Tuesday:
My exercise has been a bit inconsistent lately but for some reason I am fairly confident I can get that back on track. Yesterday afternoon I did an hour of Just Dance 4 and my husband joined me after a while. It was kind of funny in that it started off with me getting much higher scores (on dances that neither of us had done before) but as he warmed up and I got tired things changed. His score got closer, then on one dance he just beat me by a nose, then the next one by more, then finally by a lot. He has much better stamina than me, and my ability to follow new choreography goes sharply downhill when I run out of energy.
Anyway, I am not at all confident about my management of food. I was thinking today about when to start tightening control. Not right now, obviously. It is Jasmine's birthday tomorrow and so she got to choose the menu and activities for the day; French toast for breakfast, lunch at the food court and treats at a movie, lasagne for dinner with Vienetta ice cream for dessert. Her wish is my command. Then I can't start a diet straight after that because her party is on Saturday, with family staying for the weekend. I'll start after the weekend. In fact, the kids finally go back to school next Tuesday, so that would be a perfect day to stop eating junk and get into a routine.
Except that we have our regular D&D game and supper on Tuesdays.
If you let yourself think like that, there is always a great reason to delay taking control of your life. Valentine's Day in a fortnight, must eat chocolate! Then my sister-in-law's baby shower. Easter -- more compulsory chocolate! The Canberra Show. My cousin's wedding. Husband's birthday. There is something every couple of weeks, with regular Tuesday binges to fill in the gaps.
A friend (one of the D&D guys, who is quite fit and not overweight but who does binge in a major way on chocolate at Tuesday supper) is currently doing a low-carb diet in solidarity with his wife. I am not against low-carb diets per se, but their take on it seems quite odd to me. They are having very little fruit and vegetable, from what I can make out, and I think that is very unhealthy -- but I might be wrong about the vegetable, they might just have restricted choices. But more oddly, they have one "free" day a week when they eat as many carbs as they want. From all that I have read (and experienced) of low-carb, the first week or so is the worst as you fight through the withdrawal and cravings. So they are in a continual cycle of cravings, loading up on carbs just when they are nearly through the worst. I put this to my friend and he just said that it's just a short-term weight loss strategy, not a lifestyle change, and he is not trying to wean himself off carbs. This didn't seem to me to address the issue, but I let it go. That family has such different ideas about so many things, compared to my family, that I rarely understand their reasoning behind choices. If they are happy doing their diet, who am I to argue against it?
I had a dream the other night, or rather early in the morning after Aiden had crawled into our bed for a cuddle then left again. Bob, the trainer from the US version of Biggest Loser, was trying to put me on a really weird and restrictive diet that I cannot now remember the details of. He was eating something that looked like a sausage but was apparently made of baked beans (or it might have been one huge baked bean) with a chutney made of charred eggplant (I obviously got the eggplant chutney from the previous nights episode of MasterChef). He was very insistent that his way was the only way to lose weight. I was nearly in tears as I argued with him. I laid out for him my idea of what a healthy diet was:
A small amount of lean protein with each meal.
Unlimited vegetables.
Fruit for snacks.
2-3 serves of low-fat dairy a day.
Lots of water.
If only I could stick to that! I think I woke up before I talked Bob around to my way of thinking.
No comments:
Post a Comment