Do those celebrity weight loss stories get your goat? Who do they seriously think they're kidding? What woman wouldn't lose weight working with a personal trainer, a personal chef, a personal nutritionist, personal assistant, chauffeur, hair stylist, make up artist, house manager, butler, landscape artist, nanny, personal shopper, private Pilates studio, Olympic sized pool, indoor gym, tennis courts, running track? Strip away all that stuff and you betcha that Leah Rimini would have just as much of a challenge clicking through 1500 calories and pumping her quads off as you do.
What so newsworthy about a celebrity losing weight? Their stories baffle me. And I am supposed to be inspired how? I don't know any woman, or human who could relate to their testimonies. Now, show me a 20po who drags herself out of bed at the crack of dawn, grabs a five minute shower, wiggles into an outfit that's still hanging over a chair (because there was no time to run it to the dry cleaners), wakes up catatonic kids, shells out Pop Tarts like a blackjack dealer, tosses in a load of laundry, packs four lunches, signs a permission slip while brushing her teeth, throws the laundry into the dryer, takes the dog out, car pools two kids to two different schools, is replying to emails at her office desk by 8:00 a.m., works all day, speeds home to take Kid A to football practice, slaps together a meatloaf, folds the laundry, helps build a paper maiche volcano, eats dinner, cleans up the kitchen while quizzing Kid B on vocabulary words, tosses in another load of laundry, runs back to school to pick up Kid A, bakes two dozen Oatmeal Scotchies for the debate team, takes the pooch out for a quick walk around the block all before 8:00 p.m. and still manages to stay on the "Plan", and I'll show you a woman I can relate to. She's newsworthy and deserving of a People Magazine spread.
Think how easy it would be to lose weight if we never had to go near food, except to eat what was served to us by our personal chef on a silver domed platter in our dressing room on the set. Can you imagine never having to confront the aromas and sight of a pan of double fudge brownies on an empty stomach? You'd never have to enter a grocery store when your hunger is hitting a 10 on the starvometer. You'd never have to worry about putting a meal on the table for anybody, packing lunches, baking bake sale cookies, buying Snickers for Halloweeners, making holiday stollen or icing birthday cakes. Every food related task would be done for you including the circuit design for your training program. That would be great, wouldn't it? Or would it?
The 20/90 Plan is designed by you, planned by you, executed by you and carried out by you. You don't need anything or anyone else to take your weight off. You only need yourself. You, and only you, will receive the credit. Remember when Oprah proudly dragged the little Red Flyer fat wagon onto the stage of her t.v. show? It was piled high with fat, equalling the blubber she lost on Optifast. I wonder if crow was on her diet plan because she sure had to eat alot of it when she gained all the weight back while 74 bzillion viewers watched? I was sure inspired, weren't you?
Breakfast: Coffee w/4 T. Half 'n Half (80), a toasted Lender's bagel (210) with 1 T. cream cheese (barely a smear, 100), about 30 seedless grapes (90)
Lunch: PB&J (w/Polaner's Sugar Free Orange Marmalade, 230), 1 ounce pretzels (110), about 5 Doritos (I'm guessing here..70), Coke Zero.
Snack: Jolly Time 94% Fat Free Kettle Corn (mini bag 100)
Dinner: Lean Cuisine Sante Fe Style Rice & Beans (290), green salad w/2 T. Ken's Northern Italian Lite Dressing (50)
Snack: 1 cup Sugar Free Cafe Vienna (35), 1 Chips A Hoy White Chocolate Cookie (80)
Day 9 Calorie Count: 1445
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Day 8 Weigh In #1 The Moment of Truth
I tiptoed up to the scale, timidly stepped on, let a few seconds pass so all the poundage could shift about and register, then I glanced down...I lost 3.8 pounds! The Gods of the Scale were smiling and I think I even saw the read out window wink. In my best Sally Fields Oscar-accepting voice, I sang, "you like me, you really like me!" I bent down, tenderly patted that 'lil old Taylor lithium electronic scale and then, I hit the door walking. I had sold my Sole Meuinere to Lucifer last night, I had a debt to pay.
As I trudged up and down the rolling concrete sidewalks, I thought about the 20/90 plan. It works, plain and simple. There is no debating, dissecting or analyzing it. It's math. In the numbering mathematics scheme we use, 1+1 does not equal 3. In the dieting plan we are following, gobbling up more calories than we are firing off does not equal weigh loss. Less calories taken in plus more calories burned up equals pounds lost.
