Category Archives: Accountability

Self-honesty

Accountability, Cravings, Habits, Motivation, Thought Patterns

Fatigue: Success Saboteur

May 15, 2013 dotyness Leave a comment

I. Am. Exhausted.

Starting any new endeavor takes an enormous amount of energy, and it doesn’t matter what kind of endeavor it is: weight loss, new job, new baby, new puppy, new home, whatever. You know this. I know this. Of course, there is knowing and there is KNOWING.

With my new professional position, I am moving into a state of KNOWING.

New knowledge, friends, clients, situations, and experiences are invigorating; however, I am a middle-aged woman, not the battery bunny. Long hours away from home are wearing me out and are beginning to have some not-so-great effects, a few of which I noticed yesterday:

overeating,
bad food choices, and
over-analysis head trash.

My body is tired. But, because it doesn’t know that I’m doing this on purpose, it is now beginning to register the fatigue as a threat to survival. As a threat response, it’s telling me that it needs more food. My hunger alarms are blaring like it’s a London air raid and I need to Keep Calm and Get My Fanny into the Tube. I know that the threat is not real; however, my basic life functions don’t and right now they are buying all the air time and running commercials for food in my brain.

And the commercials they are running are not for apples, mangoes and lean meats, either. No, sirree! I’m getting messages that my organism is in danger and we need high calorie items! It’s like the old drive-in commercials: I’ve got peanut butter cups, ice cream pints, and pastries dancing across my mental screen. My conscious mind knows that the danger isn’t real, but my brain is still creating massive carbohydrate cravings.

My brain is also thinking too much. It is my nature to over-analyze. You can stop reading now because I’m certain you don’t deal with this same issue (yes, I’m rolling my eyes). I was doing a mental post-mortem driving home after an event last night. I concluded that during the evening, I had likely developed a bad case of what my mother always called Diarrhea of the Mouth.

Speaking with these three really nice women, I realized that I was probably talking non-stop, but I could not shut up! A good conversation partner talks, then listens. A poor conversation partner talks, then talks, then waits until it’s their turn to talk again. I’m pretty sure I was the latter, not the former. Laura, Linda, Katherine: I promise that I will bring duct tape to the next function and you can just slap a strip on me when I start running off like that again. My apologies, ladies.

Alienating people is bad; but, that’s really not the big, long-term danger for me. The real danger was in berating myself as a boor on the way home. The head trash – I’m a jerk, nobody likes me, I might as well go in the backyard and eat worms – will sabotage any and every effort, whether social, personal, external, or internal. Just like I said yesterday, I have to recognize that the trash is there and pluck it out before it does damage.

At the moment, I am not so tired that I don’t know the source of my hunger, cravings or self-doubts. Because I know the source, I can (and, really, must) correct it. I must address the fatigue before it causes some real harm. I must take care of me.

Now, for those who have nodded your heads throughout this piece, who is taking care of you?

Accountability, Exercise

Accountability and The Double Dog Dare

May 3, 2013 dotyness 1 Comment

My thoughts today are short and saucy.

A childhood friend is a chaplin in the Army and is currently deployed. His self-imposed deployment goal was to run 400 miles. He is 160 miles closer to his goal and was just challenged to start over and join the 300 club. His Facebook status question this morning was if he should just continue on with his own goal or start over. I encouraged him to start over. Perhaps he would inspire someone else and cause a ripple in the pond, as it were. He responded that I should remember that he is old. I responded with some tacky smack talk. Then, I offered to join him.

My knee may not let me run 300 miles in the next four months:but, I can walk it. So, here’s my challenge to you: walk 300 miles with me. Between today, 3 May 2013 and 3 September 2013, run or walk 300 miles. Take monetary pledges and donate them to your favorite charity. Keep track with an exercise app. Do it on the QT and use the satisfaction of knowing you did it to quietly encourage yourself or someone else. Just do it.

If you would like to participate, email me at runningwithronnie@yahoo.com. Give me either your real name or a user name, whether you want to run or walk, and anything else you want to share. Then, send me updates on Fridays. I’ll post the information you want to share and I’ll share it with Ronnie, as well. Encourage him, encourage yourself and let’s do something fun.

I double dog dare you.

Accountability, Cravings, Food, Habits, Thought Patterns

Get Thee Behind Me, Little Debbie

May 1, 2013 dotyness Leave a comment

We had another lunch training session at work yesterday and after The Foolish Cookie Incident, I actually started being a little concerned about the boxed lunches a whole 24 hours prior. I was worried about losing another dual to a baked good.

