I'm sitting here enjoying a beer and looking upon my daily food intake and I'm feeling a bit sad, I seem to have gone right off track and I'm regularly eating more than double what I should be eating and its mainly snacks and chocolate to blame. I worked really hard to get to the size I currently am, slimming right down and starting to feel happy in my progress, I was also happy that I'd managed to consistently stick to my guns and eat properly but I now sit here starting to feel uncomfortable, my stomach has that bloated sensation and I'm sure a pair of tracksuit bottoms which were relatively loose a couple of months back felt a little tighter, when I had them on yesterday.
I know exactly where I'm going wrong, I'm eating too much in my afternoon break, I'm also having a false sense of how much I can eat with my bodybugg, stupidly I seem to be telling myself, it doesn't matter if I have four or more slices of toast with meat or some kind of topping, my bodybugg will show that it was ok and I shouldn't worry, the weird thing is, I'm handing out advice to other people, that I'm not following myself, I even have colleagues questioning my snack purchases at work, mentioning that they thought I was watching what I was eating.
I merely smile and laugh it off suggesting that it'll be alright, since I have tomorrow or my exercise classes to sort myself out, well based on the way I feel right now, I'm genuinely scared to step on a scale, I haven't weighed myself in over a month, so I'm not quite sure what I'll weigh when I do weigh myself again. I'm pretty sure that at some point in this post, I was likely to have put, well I'll be pulling my socks up and getting back to eating properly and also logging on my fitness pal but I've said that before, I've also mentioned that this is possibly a blip and I'll get back to eating properly and losing those last few tricky pounds.
The sad fact is, if I don't genuinely do something I will end up back at my starting weight, which annoys me, since I really hoped I had turned over a new leaf and was on the road to a fitter healthier me but alas, it seems my fucking impulse control issues have overtaken me yet again, I really need one of those angry personal trainers you see in films and comedy sketches shouting at me, whenever I go to have an extra slice of toast during my break, especially as I don't really need it, as I'll be getting my evening meal when I get home after work.
I think I'm in that post weight loss period where I seem to have lost a whole bunch of weight, so I should be alright eating a couple of extra treats, as I'll be able to handle it, when I should be limiting the treats that I have to being just that a treat, rather than a regular part of my diet, I also need to have smaller amounts of food during my longer breaks and telling myself no, you can't have that big bar of chocolate, or asking my colleague to snap me off a small piece and then hiding the rest from me, if that makes me a helpless child, then so be it, I suppose I should perhaps speak to someone about my food issues and see what I can do to stop myself from eating it all when I should be eating a portion.
I suppose I should sign off with my usual upbeat, life carries on and I'll bundle through but quick frankly I don't think I should be quite so laid back right now, in fact, I'm just going to see where the next week takes me and hopefully I'll be in a better frame of mind.
Showing posts with label chocolate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chocolate. Show all posts
Friday, 12 October 2012
Tuesday, 14 August 2012
Stop coasting through life, RIGHT NOW.
I seem to have reached a point where although I'm happy with my slimmer frame, I'm not really pushing myself as much as I should. I've tended to drift through life falling into one thing or another, after all I only got my new job after I was pushed into attending a job search course. So I seem to be getting a little slack in my exercising and dietary choices. Whenever I go swimming I only do breaststroke because its easier than front crawl and I can do a mile relatively easily, when I should be pushing myself to start doing front crawl, so I can get stronger in my swimming, I should be pushing myself when I'm on the treadmill, or rowing machine but keep telling myself, that I'm tired so that's why I'm not giving it more. The Boxercise class on a Saturday I'm trying to push myself but some of the exercises are leg work, so I'm not quite as quick as I'd like to be but I should push myself more so that like the swimming I can get stronger and therefore quicker at.
I'm no longer doing the Zumba class on a Monday because I'm weighing in that day and have work, so don't have the time anymore, the same on a Wednesday, although this is partly true, I'm using it as an excuse not to do the classes, when I should be pushing myself more, since I don't have much more weight to lose.
