Day one. Again.

Pounds lost? O Pounds gained? 1 Whoops.

Well it doesn't take a genius to figure out I'm not doing well on this diet. In fact I pretty much accidentally went off my diet altogether. After my day of freedom on Tuesday, things quickly went from bad to worse.

Dieting has always been hard for me, which is why I choose not to do it very often. My willpower isn't very strong, so If I stray off course, I'm likely to get completely lost. After Tuesday, I ate whatever I wanted Wednesday. And yesterday being Valentines Day, well I figured that wasn't a good day to behave either, especially after consuming popcorn, candy, hot dogs, and nachos at the movies. But it was a holiday, so technically it doesn't count right? Maybe I shouldn't have had pizza for dinner though ...

Which brings me to today. As I write this I'm eating a very yummy bagel with cream cheese. But only half. Although tonight my husband has requested enchiladas, which as a good wife, I said I would make. Doesn't that sound delicious?

Not a good train of thought when dieting huh?

So I have a new theory. I can't stay away completely from butter, and sugar which by the way includes a lot more foods then one would think . It may work for my mom, who come to think of it, doesn't even like chocolate (Is that normal?) but it isn't for me. Life has a bad habit of getting in the way of dieting. You aren't always able to follow a strict regime. Sometimes you have to eat out, and a salad just won't do, or you just need that piece of chocolate, brownie, ice cream sundae, whatever. The point is, I can limit my intake of problem foods as much as possible and eat smaller portions. i.e. put less Rice a Roni on my plate and more vegetables. Which I know is a big DUH right? Yeah well, It sometimes takes me a while to catch on. But I finally did, and I'm starting this theory today.

You see, I feel that we shouldn't deprive ourselves completely of the food we desire. It's too depressing. Especially for me who is a self proclaimed foodie. I love my food. I do not like to feel that I'm suffering when I have to eat a banana instead of a cookie. (I don't care what diet guru's try to tell you, the sweetness of fruit, does not replace the craving of cake, cookies etc.) I just need to learn how not to go overboard. That is the hardest part of all.

Have one peanut butter cup instead of the whole package? Ugh. Here we go again...

Uh oh...

Boy, I have to say that Chocolate and Peanut butter ice cream I had last night was gooooood! It's a shame there wasn't much left, but what little bit I had was wonderful. Yes I blew it yesterday, I completely disregarded my diet and ate anything I wanted for the whole day, and you know what? It was awesome!!

All the suffering, starving, and willpower over the last 5 days, have had absolutely no effect. I haven't lost ANY weight! You would think that eating salads for dinner, and not having desserts or yummy snacks would cause me to loose something. Anything. Just 1 tiny water pound? Nope, not a bit. I don't understand it. OK, yes I've had to cheat a little and strictly speaking I'm not following the diet all that religiously, but I know I'm eating less food, and it's healthier too. Plus I'm not eating any desserts, that has to count for something right?

Then there was yesterday. The problem started when I found that I had to leave the house early in the morning and didn't get home til late that night. Since I really need to grocery shop for more diet friendly food, I decided to just wing it food wise yesterday. For breakfast lunch and dinner I ate out. And since eating out was the only way I was going to get food, I decided to enjoy the experience and not worry about what I ate. I felt so free! And it tasted soooooo good. I've been working on this diet for less than a week and already I feel as if I haven't eaten a proper meal in months. The thing with eating out and being on a diet is, that I will not go to a dinning establishment and spend money on a salad as my meal only to feel hungry again 20 minutes later. When that happens I will need to spend more money getting something else to eat, that will most likely not keep me full either. You can see where this is going. Not only does it waste money, I don't have the time to keep getting food to keep my appetite under control. It's not like when you are at home, and if you are hungry again 3 minutes after eating a sandwich, you can walk to your kitchen and get a piece of fruit or something. Therefore, I chose to eat whatever I felt like while out and let the cards fall where they may. Diet be damned!

So, after writing the above, I decided to weigh myself after my gluttonous behavior yesterday. I don't believe this, I lost 1 pound!!! How? How does that happen? And most importantly what does this mean?

Day 4 or is it 2?