Boxed lunches arrived and I had a great sliced turkey sandwich. I ditched the top piece of bread and enjoyed it open-faced. The chip bags were the big single servings (you know – the ones that aren’t really single servings); so, I ate a quarter of those. The fruit cup was great. The pasta salad looked good, but I chose not to eat bread and pasta at the same meal. So far, so good. Enter the brownie.

The Brownie. Four square inches of moist, chocolaty wonder, liberally dusted with white chocolate shavings. If you’re quiet, you can hear the angels sing.

During my Monday Menu Musings, I had explained my problem with the cookie to a coworker. I just didn’t know if I could face another one down. At high noon in the bakery, I’m pretty sure that chocolate walnut disc was going to be the faster draw. That’s when this Great American Woman stepped in and offered to take the bullet for me.

Appearing to be very athletic and fit, she offered, nay, she demanded that I give the cookie to her. That kind of sacrifice just brings a tear to your eye, doesn’t it? Such a sweet woman! Of course, I must hate her on principle because she’s beautiful and can still fit into her clothes after eating 440 calorie cookies, but she’s still sweet.

Temptation is everywhere, all day, all the time, smiling at us from the snack shelf wearing a Nannette Fabray grin and a cowgirl hat. We can’t get rid of it; so, we have to find effective ways of dealing with it. After opening the lunch box, I put the brownie behind the lid so that I couldn’t see it. I left it out of sight until I could run out of there to give it to Rene. At an event last night, I stood with my back to the M&Ms on an exhibitor’s table. Although out of sight doesn’t mean out of mind, it does make it easier. Having healthful alternatives close to hand is also good.

I’m not trying to tell you that some hummus and baby carrots are better than an oatmeal creme pie because that would just be crazy talk; however, I am telling you that we don’t have to let Swiss cake rolls determine our fates. Although I ate an oatmeal raisin cookie at that event, it was my only gastronomic sin of the day. At worst, the net effect of that cookie was break even.

And, sometimes, that’s good enough.

Accountability, Motivation

Monday Morning…um….Yellows

April 22, 2013 dotyness 4 Comments

Confession. Last Monday, I wasn’t annoyed that the scales showed no weight loss. I was annoyed because they showed a seven pound gain! I knew that wasn’t valid; however, I was still all kinds of irritated. If you’ll notice, as of today, 22 April 2013, the weight loss counter shows a total loss of only six pounds. So, yes, last Monday, the scales showed that for all of my efforts, I had gained a pound.

This morning, the scales show me back down at the six pound total loss. I promise that from this point forward, I will be 100% honest with you about the scale results. I didn’t want to do that last week, however, because I knew that the numbers were flawed and I knew that if I pushed through, they would correct. However, if you are just starting your weight loss journey, that kind of information could just torpedo the whole project right there – or, at least, it would have for me in times past.

So, I’m back to square two, and that’s not such a bad place to be. The momentum is heading in the right direction and the things I did last week worked; so, I will continue doing those this week:

I drank LOTS of water – in the form of water or coffee, I drank at least 8 pints a day.
I kept my wheat portions down to no more than two in the whole week. I satisfied my grain needs with steel cut oats. This week, I will add a little brown rice.
I ate no more than two fruit servings per day.
I got in at least four hours of exercise this week that included five days. I’ll be honest, a couple of those days were kind of phone-in efforts. This week, I add that I will get in four hours of exercise that include me getting sweaty and include at least five days.

As ever for those of us with chronic, self-esteem related weight issues, the keys are:

modify my behavior. To get different results, I must do different things.
(and this is most important) DO NOT ALLOW OLD, NEGATIVE THINKING PATTERNS TO DEFEAT ME.

I will continue to be my own best friend and defender rather than my own worst enemy.

Accountability, Exercise

A Calculated Walk in the Park

April 17, 2013 dotyness 3 Comments

My exercise yesterday was shopping. I know. That doesn’t count. Actually, it does. I walked around the store for over 90 minutes. For 90 minutes I was walking, not sitting, While it wasn’t strenuous exercise for me, it would have counted had I been at the part; so, it counts when I was in Target.

Now, my walk in the park with the pups on Monday was considerably more strenuous. We walked 2 miles at 3.7 mph. Now, you know that math is not my best subject; so, how do I know that’s how fast we walked? I have an app on my phone called Cardio Trainer. The free version tracks how far and how fast I go using my phone’s GPS. It gives me updates along the walk or run to let me know how far I’ve gone. Using the weight I’ve input, it also tells me how many calories I burned and it equates those calories to something I can relate to. The walk on Monday burned two pears’ worth of calories!