I'm also telling myself that because my bodybugg shows I've burned off additional calories that it doesn't matter if I eat more than I should, since hey look a calorie defict, although the way I'm going its been a handful of calories, rather than the amount which will help me continue to lose weight.
I've also gotten into an annoying habit at work, where if I have a break, I'm tending to eat something, it seems to be toast with some kind of meat, then having something sweet afterwards, since I only do five hour shifts and have a 15 minute break, this isn't too bad, its the days when I have longer shifts and therefore more breaks, I seem to be ingesting upwards of 800 calories, more if I get the urge for a chocolate bar or two. I can't seem to break out of the habit either, I do try and pick the healthiest options when it comes to the bread and meat but seem to be failing when it comes to not eating an unhealthy chocolate bar, I know I shouldn't be eating them but I guess I must have an impulse control issue when surrounded by all the sweet treats, it might be easier if I take something in with me to eat, or simply avoiding eating on my break, or minimise the amount I eat and having a piece of fruit or something.
Before I started the job, I was on a steady downward trajectory with my weight loss, then I started working and my loss seemed to stall, then I gained a couple of lbs, lost them, stayed the same for a couple of weeks, lost again and as of this morning, had gained 2 lbs again, so put me squarely back at 13st 9lbs. It just shows how easily the weight can creep back on if you aren't careful. So time to get back to being more careful with what I'm eating and avoid the chocolaty treats.
I'm no longer doing the Zumba class on a Monday because I'm weighing in that day and have work, so don't have the time anymore, the same on a Wednesday, although this is partly true, I'm using it as an excuse not to do the classes, when I should be pushing myself more, since I don't have much more weight to lose.
I'm also telling myself that because my bodybugg shows I've burned off additional calories that it doesn't matter if I eat more than I should, since hey look a calorie defict, although the way I'm going its been a handful of calories, rather than the amount which will help me continue to lose weight.
I've also gotten into an annoying habit at work, where if I have a break, I'm tending to eat something, it seems to be toast with some kind of meat, then having something sweet afterwards, since I only do five hour shifts and have a 15 minute break, this isn't too bad, its the days when I have longer shifts and therefore more breaks, I seem to be ingesting upwards of 800 calories, more if I get the urge for a chocolate bar or two. I can't seem to break out of the habit either, I do try and pick the healthiest options when it comes to the bread and meat but seem to be failing when it comes to not eating an unhealthy chocolate bar, I know I shouldn't be eating them but I guess I must have an impulse control issue when surrounded by all the sweet treats, it might be easier if I take something in with me to eat, or simply avoiding eating on my break, or minimise the amount I eat and having a piece of fruit or something.
Before I started the job, I was on a steady downward trajectory with my weight loss, then I started working and my loss seemed to stall, then I gained a couple of lbs, lost them, stayed the same for a couple of weeks, lost again and as of this morning, had gained 2 lbs again, so put me squarely back at 13st 9lbs. It just shows how easily the weight can creep back on if you aren't careful. So time to get back to being more careful with what I'm eating and avoid the chocolaty treats.
Saturday, 21 April 2012
Musings from the pub.
I was sat in the pub on a Friday night, which is an unusual thing for me these days but it was a TweetUp, a chance to meet and greet friends you have on Twitter, so I popped along as I've not had a night out in a while and whilst I was there the group I was in started talking about diet and exercise, the usual chat of what kind of exercises that we tend to do, I mentioned that I was using MyFitnessPal to log my food intake and my exercise output, which has really helped me to make better choices about what I put in my mouth.
One of the people I was chatting to Neina, is one of those lucky people who never has to worry about putting on any weight, they've always been thin and never have to worry about what they eat, she mentioned they having a Sister who has been using a "nutritionist" (for that read an app they downloaded) and it told them that they should be eating 1,400 calories a day, they'd also been exercising as well and they were wondering why they never lost any weight, which caused this Neina to feel like sighing loudly and hitting them upside the head with a clue by four. Her Sister didn't even realise that by eating a low number of calories and then exercising her body was only taking in around 1,000/1,100 calories which is half the amount an adult Woman needs just to live and that her body was probably in starvation mode and holding onto those calories since it had no idea where the next ones might come from.
