Wednesday, October 29, 2008

After some consideration...

I spent some time talking with the husband last night since he actually had the evening and I could actually talk to him face-to-face rather than by text like we normally have to do. He and I both agree that it's probably better on my "we don't likes change, precious" psyche to not try to do too much all at once. He also thinks, and I agree, that being off gluten first will help my muscles feel better enough that I'll feel up to exercising. I know from personal experience that I'm much more inclined to follow a reducing diet if I'm exercising because I know how much work goes into burning off each and every one of those pesky kCals and I hate to have hard work go to waste. :-) So, step 1: get back to where my diet is cleanly gluten (or at least wheat) free. I'm giving myself 2 weeks for step 1. So, if I'm not making some sort of mention that I've started exercising or have given some actual reason that I'm not by November 10, start nagging at me, OK? That means you, inner trainer! If I'm feeling up to exercise before then, I'm gonna start. In fact, I prolly ought to at least start taking my AM walk breaks, even though it's cold out there! Still, "they" say that you burn more calories exercising in the cold. Who knows if that's true, but I'm willing to accept the possibility. :-)

On or before 11/10/2008, I will start exercising again. I'd dearly love to be up to doing the half marathon I'd planned for myself in March 2009, and I'm gonna try to be there... walking, of course. If not, I'm at least going to attempt the 5K that goes along with the Knoxville Marathon. I should at least be up for 3.1 miles, even if I'm not up for 13.1. Monday, 10 November, I will do my official WW re-start weigh-in. That will tell me how many Points I'm allowed per day. For full accountability, and it really disgusts me to put this out for anyone and their beloved second cousin to read, but... My weight on Monday, 27 October was 272.6#. Blech! Many people who know me stare at me in disbelief (Gods love 'em) when I say that, but believe me, I'm feeling every tenth of a pound. Of course, when I weighed today (only my weights on Monday "count"), it was 268.8, so I guess this gluten-free thing is the way to go. *snerk* Still. Blech. But, ya gotta start somewhere, right? To add to the accountability, I put a weightloss ticker on this blog. It's to the left of the text. Cute kitties, huh?

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Okay, what now?

I'm really going to try to keep all of my whining about diet, exercise, health, etc, over here and off of LJ because no one really seems to shive a git, honestly. I don't know who is going to be reading this and I really don't care. I'm not sure that there's anyone I know who isn't concerned about their health and/or weight, so my posts won't come as any shock or suprise. All that being said, I need someplace - even the relative anonymity of the internet - to be accountable.

If you go back in this blog, you'll see I've had ups and downs with my weight and health. Right now, I'm mostly having downs. For some reason, I decided to ditch the one thing that had gotten me to feeling the best I had in 15 years: a gluten-free diet. I'm honestly not sure why I just up and decided to say screw it, but I did. I think the biggest part was because I was just tired of having to double or triple the time I spent grocery shopping simply to read the gorram ingredient lables. Yeah, I know that I could save that by not eating anything that comes in a box, but who has the time to cook -everything- from scratch? Who has that kind of money? I know I don't. I do have a set rotation of meals that are at least wheat-free, and I try to stick to them as much as I can, but there comes a time when you are restricting what you eat - whether for health, weightloss, or religious reasons - when you get fed up. I guess that if I'd been raised in a Kosher household, where that's all I'd ever known, I wouldn't miss pork. Not that I'm keeping Kosher. I certainly appreciate the health reasons behind the dietary laws, but I'm about as tref as they come. :-) I also don't need to add yet another set of restrictions to my life.

I think that my problem comes when I try to combine eating gluten free AND within a reducing diet framework. Perhaps what I need to do for the time being is concentrate on ONE set of restrictions. In other words, since I feel so crappy when I'm eating wheat, maybe I should just concentrate on just cutting the wheat/gluten out for now and not worry so much about the kCal/fat/&c in what I'm eating. I think that would help me feel better enough that I could have the energy to exercise and also to actually care about counting Points or carbs or kCal. I'm hoping that, as it did the last time, just the act of getting back on the gluten-free diet should help me lose some weight, especially if I don't use it as a license to eat whatever the hell I want to, so long as it doesn't have gluten in it. :-) I guess what I need to do now is to decide how long I want to just concentrate on doing GF. Is a solid week long enough? Should I shoot for two? As long as a month? I dunno. I'll ponder that.