Diet Update!

So as far as the crazy diet stuff I'd been trying, here's some of the stuff I've been doing... and it seems to be working!

1. Snacking. LOTS of it. Nothing big, of course. I've been buying lots of bananas - they're the cheapest form of fruit I know of, and I know I don't eat enough fruit as it is. Also, I've been keeping 100 calorie packs of daisy-go-rounds in my desk [not the most nutritious, but its the truth.] As far as the chocolate cravings go, I got a pack of dark chocolate individually wrapped squares... but the catch is this - the serving size! Four pieces = one serving, which = approx. 130 calories. Well I don't need to eat FOUR pieces, I just want something to saitisfy the craving for the day. I haven't done the math, but its a smaller calorie count if I'm just eating one piece.... and if I decide I want a second piece, its not a full serving. Check out those serving sizes people!!

[I find that by snacking, when it comes down to actual meal time, I eat very small portions, which is pretty much more snacking.... and its not quite eating every hour, but its eating at my own pace, I guess?]

2. Eat breakfast. EVERY DAY. Even if its not the 'best' or 'healthiest' breakfast out there. If I eat something moderate or even big in the morning, I eat a lot less during the rest of the day. And its not like I'm starving myself or depriving myself either... I just don't feel hungry at all.

3. Drink lots of water, especially before meals. Hey, they used to do it when we were fighting the world wars so we could send more food to the soldiers, why not do it now? It helps you to eat less. Also, drink green tea between meals. Its all-around good for ya, and it kind of has a bit of an appetite suppressor. And, sometimes you can mistake thirst for hunger, so if you start to feel hungry, drink up... you might surprise yourself and realize that you're just not drinking as much water as your body wants you to.

4. EXERCISE! TV is a great thing.... but its a terrible thing because it encourages you to sit idly and relax, but not completely because your mind is processing what's going on. You may as well be sleeping with your eyes open. This is something that I heard from one of the contestants on 'The Biggest Loser' - Don't say you don't have time to exercise if you have time to watch tv. So if you're going to watch TV, stand up. Do some squats. Lift some weights. Do situps. Learn some simple yoga stuff. Do some core exercises. Get an exercise bike or treadmill and plop it DIRECTLY IN FRONT of the TV, and make it a rule that you can't watch TV unless you're using one of those. Use exercise balls as chairs. You don't have weights? BS! Yes you do - you have cans of something whether it be food or soda, I'm sure. Bottles of water. Apples and oranges. A gallon of milk that can be filled with something once the milk runs out [water, sand, etc]. Weights don't have to be HEAVY, so don't be afraid to improvise.

If you're bored at the gym, assuming you're going to one, SERIOUSLY -- go get an mp3 player! They are soooo cheap! I just saw one for 30 bucks! 2 gigs of music for 30 bucks! Chances are that you wont even work out for the full length of however long 2 gigs of music will run, so who cares if it can only hold X amount of songs. If you really want to shell out big bucks though, get something with video capabilities, and put some tv shows on there. It really changes the entire atmosphere up if you're on a treadmill and you've got a video player propped up in front of you, and you're laughing at something or watching a concert and focusing on something other than the burning and the sweating.

5. Brush your teeth. OFTEN. As gross as this sounds, sudden hunger cravings come 'out of the blue' because you sometimes have a piece of food lodged that finds its way to your stomach after a meal... and confuses you into thinking you want more food when really, you just had some not too long ago.

6. NO TV DURING DINNER! Or any meal for that matter. I've found that you get easily distracted with TV, and then you're not focusing on eating/making sure you're full. You start getting entertained, then you get into movie-theatre mode and start eating without thinking... and soon you ate twice as much as you would have if you had just been by yourself in a quiet room with no windows.

Foods I've been staying away from: Ice Cream, Any kind of soda [but I don't really drink soda to begin with anyway], fried stuff, BEEF, cake & other oven baked pastries, milk.

Things that I've been doing instead: sherbert & sorbet or even a bowl of cereal if I want something cold and junky, iced teas & mineral water if I want something that's got carbonation like a soda, grilled or boiled stuff instead of fried, turkey & chicken instead of beef, 100 calorie packs of stuff and/or low calorie packages of sweet stuff that has a serving size of more than 1 piece, but eat only one piece at a time and not the actual # of pieces required to make a serving. And the milk? Wow.... its been almost a whole year I think that I haven't had milk. I'm not dodging dairy altogether, just the milk. There's this fantastic thing called Almond Milk. I swear it tastes just like regular milk... or at least its how I think regular milk tastes. If anything its closer to lowfat/skim milk, but if you're using it for cereal you're totally not going to notice.

I think the biggest thing in all of this is the exercise, as it plays the biggest role. But as I documented before, even without a gym you can lose weight. [crazy hourly eating.]

