People who have known me a while will know that I've always been very self concious about my weight and that in the period before moving to NZ I've been working on getting down to what I considered an appropriate weight for someone my frame and height.
For those of you knew to me, At my worst, I weighed 245lb. 111.13kg. This was right after Carly and I had moved into our first apartment, after years of eating terribly and not doing a whole lot of exercise in University. Through the next 4 years I tried a variety of diets, including low carb, protein power and a variety of exercise programs. They all worked to a certain extent (the low carb thing worked well until I started putting carbs back into my diet, then it exploded) but none of them really got me beyond my first plateau of 220. Still, 25 lb is nothing to snease at. Anyway, the thing they all taught me was that a) I'm a boredom and stress eater and b) the act of tracking what I ate was doing me more good than the fad diets.
So, fueled by a desire to loose some more weight to be more competitive in climbing. I found some links relating to the "hacker diet" which claimed to apply the princples of engineering to dieting. Really it boils down to looking at what goes in, the effect it has on the system and how much leaves through daily activity.
Long story short, before we moved to New Zealand I was down to 205lb, feeling pretty good about myself and had developed a whole batch of new eating habits and methods of cooking.
When we first moved, we didn't have a car, we lived fairly centrally and I had a job where I could take long walks after I'd finished my tasks for the day. I ate as I had in Canada (e.g. keeping me at 205lb reliably) but the marked increase in exercise meant I dropped down to a record low of 193lb. I liked how I looked and felt there and figured that was my ideal weight (Carly would get upset if I lost much more)
Now things have changed. I no longer have much time to walk, I have a high stress job and I'm no longer cooking or shopping for just Carly and I. Shopping for 3, with Wes having radically different eating habits to Carly and I has allowed me to sink into a lot of bad old habits. I snack more, I don't watch the portions like I used to (because I'm cooking in larger quantities etc...) mean that I'm now back at 202 :(
SO! Today I start documenting what I eat again, with emphasis on reducing my calorie intake and thinking about food again. Hopefully that plus starting a new climbing regimen will get my back in to the low 190s before my trip to the Cook Islands (damn you swimsuit season :P )
Little bits of sewing
9 years ago
It sounds like you're aware of your pitfalls, and keeping 50lbs off is definitely a triumph! I've found using a smaller plate or bowl is one way to enforce smaller portions. Good luck with keeping it up! :)
ReplyDeletethat's not a bad idea, though i've noticed the dinnerware we bought is already a little smaller than the ones we had in Canada. I'm just going to have to suck it up and track what I eat like I used to do, and figure out what my new target Calories / day is.
ReplyDeleteTry fitday (www.fitday.com).
ReplyDeleteThere's an online and PC version, we've got the latter. Damn useful for keeping track of lots of things you never thought you needed to keep track of, including vitamins and minerals.
Plus targets, for weight, calorie intake, activity etc.
Also allows you to create custom foods - i.e. a standard meal where you know the quantities. So you just log that you had one of your standard meals, which makes tracking a less time consuming exercise.
looks interesting, however, being a PC only application, I don't think it's going to work. (We're an Apple household)
ReplyDeleteMy biggest complaint about applications that track this stuff is the dictionary of nutritional info is always such a chore to maintain and incomplete.
I use Calorieking.com for most of the lookups (and they have software now) but really, it's all beyond what I think i need.
If i could find an app that ran on a smartphone and had a good dictionary but could also refer online if need be (preferably in an offline mode) I'd consider that. My memory is just too short to remember what i've eaten all day long
Really, this has done me perfectly well in the past:
http://wiki.earthshattering.org/FoodLog
Every so often I get geeky, throw it into a spreadhseet so I can track my overall caloric intake and weight loss. Using a 5 day moving average for both shows the trends I need to track fairly well. After 2-3 weeks of just tracking I typically end up with a good idea of how much I can eat to maintain, loose weight or gain it as required.
I'm sure I spotted something on iPod application store the other week, which was a potr of something from Mac. However, not being that worried about it me'self, I didn't download iPod version.
ReplyDelete