On dieting

Lately I have been trying very hard to lose weight, and instead, I'm losing the battle of the bulge. I've gained a few pounds instead of losing them, and my clothes are getting tighter. I've been exercising a decent amount, mostly training for a bicycle race that's coming up, but I'm also eating with abandon. I'm not sure how to go about breaking the cycle, but I have a few ideas...

For one thing, I eat too much dairy. Dairy makes my stomach upset, and has a lot of calories for how filling it is. I've been eating toasted whole wheat bread with butter for breakfast, and the butter has a whopping 1oo calories per tablespoon. I think that from now on, I will have some hummus on my bread instead, which clocks in at a mere 26 calories per tablespoon, and is more filling to boot. I'm going to make some fresh hummus tonight and give it a whirl tomorrow. Another thing that I've been doing is using balsamic vinegar and red wine vinegar as flavoring. They're both quite low calorie, only 10 calories per tablespoon, and add a lot of flavor.

I also need to try to eat more veggies and more fiber. For this week, I'll be having some leftover pasta salad (unfortunately with cheese), some asparagus and mushrooms in oyster sauce with brown rice (and I know the asparagus is out of season, and I feel completely guilty about it), some grilled veggies one night (with a tomato and cucumber salad), and perhaps towards the end of the week, some black bean soup, risotto, or pasta primavera, depending on what my garden provides me with.

Speaking of my garden, things are progressing well. The corn is huge and is producing ears. The pole beans are going crazy, and also producing. The tomatoes aren't doing quite as well, for some reason, although the peppers are doing great, and the tomatillo is growing like a weed. The plants that i'm having the most trouble with, though, are the squash. For some reason, squash doesn't like to grow in my garden, and i have no idea why. I'm going to have to do some research and figure it out.

Until then, happy eating!

On Star Trek, exercise, and heat

I was lucky enough to see the new Star Trek movie at the IMAX theater near here this weekend. It's a new IMAX theater, and I'd never been to it before, but I have to say the screen seemed awfully small. I assumed it's because I was sitting a bit farther back than I was used to for an IMAX, but as it turns out, IMAX has started making movies that are MUCH smaller than the traditional IMAX format, yet promoting them in the same way. I can assure you, despite the fact that it was an awesome movie, I felt a bit ripped off. But still, it's a great movie. It's not exactly pure Star Trek (and I'm a proud Trekkie), and there were a few too many gratuitous fight and chase scenes, but definitely worth seeing at least once, if not more.

I'm finally getting back into the hang of exercise, and I'm finding that it makes me a much happier person. Despite the fact that it's been over 100 degrees recently, I managed to get outside this evening and go for a short run. A VERY short and pathetic run. I only made it 1.5 miles, and I barely ran more than half of it, but to be fair, I haven't exercised much lately, and my legs are incredibly sore from gardening on Saturday. I'd still like to get in shape and lose weight by midsummer.

In order to accomplish my lofty goals, I've finally set up an exercise plan consisting of running 3 days a week, spinning once a week, swimming once a week, and hopefully a bike ride on the weekend. Also, it would be good to fit some climbing and yoga in there, but I'm not going to push too hard just yet, especially on the yoga (since I am incredibly unflexible). I'll keep you posted, and tomorrow I should know approximately how many pounds I really need to try to lose, but I'm guessing it will be 10 to 15. I'd like to lose a pound a week, and drop 10 pounds by the end of July, but that might be asking a bit much. I'll just take it week by week and see how it goes...

On food and packaging

So I’ve been doing some thinking on how to reduce waste, especially packaging waste, and also how to eat more healthfully. I want to stop eating margarine and eat butter instead. I’m considering buying the giant stick of butter from the co-op that’s just wrapped in one piece of paper. I think it’s a pound of butter. But I’d need an easy way to 1) bring some to work to keep in the fridge, and 2) use it at home without hacking off a piece of the huge block every time. I’m thinking I can reuse the glass jars that certain things come in, such as bread yeast or the new boullion that comes as a paste. I can refill the jar from the big block that I keep at home. I would probably buy the individually wrapped sticks of unsalted butter for cooking and baking, because they’re much easier to measure than the huge blocks.

