feels good!!!!!
I’m going out tomorrow night, in exactly 24 hours, and I feel SO bloated right now. Like, I feel so so so fat and unhealthy, it’s not even comprehensible. But I wanted to wear this fitted top when I go out to party tomorrow night, do y’all think that my bloat/fatness that resulted from the binge will be gone by then?
This is probably stupid, but I feel so down because of it. Where has my self-control gone off to?
welcome to my health blog. This is kind of an online diary for me. I will post about food, recipes, health, exercise, tips, my experience and lifestyle. I exercise about 5 times a week. I would like to exercise ideally every day. I eat healthily but I also allow treats, generally good treats, but still very yummy treats. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll have the odd blow out, but I am terrible with guilty feelings afterwards so I prefer to be healthy about my treats rather than naughty and suffer with guilt! So I have begun this blog to help me get to stage where I am completely satisfied with my lifestyle and health. I sometimes struggle with acceptance, therefore I have to be at a zen with myself in order to accept myself. This I truly believes is achieved through my diet and exercise regime. But this is a personal thing I know. I do not have any sort of eating disorder, nor do I agree with all this pro-ana, pro-mia thing. I am happy to listen to anyone with a problem, I too hope my followers will be around to help me :) But I am healthy!!! So please, respect that! Anyway, I think this is a good enough introduction. Follow, if you please. x
Extra Easy Day:
- Brekkie: 28g porridge oats (HEX B), skimmed milk (part of HEX A) 1 tbsp golden syrup (2), strawberries
- Lunch: Jamaican chicken casserole
- Dindins: wholemeal pasta, red & yellow pepper, red onion, tomato, chicken, herbs, garlic, egg, mozarella (rest of HEX A)
- Snacks: 100 cal M&S mini popcorn cakes (4.5), mini milk (1.5), strawberries, cherries, fat free vanilla yoghurt
- Drinks: water, chai tea, redbush vanilla tea, options belgian hot chocolate (2)
- Syns: 10 = Great day :)
Stressful day. Revision in morning. Modern French Thinkers exam in afternoon. First question was excellent…second was not bad…third was atrocious…hopefully this balances out. :/ Then I was starving and had dinner, cleaned the bathroom and kitchen so they’re habitable again and my room. Now chiiiilled. Debating whether to do some exercise before bed. Was gonna start off the shred again but my ankle is sore and twinging for some reason… (it does this every so often :( )
So tired. Gonna at least read through my Baked and Delicious magazines and plan out the rest of the week and my reply to my german schools. The internet’s been SO super frustratingly slow that I haven’t got round to it yet. :( Been trying to have a ‘quick’ look at Tumblr for the past 5 hours but everything keeps freezing. Booo.
‘Cupcake’ x
I was always very slim, up until my twenties, but even back then I thought I was “big.” When I met my husband, I was 16 and weighed around 105 - 110 pounds. It’s so strange how I was self conscious back then but now I would be in heaven if I weighed that.
My weight started to creep up after my junior year when I quit my dance/flag line group. I got a lot of exercise with it and since I didn’t march my senior year, I got no physical activity. I’d always been more interested in books and art than anything and I devoted myself to that for a long time. When I got married and moved in with my husband, it got worse because we cooked big meals every night. But the real problem began when I was working three jobs and lived on fast food. One of my jobs was in a bakery, which didn’t help either. Let me tell you, I don’t care how much willpower you have. Christmas time in a bakery kills. Fresh cookies and cinnamon rolls straight out of the oven… that “just one” will add up if you do it every single day.
Anyway, I told myself that I had it under control and that I was ok as long as I didn’t gain anymore. I was fine at 130. But then 130 became 150. And 150 became 175. And then I looked at my closet one day and decided my clothes were looking kind of ratty and I needed to buy some new ones. My financial situation as well as my lack of free time had stopped me shopping a long time ago. So I went out to get a few things.
It was a shock to realize exactly how many sizes I had gone up. I had to keep going back to the racks and getting the bigger size until finally I realized that I would need to go to the plus size department. So I went home and cried instead.
I still haven’t bought new clothes and that was about four years ago. I rely on t-shirts, hoodies, and jeans on the rare occasions I do leave my house. I don’t like going out with friends, or even to family functions. Worse, I very seldom do any of the things that used to make me happy. I’ve turned myself into a social outcast and I’m pretty sure I have mild depression.
I’ve tried almost every diet you can think of. I’ve done low carb, high protein, high fat, low fat, no fat, gluten free, dairy free, veganism, juicing, raw food, cleansing and anything else you can think of. At one point I was on this thing where I was cutting out anything that could possibly be an allergin and then adding it back in slowly, just to see if I had any reactions. I forget the name of the diet, but it was a book written by some kind of doctor who promised miracle results. And I got them. I lost about 30 pounds. But man, was I sick and tired of the food.
