Day 34: Keeping It Real

 

Friday September 20, 2024

Here is the link to my original Day 34. It was  Wednesday February 6, 2019. My headline that day was "No Room For Hate". I ranted a little about removing friends that were posting hateful things about Trump, who was President at the time. Nutrisystem was going well, but I was eating more than I do today. I was on the 1400 calorie plan because I needed to lose over 100 pounds. I updated my weight in the app today and it put me back on the 1400 calorie plan. All it does is add a Smart Carb to your morning snack.

Despite being awake until after 2 am I was awake and up before 8:30. I'm going to try and get to bed earlier tonight, so I can get my sleep schedule back on track. After feeding the cats I hopped on the couch with my breakfast to enjoy some YouTube, some Cookie Jam and some Minnie snoozing in my lap ! She got up to stretch shortly after 10 so I took the opportunity to get another cup of coffee and my yogurt. I also got dressed. I had made the bed when I got up, so I didn't need to do that. The plan for today is laundry, dishes and the treadmill at noon. Totally reasonable !

Breakfast was a 270 calorie breakfast sandwich and later, an 80 calorie yogurt. Morning snack was a 155 calorie vanilla shake with peanut butter powder. Lunch was a 220 calorie pepperoni pizza melt and a chef salad. I didn't have an afternoon snack. Dinner was a 260 calorie roasted turkey medallions and a bowl of green beans. Evening snack was a 140 calorie lemon zest cake.

I got a connection request from someone at AT&T that was a bit of a surprise. It's someone I never really worked with. Her boss was replaced by the asshole that laid off everyone in May, but her boss made sure he took care of her with a new position before he moved to his new role. I can't imagine why she wants to be connected to me. I have zero to offer. Perhaps she has been notified she's being let go so she's looking to see where those who went before her ended up. Either that or she's just nosy. Hard to tell !

I pushed myself off the couch around 2 pm, made my shake and hit the treadmill for 12m23s plus a 3 minute warm up and 4 minute cool down. I wanted to get a second workout in, but never did.

I'm continuing to work on embracing feeling hungry. Again, I am not on a quest to starve myself. I'm going to eat everything the Nutrisystem plan calls for, but I will not give in the hunger pangs. I found a short article about feeling hungry during weight loss. One thing that stood out to me is their take on using artificial sweeteners:

Sweet tastes increase insulin levels. Insulin causes sugar and fat to be stored and made instead of burned and used. So eating something that tastes sweet (even if it’s zero-calorie sweetener) is like sending a signal to the body, “Make sure to stop burning fat, and make sure to store as much as possible of what I just ate.”

Well, I use zero calorie flavoring in my water and coffee. I also started drinking diet coke recently. I mentioned not long ago that I'm not going to buy any more of the coffee syrups. I will use what I have and then be done with it. I'm actually kind of tired of the sweetness. I don't usually have more than one diet coke per day so I'm not going to deny myself that. I'm also not going to deny myself the raspberry lemonade flavoring in my water, but I'm going to try to use a bit less of it. Sometimes I am heavy handed and my water is sickly sweet. 

The article also has this to say about hunger:

When people are losing weight they often have a sense of discomfort known as hunger. Hunger isn’t always a pleasant feeling but it can be more pleasant when we consider what it means. It means we are losing weight. Let it serve as a constant reminder that you are cheerfully accomplishing your goal. We can almost be sure that if we aren’t hungry we aren’t losing weight. We can embrace hunger as a welcome sign that we are losing weight.

This was exactly my thoughts on the subject, so I'm glad to see there are medical professionals who believe hunger is good when you're trying to lose weight. I really have to train my mind that I do not need to eat just because my stomach is rumbling. 

I mentioned at the beginning of this blog that I updated my weight in the Nutrisystem app. It hurts to see that I am nearly back to my pre-Nutrisystem weight, which was 304. Yesterday I brought the 30 pound bear back downstairs, because I need to earn that back by reaching 274 pounds.