Too old to change habits

Realized I am more concerned about my carbohydrate addiction and growing desire to eat everything in sight at any hour, than about losing weight. Had been doing so much reading and comparisons about diets. So I pulled out an ancient paperback called The Carbohydrate Addict’s Diet by Drs. Heller. Was curious what had happened to them and learned that they retired from teaching a dieting program at Mt. Sinai, so they went on to be credentialed. 
I tried my own twist on it this week to get revv’d up - no carbs until dinner and then for one hour, anything I want. No throwing out the “bad foods”, just restricting when I eat. Notice the absence of addiction almost immediately and the scale is my friend again. Am excited to see if the belly fat might be less noticeable for Christmas.
I had a list of must allows, as I love cooking and eating out. At 72 and 83, I and my husband are too old to give up much in the way of foods. I decided that whatever we attempted had to work with our habits and desires. 

Building a Base from Transgressions

Hoping it will be strong, as it is rising from the daily transgressions.

No family style serving plates on the table. Made a pork roast and sat there going mindlessly for thirds or fourths last night.

Had a glass of wine because I totally forgot I wasn't drinking and Frank bought me what I asked for.

A giant bar of Cadbury's was impossible to resist in the midst of my Tony Robbins meltdown.

Is my real problem procrastination?

Really like the 30 second rule, but it's hard to remember.

Have cut back on coffee servings.what leads to weight gain, and it isn’t what stops you from weight loss, either. It’s overeating almost every single day that does it.

"Infuse your effort with realism, self-acceptance, and flexibility." Joy of Half a Cookie
It's not all or nothing. The temptation to go from never to always.

What leads to weight gain is overeating almost every single day, not occasional binging. 

Question yourself: Hunger, Taste, Choice, Fullness, Thoughts & Emotions

Dr. Mark Hyman: Eat Fat, Get Thin - Planning may be the key. If tried tracking but not planning. 

• The reason most people don’t succeed is they don’t plan their food. They plan their vacations, they plan their kitchen redesign, but they don’t plan out what they’re eating, and that’s a recipe for failure. I always think through how and where I’m going to get my food every day of every week. I also carry with me a set of emergency food so that I’m never in a food emergency. So I always carry packets of almond butter, cashew butter, an Evolution bar, a Bulletproof bar, a Tanka bar and a KIND bar. I basically have fat and protein as my snacks, and I have enough food in my bag to last an entire day so I don’t make bad choices.

192.8 Baby Steps

Let me tell you 194 is a really scary number and that's what I weighed two mornings ago. Starting to give some serious thought to my health. Don't want to contemplate another larger size wardrobe.

I'm totally addicted to reading cooking stuff online and downloading recipes, so I unsubscribed from the NYTimes Cooking newsletter this morning. If I could funnel all food related reading into one file and look at it weekly, I cannot imagine how much time I would save and perhaps, a few calories.

We went to a ShrimpFest and I refrained from drinking both at the festival and later at a restaurant. It's awfully hard to eat slowly at a festival when you are walking and eating small samples.

Three Years Later

Back to where I was, weight wise 178 lbs, when I started this blog. My daughter's wedding, my initial incentive, is long past and the weight crept back. Actually, it was more like a snowball going downhill. I was putting it on with no end in sight, discussing and reading every piece of dieting advice I could find, but unable call upon willpower to diet 24 hours. I'd resumed a respectable exercise regime: Zumba 3x weekly and Pilates once. My Christmas Fitbit may as well have been embedded in my skin. I knew that the weight and nightly cocktails and wine were not doing my husband or myself any good, but life without them was simply unimaginable, at least after 4 pm. My weight had actually hit 188 earlier in the year. So what happened? What do I have to say worthy of resuming this blog?

