This week’s progress was good. Unexpectedly so, even.
Toward the end of the week, I wasn’t feeling confident about how things would turn out on the scale since I am starting to retain water (usual Ma Nature crap), and my eating wasn’t as good as it could have been. I’ve been eating more starchy carbs than I’m accustomed to, and I keep justifying it by telling myself oh I’ll ride those off at the gym but I know I need to dial them back a little bit. I aim for 50 carb grams most days (most from veggies or beans), but some days I go over.
I’m definitely starting to feel behavioral fatigue–the idea that you get tired of sticking to a certain way of doing things. In this instance, there are days when I tire of “being good.” I’ve tried so hard to live in the “real world” with regard to eating, but it’s hard when you know you still have a little ways to go in your weight loss. While I commend the folks who tackle this VSG life in a balls to the wall fashion, eating 600-800 calories for the duration of their weight loss, it’s not sustainable for ME. I’d rather have a higher calorie count now and have a slower rate of loss (and yeah, I know I ought to leverage this “honeymoon period” and all that shit) and make my mistakes now than struggle mightily in maintenance. I have no idea what it means to maintain my weight, and I know I’m already going to struggle with it because I’ve never done it before. But I’ve also never lost 158 pounds before! I think I’m doing pretty okay as I’m doing things now, and as I’ve said before, until I stop getting results, I’m going to keep on doing things the way I’ve been doing them until I no longer see the results I’m after.
A couple of NSVs from this week:
- I rode the recumbent bike for 55 minutes yesterday. That’s the longest I’ve ever ridden. I did intervals, where I rode really fast for 3 minutes, and then slow for 3 minutes the entire time. It felt awesome! I would have ridden for a little longer but I didn’t want to hog the bike, and besides, I had to pee like a racehorse!
- I now wear a 20 in pants. I need to have my dress pants for work altered because they are ridiculously big on me. I also had to have my husband punch a new hole in my belt because it wasn’t holding up my pants very well! I have a bunch of skirts and pants that I need to have altered to fit me properly. Now if spring would actually act like spring, I could wear these things! But it is not warm enough for me to do that yet. 😦
This week I will work on keeping my protein and water intake high and my starchy carbs lower as I approach another surgeon’s appointment on Thursday. I am officially 19 pounds from his goal, and 40 away from being under 200 pounds. This is exciting for me and represents a big milestone on my path to a healthy me. My weight loss has slowed, but it is okay so long as it keeps happening. Hopefully this will allow my skin to bounce back some, but given all the excess that I have, I’m not optimistic. I’m not in this to finish first or the fastest–I’m in this to learn how to live the rest of my life using this tiny tummy of mine to keep myself at a healthy weight. I’m aiming for hitting my doc’s goal by my one-year appointment in July. If I get there sooner, great. I think 19 pounds in 3 months is possible, especially if I increase exercise (which I plan to do) and tighten up my eating (which I’m thinking about doing, but need to think about how to do it without making myself crazy). It may be time to visit with the dietician again just to see where I can adjust things to power through these last 69 pounds.
I have been having thoughts of enchiladas running through my head lately because I’ve been having a serious jones for some! Thankfully, I was able to find a way to make something that tastes just like enchiladas minus the tortillas…don’t know why I never thought about it before! I took a pound of grass fed ground beef (93% lean), browned it with a half cup of onions, 4 cloves of minced garlic and seasoned it with cumin and some other spices. I rinsed the beef after I cooked it so I could cut down the fat a bit. Then I put it into a small baking dish, poured a can of Hatch medium enchilada sauce over it and sprinkled a cup of shredded cheddar cheese on top. I covered the dish with foil and baked it at 350 for 25 minutes. I took the foil off and continued baking it for 15 minutes. When it was done, I let it sit for about 5 minutes before I served myself. It ended up being super tasty, and satisfied any craving I might have had for an actual plate of enchiladas. I think next time I will make this with ground turkey so that I can cut the fat and calories.
I also made turkey sausage, cheese and egg breakfast bites. The ham ones I made last week were really good! But I didn’t stop and get ham at Rudy’s this week, and the store didn’t have any diced ham that looked good or had the nutritional requirements I wanted it to have. So turkey sausage it was. It ended up being a pretty good choice.
I haven’t been good about posting my daily food because quite honestly, life has been really exhaustingly busy lately. I don’t know if the daily bites have been useful for people, so I haven’t felt bad about not posting them. But in the back of my mind, it’s a way for me to feel accountable in a way. I guess I’ll post them when I have the time to do it. There is just so much to juggle!
La Guerra de La Gorda 