I realize that my first week's loss was high and I anticipated that on Day One, but I knew that if I followed the formula it would work. Always does. The rubber is about to meet the road in Week Two because the honeymoon period is over. What I like to call the "easily lost weight" (retained water) has been flushed away, now I'm into the concrete, the hard core padding that seems as if it has to be chiseled off.
How much weight did you drop this week? Are you on target? Did you hit the 1.66 mark? If you didn't, then you didn't follow the plan. You didn't count (or you counted incorrectly) and you probably didn't walk or run or do any kind of aerobic activity. Is this yet another failed attempt in which you'll blame the program? Are you serious about this? If you are, now is the time to get in the boat because the next 11 weeks are going to get tougher and you'll only have yourself to thank or blame. No one or nothing else to blame this go around, just you and the count. The defeated feeling that comes with failure can't be worth all the Little Debbie Zebra Cakes in the world.
I am the first one to admit it is not easy to get off your butt and allot 45 minutes to something that, at the time, doesn't have an immediate payoff. The 3/4 hour of activity might not seem as important as some extra sleep or watching "Lost". Nothing that is sacrificed in a moment of desire seems important. But it is important.
It's very important, and on Weigh In Day, it's vital.
As I trudged up and down the rolling concrete sidewalks, I thought about the 20/90 plan. It works, plain and simple. There is no debating, dissecting or analyzing it. It's math. In the numbering mathematics scheme we use, 1+1 does not equal 3. In the dieting plan we are following, gobbling up more calories than we are firing off does not equal weigh loss. Less calories taken in plus more calories burned up equals pounds lost.
I realize that my first week's loss was high and I anticipated that on Day One, but I knew that if I followed the formula it would work. Always does. The rubber is about to meet the road in Week Two because the honeymoon period is over. What I like to call the "easily lost weight" (retained water) has been flushed away, now I'm into the concrete, the hard core padding that seems as if it has to be chiseled off.
How much weight did you drop this week? Are you on target? Did you hit the 1.66 mark? If you didn't, then you didn't follow the plan. You didn't count (or you counted incorrectly) and you probably didn't walk or run or do any kind of aerobic activity. Is this yet another failed attempt in which you'll blame the program? Are you serious about this? If you are, now is the time to get in the boat because the next 11 weeks are going to get tougher and you'll only have yourself to thank or blame. No one or nothing else to blame this go around, just you and the count. The defeated feeling that comes with failure can't be worth all the Little Debbie Zebra Cakes in the world.
I am the first one to admit it is not easy to get off your butt and allot 45 minutes to something that, at the time, doesn't have an immediate payoff. The 3/4 hour of activity might not seem as important as some extra sleep or watching "Lost". Nothing that is sacrificed in a moment of desire seems important. But it is important.
It's very important, and on Weigh In Day, it's vital.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Day 7 Jif 'n Jel
Do you have a food that you have to know you can eat, anytime, if you want? A food that makes you feel totally indulged and completely satisfied, like a whack of Entemann's Ultimate Crumb Cake? A food, that once you eat it, you really don't care about what you eat the rest of the day or if you even eat the rest of the day? For me, it's a no frills, old school peanut butter and jelly. Always has been. That's my thing.
Ever since the second grade, when I opened my dinged up, metal Mary Poppins lunch box and discovered, right next to the Hostess King Don, the ooiest, gooiest grape jelly-stained-Wonder Bread sandwiching the creamiest Jif ('cuz my mom was choosy) peanut butter, I was hooked for life.
I still eat PB&Js (as you know from my food journals) and I am still loving 'em, in all their empty nutrition spongy white bread wonder. But, I'm compromising. I still have the white bread (the kind that when squeezed, like Silly Putty, mushes flat), but I've switched out the "jel".
Calorie Pop Quiz? When you prepare a PB&J how many tablespoons of peanut butter do you spread on it? 2? 3? 5? If you're honest, it's probably close to 4 or 5 and believe me, that isn't extreme. Now the jelly. 2 Tablespoons? More? If you took your average Wonder Bread PB&J, where do you think your sandwich would come in at on the calorie chart? 300 calories? 400 calories? Try 640 and that doesn't include the Vitamin D milk and Cheetos that usually accompany it.
I've 20/90'd my favorite lunch staple. I still have it, almost everyday on low cal bread (60 calories per slice) but I use Smucker's Low Sugar Preserves (10 calories per T.) with 1 T. peanut butter. I've looked high and low for a peanut butter that has less calories then Jif, but I guess no matter how hard those peanut butter producers crunch 'em, a low calorie peanut butter can't be made. Every jar of lowered sugar/less fat peanut butter I've picked up still has 190 calories per 2 T. Go figure. I could keep searching but I am satisfied and that's the key.