Once she'd explained to her Sister what was happening, the Sister started to understand why she wasn't losing weight and that she would change her dietary intake accordingly. I suppose it goes to show that without a proper understanding of how the body works, people can end up doing all kinds of bizarre "diets" that don't really work and end up causing the dieter to gain more weight, once they've stopped sticking to it.
We also talked "cheat days" and although its a very popular term is a rather bizarre way of thinking, since there is nobody you're actually cheating against, if you eat that chocolate cake, or those nachos, who's going to win, well nobody is going to win, as its not a contest or exam you're taking part in. If you actively deny yourself something, telling yourself that's a "bad food", what will happen is you start craving the very thing you're trying to avoid, then when you do give in, you'll probably end up eating way more than you intended to. Which sort of happened to me at Easter with the chocolate eggs, though I put that down to only wanting to eat chocolate on that one day.
It can also send you into a guilt spiral, where because you've just eaten three burgers from the local burger joint, that you were craving, you then feel guilty for having eaten them, so then get a bit depressed you've "broken your diet" so you then go and get something else that's probably unhealthy to eat, to comfort yourself for not sticking to your plan, which in turn brings you down so on and so forth.
Neina also made a very good point that your body has no idea, what you're putting into your mouth, it could be a piece of toast, or a piece of cake, all your body knows is that you've fed it energy, it doesn't give a damn where the energy comes from, so whether you eat 500 calories worth of biscuits, or you eat 500 calories worth of steak and chips/fries all the body knows is here's 500 calories, let's use them accordingly, aside from the steak being better due to the other nutrients it contains, energy is just energy.
So let's all eat what we like but in moderation, take those three chocolate biscuits from the tin, then put the tin away, so you don't eat more of them just because they're in front of you and everybody repeat after me
Once you remember that, you can have that chocolate or enjoy that side of chips.
One of the people I was chatting to Neina, is one of those lucky people who never has to worry about putting on any weight, they've always been thin and never have to worry about what they eat, she mentioned they having a Sister who has been using a "nutritionist" (for that read an app they downloaded) and it told them that they should be eating 1,400 calories a day, they'd also been exercising as well and they were wondering why they never lost any weight, which caused this Neina to feel like sighing loudly and hitting them upside the head with a clue by four. Her Sister didn't even realise that by eating a low number of calories and then exercising her body was only taking in around 1,000/1,100 calories which is half the amount an adult Woman needs just to live and that her body was probably in starvation mode and holding onto those calories since it had no idea where the next ones might come from.
Once she'd explained to her Sister what was happening, the Sister started to understand why she wasn't losing weight and that she would change her dietary intake accordingly. I suppose it goes to show that without a proper understanding of how the body works, people can end up doing all kinds of bizarre "diets" that don't really work and end up causing the dieter to gain more weight, once they've stopped sticking to it.
We also talked "cheat days" and although its a very popular term is a rather bizarre way of thinking, since there is nobody you're actually cheating against, if you eat that chocolate cake, or those nachos, who's going to win, well nobody is going to win, as its not a contest or exam you're taking part in. If you actively deny yourself something, telling yourself that's a "bad food", what will happen is you start craving the very thing you're trying to avoid, then when you do give in, you'll probably end up eating way more than you intended to. Which sort of happened to me at Easter with the chocolate eggs, though I put that down to only wanting to eat chocolate on that one day.
It can also send you into a guilt spiral, where because you've just eaten three burgers from the local burger joint, that you were craving, you then feel guilty for having eaten them, so then get a bit depressed you've "broken your diet" so you then go and get something else that's probably unhealthy to eat, to comfort yourself for not sticking to your plan, which in turn brings you down so on and so forth.
