It's All A Matter of Perspective

This week begins my sort-of summer break.  Though I am not teaching over the summer, I will be working part time doing curriculum design.  That's OK.  The hours are flexible and there is no homework!

My first text message of summer was sent to Tracey at 6am Monday morning.  It read:
Chocolate cake: 1, Me: 0.   Mondays are our weigh days and we check in with one another once we have stepped on the scale.  I lost nothing last week.  I was not surprised because on Saturday I met for lunch with a group of friends that I have not seen in over a year.  I made reasonable food choices with my actual lunch, but everyone was ordering dessert and I gave in to a piece of chocolate cake, a big piece of chocolate cake!  It was good and I enjoyed it.  Did I log it in SparkPeople?  Nope!  First of all I had no idea what the actual calorie count was.  That is probably a good thing.  Lol!  I did not have any eater's regret.

When Tracey and I began our mindful eating journey together, we said that this was not a diet.  Nothing was off limits.  We simply wanted to be more conscientious with regard to what kinds of foods we eat and the number of calories we consume.  Our goal is to make a lifestyle change, not just try "a diet" for awhile to quickly drop a few pounds, only to gain them back probably faster than we lost them.

My piece of chocolate cake day was the only day during the week that I exceeded my recommended calorie intake.  That one day negated all that I had done the other six days of the week.  That was an eye-opener, but it is all a matter of perspective.

As I tell my music theory students, a perfect fourth sounds dissonant when surrounded by thirds and sixths and consonant when surrounded by seconds and sevenths.  Or, a photo taken at ISO 1600 may look grainy when compared to one taken at ISO 400, but may look great when compared to one taken  at ISO 6400.  Maintaining a steady weight feels pretty good when your goal is to not gain, but its a little disappointing when you are hoping to lose a few pounds.

Why is it that when I gain a pound I feel like a failure yet when I lose that same pound it feels like too little to make any kind of difference?  This kind of thinking doesn't make any sense.  If a pound gained is something to be upset about, then a pound lost is something to celebrate.  Its that simple.  Either it makes a difference both directions, or it doesn't.  And maintaining a steady weight, whether ascending or descending digits on the scale, is ok.  The good news is that once I reach my goal weight, I know that I can eat that piece of chocolate cake and all will be well!

Tracey found herself in this same situation over the weekend.  She and her family went out for dinner.      They had a Blizzard from Dairy Queen for dessert.  Our advice to one another was if you are going to have it, enjoy it!  It definitely isn't worth the calories if you don't enjoy what you are eating!

It is now a new week.  We are both back on track.  Content with the choices that we made over the weekend.  Content with the message from the scale on Monday morning.  Confident that we can continue from where we are and move forward, which is exactly what we are doing!

I don't foresee chocolate cake in my future this week, but you never know.  Lol!  My intention is to stick to the calorie guidelines that I know will help me to continue a downward trend.  We'll check back in next week and let you know if we are moving again in the desired direction.

Until then...

Tuesday in Texas - Reflections On Week 1 of Our Weight Loss Journey

I am no stranger to the weight loss routine.  Once I became a real adult with a family and a job, I stopped riding my bike a hundred plus miles a week; unfortunately, my appetite didn't didn't adjust to that more sedentary lifestyle and those numbers that once accumulated as miles ridden changed to pounds gained.  I first got serious about losing weight twelve years ago when I joined Weight Watchers.  I was diligent and it worked.  After letting the pounds again slowly find their way back, I again followed the WW plan in 2011 and again was successful in losing the extra weight.  So why am I here again?

The fact that I keep finding myself in the same undesireable place is not the fault of Weight Watchers.  I am fully responsible.  Basically, I can't multi-task.  I tend to focus all of my energy and interest in one direction.  If that one place is not making healthy choices about nourishing my body, I make mindless choices and find myself exactly where I am now - once again working to shed those pounds that I don't want.  As I mentioned in my Friday post, I am not using Weight Watchers this time.  It has changed and so have I, so something new it is.  The big difference this time is that I am counting actual calories rather than "points."  Wow!  Has that been an eye opener!

I walk home from school every day.  It is a 1.3 mile walk.  Thanks to the app Map My Walk, I know that I walk at a pace of four miles per hour and that 1.3 miles is covered in approximately 2600 steps. This is all good information to know.  My walk puts me a quarter of the way there to the recommended 10,000 steps a day.  The shocker came when the app told me that my walk only burned 118 calories.  I sent a message to Tracey saying that my attempt at exercise only earned me a banana, which is 110 calories.  Lol!  A cup of black coffee is 2 calories. The handful of peanuts that I often grab between classes is 130 calories.  The crackers that I snack on when I get home from school add another 200 calories to my daily intake.  Though none of these things in and of themselves has a particularly high caloric value, taken collectively and added to the calories from three meals a day, the number starts to soar.  Even on the days where I did not snack or have any extras, like bread with my meals, I have had no problem getting to my alloted number of calories (1200-1500) per day.  I don't even want to think about how many mindless calories I have been consuming for the past few years.  I can tell that it has been a lot now that I am tracking every little thing that I eat, even those mints that you pick up on the way out of the restaurant.  They count too!

