Posts by: Jo Davidsmeyer

Thanksgiving has come and gone. So much to give thanks for – family, friends, food, and the joys of portion control. Traditionally, the Thanksgiving meal is my meal to prepare. I always thought I got the easiest of the holidays in my family. What’s hard about cooking a turkey? You throw it in the oven and forget about it for five hours, what could be simpler? Of course, you have to stuff it first, and I make some of the best stuffing in the world!

This year, I had a couple special considerations for the meal preparation this year. First, I needed to keep in mind my own journey and to make sure I didn’t self-sabotage my efforts thus far. Second, my 89-year-old father is on a severely salt-restricted diet. Keeping those two goals in mind forced some changes from my normal Thanksgiving meal preparation.

In recent years, I’d foregone making the mashed potatoes from scratch. Publix supermarket makes superb real-potatoes mashed potatoes, it hardly seemed worth the effort to do it myself anymore. But checking Publix mashed potatoes and then looking at the other various pre-pared potatoes available on the market, I found that all were terribly high in sodium. So, this year I once again made my own mashed potatoes from scratch. I bought the Gold potatoes and boiled them in pure, salt-free water. I kept the skins on, to add flavor and keep the natural nutrients. I added no salt to the mash, but did add lots of other spices. Thinking of me, this time, I kept the butter out and instead added fat-free sour cream — but added the whole milk, which I love. The potatoes were a great success and I even got to enjoy them myself, in moderation, of course.

I bought canned gravy, but that’s nothing new. The only woman in my whole family who has ever been able to make gravy from scratch was my adorable Great-Aunt Pauline. When she passed, she took the recipe with her, and thus ended the era of scratch gravy in our family. I was delighted to see that Heinz bottled gravy is only 35 calories per quarter cup. So I could enjoy gravy with my golden potatoes — in moderation, of course.

I didn’t want to muck with my traditional stuffing, so the recipe remained the same. So, I had to severely moderate my normal consumption of it. But it was nice to see the family enjoy the stuffing as usual. Just because I’m obese doesn’t mean my family should be deprived.


For decorations, I made the cutest little cornucopias for each person’s place at the table. They were very simple to create. Just take an ice cream cone and dip the edge in chocolate. Then sprinkle with gold sugar and let dry on some wax paper. On thanksgiving morning, just fill them with a mixture of Chex mix, peanuts, and candy corn pumpkins. I also used pumpkins with THANKS written on them for the centerpiece.


Best of all, when making the cornucopias, I wasn’t even tempted to dip into the chocolate. And I didn’t eat any of my own of the cornucopia contents. I stuck to what I was really looking forward to: turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy. I did have the desert that friends had made and brought. Vicki made chocolate and peanut butter cake which was no sodium. It was delicious! They insisted on leaving the uneaten portion of the cake. I thanked them for it, and made sure that I didn’t have another piece and just brought the cake to share at coffee hour at church. Wow! I have really made progress on my journey. In the past, that cake wouldn’t have lasted a day in my house.

Give thanks for successes on the journey!

 

Woohoo! Lost three pounds this week. I’m going to need that buffer pound going into Thanksgiving. Plus my brother is coming to visit for two weeks. That’s going to be a challenge on my goal to lose 41 pounds for Christmas. I’ve got just four more pounds, but during the holidays, that’s going to be a challenge.

 

I’m now over 100 days into my journey and I’m truly beginning to feel that this is a true lifestyle change. Today when I caught myself actually counting out the number of pretzel sticks when I was grabbing a quick snack, that’s when I knew I had arrived. Especially when I realized that even though the label said 28 sticks was a serving size and I only counted out 14, yessirree-bob, that’s a major lifestyle difference.

So, what’s been your realization that your life has really changed and you’re not just dieting anymore?

 

I’m 90+ days into my journey and, by the scale, I have now lost 10% of my body weight. Woohoo! Still a long way to go, but I’m on my way!

