Weight change +/- in lbs: -4 (262.40 to 258.40)
1. Start each meal with a soup and/or salad and/or fruit.----Ugh. This is the point with which I'm still struggling the most.
2. Follow the 50/50 plate method for your meals, filling half your plate (by visual volume) with non-starchy vegetables and 50% (by visual volume) with minimally processed starches. Choose fruit for dessert.----Yes, pretty much each + every meal.
3. Greatly reduce or eliminate added sugars and added salts. This includes gourmet sugars and salts, too. If either is troublesome for you, you can eliminate them.----Yes.
4. Eliminate all animal foods (dairy, meat, eggs, fish, seafood).----Yes.
5. Eliminate all higher fat plant foods (i.e., nuts, seeds, avocados, tofu, soy).----Had 1 serving of commercially bought "Ranch" Kale Chips. No oil, but had ground up sunflower seeds + tahini, 9g of fat.
The good thing is that they were too bitter from the tahini + I really didn't care for the fatty feel on my tongue. The best thing is I didn't "beat myself up" for having such a high fat item, "only" had 1 serving, + it didn't lead to eating more non-MWL compliant items. So at least it was an isolated incident.
6. Eliminate any added oil.----Yes.
7. Eliminate all higher calorie-dense foods including flour products (i.e., bread, bagels, muffins, crackers, dry cereals, cookies, cakes), puffed cereals, air-popped popcorn and dried fruit.----Had some no oil, very low salt hard pretzels 1 time.
8. Don't drink your calories (especially from juices & sugar-sweetened beverages).----Yes, did not have.
9. Follow these principles, eating whenever you are hungry until you are comfortably full. Don't starve yourself and don't stuff yourself.----2 times I got too hungry. 1st time was when I went to get my bowl of oatmeal, saw a small bug swimming in the water
, threw it out, wasn't all that hungry, + decided to wait for lunch. Well, I did get hungry + that's when I decided to try those kale chips. The other time was yesterday. Didn't have enough lunch, so ate the pretzels in the car while away from home. Didn't have as much dinner then, though.
10. Avoid being sedentary and aim for at least 30 minutes or more of moderate exercise daily (i.e., brisk walking).----Yay! The last 2 nights I was able to walk the longest I have since I got started + was debilitated by the pain. Am still experiencing discomfort + pain, especially 3 days ago, but thankfully seem to be gradually on the mend. So excited + grateful!!!
Victories, comments, concerns, questions:
----The heat + humidity broke this week so I wasn't perspiring buckets.
----I know I shouldn't weigh every day + plan to stop soon + only go to 1x/week, but I have to admit it is nice to see the progress since I've still been losing more per week than I thought I would at this point. #'s are funny, though. It was looking that I'd maybe have a 2 # loss + maybe not even make it to the 250's, but then voila, the pounds came off! But all this clearly confirmed what I already know...the scale is a gauge but not as accurate as the positive health + behavioral changes. (Mark, just saw you included the link to Jeff's excellent post about weighing + I will definitely re-read it this weekend; thanks!)
----I talked about this further in my journal yesterday, but that cake roll pops in my head too frequently. And I do
not even have a taste for it!!! And when I think of the ingredients in it, it makes it even less appealing than it already is.
I decided to flesh this all out mentally, though, + think, "What's so special about the cake roll? If I were to buy + eat it, then what about potato chips or ?? !" Giving in just to try to get this monkey off my back would probably just open a flood gate!
Again, the
very good thing is that I really do
not have a taste for it + find the ingredients appalling. But I sure would like for the thoughts of it to stop or at least become waaay less frequent. Any suggestions would really be appreciated--thank you!
----
Happy Labor Day, everyone!
Wishing you all a very safe, exuberant, + MWL (or at least McDougall) compliant celebration. Thank you, again, Mark, Jeff, + everyone else for all the laboring you do for us. Your great efforts are
not in vain.