It allows me to input all my workouts manually to track everything I do. It will also keep track of all my walks over time; so, in a month or so, it will tell me how far I’ve walked in total and how that relates to my region. By the end of summer, I will have walked to Chattanooga and back, two or more miles at a time, without ever leaving home!

Cardio Trainer has an associated food diary app called Noom. I downloaded that free version last night and will let you know how that goes.

As I told you earlier, I used LoseIt to lose weight before and I’ve been using MyFitnessPal this time. The more I use MyFitnessPal, the less impressed I am, actually. The food diary seems really random and disorganized. That’s such a shame! I had such high hopes for it.

I know there are tons of these programs out there. What are you all using and what do you think of it?

Accountability, Exercise, Motivation

Monday Morning Blues

April 15, 2013 dotyness Leave a comment

So, I weighed in this morning expecting at least a pound lost and….no. Nada. Nothing. C’mon! As long as I’ve been doing this and as many real causes as my mind can give, this still frustrates me, particularly at 5 AM.

I’ve run into this several times during this last couple of years. Here are some possible culprits:

The fact that I’m a woman in child-bearing years. Girls, you know what I’m talking about. Did you know that we can retain as much as nearly five pounds of water? I feel like a camel.
Too much wheat. My first week at my new job saw me eating about 10 meals of Cheerios and a couple of meals that involved mini bagels. While my calorie counts were okay, too many of those calories were supplied by wheat. I don’t know if all the studies are valid; so, I don’t know that wheat causes weight gain. I just know that, for me, too much wheat makes me feel bloated.
Too much fruit. When I first switched my food choices and when I’ve had to pull myself back onto the wagon, I found that eating a lot of fruit during those first weeks was really helpful with cravings. I had quite a bit of refined sugar in my diet, which just wreaks havoc with my blood sugar. To help me stay with healthful food choices, I replaced the refined sugars with fruit, then decreased the amount of fruit to cut overall sugar consumption. It’s time for me to cut my fruit consumption down to two servings a day. I’ve seen diet plans that recommend that you not eat apples. Apples are actually VERY helpful for me. They are sweet, colorful, crunchy, and full of both fiber and flavor; so, they satisfy my appetite in several ways. You just have to try it for yourself and see how your body does with them.
No enough exercise. I have pretty much been wiped out when I get home at night and have not been getting any movement in. That simply won’t do. For my weight, for my heart, for my muscles, for my bones – I must exercise.

So, what are my solutions and goals for this week?

Nothing much I can do about that whole girl thing but wait it out and drink a lot of water to keep my system flushing.
I have to reduce my wheat intake. This week, I will have no more than two servings of wheat. I will satisfy my grain requirements with oats, brown rice and quinoa.
I will have no more than two fruit servings per day.
I will get in at least four hours of exercise this week that will include at least five days.

If we are connected on MyFitnessPal, you can hold me accountable for my exercise – and I EXPECT YOU TO! If you don’t see me moving during the week, send me a little nudge. If we are not connected on MyFitnessPal, why aren’t we? Connect with me and let me know your goals and how you’re doing. Let’s help each other.

The keys to breaking through this stall are:

modify my behavior. To get different results, I must do different things.
(and this is most important) DO NOT ALLOW OLD, NEGATIVE THINKING PATTERNS TO DEFEAT ME.

I have been my own worst enemy. It is long past time I became my own best friend and defender.

Accountability, Food, Habits

Accountability To Myself

April 3, 2013 dotyness Leave a comment

I Ate What?

Like I said, I had no clue what I was eating. I was astounded to find out and I found our using a very simple tool – a food diary.

The one I used was LoseIt!.

You can find it at LoseIt.com and they have a great app for your smart phone. You can log your food and your exercise either online or on your phone; so, there’s no excuse not to get things input. I used their free version which has a few deficits. I don’t know what the features are for their paid version are.

Their food database is extensive with lots of restaurant foods included. I can scan bar codes for a super fast input and can add my own foods and recipes. Since I make my own spaghetti gravy, I have to calculate each ingredient individually, then figure out the nutrients per serving. As long as I make it the same way every time (fat chance), I have to do that only once.

Their exercise database is also pretty extensive and it allows me to add my own, as well. However, the exercise duration times are only in blocks of five minutes. If you’re maintaining your weight or if you are exercising for a couple of hours a day (yikes), fudging a minute or two is no big deal in the larger scheme of things. BUT, when I first started, I could run only a couple of minutes. I could manage only ten or so sit-ups and, by golly, I wanted every drop of sweat to count. This app (at least the free version) didn’t let me account for that.

