I haven’t posted in a while and I think that shows that I am slowly starting to recover from the emotional pain of losing my family nearly three months ago. I still have to fight off thoughts of them, especially at night, but I am starting to move on. My financial situation is still somewhat in peril, but on both fronts there really is no new news at this point.
That said, I thought it “fit” to give another summary of my weight loss after my initial report last month. I have now lost 36 pounds this year and am at a weight that I haven’t seen in 15-20 years. I think the loss is slowing down and I am starting to find a plateau now where I can be comfortable eating and maintain the lower weight (my Dr. said I shouldn’t be trying to lose much more, and indeed I have moved from “obese” 13 years ago to “overweight” at the beginning of the year, but am now well within the normal range for my height). I’ve bought two belts, gone from a 40 to 34 pants, and X-Large to Medium shorts!
Many people have asked: How did I do this? Here’s a list of things that I did, and that you can do too if you want to go from “overweight” to “normal.”
1. Cut out Carbs
2. Got Divorced
3. Doubled Exercise
4. Stayed on Sudafed
1. Cut out Carbs
The single biggest contribution to this weight loss has been cutting out carbs. But the most important part of this is what I didn’t do. I didn’t “go on a diet” persay, or I didn’t see it as that. I didn’t follow anyone’s plan. I didn’t cut out sugar or fat.
See, historically my diet was heavy on bread and potatoes. I have always gotten very tired after a meal; you know how you feel tired after Thanksgiving Dinner? I felt that way after every meal. So in May I decided to start eating a salad, fruit or nuts at lunch time. Voila, no more “too tired to work in the afternoon.” Much more energy. It truly changed my life, and I would have never been able to have the energy to survive the divorce without this change.
At the time, I was still eating whatever carb-heavy dinner we prepared at night because I didn’t mind being tired in the evening and I didn’t want to disrupt our family dinner plans.
2. Got Divorced
Obviously, this is not something you kids want to try at home. But living alone allowed me to eat what I wanted, when I wanted. You should ask yourself how you can change your habits to get closer to that. I started having the same carb-free lunch meal for dinner too, and that’s when the weight loss increased.
3. Doubled Exercise
When we moved into our new house in 2006, I started walking, eventually up to 10 miles a week. Since the divorce I’ve averaged closer to 20 by walking to work (4 miles a day) and walking in the morning, even if only for a mile.
Exercise doesn’t have to be hard – walking is a good start. It’s more fun with an app like Runkeeper which tracks my walks on a map and keeps stats of progress. When it’s too cold, I use the elliptical machine.
4. Stayed on the Sudafed
None of this would have been possible without Sudafed. I was diagnosed with allergies to animals, dust, mold, and pretty much everything about eight years ago. Sudafed is an appetite suppressant. I have continued taking it during the day, even though I stopped taking it at night last year because I believed it was keeping me up. It makes me a little tired mid-morning but it’s totally worth it, not only because it keeps my nose from running 24/7 but because you can literally forget to eat on this stuff. I’m just never hungry.
So what am I eating now? Mostly salad, fresh fruit, nuts and water. A little meat and cheese on the salad and on the weekends. Avoid bread and potatoes.
Salads are tough to fall in love with because they take prep work and go bad quickly. I tried bagged or prepackaged salads for a while, but they were almost always unsatisfying, and no less expensive than buying fresh vegetables. When I do that, I can always build a good tasting salad, and I’ll cut everything for several salads then store it in the fridge.
You may not have to force yourself to eat things you don’t like — you’ll have to experiment with different vegetables but typically I’m eating lettuce, carrots, radishes or turnips, cucumbers, and a little meat (bacon, grilled chicken or ham cubes), cheese, and a tasty low-fat Italian dressing.
And I haven’t sworn completely off of carbs; I’ll still have some bread or a small fatty sugary meal on the weekend. When I was married we found out that, no matter how hard we tried to diet, we still fell back on “fast food Friday.” It was what helped us feel like we could take a break at the end of the week when we were all tired. I have carried that idea forward. I truly believe you cannot, or at least should not, lose weight without indulging yourself once a week.
Here’s a list of my meals:
Weekday Breakfast (Optional): Nuts & Water.
Weekday Lunch: Salad with meat & cheese, or fresh fruit. Water.
Weekday Dinner: Salad with meat & cheese; nuts; yogurt, fruit and granola for dessert. Water.
Fast Food Friday: A small fast food meal, including dessert and soda.
Weekend Brunch: Yogurt, fruit and granola. Water.
Weekend Dinner: Salad with meat & cheese; Optional small burger or frozen dinner. Yogurt, fruit and granola for dessert. Water.