Neina also made a very good point that your body has no idea, what you're putting into your mouth, it could be a piece of toast, or a piece of cake, all your body knows is that you've fed it energy, it doesn't give a damn where the energy comes from, so whether you eat 500 calories worth of biscuits, or you eat 500 calories worth of steak and chips/fries all the body knows is here's 500 calories, let's use them accordingly, aside from the steak being better due to the other nutrients it contains, energy is just energy.
So let's all eat what we like but in moderation, take those three chocolate biscuits from the tin, then put the tin away, so you don't eat more of them just because they're in front of you and everybody repeat after me
"EVERYTHING IN MODERATION"
Once you remember that, you can have that chocolate or enjoy that side of chips.
Tuesday, 10 April 2012
Easter chocolate over indulgence
Ever since I made my resolutions at New year I've been actively avoiding chocolate, partly for the calories and the fat but mainly because it contains so much caffeine, I have a big problem when it comes to caffeine, where it seems to really affect my sleep, causing me to stay up late for weeks on end.
So I decided that I would allow myself some chocolate on Easter Sunday as a little treat for all the hard work I've put into improving my fitness and weight loss. I had a choice of a cadburys egg head and a green & blacks dark chocolate mint egg. I went for one of the egg heads and noted down the calories, which turned out to be only 400, which was pleasantly surprising, a short time later I got the urge to for another egg head, which I ate reasoning that it was relatively low calorie/fat.
I thought to myself, well since I've had the others I'll have myself the green and blacks, I can do some exercise and work off the calories, so I dropped it to the floor since it was proving hard to break the shell, I discovered it was really thick chocolate which was quite surprising considering how thin most chocolate eggs are these days.
I then set about munching the chocolate whilst Susan went out to her Parents house with some sweets for Sophie, from my Parents & Grandparents, I demolished the egg even though I felt quite full from breakfast and the other eggs, still its one day out of 365 and when they're gone that's it with the chocolate, also we weren't having our dinner till much later as per a usual Sunday.
I sat around watching tv then decided to start tidying our bedroom since it had stuff lying everywhere and looked a bit on the untidy side, which I'm glad I did, as I turned up all kinds of things I'd been looking for, like my little netbook power supply and the charger for the hair clippers.
Time started to get on, so we went downstairs to make a start on the dinner, as we were preparing it, I started to feel a little light headed but I put this down, to having gotten up too quickly, though I realised it was something else, when the feeling got worse, until I was crouching on the floor clutching at my stomach and my head feeling quite light and uncomfortable. The last time I remember feeling this ill from overdosing on caffeine, was when friends visited to do a Gowalla trip that I'd created and we visited Starbucks twice in one afternoon, though I did get a high from it and bounced around like a happy idiot.
I tried being sick in the toilet as I felt like I wanted to throw up but that didn't happen, I just squatted there feeling ill, wanting to vomit with nothing happening. I gave Susan a hand with putting the dinner out, then sat and ate my way through some it, before deciding I'd had enough. I couldn't even do the dishes and headed off to bed. After falling asleep snuggling up, I found myself awake at 1am and still feeling ill from all the caffeine that was floating around my system, still wanting to be sick and having that sinking feeling, that I'm not getting back to sleep but feeling really tired.
I lay in bed unable to sleep, so decided I would watch Get Carter, which I manged to view about half before deciding I was so hungry I would have to get something to eat and had such a craving for soup. So I popped downstairs and had myself a tin with some bread. Still unable to sleep I decided to watch some tv, till I had an email notification which made me suddenly want to listen to music, so I listened to some music whilst watching tv. I lay there and the bairn came downstairs so we chatted about thus and that and eventually decided to get up. I then spent the rest of the day, feeling dead tired and listless, napping on and off not really doing much of anything.
