Just a 46-year-old mom of 2 in Northern California. My kids are Monkey Monkey(MM) and Drama Llama (DL). I am married to Monkey Hubby (MH). The secret to losing weight?
Eat at home. Cook your own food. Don't order food To go and don't eat at restaurants.
I think that is as simple as it gets when it comes to a weight loss plan. The irony is that we don't really follow any diet guidelines (er, fads). There is nothing uber healthy about our food choices. We don't cook everything from scratch - we make a lot of food we can throw together quickly. I do admit that we don't drink a lot of calories. (Mostly drink water - ocassional soda and juice, beer, wine, hot tea). I am not scared of white bread, white rice, carbs, red meat, or butter.
Anyway, I was astounded when I became pregnant with BM, dh got laid off, and he took it upon himself to whittle our food bill down and home cook all our meals. He lost 10 pounds in just a few months. For reference, he was underweight to begin with. He might have easily lost 8% of his body weight. (I didn't lose weight, overall, because I was pregnant. & I have horrible horrible eating habits, to boot). But yeah, that was VERY eye opening.
I've since noticed that every time I eat out a lot, I tend to notice it on the scale before I notice it in the checkbook. But there is a very specific correlation there. Every time we spend too much eating out, the scale is not very nice to me!
Anyway, October hasn't been pretty. I have been at a very nice/low weight since about the time we went to Hawaii last year. I think #1 - I was in great shape back then. & #2 - my metabolism returned somewhat back to normal post surgery in January. ("Normal" for me is a pretty high metabolism - much like dh). But this month I gained an easy 6 pounds or so. I was horrified by the scale this morning, after returning from Napa.
Gee, what have I done but eat out this month? On vacation for a week - no access to home cooking. Then, eating and drinking wine all weekend? Ugh.
The irony is that I am not exactly sure what it is. I mostly ordered tap water while eating out (just as I would drink at home). I had THREE meals this past week that were obviously big portions and so I took the leftovers to eat later. I don't feel like I was eating big portions. I had a salami sandwich for lunch and dinner last night (half sandwich for each meal). I had a wrap at Mimi's last week that I ate in two sittings - was filled with veggies, etc. I mentioned the burrito I turned into 3 meals because it was so HUGE. I only drank the equivalent of 2-3 glasses of wine, all weekend. There is no real apparent difference between the kinds of food I eat at home and in a restaurant, but geez louise my body sure can tell the difference.
For November? I am just going to eat at home, thanks. It makes ALL the difference.
I probably should have called this, "The Secret to Losing Weight AND Saving Money!"
The Secret to Losing Weight
October 31st, 2011 at 07:53 pm
October 31st, 2011 at 08:20 pm 1320092437
However, if I don't watch my calories, it is easy to snack at home and gain weight. That tends to be my biggest issue...snacking without regard to portion size.
Good luck in November with your weight goals.
October 31st, 2011 at 08:42 pm 1320093720
If some of that is water, just salting your meal appropriately will get you most of the way back.
October 31st, 2011 at 08:52 pm 1320094345
October 31st, 2011 at 09:52 pm 1320097954
A fun and smart read:
Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink (a professor at Cornell. He is a hoot! Basically proves in experiments that we say we don't eat stuff but we do!! We're in denial. The book is probably cheap or free on http://www.paperbackswap.com and here is his website http://www.mindlesseating.org
November 3rd, 2011 at 03:39 pm 1320334792
I didn't expect it to stick - so there you go.