Tag: calorie counting

“Weighting” for a Lifestyle Change

When I had gone to my doctor, I had a good conversation with his nurse, Anne. We talked about dieting and counting calories. To look at Anne, you would never know that she counted calories once upon a time.She had clued me in upon what worked for her and one of her hacks that she let me know about was ice cream sandwiches.

Ice cream sandwiches?

She had my full and undivided attention.

Evidently, you would get two chocolate graham crackers. Ok, I thought:so far so good. Then you fill the cracker with whipped cream and stick it in the freezer. On the surface, this sounded like a good substitution.There is only one problem. When you first take them out of the freezer and hold it as you would an ice cream sandwich, they are no longer as large as an ice cream sandwich. You might as well just eat two graham crackers and touch the can of ReddiWhip to them. I would already have my 1 cup of fruit with some whipped cream on it. Don’t get me wrong.

I appreciate what Anne was sharing with me. It worked for her. Hacks are not universal. The ice cream sandwich might work for you. It didn’t for me.

The one thing you pick up, when trying to get back to a healthy lifestyle, is that you do, indeed,learn by doing.

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“Weighting”to Figure It All Out

This past week, I had an appointment with my relatively new general practitioner. He commended me for my weight loss, and with his next breath, said most of his female patients my age hit a plateau and then stop watching what they eat, recording calories, and start eating junk. I had thought that it wasn’t really thought through by my doctor, because he knows that I need to be positive about this lifestyle change. I decided to cut him some slack, as he really is a good doctor and just was throwing the conversational thoughts out there.He was “spit-balling”, as it were.

I am still under the weather with either early allergies from pollen or a run-of-the-mill head cold. I usually can make due using a saline wash to clear my sinuses out, but it just wasn’t working. When that happens, I have to pull out the big guns: I take a decongestant. Hopefully, I will be ok for work this week and for the Easter holiday. I am hoping , also, that Easter dinner will offer me good choices. As I am going to someone’s house for Easter dinner, I don’t think bringing my own salad would be too good. I just hope that I can get through Easter without it causing my calorie counting to go into overdrive.

A Sunday in Spring

Jim and I were invited over to my godson Luca’s house for breakfast this morning.

I mean how can I not want to eat where I see this face! ** muah** It’s a two-fer when I get to see this face too!

We had homemade waffles that my friend Bella made. It was the first time we socialized while counting calories .As we knew what we were going to eat, we got to work the calories up so it wasn’t too bad. Luca and Matti’s parents are good friends of ours, and we always enjoy their company.

Now we know we can handle invitations out. The dietician visit also gave us some other ideas for menu choices out and different things for home. The rough part is I have to work this week and I need to make meals in advance. Hopefully that will turn out ok.

Weight a Minute!

Between the exercise of walking Kasia further, school and counting carbs and calories, I am officially down 12 1/2 pounds.
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Take the picture above. Where Jim and I go out for dinner on Thursday nights, they have introduced this roasted red beet salad which is delicious. Six months I wouldn’t have thought so. Incredible what accountability will do.

The dietician looked at me as though she didn’t think I would do as well as I did on the scale. Easy to do, when you are tired of lugging the extra inches on your body.Our appointment today gave us a few ideas on trying twists in the menu to keep us satisfied and keep up our good work.

So we are going to keep on keeping on. This appointment marked one month since the initial appointment with the dietician. I’m going to keep doing what has been working for me, and not kill myself, as I realize that an almost 60 year old body goes slowly in some areas. Fortunately, there is no race. My body is happy, and I intend to keep it that way!
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Going to give it the best effort a 51 year old can.

Who is going to benefit from my effort? Hopefully ,my health.

I lost 45 pounds 5 years ago, and things were going good.

Then Mom got sick, my knees started hurting, care-giving was wearing me away, and suffice it to say, although I didn’t gain all of it back, I do feel that I’d probably feel better . I belonged to the Trevose behavioral health system , whose premise is calorie counting, period. You start with a set amount, say 2000 calories, for a few weeks. As the new weight falls off, then you start to wean off, and say move down to 1900, or then 1800.

The mountains of Halloween candy are all given out, and baking is, right now on a hold. Still trying to keep Mom’s ship afloat and that’s taking a little out of me.Unfortunately, due to past cancers and antidepressants, I feel like I am taking Pez in the morning as I try to swoop needed meds into me. To me, that is proof this body is getting older. Maybe it is time to pull up my big girl pants and respect this body.

The time feels right,