How I throw it away

I am definitely not perfect at this, but these are some strategies I use. The self-talk I use to throw out food is "I'll eat this again." At a restaurant when I have food left over and am full, I toss it (no doggie-bag) because "I'll eat there again." Plus I don't have a dog so I don't need a doggie-bag. I think somewhere in my brain I get the idea that, "If I don't eat it now or save it for later, then I won't ever have it again for the rest of eternity." That isn't true, the truth is I can have it later when I will enjoy it, rather than now when I am too full to enjoy it.

Having said that, I do like to give food away to others when I can and the food is in condition for someone else to enjoy. Most of the time the food ends up in the garbage or down the sink disposal. It seems wasteful to throw it out but really, it does no good to continue to eat something your body does not need.

So the situation starts with leftover food, then I start to think, "This leftover food was good so I should eat more of it or put it in a bag for 'later' (usually five minutes later). This was expensive so it is wasteful to get rid of it plus I want to get my money's worth; good thing I have a hollow leg." Immediately I STOP that thought pattern and CHALLENGE the truth of it, the thinking is always false: 

• I don't need more because I ate plenty,
• I don't need it "later"; I have eaten the calories I need for the meal and will have meals ready "later" to eat.
  
• No one else needs to have it "later", that is why it is leftover. Everyone is done with it and meals will be prepared "later" for when we are hungry again.
• It was good and I can make it (or have it) again later when I can enjoy it the most.
• Just because it wasn't all eaten, doesn't mean it wasn't "very good". Sometimes it was just "very rich" and people were satisfied with a small amount. I can make less next time.

Then I FOCUS on what I should do instead. 

• I don't need access to this food anymore, it can be given away or tossed in the garbage. If I can't think of a specific person to give it to, it is probably better to just get rid of it.
  
• By throwing it out I can clean up all the dishes to keep the house clean, and it is easier to clean off plates before stale food gets stuck to them.
• When at a restaurant I think, "By throwing out the food, I don't have to carry it around and carry it home in the car, or store it in the fridge. I can come back to eat here again another time. I got my money's worth because I am full and enjoyed the meal."

Some dishes use a lot of ingredients and make more than the portions I need for one meal. If I make a meal that has a large portion (like chili), I put away the extra portion at the start of the meal, not the end. I planned on making extra for lunch so I take out the lunch portion before I serve it so that I indeed have the lunch portion I planned to make.

Tenth Tuesday weigh-in

228.0 lb

Loss of 1.0lb from last week. My goal was to lose 6.5 more lb to weigh 222 lb on January 27th

Finally, down a pound. It would have been more but I discovered Rebecca's hidden stash of Pure Cane sugar Dr Pepper from Waco, TX. That stuff is so good! I did well on staying away from store bought candy, but I did splurge some on Rebecca's homemade-from-scratch chocolate birthday cake with ice cream and Hannah's cherry pie Sunday. I threw some cake away so I would not eat it. I also did well on workouts, missing one workout of six on Monday. I am slowly adding back in weight lifting, I was so sore just from lifting upper body that I am waiting to start lower body. Rebecca is so helpful but I really need to step it up because she is getting me out of bed every morning during the week. That won't happen once the baby arrives and I really need for my exercise to continue because, once I stop, it is months before I finally start up again.

One big challenge is sleep, when I play video games until 3:00 AM; I can't get up to workout in the morning and my sleep schedule is thrown off. I probably don't help my goals by staying up so late but I will be grumpy if I never get to relax and play games. Life is not as good without junk food and video games occasionally.

Since I have not been losing at the pace I was hoping, I am again revising my goal to compensate for lost time. New goal is 222 lb by February 17th. which is slightly less than 2 lb per week. My plan to accomplish this is to eat only what is served on my plate (no second trips, no finishing Eleanor's food.) I think it is going to be neat to compare the Tuesday I started with the Tuesday next November 52 weeks from then.

Today in Church people were smiling at me

Then my neighbor came up and said, "Hey saw your picture on the front page today you looked like superman with your arms out, ha ha."

Rebecca and I went to the Lehi Legacy Center Saturday to get our 20% off membership discount and the line was huge, even 15 minutes before 10:00AM. It took us a good 5 minutes to even park and we had to stalk someone to their car to get the spot.