The thing is, I know that the only thing that will work for me is a diet that’s convenient and full of variety. So I’m opting for calorie counting this time around. I’m going to allow myself to eat whatever I want but to keep my overall calories within a budget of around 1200 -1600 a day, depending on if I exercise or not. Eventually I hope to move into other phases, like cutting out processed food and drinking only water. But too much too fast is what’s ruined me in the past so I’m going slow. I hope to use this tumblr as a daily food diary to track what I eat, and also to list any goals or triumphs or thoughts I have along the way. Basically I’m hoping this will keep me accountable and I’ll stick to it this time.
Wish me luck!
Breakfast:
- 3/4 cup of Kashi Toasted Berry Crisp cereal - 210 calories
- 3/4 cup of skim milk - 70 calories
- 1 small banana - 90 calories
- Coffee with skim milk - 20 calories
Snack:
- Coffee with 2 creams and 1 sugar (it was given to me by one of the people I work with and I didn’t want to be rude and just throw it out..) - 40 calories
Lunch:
- 1/2 salami sandwich with mustard and spinach - 275 calories
- Baby carrots - 30 calories
- Red grapes - 60 calories
Snack:
- Fiber One bar - 140 calories
- Red apple - 95 calories
Dinner:
- Greek salad with vinaigrette - 160 calories
- 1/3 chicken breast - 95 calories
Total: 1285 calories
not exactly hungry, i just feel like eating. it’s a difficult habit to break.
i’ll go for another walk instead.
The change I was doing with P90 and eating more calories obviously didn’t work at all. I was trying to get up to losing 8lbs a month, instead of 5lbs (what I normally lose) but I’ve only lost 1lb in the last month and a half so blah. That’s the problem with losing once a month instead of once a week. I have to try a diet for a whole month just to see if it works. Gr.
Anyway, I’m going back to what I usually do! Which is every other day switching between doing the 30 Day Shred, and the treadmill (or the stationary bike I just got! $40!). And hooping everyday. Along with eating 1,200 calories.
Though I might still screw around with eating more some days, I don’t know. Every BMR calculator gives me a different calorie consumption! I’ve gotten anywhere from 1,600 to 2,800. It’s ridiculous. If anybody has any ideas, I’m all ears.
This was all rambly I’m sorry, haha.
“Losing weight” is insufficient terminology. It’s too vague, too unspecific. When a person sets out to lose weight, just what are they trying to lose? Bone density? Muscle mass? Organ weight? Of course not – they’re generally looking to lose adipose tissue. People want to burn body fat, and they want to do it without negatively impacting the more beneficial sources of (corporeal)gravitas. Simply put, you want to lose fat, not muscle. The only problem is that the popular methods for shedding weight often result in excessive (but really, any amount is excessive) muscle loss, too. I’m talking, of course, about precisely the practices I rail against in the Primal Blueprint – Chronic Cardio, ultra low-cal/low-fat ascetic dieting, and other trappings of Conventional Fitness Wisdom. Granted, adhering to any, individually or in concert, will probably help you lose weight, but a ton of it will come from yourlean mass (not to mention bones and organs). That said, if you’re going for skinny-fat chic or the waiflike, undernourished look, feel free to run fifteen miles a day and live off canned tuna and rice cakes. The scale will drop, and you won’t be weighed down by that pesky musculature any longer. But you don’t want that (do you?). You want a strong, lean body. You want to maintain your agility, your power, your strength, and your agreeable appearance. You want to burn fat while maintaining (or even building upon) your existing muscle. Heck, if you’re mostly interested in burning fat, you need the muscle. Muscle is a hungry, wasteful thing. It craves protein and fatto run effectively, along with a bit of glycogen every now and then to fuel up. Next to the organs and the brain, your muscle mass is one of the biggest consumers of energy in the body, and the more you have, the better your fat loss. It’s a delicious cycle – the right kind of exercise spares muscle and burns fat, and more muscle with reduced body fat allows you to do the right kind of exercise. To make sure you’re losing the right kind of weight, you have to chart your progress. It’s a little more complicated than just watching your total weight, though. In fact, you don’t even really need the scale anymore. Well, you can keep it around, but don’t get too comfortable; your meetings will be fleeting and infrequent from here on out. Spend a little quality time alone, if you must. Get your fill of each other, because you’re going to be using an entirely different set of barometers to monitor your weight loss: eyes, ears, belts, and weights. Check yourself out. Don’t hover in front of the mirror, though. Strip down to the bare essentials and take full body snapshots, making sure to space them out every few days. A lot of people tend to obsess over minor daily fluctuations, but you’re not going to see a whole lot of visual differences that quickly. Five days, six days, or definitely a week, however, can be enough time to notice a difference in a direct comparison. Look out for misshapen lumps, sagging chests, flabby underarms – all signs that you’re losing muscle and