weird kid, too. Hated most vegetables, still do.



Most vegetation tastes bitter to me. Like really, seriously bitter. I hate bitter! I want salty, savory foods. I don't even care about sweets, honestly, and given a choice between sweet and salty I'll grab the salt every time. The only veg I really actually like are fresh salad-type stuff (and asparagus, oddly enough, can eat roasted asparagus like candy).

So this diet says "eat your meat and eggs and a whole load of salad veg"? Hey, I can do that!

Typical day this last week has been coffee with heavy cream (just a touch), some sort of meat or cheese and a low-carb protein shake for breakfast, some sort of sliced meat and cheese (occasionally some Greek and/or Spanish olives) for lunch, a couple of chicken thighs or some crock-potted beef brisket and a massive pile of vegetation for supper, perhaps some sugar-free jello with heavy cream to top it off. Three or more liters of water through the day. Some extra exercise scampering to the bathroom repeatedly since I'm shedding water-weight right now. A Flintstones chewable vitamin every morning.

Perfect diet for someone as lazy as I am, really. No counting calories and trying to work out how to get as much food as I can within that limit. No spending hours at the store trying to find low-calorie foods that still taste good. Very little "weighing and measuring." Some easy prep ahead of time to make sure I always have food available so I'm not tempted to break from it. Buying pre-cut, packaged shrubs (bags of mixed greens, romaine hearts, shredded broccoli). Crock-potting or oven roasting big lumps of meat to take care of meals for several days. Boiling up a dozen eggs at a time.

Funny thing is, you'd think this would be an extremely high-calorie diet. It's not. Since I'm tracking at Fitday I can see how many calories I'm taking in, and all week it's run between 1200 and 1600 calories a day. Even if this wasn't a VLC diet I'd still lose weight just on the energy in/energy out principle.

Now I need to start adding a bit more activity in. I can't do much yet, but every little bit helps. Bugger of it is, I tripped on a pile of cardboard boxes the other day (yes, I'm just that graceful) and sliced a chunk out of the back of my ankle, just above the heel. Right where the top of my shoe rests. Ouch! Taking today off and letting it rest, hopefully to heal so I can go for walks. Been hobbling around at work rather slowly. But when it heals enough to walk comfortably it'll be time to start sweating a bit.

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