the decision to put down the spoon

Check out this clip from the Triplets of Belleville. I know what you're thinking, either, "WTF is that?" or "How can a weirdo French cartoon help me with weight loss?" But trust me, this scene has a great moment that always occurs to me when I'm thinking about having a second helping at dinner. This character is a Tour de France cyclist, so he has to control his weight. His granny helps him rig up a system that lets him know when he's had enough food for one meal, but after the bell goes off, it's his decision to put down the spoon. You can see it in his face and in the reluctant but determined way he sets it next to the plate. He doesn't want to, but he has a goal and he's committed to achieving it. Trust me, it's worth two and a half minutes of your time.

actually, if my food looked like that, not eating would be no problem

When you decide to put down the spoon, do it like that. It feels so final, like you've made that choice, you're strong and in control, and you can do this.

Remember, YOU can make that choice
you ARE in control
you CAN do this.

(BTW, if you've never seen the movie, you should watch the whole thing sometime. It's pretty freaking fantastic.)

heart it

I have recently fallen in love with weheartit and started my own page skinnydancing. It's a service that let's you grab any image you like from the web, categorize it and it maintains the link back to the original page. So in theory, ownership and photo credit are maintained. It's stupid easy to use. Check it out if you like to collect and share images. I use it to share images that inspire me in my weight loss, and just images that inspire me. My current sets are:

thin inspiration
ballet (yeah, I know I have a thing about legwarmers)
photography (just stuff that inspires me in general)
food (great low-cal food photos that link back to the recipes)

and my personal favorite, goal, which is a set of photos that represent where I personally want to be body and fashion-wise in a year. Except this, which is exactly where I want to be and what I want to be doing and what I want to look like this summer:

Look ma, no tan lines!

Check it out, let me know what you think, and start sharing images that inspire you. Stay skinny!

calorie counting help

Counting calories is LAME, but it's what I've had to start doing in order to reach my goal. I'm always on the lookout for anything to make it easier, and the computer program, Calorie Balance, makes it way easier. 

It's freeware, so it's not perfect, but on the whole it works fine for my needs. You type in the foods you eat, and the amounts and it looks in its massive food database and spits out your calories, fats, carbs and other nutrients consumed for the day. You still have to measure your food yourself, ugh, but it's about as easy as it gets. If you have some restaurant entree or exotic new food it hasn't heard of, you can look up the nutritional info on the web and add it to the database. There is supposed to be a feature where it goes looking for you, but it doesn't work. (There are some internet-based calorie tracking programs that do this very well, but you have to live with the fact that your personal information, plus what you eat every day is being stored on someone else's server. Creepy.) The main food chart screen totals all your calories, carbs, fats, sugars, fiber, and protein in an easy-to-understand graph at the bottom. That works very well. There is also a feature where you can choose other nutrients (iron, calcium, etc.) to be tracked on the same graph, but it's pretty buggy. It does track that kind of thing for you, but you kind of have to total it yourself. 

It also has an exercise tracker, which I love. It tracks the calories you burn in different workouts. All you have to enter is the kind of activity ant the time spent, and since it's already keeping track of your weight, it does that calculation for you. Then it takes the calories burned and subtracts it from your total calories consumed, giving you the net figure. (Keep in mind, if you eat 1500 calories, you don't have to do 1500 calories worth of exercise. Your base metabolism rate will take care of a lot of that for you.)

I am a huge geek, so it's been a boon for me. It helps me compare foods, plan out my exercise and know every little thing I am consuming and burning.

Anyway, for absolutely free it's a great tool to try. Read cnet's review and download the program here. The download does ask you if it can install a web toolbar. It's just an ad (everyone's gotta make money right?) you can decline it.

I hope this helps you on your way to awesome!

ballet + skinny jeans = hot

Mental notes:
1. gotta get a pair of those
2. gotta take more dance classes
3. gotta increase the number of men wearing jeans in ballet

Seriously, maybe more dudes would realize dance isn't just for gay guys if we just ditch the whole tights-wearing thing.

progress report 5-06-2012

No perceptible changes in weight or waist measurement this week, which is not surprising. A combination of nearly constant rain this week, and a play birthday weekend in the city of Busan, means my exercise total is about 4 hours this week. Lame.

I actually did a lot of walking in Busan, but I don't count that in my total. For one reason, it's almost impossible to keep track normally, and actually impossible when your focus is debating the merits of the margarita at this or that restaurant. And, the water at the beach was not warm enough for swimming yet. Actually, it's pretty crisp even in August. It's kind of cool that I can say I've swam in three oceans, (and waded in the Mediterranean,) but I can't wait to get my spoiled ass back into the bathtub-warm Atlantic back home.

But anyway, time to get back on that horse this week. Stay skinny!

you do not need 2,200 calories a day

Whenever you look at the dietary intake recommendations from the USDA (the people behind the food pyramid, and MyPlate), keep in mind this organization is run by farmers, people who make money when you overeat. While they are wising up to the idea that too many starches are bad and more vegetables are good, their guides are still more about keeping big agriculture in business and less about keeping you healthy. (Have you ever looked up the ridiculous amount they tell you to eat? Unless you're a bodybuilder, you do not need 2,200 calories day.) I am not the only one saying this. Harvard agrees with me.

“Unfortunately, like the earlier U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) pyramids, MyPlate mixes science with the influence of powerful agricultural interests, which is not the recipe for healthy eating,” said Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition and chair of the Department of Nutrition. 

Harvard's redesign of MyPlate actually looks like what I try to eat every day, on a lower-calorie basis of course.

This makes way more sense than any of the USDA's current or past recommendations. And it's the way I will continue to eat in the future, to maintain my awesomeness. Check out the article here.

the power of a nap

When I was in college I had a friend who said whenever she got hungry, she just went to sleep. Oh, to have a college schedule. But in all seriousness, it's not a bad idea. When I go hiking, I can't eat lunch. My stomach just can't take it. So when I get home I'm turning inside out with hunger, but I'm also beat, so I take a nap. It's not even anything I do on purpose, my body just needs it. It's the weekend so, why not? But it really is a good idea, because I sleep through a period of time when I might be driven to snacking from honestly earned exercise hunger. Instead I power nap, shower, and it's time for dinner. This would never work during the week, but fortunately on work days I'm better at managing my need to snack. 

So if you have a schedule that allows for a nap, try timing during a time you usually want to snack. Every calorie you skip helps, and the extra sleep will actually help you lose weight. 

Enjoy your zzzz's!