Selfish Mom

A typical, 1,180 calorie day

Apr 21, 2009 Weight Loss

1,200 calories a day

It’s been almost six weeks since I started limiting myself to 1,200 calories a day in an attempt to lose some more weight.  I’ve changed my mind a few times about what my latest goal is, but at the rate I’m going I could be at exactly the weight I was when I first got pregnant (more than eight years ago) sometime in July.  Now, by the time I got pregnant, I was already about 20 pounds more than I wanted to be, but I was still a heck of a lot smaller than I am now.  So I think that’s good for my next goal.

In this latest round of what I’ve decided to call the “Get your ass off of the couch and stop eating like a pig” plan, there were seven days when I ate more than 1,500 calories, and three of those were over 2,500.  The rest of the days were very close to 1,200 calories.  I’ve lost just shy of 11 pounds.  I even managed to lose one pound during my recent trip to Buffalo, which has never ever happened (I usually gain a couple of pounds just by getting on the Thruway and pointing the car west).

My Food Diary

I’ve written and talked several times about a “typical” day for me food-wise, and since yesterday was in most ways a typical day, I thought I’d give you a snapshot of what yesterday was like.  I keep track of what I eat with an online food diary, MyFoodDiary.com.  (I have absolutely no connection to them, except that they’ve been charging $9 a month to my Visa for the past few years.)  Even when I wasn’t actually limiting my calories, I swear to you that just keeping track of it all kept me from gaining more.

So here’s what yesterday looked like.  The green shaded squares mean I did something good.  The red shaded squares, not so much.

At the end of the day I only ended up with two red squares.  One was for going under 1,200 calories.  I seriously doubt that missing by 20 calories is going to damage my health.  The other red square was for sodium.  In all the years I’ve been using MyFoodDiary, that square has never been anything but red.  I eat a lot of frozen and packaged foods, and they’re all chock full of sodium.  I don’t care.  I have absolutely no problem with my blood pressure.  It’s in the “excellent” range, even though I’ve done nothing to earn this.  I can also eat as much cholesterol as I want.  The crappy genes that made me hairy threw me a bone with salt and cholesterol.

So, that’s how I do it.  Yesterday’s calories were a bit heavier in the afternoon than usual (more often than not I make it to dinner with more than half of my calories still available), since I put over 100 calories worth of croutons on my salad.  I was just in the mood.

The challenges ahead

This week will be hard, because I’m supposed to get my period at the end of the week, so I’ll be saving up water.  (I don’t really understand why this happens.  I’m guessing that eating less sodium would help the situation, but I really don’t care what my ankles look like under my jeans.)  I weigh myself every morning, and I get very motivated seeing the numbers go steadily down.  This week, they won’t.  So I have to keep reminding myself that I’ll get a big drop towards the end of next week.

Originally posted on Selfish Mom

Tags: My Food Diary, Weight Loss