A food diary isn't a bad idea, though how I would work out the food values of, for example, a bowl of homemade tabouli or a sandwich made with corned beef cooked at home, I am not at all sure! (I'd have to do it ingredient by ingredient, and then divide. By then I would have burned off all the calories gained from eating the food! lol) Have you ever tried to write down every penny you spend for a certain period of time, like a month? It can get pretty frustrating! I assume a food diary would be similar. Easier just to stop doing the activity that you're trying to record. :)
Have you thought about keeping a food diary that includes all those little morsels you snack and sip on? I did that once and it's mind boggling, she says as she polishes off the last of a salted nut roll... Yep, husband wanted pizza tonight and that never sits well with me, so I always have to eat something behind it, but then peanuts done sit well either, so what's going in after the peanuts?? Fortunately, most nights aren't like tonight... :-)
I'm off to have a cup of ginger tea to settle my acid reflux because the prescribed PPI's don't do it. All they do is cause brittle bones so my doctor wants to start me on even more medications that come with even more side effects... no, no and no!!!
Oh, I'm certain I can't lose like my husband can, he just thinks "I'd like to lose 15 pounds," and does it. That isn't the way with me. But it seems important for me to realize that the little snacks I will grab when hungry instead of eating anything balanced, probably add up to more than I think. And I'm impressed by his not putting one bite in his mouth when he is dieting if it is not part of a meal. It does fly in the face of sociability to turn down a little taste that someone offers in a friendly way, but that is how he managed to drop a whole size in the waistline. Incidentally, he says he refuses even when I say "It's just one bite," not because he's worried about one bite, but because he will then eat another and another and another, so he has his willpower struggles, too. Anyway, I wonder how many extra calories I pack on in an average day when I snack when hungry. Probably more than I think. :)
Hi, that's good news about the .6 of a pound, at least it's going the right direction! I ignore the many .2's and .4's I've been getting but at .6, now you're getting somewhere! :)
In my case, also good news this morning -- I'm down 1.6 on my scale and am very pleased. This week I didn't eat any big meals, and it seems to have paid off. We had homemade split pea soup two nights for dinner, and one night just a big bowl of tabouli (again, homemade) and especially the tabouli meal was great for results. I even ate some halvah and it didn't take me back up (or, I had lost even more weight and the sweet halvah didn't replace all of what I had lost).
This takes me nearly three pounds into that last stubborn ten I've been working on for a year. When we began these challenges I was 15 pounds higher than I like to be and have never been that high before. The first five pounds went away with basic dietary rules and common sense, but the rest, probably since it has been there the longest, evidently has no intention of going without a fight. Doubtless my metabolism isn't what it used to be. So there is nothing for it but facing that I have to reduce my intake to come up with the same result. I've heard that as we age we should adjust our diet not only to meet health challenges but also just because we need less food. You could prove it by me.
I saw my doctor last week, and she ran a lot of tests, all of which came in at "normal." My HMO is such that if you get normal tests, they don't pay any attention to you again. But my legs are still hurting, and now a specific left-leg and lower back pain (that I suspect might be sciatica) that I've had off and on for months is coming on even more strongly. It's no fun to be told you are normal when you hurt and can't run more than a half a block. I'm going to work on the suspected sciatica by looking for exercises on the Internet, but I'm also going to call my doc back and explain that no matter what the tests say about how I should be feeling, I'm not feeling normal. My legs are like lead when walking up the stairs. (She did rule out peripheral neuropathy, whew!, but something more closely resembling a diagnosis would be nice, not just ruling things out.)
Anyway, that's my week. I think I'll go have some more of that great tabouli. lol