Final Thoughts II

Well Amy, it’s been fun!  Thanks for being a sport and taking this ride with me!  And congrats on your 2 pounds!  Here are my final thoughts (for now).  I also lost 2 pounds but then gained back a half leaving me with a net loss of 1.5 pounds for the month.  That was discouraging.  But that was also with little exercise other than dog walking and less than optimal health for the month and mega (job) stress.  I’ll take the loss…I just hoped for more.

I spent a lot of time in my head on Saturday wondering about good food and bad food and the realities of continuing long term with so few carbs.  It’s hard for me to demonize fruits and veggies and potatoes.  Oh, I love potatoes.

I came away from that talk with myself with an appreciation for what I have learned in the past 7 or 8 months of blog/book-reading & podcast listening.  I no longer look at soy as a health food.  I know why Crisco is bad for you and butter is good.  I know that food closer to how God made it is best for us, and that processed foods should not be our norm.

I’d like to continue to lose weight in November, though I know it will be a small and slow loss, as per my usual.  I’d like to maintain my loss in December so that I don’t end up losing ground before resolution-making time.  I’d like to eat real food keeping an eye on the carbohydrate intake, but not being dogmatic about it.  If I eat something sweet and delicious, I would like it to be something that my great-grandmother would have baked in her kitchen, or picked from her orchard (if she had an orchard!).  I would like to continue to spend the extra money to ensure that my meat & poultry are grass-fed/free range or at least hormone and antibiotic free.  I’m going to try to eat 3 meals per day and cut back on the snacks, and really, really work on my sleep.  

Thanks again to all of our readers (do we have readers??) for following along and as a final thought, I’d like to encourage others to try this – you never know what you might learn about yourself along the way!

Final Thoughts

Well, it’s over, and to be perfectly honest, I was horrible this past week! Too much Halloween candy.  And to make it worse, I haven’t been exercising AT ALL! Which is totally not like me.  But I wake up super early, get wrapped up in “work” aka Blogging, and I don’t stop all day.  I find it hard to pull myself away to exercise, or even eat for that matter.

Despite that, here are things I was true to:

I lost 2 lbs!  That may not seem like much, but those two pounds are actually ones that haven’t returned!  I started this experiment i think at 123, and I’ve been 121 for the last two weeks!

• I didn’t eat any whole grains the whole month!  This is a HUGE breakthrough for me! Even if I start eating oatmeal again, I don’t think it will be hard to never eat bread or pasta again!  I really think this alone has helped me keep the weight down, despite not exercising.
• I stopped killing myself with the cardio!  Well, it did help that the marathon was over, but I think I was finally able to let go of two pounds because I wasn’t “conserving” the fat for those long stinkin runs.

So, those are the two changes I’m sticking with, and I’m lightening up on the rest of the stuff.  Less grains and no bread… plus less long cardio sessions.

Thanks for the challenge Mindy! I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) have done this without you!