Hot By Thirty

Because I couldn't resist adding my two diet-related cents

I've discovered that the weather totally affects (much like everything else in my life!) my motivation to exercise. Case in point: today it snowed (YES, SNOWED) (I saw a picture on the local news of a snow-covered car with "APRIL FOOLS! LOVE, GOD" written on the windshield) and I spent naptime huddled under a blanket on the couch watching The Biggest Loser and eating a low carb ice cream bar.

However! Two days ago I ran three miles for the very first time ever. And yesterday I ran two. And today my legs feel like crapola, so I figured it was okay to take a break. I thought, for a split second, about spending the requisite twenty minutes with Jillian, then decided I prefer my Jillian barking at other people. I don't know what it will take for me to do another Shred, folks. I am not excited about The Soreness.

Anyway. I've been wanting to write about The Diet, not least because people both online and in real life keep asking me questions about it. And then Jess was all "What's your food philosophy" and I was all DUDE, the people! They are clamoring! Apparently the internet cannot continue existing until I submit my unscientific and totally un-researched contribution to the Online Annals of Dieting.

And the first thing I want to say is: I don't think this is a diet.

OH SURE, it looks like one. I mean, you can't eat bread! You can't eat spaghetti! You can't eat brownies! If it looks like a diet and sucks like a diet, IT'S PROBABLY A DIET. And yes, I agree with you. Low Carbishness certainly starts OUT as a diet, but I think at this point, for me and possibly a lot of other people like me, it turns into The Way You Need To Eat.

Before I Low Carbed (and, I admit, both times I was pregnant) I was All Carb. No seriously, ALL CARB. Those are my favorite foods, and the only foods I eat too much of. There are some overweight people who eat too much of everything, and need to concentrate on portion control and all that. I, on the other hand, will have two bites of all the other food groups, then proceed to suck down all breaded and baked treats in a five mile radius, like a vacuum cleaner powered by brownies. That was a problem, and I knew it, I just didn't care for a very long time.

Also: diabetes runs in the side of the family I happen to look like. You know what works great for diabetics? Low glycemic eating, ie: not-crazy low carb eating.

When I started my Low Carb Plan it WAS a diet. I intended to drop a certain amount of weight and then go back to my regularly scheduled life. Hopefully I wouldn't be eating cake all the time (I was hopeful Phase One (the evil, very strict first two weeks of the South Beach Diet) would help get rid of my sugar cravings like the book promised) but what is life without cake? And brownies? And cookies? And ice cream? And spaghetti carbonara? And bread slathered in Nutella? And and and and...

After a few months of the Low Carb Plan (which I only stuck to because it WORKED and there is no motivation like the motivation of a lower number on the scale) I realized I was living on foods other than carbs AND NOT DEAD YET. Yeah, in the beginning it totally sucked to trade my bowl of cereal for two fried eggs every morning, but then? One day? It didn't suck. And I liked my eggs. The salads I made myself for lunch? Totally didn't suck. Dinners without a side of rice or slice of bread or helping of potatoes? Still filling, not suckworthy.

(I don't know if my mom reads Hot By Thirty but if she does she's totally annoyed at the amount of suckage in this post.)

I guess what I'm saying is: this is the way I eat now. I've gone through the What Do I Eat and Will This Affect Me Too Much and How Do I Keep This Up stuff and, I don't know, it's kind of just the way it IS now. And I don't intend to go back. Not if Low Carbing keeps me at a lower weight and helps prevent diabetes and (and this is TOTALLY as beneficial as the no diabetes thing) buy cute summer clothes.

One day, when I plateau or decide I'm done with the weight loss hamster wheel, I'll make carbs a part of my life again- just DIFFERENT carbs. I love brown rice. I've never had quinoa, but I'm pretty sure I'd love it. Oatmeal- mmm, LOVE oatmeal. And there's always room for my beloved baked goodies, but not on a regular basis, or even half-regular. I am all about Everything In Moderation, right? Except for the fact that I have twenty some years of proof that I'm incapable of moderating myself around cookies.