The one I’m going to use this time is MyFitnessPal.

I’ve played with their free version a little bit, but I’m still not totally familiar with it. Like LoseIt, I can log my information either online or on my phone.

Their food database is also extensive and includes lots of restaurant foods. The one issue I’ve encountered is that there are sometimes duplicate entries for the same item. The duplicate entries may list different nutritional value for the same item. I normally choose the entry with the highest caloric value. Even if my calorie count then ends up artificially high for that day making it look like I ate at least my minimum calories when I didn’t, that error won’t happen every day; so, it’s not like my long-term progress is going to get knocked off track. While LoseIt also tracks carb, protein and fat calories consumed, it doesn’t tell me which categories I’m light and heavy on. MyFitnessPal does and I like that. I like being able to look at my daily summary and see that I need to concentrate on vegetables at my next meal. This app also allows me to add my own recipes so that next time I cook up a big old batch of Peel-a-Pound soup, it’s already in the database.

Their exercise database is also extensive and lets me add my own. The real plus here is that I can count every. single. minute. of exercise. I don’t have to do five minutes of sit-ups, two minutes will count. They won’t count for much, but they will count. As my friend Trish says, “Ounces make pounds.” Calories ingested or burned account for ounces on or off. Each one counts.

Both of these programs allow me to share my exercise and my weight loss (or gain) via Facebook and Twitter. I really like that. My friends and family have been an invaluable cheering section throughout my process. It’s like a group weight loss program stacked with a group of people who already love me. It’s great!!! (By the way, neither site posts your actual weight. I was a little worried about thaton account of I was a big girl.)

I would like to be able to change the caloric value for restaurant foods, but neither application allows me to do that. For instance, if I order a Cobb salad at Chili’s, but I ask them to hold the cheese, croutons and dressing, my salad is going to have fewer calories than the one listed in the database. To get an accurate count, I would need to measure the remaining ingredients and build a recipe, which is just not going to happen sitting there in the dining area. It would be nice if the salad in the database had check boxes underneath for all ingredients. You could check the ones you didn’t eat and the calorie count would adjust accordingly. I’m sure that’s an absurd amount of programing work or maybe their paid versions already let you do that. Hey! If you know, tell me!

Also, if you use, have used or know of another food diary (besides a note pad and pen, please) share it with us!

The big thing with these applications is that they are effective only as long as you use them and are honest with yourself. If you ate two cups of Cheerios rather than the 3/4 cup serving listed, then count that. That fish stick you ate to clean off your child’s plate must show up in your diary. Lying to ourselves and/or being oblivious about what we eat is one of the reasons we can’t zip our pants now!

Together, let’s be honest with and accountable to ourselves in all things. Nobody else has to know ; however, we are worth that attention! Let’s make sure we get it.

Accountability, Habits, Motivation

Commitment Doesn’t Have A Past Tense

April 2, 2013 dotyness 3 Comments

Noticeable weight loss — (L) May 2011; (R) March 2012

Neither does accountability; but……..

All in all, I lost 80 or so pounds with my lifestyle change – from a size 20 to a size 6. I went from eating garbage to eating clean, nutritious foods. I went from feeling like I had sludge in my veins to feeling light, clear and powerful. I went from refrigerator squats to kickboxing three times a week, running, and rock-climbing. Then, life happened.

In July of 2012, I injured my knee. In August, I was laid off. In September, my only child started college across the country, I started a new (more stressful) job, had knee surgery and was told no impact exercise. November was my first Thanksgiving without my son. December was Christmas and resignation from my job. January was job searching and eating. February was job searching and eating. March was studying to pass licensing exams, eating, a totaled car, and the death of a precious aunt. Did you notice that I was heavy on eating, light on exercise of any kind?

My knee was in worse shape than the doctor or I anticipated. As a result, I was unable to do much of anything for six months. I could have gone swimming or used an exercise bike every day; but, I didn’t. Instead, I slipped back into old habits – bad ones.

Here’s the thing: I’m an emotional eater. Stressed? Depressed? Anxious? Pull the chair up to the fridge and eat until you feel better! Happy? Celebrate with some ice cream! Bored? Cheetos are entertaining! Tuesday? Fried chicken makes for a great lunch!

With the life stresses that were weighing me down, I began to hear those negative voices again. (Not literally, for goodness sake. Don’t go reserving me a padded room.) You know the ones I’m talking about – “You can’t do this.” “You messed it all up again.” “You’ll never be anything but fat.” I ate a little more ice cream, drank a little more beer and wore a little more elastic.

Unable to button a skirt, I had to take myself to task.

