I'm turning the big 3-0 this year, and I have decided that this is the year I'm going to lose it all. I've been "watching my weight" with varying degrees of attention since I was 15. I've lost a bunch (but never reached my goal), gained it back slowly, lost it again, and now I'm back up again, this time at my highest weight ever. I have a loving family, fantastic friends, a wonderful boyfriend who finds me attractive just the way I am, and an almost-completed Ph.D., and I am sick of my weight being a giant, swollen pimple on the forehead of my otherwise happy life. Plus, I'm getting to the age where it really isn't going to get any easier as I get older. So this is the time.
To try to make myself as accountable as possible, I'm going to tell you _all_ about it. Yes, it will probably be boring. And no, you don't *really* have to read it. You just have to pretend you have, or ask about it once in a while. Because I know I can lose the first 10 or 20 pounds; it's sticking with it long-term that's the problem, and I don't want to burn out this time. So this blog is my own personal experiment in the power of peer pressure. Please feel free to comment, or if I haven't posted in a week or more, write a note or comment asking how it's going. It's going to be a long haul, and every little bit of motivation helps.
So here's the master plan. I'm going to be using the South Beach diet (as well as exercising) to try to lose weight. I've done it once before with great results, but I stalled out because I wasn't really *cooking*. Omelets are great for breakfast, but you can only eat so many of them for dinner before you get bored. Why didn't I cook? The big, shameful secret: I don't really know how. Ok, not entirely true. I can cook... some... if my mom is available on standby for 3-4 emergency consultations per recipe. But the recipes I've made on my own could probably be counted on both hands. Of those, many are my "favorite recipes from growing up," which of course are the most cheesy, fatty ones available in my parents' repertoire (surprise, surprise). So I am essentially starting from scratch, using the South Beach books and recipes I find online to try to follow my diet and turn myself into something of a grown-up (in the kitchen at least). Ideally, these will be recipes that I keep in my book and continue to make for years to come, so I don't really have to think about "dieting" to be able to maintain my weight loss. *insert idealistic dream sequence here*
So as I've been using the South Beach books and scouring the internet for South Beach Phase 1 recipes that sound simple and fast enough for me to make them after a long day at work, I have realized that there are probably a lot of people out there just like me. Non-cooks who would like to learn some basic things that are healthy, quick, and "user-friendly" enough to learn to make quickly. So in addition to my weight loss chronicles, I will be posting the recipes that I have made every time my adventures in healthy cooking unearth a good one that I would make or have made again.
Today is Week 2, Day 2, and I am currently down 6.5 pounds. It feels puny compared to what I know I can lose if I'm exercising religiously. It is, however, under my target of losing 2 pounds per week, and given that I haven't set foot in the gym, I'm pretty happy with myself. I definitely want to include exercise in this program, but given how busy I will be in the next 6 months, I need a diet that I can lose weight on even without it.
Below is my weight loss graph for the last two weeks, which includes my notes on how well I've been following the diet. The scoring is based on a strike system in which the green dots at the top of the chart are no strikes, the yellow dots are one strike, the red dots are two strikes, and the black dots are three or more. I'm allowing myself a glass of wine (but only one per day) even in phase 1 despite the fact that it's a South Beach no-no, so a strike can be non-SB snacking, a non-SB meal, or having more than one alcoholic drink (wine or otherwise) in a day. I'll also be adding dots for exercise as I prod myself into getting to the gym. It's a little overkill, but I do like being able to see how what I've done has affected my weight, so I figured you might, too.
Soon I'll also be posting recipes for an awesome salad dressing, as well as Chicken Piccata, which have been the winners in my cooking adventures so far.
If you've made it all the way to here, I commend your fortitude (thanks, mom). Future posts *should* be shorter.
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