How's it going so far? Pretty well!
- First off, I worked out five days this week, and eight days of the last ten. Which is AWESOME for me. I've started getting up a half-hour earlier, going to the gym for 30 minutes of cardio, walking to work and showering there, and then getting on with my day. I didn't do so well at my goal for adding more light activity in the evening, but hey. I'm still doing a lot more than I was two weeks ago!
- Zero-dot fruits and vegetables make the otherwise somewhat restrictive Plan pretty livable. I'm eating a lot more fresh fruit than I used to now that I have carte blanche to fill up on it. (And I just started shopping at Aldi, so I'm not spending too much more than I normally do. $1.49 pineapples and $3 4-pound bags of apples for the win.)
- Yes, vegetables too, but I'm less excited about them. Sue me.
- I seem to be a "use a few weekly dots every day" person rather than a "save all my dots for one 'free' day" kind of girl. Which is probably a lot more sustainable.
- I'm assigned 31 daily dots on paper, 32 dots on the online tracker. I've been going by the online version because it's what I use, but I'll probably ask about it tomorrow. I didn't use any of my exercise dots, so I'm good either way.
- I have definitely made some nutritionally dubious choices, like three pieces of pizza on Sunday and frozen yogurt for lunch on Monday (I'd promised a friend I'd grab ice cream with her). Totally freaking delicious, though.
- I honestly only ate one thing I actually regretted all week. I misunderstood whether there was going to be dinner at a party and ate a chicken sandwich at Burger King beforehand (my husband went there on the way because the hosts were vegan and he's a meatatarian), which threw my evening way off. I did enjoy the food at the party, but not nearly as much as I would have if I'd gone there hungry and with more dots. Regretting only one thing I ate in an entire week, though? This recovering binge eater feels pretty goddamn awesome about that.
- I don't find myself getting obsessive about portion control; I've measured a few things, and I did weigh a pork chop tonight (it turned out to be an ounce less than I guessed), but my lifetime of baking has given me a pretty clear idea of what a half cup looks like, which makes life a lot easier.
- My awesome (and hydrating!) solution to bars and parties: have a couple of drinks, then drink soda water for the rest of the night. I love soda water -- what I love about pop is not the sweetness, but the carbonation.
- So far, it seems like Saturday is a great weigh-in day for me. I've always struggled with weekends when dieting or even just trying to be more mindful about food before; the irregularity of our schedule makes it hard to plan, and we tend to go out a fair amount. This way, I have. a full complement of weekly dots to draw upon for booze and dessert and other excesses, and then I can apportion out the rest throughout the week.
- Fuck yeah breakfast. Specifically, fuck yeah fresh fruit and homemade English muffin/egg/cheese/turkey sausage breakfast sandwiches.
- I've found myself being somewhat moody, but not substantially more than usual. Keeping an eye on it and might start taking brief mood notes to see if there's any correlation; I'm skeptical that it has specific dietary triggers, but you never know, and now I've at least got the data.
- Oh, and based on my home scale, I'm pretty sure I lost a couple pounds.
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A digression on carbs
The only real sense of deprivation I've had so far is carb-related. I like carbs. I truly would have guessed that fat and sugar would be what I'd crave initially, but no, apparently I really like carbs. And while you can totally eat carbs on the Plan, and they justifiably reward higher-fiber carbs like whole grains, they all add up quickly. Pasta and rice and potatoes are particularly problematic, as are the homemade tortillas I make with fajitas. Even with half the flour replaced with whole-wheat, they're six dots apiece. I like them enough that I'm willing to spend the dots, but I'm starting to think about ways to make the whole meal healthier, like making myself a fajita salad and having one on the side rather than eating two or three as fajitas.
The other thing I notice, though, is that even though I like carbs, I often find myself choosing not to eat them when they're served with something I like better. I went out for breakfast with a friend this morning, and ended up eating all of my three-egg seafood omelette, but choosing to only have a half-cup of the hash browns and none of the toast.
And I notice that when I have a reason to make the choice, I end up picking the carbs I like best over those that are less appealing: two dinner rolls were way more appealing to me tonight than mac and cheese, so I ate 'em. The two rolls plus the aforementioned pork chop filled me up enough that I'm still staring at most of my cherry tomatoes and applesauce -- and, I might add, they were goddamn delicious.
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As I write this, I find myself shying away from the words "weight" and "diet". I suspect this is not so much a commitment to lifelong fitness and dietary change as my discomfort with the idea of being on a diet at all. Right now, though, it almost doesn't really feel like a diet. I haven't been overly hungry except for late at night
But to be honest, there are things that I really like about this approach. Counting dots feels a little like a video game -- not a big awesome immersive one, but y'know, something mindless and a little compulsive by Zynga. And hey, this is a shit-ton more useful than Mafia Wars. (Yes, if Zynga made a weight-loss game I would probably play the shit outta that. I'm already pondering a FitBit.)
Time commitment to the Plan this week: maybe seven hours, not counting exercise? Which is a LOT. However, I'm guessing I spent two or three hours on this blog, an hour or so total messing around with the online and phone apps (way more than an average week would take), an hour at the meeting, and a very enjoyable two hours grocery shopping (at two stores) with a friend who's been on the Plan for a while, searching for deals on tasty food and discussing tips and tricks. If I'm still spending that much time in a month I'll be worried, but for week one, I'm all right with it.
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