What would I do if I heard someone telling their child, “You’ll never be anything but fat?” I’d be livid and might just say something. So, if I recognize that sort of talk as unacceptable from one person to another, why don’t I recognize it as unacceptable from one person to self? I have to remind myself every day to be kind to myself in my own thoughts. I CAN do this. If I messed it up again, I just have to TRY again. I have been at a healthy weight and I WILL BE AGAIN.

I have gained about 30 pounds. Enough. I’m not going to beat myself up because I gained some weight back. That’s over and done with. Berating myself for it doesn’t help in any way. What does help is throwing out nutritionally bankrupt foods, raiding the produce department, and taking the dogs for a walk.

My life is still something of a train wreck; however, today, and every single day, I commit to myself. I commit to taking care of my body and my mind with good food, drink and thought choices.

I bring commitment back into the present tense and, with this blog, I bring accountability with it.

Accountability, Body Changes, Food, Habits

Who Is That Fat Woman?

March 31, 2013 dotyness Leave a comment

I’ve had a weight problem almost all of my life; however, when I saw photos from a family Memorial Day event in 2011, I was surprised to see how big I had gotten. In my mind, I was around a size 14. In the real world, I was a size 20 and still going up. Surprised as I was, I was not motivated to make any kind of real change.

Oh, sure. I told myself I was dieting and cut out my daily Snickers bar, but that was really it. You see, that was kind of my life-long pattern. The Big Diet Lie, as it were. Don’t look at me like that. You know you’ve done it, too. “Oh, no more lasagne for me. I’m on a diet.” Meanwhile, back at the ranch, you scarf an entire box of low-fat cookies. Hey, but they’re low fat. Stop it. You know you don’t even believe that.

I had lost significant amounts of weight using both The Diet Center program and Nutrisystem when I was in my twenties. With the Diet Center program, I cooked my own food. Nutrisystem was just like it is now – super, super easy. I just wasn’t commited enough to myself to keep the weight off with either program.

When I made the decision this time to actually lose weight, I remembered the food list from the Diet Center program. Unfortunately, their store fronts have long gone out of business and the books are no longer in print. So, I went to abebooks.com (my most favoritest book site) to get a copy of the cookbook and of the program guide. The books are written by Sybil Ferguson who devised the program for her own health. I also bought a book called Your Body Knows Best about eating for your blood type, metabolism and heritage. I combined those two programs and came up with a group of foods that work for me.

The short description of the list is this: lots of fresh fruits & vegetables, no canned foods or premade sauces (they hide all kinds of sugar, sodium and preservatives in canned and jarred food – read the labels, they”ll scare you to death), meat-free Mondays (or just some day of the week), fish one day a week, no more than one diet soft drink a day (down from 6 or 7 cans a day!), and absurd amounts of water. A daily multi-vitamin ensured that my vitamins and minerals weren’t all flushed out by the copious amounts of water I drank. I also took flax seed and fish oil supplements to help curb cravings. My body craves red meat; so, I eat it. My dad had a calf slaughtered before it got into the meat processing system. The cuts are leaner from this grass-fed calf (which also hadn’t been treated with all those antibiotics necessary for cattle in stockyards); however, even with fattier cuts, I just counted the calories. A good piece of roast beef from time to time isn’t going to kill me and if it keeps me from craving worse things, then, in the balance, it’s the best move for me.

I ate three meals and three snacks a day, keeping my mealtimes as routine as possible. For me, this regular intake of calories kept my blood sugar steady which kept me alert and hunger pang free. I’ve read that the body often signals the need for fluid by making you feel hungry; so, if I found myself feeling peckish outside of routine meal times, I drank a large glass of water or a cup of hot herbal tea. If the water trick didn’t work, I brushed my teeth. That minty feeling often cut off hunger at the pass.

I do not buy sugar free cookies or candies since they actually contain sugar alcohol which, I have discovered, makes me hungry. For 110 calories, I can have two pieces of sugar free candy and be hungry enough to gnaw off my own fist in 30 minutes, or I can have a large banana and be satisfied for two hours. For the same reason, I rarely ate pasta or white breads. Any bread that I ate came from the store bakery, from the farmers’ market or from my own oven. Since the stuff sold on the shelves takes so long to mold, it scares me. I’d rather buy from a local baker, pay a little more, put some in the freezer to keep it fresh and know that I’m reducing the preservatives in my diet.

I would estimate that the first 40 to 50 pounds were lost basically to changing food choices and habits. It was phenomenal! But, did you notice how an awful lot of those habit descriptions involved the past tense? Tomorrow, I’ll tell you why.

The Daily Doty