Valentine's Day. I knew my husband would buy me the most wonderful box of chocolates and they might last a week. So I asked if he would give me one week's grace, instead. One week without placing a cocktail in front of me when I was beat or about to make a phone call; one week without bringing home a sundae from Boardwalk Ice Cream. That was all. Without those two things, I thought that I could control sugar on my own. Everything else would remain the same. Well, he joined me and by one week later we'd both lost a few pounds and it had worked. No real suffering. He did buy the chocolates and we pull out the box on Sunday night and they're delicious and I am alright with it.

The New York Times. Back in 2009, the NYT saved my dad's life. Actually, his not picking up the papers for three days brought a neighbor over to inquire why and an ambulance came, culminating in coronary bypass surgery, etc.

So now it's 2013 and I am following Mark Bittman in the NYT, who is espousing Vegan til 6 pm. I take my own spin on it. Going from being a lifelong Atkins believer to plants and fish. All in moderation. Lamb and ham are still there, but in about half the amount. But the joy of having cereal or a baked potato is indescribable. Just read Food Matters - perhaps he has stumbled upon a fine, non-threatening alternative to dieting.

"A Year of Eating Wisely" was short-sighted

164.6
It's time to revisit my blog after a long absence. Once my goal weight of 155 was realized last spring, I was able to stay in that vicinity for months. Then two events marked the collapse of Eating Wisely: a three week visit by a dear friend, marvelous cook and food buddy, then a trip to New York at Christmastime. The backward slide, or more accurately the upward gain was going full throttle.

January came and with it a purposeful resolution to focus on "create", rather than on weight or exercise; the assumption being I had these under control. Guests were expected for the end of the month, so it seemed foolish to worry yet. I had dropped my third and sometimes fourth weekly Zumba session after adding MELT. My husband who had lost 25 pounds earlier in the year wanted nothing more than to eat "well" rather than "wisely". Wine, butter and cream flowed. Winter and the absence of a clear goal took their toll. My weight soared to 169.5.

But on an almost daily basis, I noticed myself examining my eating tendencies. Mostly importantly, this year I no longer have feared regaining all my weight. I now think of myself as trim and too much enjoy being fit.

I've recently begun to follow Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project and agree with her that the easiest way to prove to yourself that you are committed is to keep a Food Journal. Just as last year, I don't expect to do it "forever", but yesterday, February 1st I started up MyNetDiary. It did keep me from randomly eating my way across through the kitchen more than once during the day.

My husband has a new diabetes doctor who expects to see weight lose when he goes in two weeks from now. I have laid out menus for the week, a long time goal. I shall look on this setback as an opportunity to also rework some recipes to be "wiser".

So, it's a new month, and a new year and I'm off and running.

156 And then there was the (insert event of your choice)...

Mine was The Wedding - not just a wedding - an event to entice any but the most ardent dieters into oblivion, and my husband and I jumped in with abandon. One night of pleasure and four pounds up the next morning. What I learned was that, yes I would do it again; my basic character just isn't going to change. I do truly get a lot of pleasure out of unlimited shrimp and lobster bisque. But I am learning constantly from buffet lines, and what I am learning is never to take more than two of anything except protein. The ravioli were awful, but once on the plate they were just two hard to not eat; so I will not do that again. The evening ended with a buffet of candies and I sampled some of many types I have liked over the years. Riding home in the car, I tried them all and then threw the excess piece by piece out the window. Perhaps little candy shoots will sprout along the road. At least I arrived home with an empty bag. My husband was, as always, far more excessive in his eating than I. Three days later he is still dealing with lethargy and pingponging blood sugar. For him, this may have been a life-changing experience. I actually believe it was probably better that he overdid it and saw how precarious his new-found body and health can be.