I also hate how much packaging my English muffins come in. Every week, I have the little cardboard box and plastic bag to deal with. English muffins are relatively easy to make, but they don’t keep long, so I think I will make several weeks worth at one time and then freeze the majority of them in individual bags. I can then put them in packs of 5 and each Sunday place a pack of 5 in the fridge to use for the week. I may try it out this weekend and see what happens.

I’m also having a hard time with my diet. I tend to either eat too much or nowhere near enough. It’s been very difficult for me to find that happy middle ground, and I would sure like to. I would love to know exactly how much to eat, to know when to stop eating because I really am full (and not feel guilty if my plate isn’t clean). I would like to look at a normal portion and not think “that’s all I get to eat?”. I find that when I put what I think is an appropriate amount of food on a plate, it generally turns out to be too much, but because I was raised to eat everything on my plate, I eat it all anyway.

So those are some goals to work on: less food, less packaging, and definitely less soda.

Monday morning procrastination

I don't really feel like figuring out what to wear to work today just yet. Usually, I'm lucky if I look somewhat presentable and I match, but sometime even that is a huge chore. Sometimes I wish someone would nominate me for "What Not To Wear" but I don't think I look quite that bad.

Last night was my book club meeting, and we had such a fabulous potluck while we discussed "In Defense of Food". Before I read that book, I thought I had decent eating habits. Now I know better. While I still think I make better choices than the vast majority of Americans, I still have a long way to go.

Attempting to lose some weight does make things more difficult, though. For lunch this week, I will be eating roasted brussels sprouts with garlic, with a break on Wednesday for some Chipotle (not my choice, but it's my friend's favorite, so I told her I'd give it another chance). Dinners will consist of boiled purple potatoes with cottage cheese. For breakfast I'll have my usual multi-grain english muffin with flax seed, along with some honey dew melon, and I have apples for an afternoon snack. I haven't made it to the gym in a while, so I'll likely go tonight, and see how I'm progressing in my weight loss plan.

On a random side note, I'm feeling like my hair is getting out of control. After I cut it short, I stopped blow-drying it, and it often dried decently, with a nice amount of curl, but now it's getting longer and that technique isn't working so well, so I've been blow-drying it to keep it under control. Unfortunately, that makes the horrible layers that my last hairdresser added rather pronounced, so I may have to go for my yearly haircut a bit early (and to someone else). And I was really hoping to grow it out and donate it again. Sigh.

Tipping the scales

On the topic of healthy living and weight control, I’d like to start out by saying that I’m not really fat. I’m in the normal weight range for my height and I have a healthy BMI, although I’m closer to obese in both of those categories than I would like. While my friends like to tell me that I’m skinny (even though most of them are even skinnier), when I can barely squeeze into my “fat jeans” and when I have a nice roll of stomach fat appear whenever I sit down, I know it’s time to do something about the condition I’m in. I’m not a huge person, but it’s possible to by skinny and fat at the same time, and I’m heading in that direction very rapidly. My goal now is to lose up to 10 pounds in the next four weeks while getting in better shape on my 10K training program that I am currently (and shamelessly) ignoring.

So this week I intend to eat bulgur-lentil soup for lunch every day and Brussels sprouts with a bit of homemade mayo for dinner. My breakfast consists of a multi-grain english muffin with flax, topped with a bit of non-hyrogenated margarine (although I'll be switching to butter soon - more about that in a later post), plus some calcium chews, a few small pieces of fruit throughout the day, and a cup of low-sodium V8 and some peanut butter for an afternoon snack.

For exercise, I’ll rock-climb tonight, run tomorrow, and hopefully fit some exercise in on Wednesday and Thursday, which may not happen because of classes. On Friday I’ll go rock-climbing and/or running depending on what I get done the rest of the week. That’s my plan for now. Next week, it will be bean soup for lunch and purple potatoes with cottage cheese for dinner. Yum!