If you have a food that you absolutely love, keep eating it, otherwise you'll begin to feel deprived. Deprivation morphs into pity, pity leads to despair and the next thing you're thinking is, "this sucks, I'll never be able to make it 90 days" and you won't. You are doing this day by day. How do you eat Haagen Dazs' world's largest cinnamon dulce de leche hot fudge sundae? One bite at a time.
Breakfast: Coffee w/4 T. Half 'n Half (80)
Lunch: PB&J (230), Diet Coke (0)
Dinner: McDonald's Double Cheeseburger (450), Diet Coke (0)....
I know. McDonald's two nights in a row? Let me tell you, sometimes we've had McDonald's two meals in a day. And yes, I watched Morgan Spurlock's documentary and yes, I even read the book, but today was
about "getting through it" and that's exactly what I did. I got through it. I deserved a break today and I happily gobbled down what I had coming to me. I won't bore you with the harried, mundane details but suffice it to say, that, after I forked over $4.89 (no sodas) to fill the bellies of three people, everyone felt better.
Today I didn't walk. I honestly didn't even think about walking. I plopped down on the couch after the kids went to bed (when I could've been walking) and savored 3 Chips A Hoy White Fudge Chunky cookies (240) and 1 cup low fat milk (100). I made a pact with the devil, right then, that I would exercise a full sixty minutes for the next three days straight to make up for this lost day.
Day 7 Calorie Total: 1100
Ever since the second grade, when I opened my dinged up, metal Mary Poppins lunch box and discovered, right next to the Hostess King Don, the ooiest, gooiest grape jelly-stained-Wonder Bread sandwiching the creamiest Jif ('cuz my mom was choosy) peanut butter, I was hooked for life.
I still eat PB&Js (as you know from my food journals) and I am still loving 'em, in all their empty nutrition spongy white bread wonder. But, I'm compromising. I still have the white bread (the kind that when squeezed, like Silly Putty, mushes flat), but I've switched out the "jel".
Calorie Pop Quiz? When you prepare a PB&J how many tablespoons of peanut butter do you spread on it? 2? 3? 5? If you're honest, it's probably close to 4 or 5 and believe me, that isn't extreme. Now the jelly. 2 Tablespoons? More? If you took your average Wonder Bread PB&J, where do you think your sandwich would come in at on the calorie chart? 300 calories? 400 calories? Try 640 and that doesn't include the Vitamin D milk and Cheetos that usually accompany it.
I've 20/90'd my favorite lunch staple. I still have it, almost everyday on low cal bread (60 calories per slice) but I use Smucker's Low Sugar Preserves (10 calories per T.) with 1 T. peanut butter. I've looked high and low for a peanut butter that has less calories then Jif, but I guess no matter how hard those peanut butter producers crunch 'em, a low calorie peanut butter can't be made. Every jar of lowered sugar/less fat peanut butter I've picked up still has 190 calories per 2 T. Go figure. I could keep searching but I am satisfied and that's the key.
If you have a food that you absolutely love, keep eating it, otherwise you'll begin to feel deprived. Deprivation morphs into pity, pity leads to despair and the next thing you're thinking is, "this sucks, I'll never be able to make it 90 days" and you won't. You are doing this day by day. How do you eat Haagen Dazs' world's largest cinnamon dulce de leche hot fudge sundae? One bite at a time.
Breakfast: Coffee w/4 T. Half 'n Half (80)
Lunch: PB&J (230), Diet Coke (0)
Dinner: McDonald's Double Cheeseburger (450), Diet Coke (0)....
I know. McDonald's two nights in a row? Let me tell you, sometimes we've had McDonald's two meals in a day. And yes, I watched Morgan Spurlock's documentary and yes, I even read the book, but today was
about "getting through it" and that's exactly what I did. I got through it. I deserved a break today and I happily gobbled down what I had coming to me. I won't bore you with the harried, mundane details but suffice it to say, that, after I forked over $4.89 (no sodas) to fill the bellies of three people, everyone felt better.
Today I didn't walk. I honestly didn't even think about walking. I plopped down on the couch after the kids went to bed (when I could've been walking) and savored 3 Chips A Hoy White Fudge Chunky cookies (240) and 1 cup low fat milk (100). I made a pact with the devil, right then, that I would exercise a full sixty minutes for the next three days straight to make up for this lost day.
Day 7 Calorie Total: 1100
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