I took Eleanor around the booths and we stopped at the free body fat test. I had to take off one shoe and sock, then with taped on electrodes to my right hand and foot, hold my arms out to the sides for the test. Which is the exact moment someone decided a picture needed to be taken. So I spent 3 hours in Church waiting to get home to check if I could find the picture. I was happy with the test results as they were much lower than my home Tanita body fat scale reports. So my official body fat is 23.5% still unhealthy but only 10% away. Plus my photo is now being used to sell newspapers, can't complain.

Ninth Tuesday weigh-in

229.0 lb

No gain or loss from last week. My goal is to lose 7.5 lb to weigh 222 lb by January 29th.

Yikes three weeks with no change! Well here is some good news for myself, my body fat as of today is 29%, I started at 32% so that is a loss of 3% since 11/11/2008 and is actually what I set for my original goal! So I started with ~75.68 lb of fat on me, now I have ~66.41 lb of fat on me, which equates to a loss of ~9.27 lb of fat. So I have proof of burning ~32,000 calories more than I have consumed the past nine weeks because 1lb of fat is 3500 calories. So that works out to be about 3500 calories per week which is right about 1 lb of fat a week, nine weeks, nine pounds lost... it's crazy how this math all adds up!

I think I am going to stay away from store-bought candy for a while as that is one of my weaknesses that I think is holding me back from losing as much as I would like. Not that homemade cookies and ice cream is the key to weight loss success either. At least with homemade I'll overeat on the best tasting calories.

Eighth Tuesday weigh-in

229.0 lb

No gain or loss from last week. My goal is to lose 7.5 lb to weigh 222 lb by January 29th.

Good news is I am back on the exercise bandwagon having exercised 6 times in the past 7 days. Bad news is I ate enough to compensate for the exercise hitting two restaurants last week, JCW's and Olive Garden. I could have eaten half-portions but didn't and that may have been the difference. That, or eating way too much junk food while playing Fallout 3 and Dead Rising on the XBOX.

Seventh Tuesday weigh-in

229.0 lb

Gain of 0.5 lb from last week. Net loss of 7.5 lbs My revised goal is to lose an additional 7 lbs to weigh 222 lbs, by January 29th. The revision is necessary as it is no longer realistic to lose the weight by my original date of January 6th.

I am actually happy with this considering how much junk I ate last week and how I exercised only once (if you don't count snow shoveling.) I am not happy that my goal date slipped; I like to do what I say I am going to do unless circumstances beyond my control prevent it. This case I am in control and did not plan and focus enough on my goal as the weeks progressed to reach it. For me it requires daily thoughts and planning to be successful, slip up one day and it is 3 or more days before I get back on track again.

I got to do better with exercise and food this week because I will cut off a limb before I weigh 230 lb again.

One update I am excited about, the $75 in-wall HDMI cable in the basement is working perfectly with my XBOX360, WHAAAHOOO! All I needed was to hook up a $20 HDMI booster I got on amazon.com properly and bingo.

Now I need to decide what kind of receiver and sound system to put down there, and build some shelves for it... along with finishing the garage so I can park in it again, moving the office downstairs, start my million dollar business, and convert the old office into a room for the baby.

I should not have looked this up

Sometimes ignorance is bliss. So stop reading now if you want to remain that way and enjoy soda pop guilt free. Linc made the offhand comment that 64 oz looked like about the same size as a two liter bottle... so today I looked it up...

Google says:

64 US fluid ounces = 1.89270589 liters

So yes a 64 oz cup is almost an entire 2 liter bottle of soda (~95% of a 2 liter).

Doing some more math...

64 oz of Dr Pepper is 800 calories, 213 grams ( over 2/3 cup ) of high fructose corn syrup (sugar), and 354 mg caffeine.

64 oz of Vault is 928 calories, 250 grams ( 1 cup ) of high fructose corn syrup (sugar), and 370 mg caffeine .

I have consumed more than two 64 oz sodas in addition to eating candy and bags of Kettle chips several times this week (that is equivalent to over 1 1/3 cups of sugar and nearly 1 full gram of caffeine from just soda). My hopes are not high for tomorrow's weigh in. You reap what you sow... as they say.

What I plan to do in the future is limit my soda intake to one day a week (or less) and supplement soda with water if I am still thirsty after drinking all 64 oz.