maintaining fat. If you’re doing it right, you should be getting noticed. Whether it’s a significant other, a co-worker, or friends, people will compliment you. Heed their words. When people say, “You’ve lost weight!” (and they’re not your grandmother clicking her tongue in disapproval) and, “You look stronger and healthier!” it means you’re on the right track. Take it as a sign. Losing fat and maintaining muscle means dropping pants sizes. Using an extra notch on the belt is good. Having to buy an entirely new belt is better. Using a hole punch to create new holes because you can’t afford a new belt is pretty bad – but at least you’re still losing fat. The best way to ensure you’re maintaining muscle mass is to chart your progress in the weight room. Muscle loss is accompanied by a reduction in strength, so if you find yourself failing to hit the marks you used to destroy with ease, you’re probably eating muscle. It’s a bad sign if you’re dropping weight and doing fewer pull-ups than before. (You can also use body fat testing to get actual numbers, but I’m a big fan of the above methods. How you feel, look, and lift is going to be enough of a marker for most people.) Okay, those are a few ways to monitor your progress (or lack thereof), but what about actually doing it? What should we be eating, and how should we be exercising? Short answer: follow the PB way. Eating a high-fat, moderate protein, low-carb diet is pretty crucial in our everyday life, and it’s no different now. Minimizing our insulin load while filling up on fats, meat, and veggies is just as important. Likewise, lifting heavy things and running really fast every once in awhile are keys to promoting fat mobilization and muscle maintenance. You could even just check out the last post I did on building muscle and for the most part all that stuff will apply, too. But there are a few specifics that bear repeating, and a few areas where today’s advice differs slightly from that of the previous muscle-building post. IF is perhaps your greatest tool when losing weight and maintaining muscle. It increases insulin sensitivity (good for mobilizing adipose tissue), promotes the secretion of growth hormone (a muscle sparing, fat burning hormone), and reduces body fat. What’s not to love? It’s almost like the human body’s response to IF was designed specifically for our current predicament. Hmm, I wonder if Grok ever found himself in a situation where food was scarce and muscle mass was precious… For extra benefits, exercise in a fasted state and wait at least an hour before you eat something. I know, I know, those words probably still sound like sacrilege to a few of you, but it’s true that constant, Chronic Cardio is catabolic – it retards muscle growth, interrupts protein synthesis, and can even reduce existing muscle mass. Too much exercise (especially highly stressful long distance steady state stuff) releases cortisol, a vitally important “flight-or-flight” hormone that can be incredibly damaging in unnaturally large amounts. In Grok’s day, cortisol would have kicked in when he needed it to jog his senses and get him focused on surviving a momentary threat; nowadays, we’re pelted with stress from all angles, and our body doesn’t differentiate between artificial stress (like work, traffic, or money) and “real” threats. Chronic Cardio is just another unnaturally stressful situation we subject ourselves to, and cortisol is happy to help – except all that help packs on the pounds and eats away at our muscles. Besides, sprinting (or really, any exercise that stimulates lactate production) is a great way to increase growth hormone production and burn body fat while maintaining fast twitch musculature. GH, fasting, sprinting, fat mobilization… it all seems to fit together, huh? You fail to move it, you’ll lose it. You can’t forget about lifting, whether it’s with a heavy barbell or your own weight. Resistance training increases bone density, which is an important factor in healthy body weight, and it (obviously) also increases (or maintains, depending on your diet/intensity) muscle mass. Oh, and I probably don’t even have to say it, but heavy lifting (especially compound exercises like squats and deadlifts) also stimulates growth hormone production. You’re not trying to pack on weight – even if it’s muscle – so there’s no need to stuff yourself. When you’re not fasting, just eat normally. Eat your fill, and stop when you want. Just keep those carbohydrates low, no more than 50g or so for most people, and don’t obsess over calorie counting (in either direction). Focus on saturated and monounsaturated fats (with some fish oil to supplement) and take in about a gram of protein for every pound of lean body mass. Again, you’d be pretty safe just following the normal Primal eating and exercise plans, getting plenty of rest, minimizing stress, and fasting once in awhile, but I figured a quick and dirty guide with a few clarifications would help ensure you achieve fat loss without sacrificing muscle mass. It’s just too bad that most of the mainstream assumes muscle loss accompanies weight loss – if they even consider it. Let’s hope a few outsiders stumble upon this and realize weight loss doesn’t have to be a compromise. Source: http://www.marksdailyapple.comEyes
Ears
Belts
Weights
Intermittent Fasting
Avoid Excess Chronic Cardio
Make Sure You Sprint
Lift Heavy Things
Don’t Go Overboard on the Food