Silence is golden?

Heh, maybe not.

Well I’ve been back up a bit and today am down to the weight I was in my last post.. yay.. Gotta love wastes of time.

Anyhow.. no longer on weight watchers. While I was liking it I wasn’t 100% happy with the points system. Some days when I tracked actual calorie intake it would be 1200 (read bloody hungry) and others it would be 1600 (aka not so bad).

That and I was learning what things could fudge the points counting and I think subconsciously I was playing that game a little too much which stalled me. That lead to frustration and munching. I can’t cheat straight calories in any shape or form.

I also got a new gadget. It’s called the GoWear Fit (which I still think is a stupid name and I tend to refer to it as a bodybugg which is the original device)

GoWear Fit

It is very cool. Basically via a number of gizmo’s inside including a  pedometer, accelerometer, temperature sensors etc it works out how many calories you are burning per minute and thusly shows you for the day.

One major thing I have learned and is something that Leigh Peele (my fav nutrition guru these days – FLzine.com and fatlosstroubleshoot.com ) likes to emphasize is that it’s not all about the workouts. It’s about your daily activity and this is something that the bugg shows really well. All those stairs, housework, pottering around making dinner, grocery shopping etc really can add up. And knowing and seeing that makes me much more aware of my NEAT (Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis). I get up from my desk more often, take the stairs more often, park my car further away and walk a bit more.

It’s definitely not 100% accurate (and I don’t ever expect it to be) but I am happy that for the most part it seems to underestimate which I am more than happy for it to do. Far rather that then over estimation leading to frustration.

So the upshot is I get to geek out over fun data and nifty graphs which makes tracking intake calories much less tedious.

On that note Hubby and I are cutting all refined sugar from our diet for a month. No candy, no dessert, no pre-processed products that have any form of refined sugar (HFCS, Sugar, Dextrose, Maltodextrin, etc) . This does not exclude natural sugars found in milk or fruit (fructose and lactose) nor does it mean sugars found naturally in vegetables like corn or carrots.

So our diet is pretty much 100% whole foods, I am cooking a lot more again but it’s good stuff. Shepherds pie (made with buffalo and venison so far, Yum!) a Chicken enchilada bake that was delicious (used carb balance tortillas with no added sugar for that one, gonna try it with corn chips next time though, the tortillas were not so good on day 3 )  - found the recipe for that on the back of a kraft cheese packet.

As you can see, I am eating carbs, white potaotoes!! and still losing weight – After reading Girth Control by Alan Aragon (my other fav guru) I have my macros on a pretty evenly divided split. Something else Alan also suggested which I am really liking is eating for your target bodyweight not your current with a deficit. So after some math I decided 132 was a good goal for my height and muscular desires and so I am eating maintenance calories for that body comp and general activity level. (Which works out at about 1600)

Much less math, no recalculating and no dismal reduction of food as I go down. After just under 2 weeks with no sugar (we’ve been  doing it for almost 3 but I had derby day party foods at the end of week 1 (mm cheesecake) ) I feel great, no cravings, no bad head space. I am eating good healthy food that is leaving me satisfied and my weight is going down steadily. The week before we started was not so good and accounted for most of my weight gain lol – a few to many 1 last pizza (which ended up being 2), 1 last ice cream (don’t ask), gotta finish this off etc etc