I'm starting a new section of my blog tonight, to try a little experiment. My health is becoming a bit more important to me, with getting married again, getting a little older, and some of my bad habits. So, I'm setting aside a section of my blog to talk about the things I'm doing to improve my health, both to let folks who know me keep up to date, and to publically embarass myself if I fall off the wagon. :-)
Previously, I was the poster child for low-carb dieting: in the course of a year (without any significant weight loss during the last four or five months), I knocked off 75 lbs sticking fairly strictly to an Atkins-esque regimen, going from roughly 300 lbs to 225. I was pretty happy with that, and was targetting knocking off another 25 lbs through exercise and lightly reduced caloric intake.
Instead, I gained back 50 lbs. In about four months. Mmm, cheesecake.
I don't blame the low-carb diet for the weight gain, by the way. By the time I officially stopped calling what I was doing "low-carb dieting", my daily carbohydrate intake was pretty much at what I'd call a normal level for most folks. The problem was purely mental: I was off the diet, so I was free to slip into some old habits, right? It was made somewhat worse by the mental place I'd put myself during the diet: I was used to the idea that high-fat, high-protein stuff was good for me, so I still gravitated toward that kind of food...not good when you're filling up on breads and pastas too. Long term, that kind of thinking could do substantial damage to my health, even if I somehow managed to keep the weight off.
So, to the experiment: I'm going to try and publically chronicle what I'm doing about my weight. The plan is to update this blog regularly (daily, if possible), with weight updates and what I'm doing to reduce it. I'll try to make note of things that work, things that didn't help at all, and stuff I'm considering. As the reader, you're welcome to comment to me about this, or not; either way, it's my website, and if you don't like it, you can always try something else. *grin*
Today, I weighed in on my highly-accurate bathroom scale at 270, down three pounds from yesterday (yes, my weight has fairly dramatic daily swings). I limited myself to about 1700 calories yesterday, and around 2100 today. Breakfast was a bowl of cereal with 2% milk, while lunch was a slip-up of a chicken and black bean burrito, so dinner consisted of a chicken breast sub. I've already figured out that lunch, as with Atkins, is going to be the hardest part of the diet, since that's typically the time I get together with co-workers to get away from the office for a few minutes, and the choice of eatery isn't always a good one. We'll see how it goes.