The final tip I shall leave you with is for the exercise - stick with it. It doesnt have to be 5 hours a day.... but stay on schedule and keep doing the same thing every day, as long as you're getting at least 5 minutes in. Its better than nothing, and consistency will pay off.

I am happy to report that so far.... I've lost one whole pants size! WOO! I dont know how much weight I've actually lost, but I'm in it for the inches. :D

Anyway, I'm off to bed. Gotta get the car repaired in the morning, and then deal with crazy people at work.

I havent posted a fortune lately. Sorry about that... I'll try to pick a good one for ya:

OWN A CLEVER GOAT BY ALL MEANS, BUT MAKE SURE YOU CAN OUTWIT IT.

Another Diet Related Post

I think the reason I succeeded so well with the hourly 'snacking myself thin' thing was because of the internet.

I told total strangers that I was going to do something, and I was going to report back and follow through with results and findings. So it got to be exciting that first day to go experiment and be sure to run back up to my apartment to tell everyone how the snacking and gym went.

Because, as silly as it sounds, I wasn't just diving into yet another weight loss plan - I was showing other people how to do it.

Not that I'm trying to be motivational or anything. I'm moreso picturing myself as guinea pig. The mikey that's eating the strange new food for the first time that everyone wants to try, but wants to see someone else try first... Ya know, to make sure its for real.

Anyhow, I used to get up at 430am everyday and go for a 2 mile run. Sometimes, I'd even come back from the run and hop on a bike and go that same two miles.

Then I'd shower up, have some breakfast, and be on my merry way to work. Then I'd come home and do another two mile run.

What's the point?

The pressures of the internet!!

I dont think I can quite muster up 430am again, but I think 5am is doable.

Okay maybe not... 520. Yes, 520am is doable.

You see, if I tell you fellow people of the internet that I'm going to get up at 520am to go exercise, then that same guinea pig attitude I had with the snacking-myself-thin diet will force me out of bed when no one else is awake, and I'll *have* to get up and do it.

After all, there's one lone person somewhere out there reading who I can't let down, right?

Or at least that's what I'm going to tell myself tomorrow at 520am.

Goodnight everybody! See you at 520am from the twitter.

Fortune time!

NOW IS THE TIME TO TRY SOMETHING NEW.

Diet = FAIL!

So... it worked. Very well.

However....

I felt like I was in high school sleeping 4 hours a night and having energy to study for finals, participate in after school activities for 3 hours a day, then going to hang out with friends every waking hour on the weekends, and not even touch a sip of coffee or energy drinks.

No drugs or any kind of substance, actually. :)

Anyhow, back to reality - I thought that maybe the high energy/through the roof metabolism was the working out. So I cut back... but that didn't seem to do the trick, so for two days I didn't even work out.

So when that didn't work, I thought, maybe the 'healthy subway' is a little too healthy. So I cheated and ate bad food.

But the weight kept falling off. And the energy was still there.

Pretty soon, it was getting to be midnight, 1am, 2am, and I had only slept 4 hours the previous day but just *couldn't* sleep! I tried to go exhaust myself and work out at ridiculous paces but still couldn't sleep.

Here's the strange thing - I wasn't falling over at work or dozing off at the wheel. But I wasn't getting enough sleep, and I even felt too awake to want my cup of tea.

Last night when it was past midnight, I finally said enough is enough.

So the diet was a success, definitely. I reported on the twitter that I lost 4 and a half pounds. Weighing myself today, the actual total is 6.

But I'm going to quit the hourly eating. I felt like I jumped backwards into the time in my life when I suffered from severe insomnia. I like the energy, but I don't like not sleeping.

Call me old fashioned, but I like to pick and choose when I do and don't sleep.

I'm still going to do the gym.

The next dietary experiment is this cactus smoothie thing that the bodybuilder wants me to try. I'm apparently the guinea pig of diets for him. That's not exactly a compliment... but its not an insult either, right?

Fortune time:

UNUSUAL OFFER WILL ENHANCE YOUR FUTURE

Remember my weight-loss plan?

Yeah neither do I, since was out the window so fast.

Anyhow, here's to picking up the pieces and continuing where I left off.

An experiment, if you will.

I heard this guy on the radio this week trying to sell this book, and his stuff made sense... I know someone who was a former bodybuilder and was under several eating/dieting regimens that swears by this method of 'dieting', and if you watch The Biggest Loser, Bob and Jillian are constantly telling the contestants the same thing.

So anyhow, here's the basics:

Bob & Jillian on The Biggest Loser, right from the very start, tell the contestants they're going to eat 5 meals a day. The three basic meals, and then snacks in between. Don't be afraid to eat a snack - eating all day boosts your metabolism, and it helps you lose weight.