Of course, when I found this out, I wanted to see what other milestones I could aim for. Well, that was a mistake. I’ve been trying to keep my eyes focused on just each day at a time, with short mini-goals. I confess, when I started seeing how really far I have to go, I was getting a bit depressed. To get out of the obese weight range. Yikes! I have to lose 80 pounds before I’m considered just overweight. Well, at least I only have to lose about 25 more pounds to stop being considered severely obese.

Charts, charts, charts. How depressing! I guess I’ll go drown my sorrow in carrot sticks.

 

FOLLOWUP TO YESTERDAY’S POST: The meeting went very well today. People actually stayed an hour past scheduled end because we were getting so much accomplished. Thank goodness there was enough food and beverage for the extra time. Besides the sandwich rings and chips (which I skipped), I also made a big Caesar salad and bowl of fresh fruit. Of course, there were chocolate chip cookies. I had one. And, naturally, there were about a dozen left over at the end of the meeting..

As people were helping me clean up I asked if anyone would like to take the cookies, since I wasn’t going to be eating them. And one lady said that would make her a hero with her nephew.

I turned my back and couldn’t watch as the objects of my temptation left the room. But, I let them go. I didn’t even cry, though I still had regrets. Alas, I couldn’t get anyone to take the bag of potato chips.

And, big accomplishment, I stayed within my calorie goals of the day.

But, still, I wonder where those chocolate chip cookies are now. Thank goodness they are not on my hips :)

 

It’s finally hit me. I’m 75+ days into my journey and have lost 25 pounds so far. I’ve been reading other dieters posting about issues with cravings and hunger and been wondering, why aren’t I having these issues? I’ve been obese for … well, forever. I’ve always been an emotional eater. But I’ve been doing so well on my new determination to change my life. Until today.

I’m hosting a meeting in my school library tomorrow of all the county High School librarians. I’ve got a budget from my principal to provide refreshments. So, I put in my order today for a sandwich ring, and made up my shopping list for tomorrow: ice, caesar salad kit, fresh fruit bowl, sun chips, iced tea, cookies from the bakery. And it just snuck up on me: I couldn’t take the leftover cookies home and eat all of them in one sitting, like I had always done in the past. And, I was sad.

Heck, no. I was mourning.

Even though, I knew that one cookie was allowed and would satisfy my sweet tooth, right then, it wasn’t satisfying that emotional craving. I wanted the whole thing! And I hadn’t even seen the cookies yet. I just wanted the idea of eating the whole plate of cookies.

Where the heck did that come from? Suddenly, the thought of never again being able to down about 2,000 calories in cookies in one sitting seems like a loss. Deprivation. End of a way of life that, in some respects, I really liked — I just hated the side effects.

Lord, help me get over this feeling.

 

Woo-hoo! It was my birthday this week. I went out to my favorite restaurant and ate my favorites (in moderation) and actually lost 2 pounds this week! That’s a total of 25 pounds since I began my journey.

Not much to say beyond that. It’s so wonderful to know I can have special occasion celebrations and still continue with my new lifestyle choices. Yippee!

 

This week I celebrated my birthday by achieving my first mini-goal. And, yes, it was a SV (scale victory), not an NSV and I’m very happy.

When I first started this weight loss journey, I had in mind to get down to 250 pounds by Christmas (which would put me 41 pounds down from my highest weight). But as I limped, lurched, and stumbled my way through my first few weeks, the idea of a half-year goal just seemed too far away. So, I did some math and charting and figured if I was to reach that goal, I would have to be down 23 pounds by my birthday, September 26.

Once I put that goal in my mind (and on my refrigerator), I felt so much less stress. That’s an achievable goal, something I can see in the near future.

This past Monday, when I stepped on the scale, I had achieved my first mini-goal.Yes!!!!

And, second success of the week, I actually celebrated my birthday with a lovely dinner out (treated by my parents at my favorite restaurant) and felt no guilt about it at all, because I made wise choices. This was a major mental break-through for me. I wasn’t treating this as a “cheat” meal. I wasn’t looking at it as, “Oh, well, it’s my birthday, throw the rules out the window” and then feeling guilty and miserable the next day.