Major league temptation is inevitable. It's how we view it that matters. It is possible to allow yourself binges as long as you realize that that is all they are - periodic binges in an otherwise normal eating life. I was really surprised by the amount of weight gained and by how long it is taking to recover. What is wonderful is that I know I can and will recover. Thinking in terms of eating wisely for a year seems to be a highly effective alternative to dieting.
Day 112

155 GOAL REACHED: The Benjamin Button Effect

After ever so slowly inching in on my original goal of 155, I achieved it yesterday morning. It's about the lowest I have been since the early 1980s, although I am still not able to fit into my wedding dress. I was 15 pounds lighter then. While my stomach is flatter, I still have girth around my waist and lots of drooping skin, but, what the hell, it is time to celebrate. Because of Zumba, there is a lot less drooping skin despite the waist loss. Being on the far end of middle age at 63, I can attest to the fact that it is not written in stone that older women can't fight weight gain. The same day I reached 155, my husband made 185, a full 28 pounds off.

The best thing I can say about losing weight is that I feel so much younger. Clothes shopping is fun again - clothes fit. People tell me I'm thin. Something has changed inside of me that allows me to make wiser food choices when I am out. I am no longer living to eat. It is so wonderful to seldom get hungry - I used to plan what to bring in case of hunger attacks. Now I simply pack 24 oz jugs of water; actually I think I may start carrying two. I didn't need a new bathing suit this year; the old one looks fabulous. So enter Benjamin button: it's as if someone gave me a brief opportunity to step back in time. My body has better stamina and is firmer, my self-image has improved, my hunger cravings are "normal" and I spend much less time thinking about food.
Day 107

161.2 - First Quarter 17lb 8" - How I Did It

4 inches off waist, 2 off tummy, 2 off each thigh, and other smaller achievements

While it seems my weight is unchanged, it really went up 3 pounds over a weekend with guests and is again on it's way down.

Today, I decided to give back and posted the following on 43things

"My goal is "Eating Well for a Year" rather than focusing on losing a certain amount of weight."

How I did it:

1. Beginning last Thanksgiving, I reviewed previous dieting successes and failures and began recording my daily calories and exercise at MyNetDiary
2. From Leo Babauta's Habit Change Cheatsheet, I gained structure and motivation
3. I had a clear goal, my daughter's early summer wedding but I needed insurance to avoid regaining
4. On January 2, I began a blog, A Year of Eating Wisely, making a public commitment to changing my life
5. I set a mini-goal for the first ten pound achievement, "rewarding" myself" with an extra day of Zumba weekly. As weight came off, I began to look forward to exercise.
6. My husband went on a stringent diet and backed off encouraging me with high calorie cooking and daily drinking

Lessons & tips:

* Know yourself, trust yourself.
* If you've ever successfully dieted before, you have a good idea of what
will work for you, what foods you can have around, what situations set
you off. Writing it all down helped clarify my personal behavior
allowing me to define when I would let go and how I would recover.
* The single largest positive factor was "removing my husband's influence", the temptations he brought to the table. He really loves foods and epitomizes lack of self-control. For him success has come from the Ideal Protein diet, paying $$ and eating a highly structured artificial diet (after three weeks he was off insulin, so it works for him).
* For me at age 63, I never again want to eat anything I don't like. That rules out dozens of diets. In the long run, it would be nice to imagine that I will be able to eat anything with abandon, but I know that's unlikely.
* Don't expect to find a perfect diet. My diet evolved week by week thereby avoiding boredom.
* Eat around the edges of the supermarket. I totally avoided the white stuff - bread, pasta, potatoes except on special occasions - it made them more special.
* The long-term goal is to identify foods and situations beyond your control, admit you will occasionally err, and know yourself well enough to believe you can recover.

Helpful Resources:

* MyNetDiary or something like it which required daily calorie counting for a month or two
* ZenHabits for motivation
* ZumbaWorks dance-exercise twice weekly to start; 3x currently
* Allegro Pilates (The Club At Spine And Sport Institute, Vero Beach) once weekly has made incredible improvements in my posture and balance
* Blogger daily at first until I found my rhythm, an analysis and journal of success and failure
* The Skinny by Louis Aronne, MD for insights to reorder what and when to eat
* Joe's Goals is set up to open every morning to remind me to track my weight daily

Day 85