Since I sat there at 1am feeling sorry for myself and wondering how long it would take till all the caffeine was gone and my sleep returned to a more regular pattern also how long would it would take me to burn off the fat and calories I inhaled. It also made me decide that it was the last chocolate I'd be eating, since it caused me to binge eat the stuff like some kind of crack addict. It also made me realise, that I have a tendancy to over do things to my cost, be it food or booze, so having not eaten chocolate in three months, I manage to consume my entire days calorie allowance in chocolate, I'm pretty sure my saturated fat intake was that of about four days, which is pretty horrific.
So after a terrible couple of days, I'm going to start being 37 by continuing my exercise regime and healthier eating.
So I decided that I would allow myself some chocolate on Easter Sunday as a little treat for all the hard work I've put into improving my fitness and weight loss. I had a choice of a cadburys egg head and a green & blacks dark chocolate mint egg. I went for one of the egg heads and noted down the calories, which turned out to be only 400, which was pleasantly surprising, a short time later I got the urge to for another egg head, which I ate reasoning that it was relatively low calorie/fat.
I thought to myself, well since I've had the others I'll have myself the green and blacks, I can do some exercise and work off the calories, so I dropped it to the floor since it was proving hard to break the shell, I discovered it was really thick chocolate which was quite surprising considering how thin most chocolate eggs are these days.
I then set about munching the chocolate whilst Susan went out to her Parents house with some sweets for Sophie, from my Parents & Grandparents, I demolished the egg even though I felt quite full from breakfast and the other eggs, still its one day out of 365 and when they're gone that's it with the chocolate, also we weren't having our dinner till much later as per a usual Sunday.
I sat around watching tv then decided to start tidying our bedroom since it had stuff lying everywhere and looked a bit on the untidy side, which I'm glad I did, as I turned up all kinds of things I'd been looking for, like my little netbook power supply and the charger for the hair clippers.
Time started to get on, so we went downstairs to make a start on the dinner, as we were preparing it, I started to feel a little light headed but I put this down, to having gotten up too quickly, though I realised it was something else, when the feeling got worse, until I was crouching on the floor clutching at my stomach and my head feeling quite light and uncomfortable. The last time I remember feeling this ill from overdosing on caffeine, was when friends visited to do a Gowalla trip that I'd created and we visited Starbucks twice in one afternoon, though I did get a high from it and bounced around like a happy idiot.
I tried being sick in the toilet as I felt like I wanted to throw up but that didn't happen, I just squatted there feeling ill, wanting to vomit with nothing happening. I gave Susan a hand with putting the dinner out, then sat and ate my way through some it, before deciding I'd had enough. I couldn't even do the dishes and headed off to bed. After falling asleep snuggling up, I found myself awake at 1am and still feeling ill from all the caffeine that was floating around my system, still wanting to be sick and having that sinking feeling, that I'm not getting back to sleep but feeling really tired.
I lay in bed unable to sleep, so decided I would watch Get Carter, which I manged to view about half before deciding I was so hungry I would have to get something to eat and had such a craving for soup. So I popped downstairs and had myself a tin with some bread. Still unable to sleep I decided to watch some tv, till I had an email notification which made me suddenly want to listen to music, so I listened to some music whilst watching tv. I lay there and the bairn came downstairs so we chatted about thus and that and eventually decided to get up. I then spent the rest of the day, feeling dead tired and listless, napping on and off not really doing much of anything.
Since I sat there at 1am feeling sorry for myself and wondering how long it would take till all the caffeine was gone and my sleep returned to a more regular pattern also how long would it would take me to burn off the fat and calories I inhaled. It also made me decide that it was the last chocolate I'd be eating, since it caused me to binge eat the stuff like some kind of crack addict. It also made me realise, that I have a tendancy to over do things to my cost, be it food or booze, so having not eaten chocolate in three months, I manage to consume my entire days calorie allowance in chocolate, I'm pretty sure my saturated fat intake was that of about four days, which is pretty horrific.
So after a terrible couple of days, I'm going to start being 37 by continuing my exercise regime and healthier eating.
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