Autumn colors different around town. Partial color changes, early leaf drop, |
Mid morning "snack" of immense cinnamon rolls at Braeburn Lodge, Alaska |
There in is the culprit, the food, always. Why does so much of social life revolve around food, meals, snacks, treats. Food is all over everywhere. It is no wonder we have an obesity problem. Most of us eat way too much. Our trip to Alaska involved more food than I could consume in any given setting and less physical exercise daily than that which I routinely do, so those pounds joined my body. But not to fear back home, again it is boot camp, baby, I cannot allow that poundage to become overly attached to me. BTW, the other half of this household seldom battles weight and is one of those fortunate people who can eat whatever. Even he, did some cut back to trim back after the trip because he is very conscious about weight gain and will not go there.
While I battle poundage, the last maybe 20years especially, and acknowledge my metabolism is not what it used to be when I could eat half a bucket of KFC chicken and not gain an ounce.
This is week 5 of the 16 week program; my doctor will retest my fasting blood glucose in December when I expect a clean slate, "ya done good girl". This program developed by the American Diabetes Association after significant research and clinical trials is administered by local YMCA's country wide. Like anything, results require commitment Changing habits takes time.This multi faceted approach (food target and physical activity) involves a weekly meeting, a program lecture and participation, recording every bite and morsel into our food journal along with amount of daily exercise, daily weight, any issues or concerns. We turn these journals in at each meeting to our group leader who returns them the next week with helpful comments. She has advised me to eat more and use those 33 grams of fat each day to avoid yo yo bounce dieting. Yeah! Eat more, slow down the loss which they set at only 15 pounds for me, but I set at 20. We have these dandy graphs to track our weekly weights, officially what her scale shows and yes, we weigh in every week. I still have not made friends with the scale.
Because we meet at 6:00PM which would be right at or before our dinner time. I learned after weighing in the first time to not eat my dinner until after class. There in is another mystery--how can I gain 3 pounds when I don't eat three pounds of food at a meal? Yet, there's that dreaded scale lying in wait to annoy me. There are about 20 other participants in the program with all their varying tales and excuses.
The sessions are interesting and I am reeducating myself in a lot of healthy food lifestyle choices. We count total fat grams for which my daily allowance is 33 very easy to reach when eating cheeses (one of my favorite foods) and other non-essential things. My daily lunch or midday snack was always apple, cheese and maybe some crackers. Now it might be a sandwich, apple, yogurt and only an ounce of cheese, that's a 1 inch cube. I could eat 10 of those no problem. So it is a process of learning or relearning. I have indeed become a "fat detective" and carefully consider whether an indulgence is too costly a price to pay, in fat grams. So far I have dropped 12 pounds and the program has me stepped up to increasing my walking to many miles a day instead of just one or two, interspersing some jogging on the track, and finally adding water aerobics, lap swimming and Zumba classes and toning at the Y where we have a free membership with this program. Our weather has cooled down a lot so it is good to have the option of indoor classes at the Y.
Wooly caterpillars abound; legend predicts winter by the middle red, the head represents remaining time of autumn and the tail the length of spring. |
So it goes with a step up in physically challenging activities and carefully paying attention to foods. I doubt I will ever befriend that scale, but keeping healthy is my goal, healthy aging. I love it when folks think I am much much younger than my 68 years. A healthier lifestyle, that's the choice here. Doing what it takes. This endeavor is requiring that we delay snow birding south until January; ironic in that now that we have no responsibilities of caring for elderlies, this old gal gets tied up in a delay. Such is life in retirement.