Why Hello Old Friend: 5 Reasons Why I’m Going Old School with my Food Journal.

See that notebook up there? That’s my latest food journal. Yup,  I’m back to good old paper and pencil and I’ll tell you why.

Actually, I’ll tell you 5 reasons why…

I needed a change. Over the years I have food journaled a plethora of ways: paper, spreadsheet, email, twitter, instagram. All work great but if I’m bored with the technique then I tend to start slipping. Sometimes simply changing my method re-energizes and motivates me.It works for my current situation. Each one of the methods I listed above was born out of necessity. When I taught at the community college emailing was perfect because I was always on a computer but  never MY computer. When I worked in an office, a spreadsheet was perfect as I was on the same computer all day. Twitter and Instragram are perfect when you’re on the go, but now they feel like overkill being home. When I’m with the kids, I’m home. When I’m working, I’m home. It’s super easy for me to have a paper and pencil on the counter ready to jot something down and pre-plan in the morning. Speaking of…Makes daily pre-planning easy. When I initially changed my diet and lost 70lbs I would take 5 minutes every morning to plan dinner, make my lunch and jot everything down all while eating breakfast. I found comfort in knowing what I would be eating later in the day. It took the guess work out of it and made it easy to stick to my own daily plan. You may notice dinner listed at the top above. Pre-planning daily has always worked for me. I want the accountability but not stress. If you haven’t noticed, I share a LOT online, and for a long time I posted food journals. More recently I’ve been using instagram, but publicly posting adds more pressure for me. Self-imposed but still very real. I know food journaling works, I like to do it, but I don’t want to worry about snapping the perfect photo or making a bowl of cereal look pretty. I still plan on snapping food photos because I’m a geek, but it won’t be my main form of journaling.I want to reach my goal and I KNOW this works. I know losing “the last 5 lbs” isn’t my most popular goal but that doesn’t change the fact I want to reach it. I refuse to do anything drastic or unhealthy to get there. My philosophy hasn’t changed since the day I started this blog: If I’m going to lose weight I have to do it on my terms, eating things I want to eat, exercising the way I want to exercise and enjoying every step of the journey. Food journaling was a huge part of my success. It’s a simple way for me to be accountable and, well, I know it works.

What’s your thoughts on the food journal? Do you keep one? How?

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Sneak Peek of the Foods Going Into My Stomachs Today

Hey guys. How the hells are ya?! Just thought I’d share a glimpse of my daily eats for today. This is what’s on my menu for chewing. It’s a peek into the foods I eat that help me be all sexy ‘n stuff.

THE FOODS GOING INTO JOSIE’S STOMACHS TODAY

(…and please don’t get it twisted. I do, in fact, have two stomachs: One for normal eating, and a back up chamber for increased food-storage of the extra delicious kind).

Breakfast was: Fresh fruit (strawberries, blueberries and cantaloupe) mixed with homemade yogurt bought from the Amish peoples. No Shakeology this morning because my butt was running late. Dammit! 

Mid-morning snack: Clementine

Lunch: Brown rice & steamed broccoli, plus a chicken Caesar side salad.

Mid-afternoon snacking: Cup of Bigelow Mint Green tea (very flavorful) sweetened with Stevia and a Kelloog’s Fiber Plus Bar (their Dark Chocolate Almond is pretty tasty).

After work snacking: Handful of cashews and some more Mint Green tea.

Dinner: Homemade turkey burger made with recently killed meat (gasp!) from the Amish market, plus some fresh baked, homemade sweet potato chips.

Evening snacking: Cup of coffee with light cream and NO sweetener (yep). Oh, and the evening cereal whoredom shall continue. Gonna have me a bowl or two.

So you see, I’ve got my fruits, veggies, protein, and whole grains with very minimal carbs and dairy products (because that stuff bloats me), and barely any fats. Except for my I-didn’t-get-my-Shakeology-today snafu, all my other meals for today were planned ahead of time.

Make sure you are planning ahead as well. It’s going to set you up for fitness success and reduce your chances of veering into a food ditch filled with all kinds of delectable high calorie treats that were never supposed to be on your menu.

Have a great day!

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“Pack your bags!. We’re going on a guilt trip!”

When I was in North Carolina last month, I bought a notepad with this cover:
Know what I use that notepad for? My grocery list!

Yesterday on my Lynn’s Weigh Facebook page, I posted a link to this article: “Middle-aged women happier with moderate exercise.” I wrote:

“I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I do much better when I'm not killing myself with vigorous exercise and yet, I feel so guilty for not exercising like I used to.”

Reader Michelle posted this response: “I don't get the feeling guilty part. Why do something that doesn't make you feel good?”

Guilt, among other definitions, is “self-reproach for supposed inadequacy or wrongdoing.” I don’t know why guilt is easily absorbed by some and rejected by others. All I know is that I don’t remember a time when I haven’t known self-inflicted guilt. Guilt in the form of having let someone down. If I didn’t make my bed, I let my mom down. If I didn’t get an A on a test, I let my teachers down. If I hit a pop fly into right field, I let my softball team down. And whenever I gained weight, I let myself down.

Over the years, I’ve grown a thicker skin, something less porous. I can better discern those actions that are “worthy” of guilt and those that are unproductive self-flagellation. Better, but not perfected. Food and exercise are those precarious areas in which I am most vulnerable to the kind of guilt that produces feelings of “inadequacy and wrongdoing,” largely because their effects are physical. If I gain weight, I’m not only letting myself down, but also a community of people who have followed my blog over the years.

