...How I Disappear...

I weigh myself every day. I know pretty much any diet will tell you not to do this, and that it makes me look positively obsessive over my weight, but I do it anyway. Being as I work in a manufacturing facility, there is a pallet scale on my way to the bathroom, and it's just a quick glance around to see who's looking, hop on, hop off. I don't worry about the number on a daily basis, but I am keeping a diet journal right now and that's just one more column. The other columns are for all of the food that I eat every day, exercise I get, cigarettes I smoke, location (home or traveling), and activities. This helps me keep track of why I eat a certain way on specific days, and why I might eat more or less when I travel or work or hang out at home.

Since I started my journal on 25 February, I've lost 6 lbs (145-139). This averages out to 2 lbs per week, which isn't a bad rate of weight loss. I don't expect that it will remain consistent down to my goal, but if it did, I would achieve 120 lbs at the beginning of May. That really doesn't seem very far away! I still think about myself as having started at 170 lbs, though it's been almost 2 years since I weighed that much, and compute my overall loss using that number: 31 lbs. I had been at 130 for most of last year, but gained weight this fall from lack of exercise due to injury.

The key to my weight loss has been exercise, but I've also begun to pay much more attention to what I eat. I cut way back on my Dr. Pepper fixes, pretty much eliminated fast food, and upped my water intake. Those very simple changes, plus excercise of course (can I stress that any more?!), allowed me to lose weight quickly and relatively easily. As I began to keep records of what I ate on a daily basis, I also started to eat better food. It's lame to say, but I felt proud of myself when I looked at the day or week and saw only foods that were good for me.

All along, I've known that my eating habits, and Dave's for that matter, would be far better if we ate at home more often. We rarely cook dinner, preferring to have restaurants do the work for us. Dave is also very picky, and does not eat many of the foods that I like, so going out means we can both get what we want. Something about being at Sarah's last weekend inspired me to make more of an effort to cook. Dave's job as a bartender at a country club means that we work nearly opposite hours, so currently the only nights we have dinner together are Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Three nights of meals per week shouldn't be a problem! If I can finally get myself into the habit of taking leftovers to work for lunch, I should save quite a bit of money, and eat healthier, tastier food everyday.

Sarah made a wonderful sausage & peppers soup on Sunday, and though I didn't actually pay attention to how it was made, I attempted a version of it on Tuesday night. I had asked her for the recipe, and when she got back to me after I had already made it, I saw that I had guessed pretty well. I thought the soup turned out great, though extremely spicy, and Dave liked it as well. I think it's the first time I've ever cooked anything for him with tomatoes, his most hated food, and he ate them with no complaints. I reheated a bowl for a quick dinner before my soccer game last night, brought over a generous portion for my parents to try, and finished the rest for lunch today. The ingredients cost about $20, which isn't bad for what worked out to be six individual meals worth of food. I'm making chicken enchiladas tonight from a simple and healthy recipe I found online, also inspired by a meal I had with Sarah this weekend.