Well yesterday I did alright. Despite the fact that I was starving all damn day, I sort of managed to eat somewhat decently. I did have to cheat a little when I made a very healthy turkey sandwich (with no cheese!) and put a very thin layer of mayo on my it because you know, without it it would be too dry. And the mountain of avocado I slathered on wasn't an issue either, because hey, avocado is a good fat right? The strange thing was, that after eating the sandwich which was rather big once I layered on the tomatoes and lettuce, I was hungry again not an hour later. WTF?! Why? How does that make sense? What was even stranger, was that I had eaten several diet friendly snacks before the sandwich consumption, so technically I should have been stuffed right? Not the case. When I got home from work at 3:00, I was starving again. So I ate a bowl of cereal (fruity cheerios which are flavored with 25% fruit juice, so not really eating sugar). I then took a nap for about 1.5 hours and when I woke up? You guessed it. Hungry again. At this point I snacked on Triscuts because, besides liking them, according to the box they are heart healthy, have whole grain and fiber, and do not contain cholesterol. All good things. How the chunk of Brie cheese wound up in my mouth with the crackers, I will never know. At least there wasn't a repeat performance. For dinner I was also good, when I made myself a huge salad, topped with thousand island dressing (only dressing I own), but I hardly put any on, and the veggies and lettuce more than make up for a little indiscretion like that right? As a reward, I had 3 ravoli's and 4 bites of Kung Pao tofu, which happened to be fried, but that isn't my fault as I didn't know that before it was ordered. (yes it was leftover night). Approximately 1.5 hours later I was hungry! Again. Once again I had cereal, which brought my cereal consumption for the day up to 3 bowls. Hmm. Might need to find a better snack. Needless to say I fought long and hard with myself with alternate musings of screw this friggin diet and whether or not it would be cheating if I just had a tiny bite of the chocolate cake that happens to be residing in my fridge.

In the end I didn't eat the cake, and went to bed hungry, but hey It was worth cause when I weighed myself this morning, I hadn't lost any weight!!

Diet Days Ahead...

The time has finally come. I knew it would, but I didn't realize it would go this far. The other day I finally got the courage to step on the scale and saw three numbers that shocked me to my very core. I think the ricter scale may have registered a small earthquake. No I won't reveal the actual weight, but sufise it to say, it's the biggest I've ever been. Yikes! I knew I was getting fat when my wardrobe had dwindeled down to three pairs of stretchy pants and a handful of tee shirts, but this was ridiculus. No longer can I fit into my jeans, or cute little skirts. Cute sexy tops? A thing of the past. My favorite pair of go go boots? Nope. Even my legs are fat.

Obviously something must be done, but what? I love my food. Especially desserts, cream sauces, pasta, and cheese. Chocolate alone is an everyday essential, it's like oxygen. Oh and did I mention that I love to cook? Never trust a skinny cook has always been my motto, only problem is I didn't want to actually fulfill (overflow)that statement.

Exercise? Sure, I like doing active things, like hiking, biking, kayacking etc, but most of those activities go on in my mind. The idea is nice, and I know I enjoy it once I do it, but staying at home is so much easier. Plus, there are so many other things that need my attention (cleaning the house, watching tv, checking email etc). I could go to a gym or do some excercises at home, but nah. I always say I will but never do, see the problem with me is, I'm just not that diciplined in that department.

But... I can't ignore it any longer. Summer is coming and unless I want to walk around in a mumu I need to get off my fat arse and fix it.

There is only one thing to do: I need to diet. (Gasp!). I hate dieting. I tried Weight Watchers a couple of times, and lost weight, but got sick to death of counting points. Talk about obsessing over food. Every little thing (including drinks) needs to be added up, and guess what? I only got a grand total of 20 points a day! When you figure that breakfast alone, just cereal and milk (non fat) adds up to 5 points (and that's less than 1 cup of ceral I mean who gets full on that?) you start getting pretty discouraged. So WW was out. I spent the better part of two days researching diets online, and came across a few that I thought sounded good, but after reading more about them realized they weren't for me. Alas, I decided to turn to my mother, who has been loosing weight without following a specific diet. Her idea? Just cut out desserts and butter. She has lost over 30 pounds that way so it must work.

Hmmm... sounds easy enough. Desserts huh? well obvously I am going to need to make sacrifices, in order to loose weight, I suppose that I could give up that. Besides all that sugar is not good, and I don't want to end up diabetic. Butter? I can do that. Easy peasy. I hardly use it. Except when I put it on my pasta or bread, or mashed potatoes...What's that? no cream sauces either? Or cheese? Oh boy. Well, never mind I can change. (I think).

So today is technically day 3 of my new diet. But yesterday didn't count as I messed up when was forced to eat out, and accidently ate a cream soup (so not my fault as was fasely advertised under the title of roasted red pepper) and bruschetta that had been toasted with butter. And I may or may not have had thousand island dressing on my salad, last night, when after rumaging through the fridge noticed all diet dressing had expired and therefore had to be thrown away, even though the experation date was only last december. So right now I'm trying to be good and not run to the kitchen and stuff my face with a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich. Since I'm starving to death after eating ceral, yogurt, some diet chips and half a banana all in the 3 hours I have been awake, I'm not exactly sure how I will fare...