Long Bones

Take this optical illusion:

Now you know, even if your eyes deceive you that the center circle is the same size in both pictures, right? Because otherwise it wouldn’t be an optical illusion. Use the same principal when you are dishing up dinner. Pretend that the circle in the center is your food and the perimeter around the outside circles is the edge of your plate. One potato on a small plate looks bigger than one potato on a big plate.

Brian Wansink, Ph.D., the author of Mindless Eating (which I highly highly recommend and nobody paid me to say that) goes into this in detail. Unfortunately I lent my copy of the book to Shondar so I can’t quote him exactly, but it is scientifically proven that you eat less if you eat off small plates.

In my house the salad plates are always dirty first, followed by the bowls. I do have to warn you about eating from bowls though, what they lack in diameter they make up for in depth most of the time, so if you eat from bowls make sure they’re shallow.

I wouldn’t exactly call this an indian summer – it isn’t particularly summery here. But I’ll be damned if it isn’t above freezing and not even thinking about snowing. It is crazy nice. I seriously have never seen Fairbanks this warm and pretty this late in the year. Keep up the good work, global warming!

Starting Weight: 280
Current Weight: 204.4
Total Loss: 75.6

Last week I said “If you all notice I really didn’t lose a lot of weight this week – under two pounds. Remember what I said last Tuesday about cycles? I won’t lose any weight for about a week and then I should have a sharp drop at the beginning of next week.”

I totally called it.

Because of hormones and my personal cycle I dropped all of .4 pounds this week. Now if I had just started losing weight and hadn’t been weighing myself on a daily basis for over a year I would be getting really frustrated about now. A whole week of nada and a completely irritable mood to boot? Heck no!!

But I’ve been doing this for a while and I didn’t even get a little freaked out this week, even with the crazy bad mood.

Sooooo, moral of the story, and I know I’m repeating myself, but DON’T FREAK OUT!! The weight will come off as long as you keep eating low cal and exercising.

This article for instance: http://food.theatlantic.com/food-wire/fat-stigma-and-the-nj-governors-race.php.

I had a bingy day yesterday. Most of the time I’m the Mary Poppins of calorie counting – practically perfect in every way. For weeks I’ll go without busting through my allotted calories per day. And then I’ll have a day like yesterday.

To be fair, I think I may have been eating too little since I started exercising more frequently. Unfortunately the exercise tracker at www.livestrong.com says you burn way way way more calories than you actually do with exercise so I’ve been estimating. And I’ve been really tired lately (clue 1). And I’ve had these weird cravings which I don’t normally get (clue 2). And then yesterday I had a lot of chips and nacho cheese dip. As Nelly, Aulika or Jess could tell you – I hate fake cheese. Absolutely abhor velveeta, american slices or cheese whiz. Anything that has the phrase “Pasturized Processed Food Product.”

And yet I noshed on the bright orange monstrosity as if I was about to go into hibernation.

I believe the moral of the story is for me: eat more good stuff and you’ll eat less bad stuff. Pretty simple. I hope.

So as you may have noticed this blog is very new and I’m not doing with it what I thought I was going to do with it. Truth be told I am a very good cook, but it turns out I’m a seat of my pants type girl – I assess what I’ve got in my fridge and cupboards, figure out how to make it taste its best and then toss it into a pot. Not exactly the stuff of great recipes. Plus with all this structure I have been neglecting actually telling my stories, letting you know who I am via my experiences.

Shondar and I went on a small (3 mile) hike on Saturday and I really liked this scene in person…too bad my camera is an iphone!

Ballaine Lake

To be fair, it was only after I dropped those first forty pounds that I became a calorie counting convert. The thing with counting calories is that you become very aware of your habits and your vices very quickly. It is enlightening.

Of course this tip has other important factors in weight-loss wrapped up into it. I’m thinking of portion control specifically. After all, how are you supposed to measure how much you are eating if you can’t tell a cup from an ounce?

First, I don’t really actually bother to check portion sizes on not-starchy veggies and greens. Seriously, take spinach. Wonderful yummy awesome spinach is 7 calories per cup. So I’m going to eyeball it.

Anything more calorie dense, such as grains, proteins, fruit, chocolate, starchy or fatty vegetables, drinks – juice, soda and alcohol, dairy and cooking fat.

Some things will surprise you. For instance, say you’re being very conscientious about your diet and you’ve switched from coke to cranberry juice. Good for you! Cranberry juice has lots of vitamins and nutrients and all of that. But when you start looking at calories – 12 ounces of coke has 140 calories – 12 ounces of cranberry juice has 210 calories. One third more than the coke!

I’m not saying don’t drink cranberry juice! I’m saying be aware of how much you’re drinking over the course of a day.

There are lots of good websites out there for counting calories. I am a devotee of www.livestrong.com. A google search will help you find the one that’s best for you.

Starting Weight: 280
Current Weight: 204.8
Pounds Lost: 75.2

Modest weight loss this week but I still feel pretty good about myself. I was in a mini-challenge with my livestrong group to walk/swim/bike/run/etc. 10 miles over the weekend and I ended up taking it to 11. Sorry, bad joke, but true story. Didn’t spend any time at the gym but I’m okay with that considering I walked 11 miles.

If you all notice I really didn’t lose a lot of weight this week – under two pounds. Remember what I said last Tuesday about cycles? I won’t lose any weight for about a week and then I should have a sharp drop at the beginning of next week.

I hope its enough to get me under 200.

This one comes from the lovely fit Nelly Plum

Congratulations on your decision to lose weight and begin a more healthy lifestyle!

I would like to share a simple exercise that can be done at the gym or at home, even while you are watching tv. It requires no equipment, although it can be done with a stability ball. It is called a Bridge, or a Glute Bridge, and works both your abdominal muscles and your gluteal muscles, helping to build a strong core.

Lie on your back on an exercise mat or the floor in a bent-knee position with your feet flat on the floor. Place your feet hip-width apart with your toes facing away from you. Gently contract your abdominal muscles to flatten your low back into the floor. Imagine you are pulling your belly-button into the floor. Try to maintain this gentle muscle contraction throughout the exercise.

Gently exhale while holding your abdominal contraction and press your hips upward off the floor by contracting your glutes (butt muscles). At the same time press your heels into the floor for more stability. Keep your spine straight, not curved. Maintaining your abdominal contraction helps avoid excessive arching in your low back.

Inhale and slowly lower yourself back towards your starting position. Repeat 10 times, rest for 60 seconds, then repeat sequence. See if you can do three sets.

Try it with a stability ball. You may put the ball against a wall for more stability while you are learning this exercise. Instead of putting your feet flat on the floor, lie on your back with the backs of your calves on top of the ball, then proceed as above, pushing your hips up off the floor.