Which is what the bodybuilder swears by.

And then, I think it was Thursday on the radio, Dr. Warburg says that the problem with losing weight and going on a diet is that once you lose the weight, diet is over, you go back to normal, and then you gain it all back. You eat a diet meal, then you're just staring at the clock counting the time until you can eat again because you're still hungry.

And then you cheat.

So diets don't work.

He says dieting and starving yourself is bad because your body stores on more fat because it goes into 'starvation mode' and tells your brain you're not eating. The answer?

Eat all day.

The 'healthy' calorie intake a day is 1500 calories, he says. So eat that all day. Break down 1500 calories into snacks you can eat all day every hour. Eat snacks every single hour of the day from when you get up all the way til an hour before you go to bed. This eliminates your big meals because you're snacking every hour, and it will take a day or two for your body to adjust, but you'll find that when this is combined with a workout, the weight will drop faster because your metabolism is running high since you're eating a lot more.

But that's the trick - you're not really eating more, you're just eating the same amount of food you used to eat with your three meals a day, only you're just eating it one hour at a time. And it doesn't have to be completely balanced. One hour you can eat 200 or 300 calories, while another hour you eat 100.

As far as junkfood/cheating goes, he says he fits in a piece of chocolate here and there [I think he said 2-3 times a week but I don't know for sure], and a couple of seasons ago on Biggest Loser, Bob & Jillian said all the contestants are given a 'cheat day', so I'm all for the cheating once in a while, hahaha.

Anyway... the experiment is that I'm going to attempt this in combination with working out, and I shall report it all here!

This time its going to stick.

Also, this weekend I'm going to attempt to log my hourly snacking over on my twitter. Figured I should use it for something cool, right?

So today I'm packing a sandwich and almonds as I venture out to go get an oil change. I think that will take maybe an hour so I'm going to go prepared just in case.

But first, I'm off to go eat the first 'snack' of the day.

And now its taipei fortune time!

MEET A CHALLENGE WITH CALM ASSURANCE

It's here...

The Diet Plan!

My goal is to lose... well ok I don't quite have a pound number, but I do know that I have some nice pants I used to be able to fit into that are practically brand new that I can't wear anymore.

I'm kind of going for some inches... Because really, it doesn't matter if I weigh like a million pounds, I just want to be small enough to fit into those magic pants like I used to, ya know? ;) [keep in mind I'm thinking along the lines of Metal Mario when I say this, hahaha]

Anyway, Monday was supposed to be the start of the dieting, but when you sleep two hours the night before, kind of puts a damper on the diet and exercise attitude.

First off, eating habits have been AWFUL! So we're going to change that.

I've been moving, so I've been eating food cooked by others (*coughtacobellchickfilawhataburgercough*) since I didn't have dishes unpacked or power to cook... So I've been eating a little badly. You too can check up on your eating habits at a fantastic website called Calorie Lab. Go ahead and check on your favorite fast food and restaurants.

Along the lines of calories, My Calorie Counter is a cool website to help you keep a diary of what you eat, what you exercise, etc. You know, because that's the big thing that dietary experts are saying nowadays -- KEEP A DIARY OF WHAT YOU EAT.

Also, The Biggest Loser Club has some cool stuff if you're willing to shell out money.

But hey, you're reading this thing, you want whatever's free right? LOL

Now for the exercise...

The Plank, One Hundred Pushups, Les Romack's Free Workout Vidoes that require NO workout equipment at all -- he has his own website as well, and I'm going to also do some good old running, biking, and stair climbing.

I do have access to a free gym, but I want to start with stuff that most people don't have access to themselves. You know, something you can do in your own home.

Today's workout was kind of blah, and I didn't eat well at all, so we'll call it a cheat day.

Hey I know -- we all have cars, right? Pushing that is a fantastic workout. Man oh man do my arms and posterior burn today! I knew that the car breaking down in an inconvenient spot would have its benefits somehow.

We'll start on the official logging and whatnot tomorrow. Why on a Friday? Because even though its a 'party day' its less of a party day than Saturday... because on Saturday you'll say, I'm too busy I have plans... and Sunday is Church day... I know -- how about Monday? But in reality, when Monday arrives you're too tired from the weekend, and then you say you'll do it tomorrow... and then its the middle of the week and inconvenient and off balance.

News flash - LIFE IS OFF BALANCE!

If you don't do something when you say you're going to, it won't get done... because there is no tomorrow, and there is no later. It's only what you do and do not allow to happen.

Alright. Stay tuned next time. Right now, its fortune time.

And on a side note to Ondrea, I swear this was a real fortune I got. This one is especially for you :)

YOU WILL HAVE THE STRANGEST URGE TO SAY 'YEEEEEEHAAAAAAW'