Now, I did abandon the “diet” for the day. I deliberately planned for my birthday dinner and made the conscious choice BEFORE the day came that this would be a day of eating at my TDEE and not a deficit day. Wow! After eating at a deficit for 75 days, when I saw how much I could eat without a deficit, it was like a receiving a birthday present. To know that I could eat that much as a special treat and know I was not binging or breaking from my long-term lifestyle goals was such an eye-opener. I had very low-cal breakfast and lunch, to make sure I left enough “eat” room for the dinner celebration.

My parents took me to Stonewood Grill, my favorite steak restaurant! I was sad to see so few entries for their menu here on MFP. The day before my birthday, I went through the menu and picked my favorites and then did some comparisons to other similar selections on MFP. I made sure I would be armed with the right information before going, so I wouldn’t be distracted by lack-of-knowledge from my long-term goals. Now, they did have a wonderful “special” that day, which was not on the menu. But it was just a variation of one of the standard meals and didn’t take too much mental arithmetic to figure out that it was within the calorie range I had allotted myself. Ummmmmm, bone-in filet mignon. Delicious!

Of course, I did not allow for the complimentary chocolate cake they provide to all birthday people. Well, of course, I couldn’t NOT have it. I asked for three forks with it, so my parents could share. I had three bites. Yes, me, the fat old broad had only THREE bites of chocolate cake. Enough to get a wonderful taste and that’s all I wanted.

I confess, I have back-slid on one of my goals this week: weighing myself. I have been just weighing weekly, but since my birthday, I have been weighing daily. Just in case I did see a jump, I wanted to take appropriate steps. And, amazingly, I’m actually down in weight this week :) I know, I know. I can’t trust daily fluctuations, but it has made me feel like counting another small victory. I’m just crossing my fingers that my Monday weigh-in that weight has stayed off.

I’m sure these sound like silly little things to get excited over. But for me, these are major accomplishments, both in mentally, physically, and in terms of NSVs and SVs.

Now, on to my next goal: 40 pounds off by Christmas.

 

I’ve been posting about starting out at the gym and how uncomfortable I felt. Thanks to inspiration and support from friends at myfitnesspal.com, I’ve kept at it. I’m getting rid of my paranoia that people are staring and laughing. I walk in with the attitude, “I belong here. Look, I have a towel over my shoulder — I’m one of you!”

I’m still pretty wimpy at the gym. I can’t go longer than 20 minutes on the elliptical without my knee saying, “Enough. Stop.” But I do the twenty and then go do ten to fifteen on the bicycle (no resistance, alas, but at least I’m moving.) And i’m working with a trainer on resistance exercises and some beginner lifting.

Yeah, I’m a wimp. But I also think I’m a baby gym-rat waiting to blossom.

I have gotten over the fear that people may be watching, or that somebody will come tap me on the shoulder during a workout and say, “Quit kidding yourself, you don’t belong here.”

While working out the other night, I was doing abdominal crunches working on the exercise ball, and I actually felt the tap-tap-tap on my shoulder. Wiping sweat from my eyes I look up and see a rather attractive gym-rat-type standing over me with a questioning look. Was this my fear coming true? Was someone going to tell the fat old broad to hit the road?

As I precariously got up off the ball, he introduced himself and asked what i was doing on the ball — what kind of exercise it was and what it was supposed to do for you. He has a bad back and was wondering if that might help relieve the stress on it.

I told him what little I knew about the exercise and addressed his fears about how to get on the thing and not fall on your butt (the same fear I had when my trainer showed it to me).

Gym GoddessI left the gym beaming that night. Here I am at 268 pounds and 55 years old, and I’m the person someone goes to for exercise advice. I’m not a gym rat. I am gym goddess!

 

Had a lovely NSV (non-scale victory) today. I was in a hurry and grabbed a pair of slacks at random and was surprised that they were snug. Lately I’ve been so delighted with how loose my pants were. But suddenly, my pants are snug? And then the thought  hit me! I ripped off the slacks and ran to the light to peer at the label. I had grabbed some old slacks by mistake. These are a size smaller and I can get into them! Okay, they’re snug, but two months ago I wouldn’t even have been able to get them over my hips.

Wow! I’m seeing progress in my clothes. What a great feeling!

 

 
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