So what’s a more proper response? Michelle has me thinking that it’s probably not guilt *smile* Guilt is counter-productive and paralyzing. A better response would be….? Hmmmm…. A commitment to improvement? Mindful investigation about how a certain exercise makes me feel? An acceptance of the way things are now as opposed to what they were four years ago?

Yes, yes, and yes.

I found this quote recently: “Hard though it may be to accept, remember that guilt is sometimes a friendly internal voice reminding you that you're messing up.” I’m messing up when I don’t feed my body right and when I don’t move it the way it is capable of moving. And "capable" has changed over the years. I used to hit the cardio really hard, but my arthritic joints said, "No more!" and I had to dispense with the 90-minute workouts. Yet, despite the reduction in pain due due to more moderate exercise, the guilt remains.

Guilt is one of the hardest emotions to wrap our arms around and let go of (when appropriate).
But with a little introspection on this rainy day, the fog is lifting and I’m seeing guilt for the inappropriate response it is.

How much happier would we be if we approached our bodies with care, acceptance and wisdom rather than guilt? Mess up? Yeah, we’re gonna do that sometimes. The best solution? Self correct. Don’t dig out the knotted cords.

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Going Nuclear

Last night while I slept, my body went nuclear, the weather went nuclear, and worst of all, my Blackberry went nuclear.

My body: The progesterone had kicked in, and I swear I slept on my head given the level of bed head I was sporting.

The weather: I looked outside and 8 inches of snow were piled up on the driveway. I couldn’t see across the street. I checked the weather forecast and learned we’re under a lake effect snow warning until tomorrow for 18 additional inches and lots of wind.
The Blackberry: I can take the cramps and the cold, but Advil and an extra pair of slippers couldn’t cure my Tour. Sometime in the middle of the night, it was sucked into a black hole, and no matter what I did I couldn’t break the loop of reset, restart. Reset, restart. I pulled the battery, tried reloading the OS…nothing worked.

I looked outside and sighed. I wasn’t going to spend the day without a phone, particularly one that doubles as a modem here on the tundra. Ergo, I had to find a Verizon store.

With my hair matted to my head, no makeup on, cramps that would choke a horse, and a total lack of self-esteem, I put on a hat, a big white sweater, my big brown boots, a scarf, and gloves and headed out to this:

It was snowing so hard, I could barely see the road, let alone store signs. I turned into an Auto Zone and asked a man putting a new windshield wiper on his car where Verizon was. He said I’d gone about two blocks too far and was looking for it on the wrong side of the road. I thanked him, got back in my car, started it up and was on my way. At a stop light, a red pickup truck pulled up on my right. I heard yelling and turned to see what was going on. The pickup driver was yelling and gesturing at me. I rolled down my window and he screamed, “Turn on your f*@&ing lights!”

In my defense, I had my lights on when I first ventured out. I’d turned off my car and lights at Auto Zone a block away, so it’s not like I’d had them off very long. I just forgot to turn them on is all. But this guy acted like I’d plotted to ruin his day by not turning on my lights.

Still, what did I do? I apologized! Ugh. I hate when I do that. He dropped the f-bomb and I was the one apologizing? He was the jerk face, not me. Didn’t matter, though. I had Armageddon going on my uterus and his words made me want to cry.

I didn’t, though. I rolled up my window and journeyed on to the Verizon store. I expected there’d be one, maybe two employees tops who’d made it to work, but heavens no! When I walked in, I was greeted by 9 young sharp-dressed men, many of whom snickered when they saw me. I was covered in snow, you already know what my hair looked like, and – flustered – what did I say to them?

“I don’t normally look like this!”

‘Oh I didn’t just say that,’ I thought.

But I had. And they laughed. My FFG was humiliated.

Why did I feel I had to apologize for how I looked?

While one of the guys took my phone away to try and fix it, I sat down and started writing this blog on a couple of deposit slips. I thought about what was really going on. First of all, I was in the throes of hormones, and as such, every little thing in my world felt like it had gone nuclear. OK, I could accept that. Second, just because the world around me felt estranged, it didn’t mean I had to abandon myself, too. Yes, I apologized for things that didn’t need apologizing, but I caught myself before I did it again. Go me!

When Junior came out with a new phone because he couldn’t fix the old one, I thanked him, looking him straight in the eye. What he saw may not have been very attractive, but I didn’t care. How I looked in that moment was neither here nor there. That a guy lobbed the f-bomb at me because I forgot to turn my lights on didn’t matter anymore, either. Junior asked if I knew how to set up my email. I said I did. He smiled and said, “Wow. You don’t know how many people have no idea how to do that. That’s awesome!”

Suffering uterus, bad hair, snow, nuclear Blackberry… There are worse things, and life is what it is. It’s how we react that makes all the difference. Today, as in many days before, I realized that my weight still has a lot to do with my self-image and self-esteem. As I’ve said many times here, just because you lose weight doesn’t mean you lose the baggage. "I yam what I yam." Today was just another one of those reminder days.

How do you respond in the moment of distress? Do you apologize? Run away? Eat? Make excuses? Beat yourself up? And if you catch yourself doing it, how do you work through the moment?

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You going?

Id love to.

But whether the financial-planets align or not (Id adore showing the Tornado Colorado!)—-Im voting.

You know, because it’s what they say: I caint whine about the sessions if I didnt take part in the process.

(That *is* what they say right?)

DizClaimer: I am listed as possibly speaking. You are under no obligation to either notice or vote for me. Vote for what you’d wanna hear/see/experience from your fellow Tribe Members.  There are some amazing (potential) sessions offered.

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