I’m a huge Steve Earle fan (I was going to marry him once upon a time, before I discovered he’s been married a bazillion times). I love all his songs and, at different times in my life, lyrics he’s written seem to define me. Like the song he wrote about my last decade of dieting, I Ain’t Ever Satisfied.
His lyrics, I’ve got an empty feeling deep inside, resonate to my core.
Specifically, my belly.
My stomach howls with the frustration of dieting. Actually, it just kind of gurgles. You know the sound. Hey, feed me!
My husband is a magnificent cook. So magnificent I put on fifty pounds after meeting him at a writing conference and moving in with him months later. I have no right to complain. I knew he loved to cook.
Worse, I’ve taken shameless advantage of his culinary talents and laid in bed at night dreaming up new food combinations. Coconut mocha rum cake, macadamia-loaded Diamond Head bread… Korean barbeque widgeon (that last dish required deep frying and barbequing, and was as difficult as it was calorie laden).
Why the pounds piled on those first two years of our relationship is no mystery.
2013 marks ten years of taking off weight from the first two, and I am (finally) only ten pounds away from my goal. I still hatch ideas for new recipes, but not with the wild abandon of previous years.
So here are my tips, gathered from the last decade of being on diet:- Weigh in daily. Periods where I’ve gained weight have always happened when I didn’t step on the scale for several days.
- Choose an exercise you like and do it regularly. I walk. Walking with friends, canine or human, is even better.
- Consume fiber every single day no matter what. The scale nudges upward when I don’t. The fiber-laden, puke-o-licious algae drink I use is an excellent meal replacement. Warning: Not for wimps. Salad is so much more sane. Eat it.
- When a binge happens, as binges occasionally do, accept responsibility for it, feed the crumbs to the dog (thus erasing all evidence of the binge), and start over the next morning by weighing in.
That’s been my plan and I’m sticking to it. Steve is right, I’ll never be satisfied, but at least I’ll be smaller.
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**Thanks for stopping by to chate with Jaime. Today, I'm at Maggie's Meanderings. Help me talk her into taking a vacation. **
5 comments:
Great advice, Jamie, and congratulations on being within 10 lbs. That is huge, huge, huge! Hmmm. Weigh every day goes against the usual advice of weigh once a week I've heard elsewhere. Do you get concerned with 1 pound fluctuations or is there a certain amount that doesn't bother you?
I'm re-starting the exercise thing with Zumba DVDs. Fiber every day I definitely do and I always account (usually in the stomach and hips) for binges. The green stuff you mention, does NOT sound good.
Great Tips! Thanks for sharing.
Algae?! You're right; in comparison, salad sounds yummy :)
I've started to take spirulina tablets - it's an algae that may help with my angry gut. But I cannot fathom having to taste it.
Darn, my comments from yesterday didn't show up!
I'll try again.
Maggie, I've learned to accept fluctuations by writing down my weight every day and as I look down the list I watch the trends -- going up, going down -- the choco-algae drink is much better with berries -- and when I drink it daily (which I don't always ) I trend downward. The debate over daily/weekly weigh ins is ongoing. I have four friends who swear by weekly. Since I've weighed daily (unless I'm away and don't have access to to a scale)for the better part of a decade it's become a habit. It's a struggle to drop pounds, still is, and if I had to define the last ten years I'd say it's largely an ongoing series of lifestyle shifts.
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