Look! It's a Weight-Loss Blog!
Nov. 22nd, 2006 07:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebMy boss let me off work 40 minutes early today! Woo hoo!
Also, I caught up on everything at work today before that happened! Woo hoo!
Weight-fixing update
I tried grating part of a carrot up into my macaroni and cheese. I used the small holes on the grater. I didn't boil it with the macaroni because you probably lose nutrients that way. I just added it with the cheese and stuff at the end. This tasted just fine.
Also, before I started eating it, I boxed up half of the batch for later. Normally I eat a whole box because it's so delicious, but really a half a box is enough. I had the other half for lunch later.
I also decided that I think the plain light Laughing Cow cheese tastes a lot like cream cheese. Now cream cheese isn't that great for you, but I like to use it instead of butter in some things (like macaroni and cheese) because it's at least less caloric than butter. Laughing Cow cheese is the next step up on the nutrition ladder. I will start using it on bagels (and toast). Maybe I will try it in macaroni and cheese. Hmm, would it work in cheesecake? I don't know.
I got a new pedometer for the Disney World trip, just because I was wondering just how far we would be walking. (The hinge broke off my old one.) We walked an average of 25,000 steps per day. The weight-loss hype about pedometers is that you need 10,000 steps per day. When I was wearing one before, I was averaging more like 6,500 steps per day. But now by pacing at the bus stop (for a bus that apparently now comes only once every FIFTEEN minutes) and walking during lunch, I am getting my average up closer to 9,000 on weekdays. Ironically, it was much lower during the weekend. But then I did get some sleep.
I've gotten a subscription to Prevention magazine using (in)frequent flyer miles. Each month they have a story on someone who lost a lot of weight. Generally they go from doing very little exercise to doing a fair amount of exercise. And always they go from eating yummy foods to eating yucky foods. There is never any explanation of how they can make themselves start eating huge piles of disgusting vegetables all of a sudden when they used to eat pizza. But apparently many people like healthy foods, they just like unhealthy foods a little bit more. Or find them easier to order at restaurants, where they eat when they are feeling lazy about cooking. So it's just a matter of them getting the motivation to cook more.
Well, I also do better when I eat my own cooking than when I eat out, but my own cooking does not resemble proper diet food. I really could live on bread alone. With some dairy for protein and calcium and stuff. Oh well. Today I had a banana. That's produce!
**
In other news, I am letting myself read fifty pages a day of Questionable Content, an online comic strip that came highly recommended to R. and via him to me. I don't enjoy it as much as R., who laughs out loud on a regular basis. The intended audience is probably people in their early 20's who are into indy music. I am twice that age and never get the music references, but it's still fun. And it's a fabulously designed website. (Want to start at the beginning? Just click on the "First" link.) And it's pretty. And if you want to learn more about what it takes to be an online cartoonist, there's a journal entry on the side of most of the cartoons. I like the cartoons better than the journal entries.
Also, I caught up on everything at work today before that happened! Woo hoo!
Weight-fixing update
I tried grating part of a carrot up into my macaroni and cheese. I used the small holes on the grater. I didn't boil it with the macaroni because you probably lose nutrients that way. I just added it with the cheese and stuff at the end. This tasted just fine.
Also, before I started eating it, I boxed up half of the batch for later. Normally I eat a whole box because it's so delicious, but really a half a box is enough. I had the other half for lunch later.
I also decided that I think the plain light Laughing Cow cheese tastes a lot like cream cheese. Now cream cheese isn't that great for you, but I like to use it instead of butter in some things (like macaroni and cheese) because it's at least less caloric than butter. Laughing Cow cheese is the next step up on the nutrition ladder. I will start using it on bagels (and toast). Maybe I will try it in macaroni and cheese. Hmm, would it work in cheesecake? I don't know.
I got a new pedometer for the Disney World trip, just because I was wondering just how far we would be walking. (The hinge broke off my old one.) We walked an average of 25,000 steps per day. The weight-loss hype about pedometers is that you need 10,000 steps per day. When I was wearing one before, I was averaging more like 6,500 steps per day. But now by pacing at the bus stop (for a bus that apparently now comes only once every FIFTEEN minutes) and walking during lunch, I am getting my average up closer to 9,000 on weekdays. Ironically, it was much lower during the weekend. But then I did get some sleep.
I've gotten a subscription to Prevention magazine using (in)frequent flyer miles. Each month they have a story on someone who lost a lot of weight. Generally they go from doing very little exercise to doing a fair amount of exercise. And always they go from eating yummy foods to eating yucky foods. There is never any explanation of how they can make themselves start eating huge piles of disgusting vegetables all of a sudden when they used to eat pizza. But apparently many people like healthy foods, they just like unhealthy foods a little bit more. Or find them easier to order at restaurants, where they eat when they are feeling lazy about cooking. So it's just a matter of them getting the motivation to cook more.
Well, I also do better when I eat my own cooking than when I eat out, but my own cooking does not resemble proper diet food. I really could live on bread alone. With some dairy for protein and calcium and stuff. Oh well. Today I had a banana. That's produce!
**
In other news, I am letting myself read fifty pages a day of Questionable Content, an online comic strip that came highly recommended to R. and via him to me. I don't enjoy it as much as R., who laughs out loud on a regular basis. The intended audience is probably people in their early 20's who are into indy music. I am twice that age and never get the music references, but it's still fun. And it's a fabulously designed website. (Want to start at the beginning? Just click on the "First" link.) And it's pretty. And if you want to learn more about what it takes to be an online cartoonist, there's a journal entry on the side of most of the cartoons. I like the cartoons better than the journal entries.
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no subject
on 2006-11-23 04:56 pm (UTC)I am up to #326, starting from the beginning. And I don't know 7/8 of the bands, either, but it's still pretty fun.
no subject
on 2006-11-24 02:09 am (UTC)QC
on 2006-11-27 04:45 pm (UTC)I'm guessing it's both funnier and more annoying for many of us who do know most of the bands/musicians mentioned in the comic (but really aren't and never have been hipsters). I think I might like it more, in a way, if the references didn't register with me and I could approach it from a more objective, anthropological perspective. But maybe I just don't like that feeling I sometimes get when reading of being implicated in this whole thing.
Huge piles of vegetables
on 2006-11-27 04:29 pm (UTC)I liked your comment about how they never explain how people start eating vegetables when they used to eat pizza, etc. But it's my sense that they (Prevention and other distributors of these weight loss stories, like Weight Watchers) often profile people who truly needed to lose a LOT of weight and whose current weight causes them immediate, ongoing problems, not just the spectres of future health problems and vanity issues that slightly too-fat people face. WW's profiles are good about telling what was the call-to-action that got somebody off their duff and the pizza delivery number off their speed dial - they seem to fall into some pretty straightforward categories, like being influenced by a family member or friend who went on a diet, having a health scare, seeing a vacation photo or a weigh-in at the doctor or other objective illustration of just how fat they've gotten, not being able to keep up with their kids, and so forth.
Personally, I like broccoli with mac and cheese, but I am actually fond of those vegetables that many people find too bitter.
Re: Huge piles of vegetables
on 2006-11-28 07:00 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-11-28 05:20 pm (UTC)Yeah, part of the idea is that the vegetables replace some of the french fries, but drinking V8 is surely better than not, ceteris paribus.