I lost four pounds last week.  That is not a healthy loss.  I am shooting for 1-2 pounds per week.  I do know that the first week of any positive change in eating habits usually causes a higher than average loss.  With this same discipline, I look for things to level off this week to a healthier 1-2 pounds  As Tracey said, we'll be happy as long as there is no gain though at least minimal loss will be most welcome!

Once of the things that I have done this time around, that is suggested by Weight Watchers bit I have never done, is to take a "before" picture and body measurements.  FYI.  All of this documentation is securely hidden away in an undisclosed location!  I certainly don't want to look at these things on a daily basis, but I do think that they will help me to see improvement along the way that perhaps the scale doesn't show.  I also have a designated pair of jeans for "the pants test."  We all know when our jeans are getting too tight.  We also know when they start to feel better.  Once a month I'll try "the pants" on and see how they feel.  To me, that may be a better indicator of where I am than any number on the scale.

Here is another observation from this week:  Though cooking meals from scratch at home is certainly healthier, it makes calorie counting much more tedious.

The SparkPeople app is great in that it gives you the tools to enter your recipe inbformation ingredient by ingredient and it will then supply you with all of the pertinent nutritional information, which can be stored. This process is not hard, but it takes time and depending on the recipe's ingredient list can be considered tedious.  This is especially true when the app also contains a barcode scanner for packagaed food.  Hold your phone up to the product's barcode and "boom" the item and all of its detailed information are logged in for you.  You don't even have to push the button on your camera.  Once the scanner has a clear read it's done.  Scanning my prepared chicken and rice burrito is a whole lot easier than measuring out all the ingredients and then typing everything in.  Boy do I sound lazy!  Please don't answer that!  I prefer to think of it as being too busy, but I could be a bit lazy, too!

All in all, I'd say we are off to a good and positive start.  I've already learned a lot about my habits, both good and bad, and have made some positive changes to help eliminate the bad ones.  One mindful step at a time and we'll get there.

Bring on week two!

Tuesday In Texas: The Journey Toward New Jeans

The conversations that Tracey and I have with one another are definitely true to our blog title.  We spend a great deal of time talking about photography and food and laughing with each other.  Yes, admittedly sometimes the laughing is at our own photo and kitchen mishaps.  One of the best things about having a really good friend is that you can share stories about how an entire photo shoot went bad because you forgot to reset your camera settings from the previous day; or, about a recipe flop that you can’t even begin to explain but makes you wonder why you think that you have any credibility with which to write a food blog.  You can also talk with one another about the tough things, like the bright red number staring up at you from the ruthless bathroom scale.

Lately our food conversations have turned more serious because we have both gotten to a place where we are unhappy with our respective weights.  We have talked about how we got to this place of dissatisfaction, as well as about past weight loss successes, weight loss obstacles, and our shared genuine desire to get serious and remedy the situation.

I have been a member of Weight Watchers for many years and when I am faithful to the program, it has worked for me.  Before Tracey and I shared our similar plight of the pounds with one another, I had decided that I would once again start counting and logging those Weight Watchers points.  As I did this, I realized that the whole program has changed since I last was “serious” about it and I found it less inspiring and more difficult to follow.  Tracey shared that she is using an app called Spark People that has you count calories instead of points, gives you more concrete nutritional information, and is free!  So, I have cancelled my Weight Watchers membership and have switched my food logging to the Spark People app.  It is not, however, a program or an app that will most help me on this journey to shed the pounds.  The key to success is having a supportive and empathetic friend by my side.  A friend who understands when I say my jeans are too tight, but I refuse to buy a bigger size.  A friend with whom I am not embarrassed to share my actual weight or waist measurement.  A friend who will be there to share the small but meaningful milestones along the way and will also be there for encouragement when I encounter those inevitable setbacks.

We are sharing our journey with all of you here because our recipes over the next few months will reflect our efforts to make healthy lower calorie, but still tasty, food choices. 

In some ways it seems kind of strange for us to share such a personal struggle with someone we have never met face to face, yet it feels perfectly natural and comfortable.  We have been talking about setting realistic goals, knowing full well that it is going to take time to achieve our ultimate weight loss goals.  Yet we keep coming back to the fact that neither of us wants to buy new jeans unless we are buying them a size or two smaller!  That was the carrot that we were dangling in front of ourselves.  Then I thought, that perhaps a better carrot might be that once we both achieve our personal goals, we should plan an actual face to face meeting and go shopping for those new jeans together!