THIRTYTONORMAL

I realized …

after saying I wanted to check out all those sites yesterday that I love information.  I love knowing everything I can know about stuff.  (not all stuff, just stuff that attracts my interest).  And I love associating, correlating and dispensing information (hence the love for Excel charts) .

There is the good and the bad about that though.  The good is that I know a lot about what I know about.  The bad is that I often get information overload and sometimes I’m so busy gathering the information that I never do get around to using it.

So yesterday I did use WW online and spark people … I found out I wasn’t eating all my base points (I ate 21 out of 29) and my calorie count was at 1100.  Normally I’d add a fruit to up my calorie count to 1200, but I’ve limited myself to one fruit a day for the first week of Phase II.  And I don’t have any nuts in the house which would be my second choice.  (The nuts are all gone because Mac loves to eat them (I don’t usually) and I refuse to buy them here when they are twice as much as they are in the states.  And yes I realize that we are only talking a couple of dollars, but it still bugs me to overpay, so I wait to go to the states and get several cans then.)  I think today I’m going to up my protein servings and pick up the calories there.

And I read something interesting on somebody’s blog (don’t remember whose … it was the first time I’d read it).  They said they were doing WW and went to see an obesity doctor because they weren’t losing.  The doctor said that the problem with WW and their reducing their points (i.e. calories) when you are losing is that your body should be getting more efficient at consuming calories as you lose weight and therefore you should be able to lose on the same number if not more.  The blogger said that that may be why WW has the exercise points you can add in.

So I got to thinking about SB.  In Phase II, week 1 you have 1 fruit and 1 starch.  In week 2 you have 2 fruit and 2 starch, until week 3 when you get to 3 fruit and 3 starch a day (in addition, of course, to your protein and your vegetables.)  Now he says you need to add in the fruit and starch carefully … if you find you don’t continue to lose or actually gain, then you cut back again.  But it is interesting that in essence it takes from low to high whereas WW takes you from high to low (until maintenance when WW has you add in quite a few points until you find the level where you are maintaining.)

Not sure if this is still true of WW with the new points system … I seemed to get the idea that the lowest you could go was 29 points with 49 extra.  Maybe Tish will come back into the blogging world and tell me.  :)   Or maybe I’ll go research it myself.  :)

nine a day

That’s the recommendation for fruits and vegetables.  Nine a day.  I’m doing a 2:1 ratio … 2 vegetable servings for every 1 fruit which translates to 3 fruits and 6 vegetables a day.  It seems like a lot of fruit to me, but then I haven’t eaten fruit on a regular basis for months.  So I’m going to try it … see how the hunger and the weight loss shake out.  I can always do more vegetables than fruit if I need to.  Right now, though, I’m loving having the fruit.

Meanwhile I’ve switched from the Points+ on WW to Simply Filling (SF).  Tish, another BBF, has mentioned it several times since it was what she was doing, so I thought I’d try it.  I was doing well on the regular Points+ but felt I needed to get back to a more SB style of eating.  With SF the only things I count are the extras.  The first thing I noticed was that while my Oroweat thins didn’t count toward my extras, my peanut butter did.  And once I started thinking about what was worthy and what wasn’t, the peanut butter didn’t make the cut.  (My dark chocolate did … really the only thing that did.)

For me, it’s making me even more mindful of what I’m eating.  And I’m hoping that it becomes a way of life, rather than just a way of eating.

I like that I don’t feel like I have to do this in an exact, no going off, way, like I did with SB the first two times I did it.  I was perfect then … no going off track, no sugar, no goodies, hardly any fruit.  Lost the weight in a couple of months and the minute I started adding a few things in here and there I gained it all back.  Took me losing and re-gaining twice to realize it isn’t all about the losing; it’s about keeping it off.  So I’ll keep tweaking trying to figure out what works for me.

I’ll count it as a draw

if I end up with no gain over the holidays.  I was thrilled last year when I lost 5 pounds in December.  I would have been thrilled this year too, but it isn’t going to happen.

So all of my “challenges” except for the no-gain one were a fail.  :(   Particularly the 3FC one to lose 20 pounds between October 1st and January 1st.  Yeah, when all was said and done, I lost and then gained the same pounds.  I would like to count that as a win, BUT unfortunately I had gone up over 190 again before October 1st (after being SO happy that I was in the 180′s and SO sure I’d never get above 190 again).  So I was starting with a +3 pounds (191).  I AM very happy that that +3 didn’t turn into a +5 or worse, but seriously that means I’ve only lost about 15 pounds for the whole of 2010.

I did do very well yesterday.  There are still lots of goodies around, but I didn’t indulge and I DID get back on the WW site and logged my points.  I’ve done canned and frozen for vegetables and not had much fruit.  We’re staying with friends and everybody is leaving on Saturday so they are trying to clean out their refrigerator and not buy things that might not all get eaten.  (I write that and I think to myself, but Siobhan you can buy whatever you want and if you don’t eat it and can’t take it across the border (i.e. citrus and apples), toss it.  Better to have some now and donate to the deer, than have none.)

I guess I’m driving the 20 miles into town to get some fresh fruit and vegetables.  :)