I think the best way to lose weight is Eat Less, Move More. I'm fairly certain all the science I haven't read backs THAT up. Since the only things I ate too much of were full of white flour and sugar, low carb eating ensures I eat less. And this time, the third time I've ventured into Full On Low Carbing, I added the Move More part of the equation and HOLY CATS BATMAN it's made a HUGE difference. [This is the part of the post where I run downstairs and kiss my treadmill.]

So if you see yourself in any of this- a sugar fiend, a genetic predisposition to diabetes, allergic to vegetables- maybe this will work for you, I don't know. I'm FULLY AWARE that I haven't been doing this long enough to prove that it works for me and that it'll be manageable, if not easy, to keep the weight off. But I don't feel deprived, I don't feel hungry, I don't crave (all right, I RARELY crave) the things I'm not supposed to eat. It doesn't feel like a diet, it feels like I changed the way I eat. For the better.

For the record, I DON'T think this works for everyone. I hope I've made that obvious. I don't think there's ANYTHING that works for everyone, especially since I've known plenty of people who Ate Less and Moved More and were still struggling with weight. AND I am extra super duper sure that I can fall off my low carby wagon at any time and gain it all back. Here I am saying this way of eating is my new normal, but in addition to the two pregnancies I used as excuses to eat whatever I wanted, I had the stomach flu. I had bad days. I didn't have time. I didn't get to the store. Too tired to cook. There are a million reasons why I could give up my end of the deal. But right now I don't want to, I'm not even tempted. Right now, this is what works, and this is what might get me somewhere near the realm of Hot by my 30th birthday.

Stupid holiday dinners

I am up two pounds this week and feeling pretty rotten about it.

I KNOW I KNOW, Thanksgiving blah blah blah, but still. I am no Biggest Loser camped out in a weight loss compound with healthy food and a trainer. It takes a LOT for me to lose two pounds and now I have to do it again. I hate losing and gaining the same pounds.

Thanksgiving was pretty rough. It's actually not my favorite meal. There are many many parts of Thanksgiving dinner that I could do without. But mashed potatoes and gravy? MORE PLEASE. Apple crisp? Which we have for the people who don't like pumpkin pie? Which includes me? A NICE BIG HELPING PLEASE. WITH ICE CREAM.

Then I made the mistake of not sufficiently stuffing myself during the actual dinner, so when we got home from 'The Quantum of Solace' (good movie, even if it's horribly depressing) I made myself another plate of turkey and gravy. And there would have been mashed potatoes on that plate if there'd been any left. '

AND THEN? There was Thanksgiving Number Two at Phillip's family's house, and I ate even more at that one. My family makes this awful stuffing that's 99% celery (I HAAAAATE CELERY) (of course I hate the vegetable that requires more calories to consume than it contains), but Phillip's family's stuffing is fried rice. Sticky fried rice cooked inside a turkey. Oh, it is glorious. And then his mom made a cheesecake for dessert, which I could seriously finish off all by myself. Cheesecake is leaps and bounds above apple crisp (and pumpkin pie most certainly!) on the Tasty Dessert Scale.

I was feeling rather rule-abiding at my family's Thanksgiving and avoided as many carbs as I could manage. But as the weekend went on, my resolve broke down and Saturday night I found myself making pumpkin bread with chocolate chips and licking the bowl. (And the beaters, and the rubber scraper.) It's so easy to fall back into, "Eh, whatever, this isn't so bad." I know people think low carb diets aren't balanced and/or are too hard to stick to, but it's what works for me. And if I'm not consciously choosing to avoid dessert and bread and pasta and all that, THOSE ARE THE ONLY THINGS I EAT. If weight were not an issue I would happily subsist on cereal and cake and pasta with cream sauce. In a lot of ways, me on a low carb diet means I'm putting carbs in their PLACE. Which is "Some of the time" instead of "ALL DAY EVERY DAY".

