Anyway, today the last day of the month I weigh the same as I did after a week on the diet, just over six pounds lost. So I'm not calling it the 17 day diet anymore, its just lifestyle weight watching. Sure, I'm trying to lose more weight but I know my weak areas that need improvement, and its not giving up cookies and ice cream. Its not giving up carbohydrates, and its not eating that special yogurt or drinking green tea.
So here are some lessons I've learned to get through this weight loss plateau and start losing more weight:
Drink lots of water – I know I don't drink enough water like they say to in the diet books. I drink a bottle of water in the morning and have a diet soda at lunch and then a bottle of water after work. So that's like only 40 oz, and I should drink 64 oz of water every day! I need to drink more but the bathroom at work is about a ½ mile away on the other side of the facility and it's a disruption to get up and pee every hour. So my plan is to drink two bottles in the morning, and to finish my daily water allotment in the evening before I'm allowed to have a beer.
Alcohol – On a hot summer day after a long work day and a five mile bike ride in the 95F beating sun, against the 15 mph headwind, I'm a little thirsty. I usually drink some water, but then a cold bud light sure does hit the spot. It's yummy to drink a frosty cold draft beer while floating in the pool to cool down. But on cloudy rainy days, its not so refreshing to have a beer. In fact, I sometimes skip it. I need to do this more often. Like maybe not allow my self to have a beer if I didn't exercise first to burn up the excess calories it will give me. That's my plan anyway – burn it first.
Dinner Hour – at our house we like to enjoy every minute we can outdoors after work before it gets to be dusk and the mosquitoes come out to attack (and they are 15% more likely to bite us since we drink beer). This means the cutting board dinner preparations don't start until after 7:00 or 7:30pm, and we eat around 8:00 pm or later. Eating this late is almost like eating right before bed since we typically hit the hay about 10:30. I don't eat a night time snack, but who needs to when we eat dinner so late? Anyway, I know it would be better to have more time to digest dinner if we ate earlier. So my new goal is to try to get dinner going around 6 pm. So, don't call during dinner now that you know when we eat.
Exercise Alternatives – On the days it might rain, I drive to work and miss my daily hour of bike riding. I still manage to take two 15 minute walks on my breaks, but I need to incorporate another exercise into my day that is a little more vigorous. If its not raining, we usually go to Busch Gardens and do a quick lap around the park. But on days we don't get to the park we usually just do a grocery shop or walk the dog to the library. I've decided to try to incorporate some water exercises into my day since the pool is right in our backyard. I bought these Speedo Barbells after trying them out at my neighbors house when we were using her pool. They are a great way for me to try to improve my tone in my upper arms. I'm also going to start treading water instead of floating on a floaty when I'm in the pool. We also got a new anti vortex pool grate (so you can't become disemboweled when you do butt touches on the bottom) that is a lovely trap for little berries that drop off the Indian Cherry trees, and the leaves love to stick there too. Anyway, diving to the bottom to pick up the cherries and leaves will have to be a new chore exercise until we figure out how to put our old flat grate back on, or find one with different hole patterns.
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