Weight loss, 40 and flabby

Okay, I am 40 and flabby. Yes, I need to lose weight. I have needed to lose weight for the last 30 years. Yikes. However, losing weight now seems more important than ever before. The older I get, the less muscle tone I seem to have. I am thick around the middle and I have never been thick there or had any kind of overhang. Even when I weighed 50 pounds more, I was not nearly this flabby.

I feel like it is now or never with losing weight this time. I will entirely lose my shape if I don't do it now. Granted I now have multiple sclerosis (see www.mylifewithms.com) which prohibits me from being as active and mobile as I once was. However, I am working out like crazy with swimming and circuit training (want a kick your butt workout? - try fast-paced circuit training). In years past, I could lose weight in the blink of an eye. And I was firm. Now, I could starve myself for days and I would gain weight. Crazy.

All I can hope is that my body will start shifting again (in a positive direction) and all of my hard work will pay off. I am not going done without a fight!!!

Weight loss and fabulous friends

This is not the blog entry you would expect with that title...

Saturday I went to my fabulous friend Marsha's house for a gathering. You would think I would know better than to do this while trying to lose weight and knowing that it was a dessert-only gala. I know, losing weight and desserts really are a recipe for disaster but I thought nothing of it. I went thinking, no problem, I have control of this situation and I am focused on losing weight.
What a joke.

Clearly, I had not prepared myself for the 8 desserts and two types of chocolate candy that awaited me. I lost my focus of losing weight and dived into the desserts. In fact, 48 hours later I am still eating sweets. The whole event derailed me that much.

Had I prepared myself better and really focused my efforts on staying away from the sweets, I could have kept my losing weight mentality at the forefront of my mind. I could have had the pre-talk with myself about my goals and short-term sacrifice for long term gain. You better believe I won't make that mistake again.

What a great learning!

Losing weight and getting focused!

I have been hyperfocused on just a couple of goals in my continuous quest to lose weight. I have to tell you it is making a huge difference in how I look at losing weight and how I react in situations where my goals are challenged. I have always been a fan of just holding yourself accountable to making a few slight changes and that is it. I believe that the rest will follow, particularly when it comes to losing weight. Here are some of the things I am doing to help me keep focused on my goal of losing weight:

- minimizing the intake of carbs at night (this is not so bad because I know I can eat whatever I want in the morning)
- tracking what I am eating so that I am able to see what I eat (I am eating way too may carbs in general, so now I am focused on eating more protein)

These two things have helped me make much better food choices the rest of the time. If anything, I am much more aware and that stops me from going haywire when I am hungry or wanting to eat late at night. These are little things that are going a long way to help in my goal of losing weight.

Losing Weight and Poisoning Your Body

We are poisoning our bodies with the horrible things we eat. All of the processed food -- refined sugar and white flour as well as the "fake" food is poisoning our body and causing us to gain weight. Packaged and processed meats (lunch meat, hot dogs, etc.) are also not good for our bodies. Our bodies can not process this food. As a result, we are getting sicker and sicker and gaining more weight than ever.

Did you know that we have 40-60% more cancer than we had 100 years ago. We are getting sicker and the only thing that has changed is the quality of food available to us.

When you eat healthy, not only do you contribute to your overall health and well being, you improve your energy level and your mental alertness. You are also trimming up your body and losing weight because you are not eating all of the food that packs on the pounds, forcing you to gain weight.

Isn't this the life you want instead of feeling miserable and bloated? Fuel your temple with good food. Think of it as a machine that you want good performance out of -- and guess what? You'll lose weight, too!

Losing weight...crap in, crap out!

Okay, I am now 40 and have been battling weight loss forever. You would think that I would learn the law of crap in, crap out. This is a continuing saga of how eating junk food not only prohibits you from losing weight but it also just plain makes you feel crappy.

I have been on a chocolate rampage for the last 24 hours -- never something you want to be on if you are trying to lose weight. My fabulous friend gave me a box of the most wonderful chocolates yesterday and I have been celebrating ever since (which is making my stomach puffy). Not only did I wake up feeling like trash (see my other favorite blog www.mylifewithms.com) but I was unable to move freely (I couldn't move enough to work out today).

The other bad effect of this poor decision is that I wanted chocolate first thing today. Again, this is a weight loss plan spiraling out of control. I ate more of the delicious chocolates today plus some yucky M&Ms -- which are somewhat tasty but really full of poor quality ingredients.

So, not only do poor quality food choices lead to more bad choices, but you just feel awful almost immediately after eating. You would think I would get this in my (fat) head and quit doing it. Losing weight can be such a beautiful thing and really a positive move for your body if for nothing at all other than forcing you to feed your body as it was intended to be fed.

Losing Weight and feeling better

Don't you feel so much better when you are thinner and on a path to weight loss? If I am either heavy or gaining weight, I feel miserable. I am tired, lethargic and generally grumpy. It doesn't help that excess weight makes it difficult for me to look good or the way I think I should in clothes. In general, gaining weight and being bigger than you want to be sucks. I am convinced that losing weight is the only way I am going to feel good about myself.

So with that in mind (I will try anything to psych myself into it), today I am going to focus on making better choices for my health. I have a great reason to need to feel better (see www.mylifewithms.com). It is very difficult for me to walk/move when I feel awful. That ought to be reason enough to do my best to feel great.

Losing weight will help me both lose weight and feel great.

What would losing weight do for you?

Weight loss and the cardiac diet

Have you heard of the cardiac diet? It has been around forever to help patients undergoing cardiac surgery to quickly lose weight. It offers the would-be weight loser a rigid, low-calorie menu of small meals with the exception of a huge dinner menu. The bonus is that you get to have vanilla ice cream every night. As part of the weight loss plan, you eat the same three-day plan and then take four days off. Repeat every week.

The beauty of this weight loss plan is that you can drop 5-10 pounds quickly. The bad part is the diet is very boring and you starve all day until dinner. I tried to follow this program to lose weight but I was dying! A friend of mine said she lost weight continously on it so I tried to struggle through it.

It wasn't all bad though. It made me realize how much I was consuming and that I eat a lot of carbs and sugary stuff at night - things you do not want to do if you are trying to lose weight.

So, lesson learned: I can't lose weight under such crazy restrictions but I do have to start cutting back somewhere. I guess where we all cut back is unique to us. We just have to cut back.

Coconut Oil...the weight loss dynamo!

I found out something really interesting about coconut oil and weight loss. I knew coconut oil helped to facilitate weight loss and that the medium chain fatty acids were utilized as energy rather than fat. But what I truly did not know is how your metabolism is affected when you eat coconut oil.

You can actually lose weight by eating coconut oil (see www.coconutoilhealthbenefits.com). There is research that shows after you eat coconut oil even just one time, your metabolism operates at an elevated rate for 24 hours afterward. It is crazy to think that eating a fat actually can help you lose weight.

So when you eat coconut oil, you are fueling a fat-burning machine long after the meal is consumed. Yeah! This is the weight loss answer I have been looking for!