I got back on track yesterday and even talked myself into doing the next routine on the treadmill (twice as long, gah), except Jack started howling halfway through his nap and Phillip had to pass Molly off to me to deal with Jack and darn it, I had to quit! Bummer, huh?

This week's goal is to lose those two Thanksgiving pounds.

I will be orange by Christmas

Yesterday went well. I didn't mess anything up food-wise until after dinner when Phillip's gigando bag of gummi bears was hanging out on the kitchen counter and I mindlessly popped a few red ones. (Which was sort of miraculous because Phillip has taken great pains to leave only green and yellow gummi bears in his wake and effort is required to hunt down the red and white and orange ones.) People, I don't even LIKE gummi bears. They were just THERE and I ATE THEM.

But then I spent an hour or two making butternut squash soup while Phillip watched Battlestar Galactica. (As a card carrying TV Addict, I am pretty sure I'm supposed to love that show. But I so very much DON'T love that show. A friend of mine really likes it, but even she confessed it took her "six or seven episodes" to really get into it. Who has that kind of time to invest when there are Mad Men marathons to watch and Biggest Losers to root for?)

I lived on butternut squash soup last year. Oh, and pumpkin soup. The recipe for the butternut squash soup is here, although I am super open to new recipes as this one isn't quite as... butternutty as I'd like it to be. I leave out the cayenne pepper because I don't have any, so maybe that's what it's missing? And the pumpkin soup is kind of a curried thing, which is all right, but I prefer the butternut. (I love soups where all the vegetables are pureed. I am so the kid those "hide vegetables in the brownies!" books are geared towards.)

Anyway, thick creamy soups are good when you are low carbing and you want to feel full.

The low carb thing, unfortunately, can get sort of expensive and time consuming. If you are doing it right, of course, which I've already told you that I don't. I don't eat a lot of meat and rarely cook it for myself. (Phillip requires meat at every meal. Unless we are having eggplant. I don't know. Don't ask me.) And I told you that I can eat the same thing for days and not even notice, like bowls and bowls of soup. I just wanted to state for the record that this is yet another flaw in the low carb eating plan. Pricey! Needs a sous chef!

I feel like I should apologize for going On and On about the low carb thing, but then I remind myself that this is a Most Reluctant Weight Loss Blog and you are reading it of your own will and I can wax rhapsodic as much as I like. Ahem!

Anyway. Day 1 went well.

Oh, and some housekeeping issues:

***YAY PEOPLE WHO HAVE NEVER LEFT A BLOG COMMENT BEFORE! I can't imagine why a WEIGHT LOSS BLOG snapped you out of your anti-commenting funk, but I'll take it! Fun! Go you guys!

***My birthday is in July. That means I have given myself something like ten months to lose 25 pounds. Some of you may think that is a looong time, given how Determined I sound. (I sound determined, right?) It took me 9 months to lose the Jack weight and although I didn't start trying to lose it quite this early on, the breastfeeding thing really didn't help. I am nervous I won't be able to lose the last 10 pounds or so while I'm still feeding this (ravenous, refluxy, projectile spit upper) kid. So I want to give myself time and a head start, of sorts. We'll see.

***Both times I lost weight I lost it in the fall. Also known as: the season of eating everything good. I KNOW. AM SUPERWOMAN. I have no tricks, other than really wanting to lose the weight. (And maybe wanting to fit into a particular dress for my husband's office party. Maybe.) So don't give me this "But it's Thanksgiiiiiiving!" nonsense.

***I love that you are translating the whole 'hot by 30' thing. As in, a lot of you are past 30 or not even close, or you want to lose 10 pounds, or you want to lose 20 by the spring or waiting until you have your baby or whatever. This is ten kinds of awesome. Go us. I'd tell us all to go have a congratulatory piece of cake, but I think that's the sort of thinking we're trying to stomp out here...