Friday, September 21, 2012

Coffee... how I love thee!

Or alternately titled "Why do I do this to myself?"


I started seriously drinking coffee when I was 14 years old.  I had my first job working as a nursing assistant in a retirement home.  I worked 2-3 evenings a week till 9:30.  The dining room always had 2-3 pots of coffee brewed, just ready for the taking. Within months I was up to drinking at least a pot of coffee a shift.  Amazingly caffeine has never interfered with my sleep.  Quite the opposite actually.  It seems that the soothing heat of a hot cup of coffee late at night will lull me to sleep instead of keeping me up.  That being said, it certainly wasn't much help when I was cramming for exams.

I started drinking coffee with milk and sugar, but in my early twenties I switched to black.  But then I developed hypo-glycemia and had many fainting spells from low blood sugar.  I also smoked at the time.  After too many instances of feeling woozy (or passing out completely) I finally made the connection that if I smoked while drinking black coffee I would pass out.  Who knows what was so special about that combination, but adding milk and sugar back into my coffee solved the problem (and no, at the time the idea of quitting smoking never even entered into the realm of possibilities).

I continued on with my love affair of coffee, drinking several a day.  Until I decided to get serious about losing weight.  When I looked at my overall diet, the quickest hit for cutting out calories was to cut back on my coffee intake.  A medium double double from Tim Horton's is 230 calories.  That is currently 17% of my daily intake.  It seemed like a no brainer.

Cutting out coffees on the go was easy.  Cutting back on my morning coffees at home took a bit more work, but eventually I got down to just one a day.  I'm not willing to give it up completely.  And so for the past 9 months or so, I've enjoyed a single cup of coffee before work.  But every now and then, if I have a bit more time in the morning, I figure that I will splurge and have that second cup.  We don't use cream at home, and the cups are smaller then they are at Timmie's, so from a calorie point of view, it's not that bad.

The problem though?  My body seems to have gotten used to a single cup of coffee and the second one now has me doubled over in pain, EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.  And yet do I learn?  Of course not.  It's not until I'm sipping the last drop and the pain in my upper rib cage starts that I have a D'oh! moment. The pain lasts for about 30 minutes and nothing seems to help it move along any faster.  I'm such a slow learner that I think I need to put a post it note in the cupboard by the sugar bowl that reads:



Why does the lure of good food always win out over common sense?

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Weigh In - Sept 19

Challenge Starting Weight   204
Current Weight                     201.7
Weight lost to date                   2.6
Percentage lost                       -1.1%

Today I hit my lowest recorded weight yet!  After feeling stuck for so long now, this made for a great way to start my day!

The biggest change that I've done in the last week is to start drinking water again.  It is quite amazing the difference it can make.  I usually drink close to 3 liters of water a day, but since my vacation in August I got away from it.  My mom lives with a hand dug well and boils all of her drinking water, so I felt that I shouldn't be drinking all of it on her every day.  And I honestly don't like bottled water.  It will do in a pinch on a hot sweaty day if I'm out and about, but given the choice, I prefer tap water.

You would think that I would at least like the brand of Aberfoyle Bottled Water.


Aberfoyle
Our natural Spring Water that is bottled right at the source, from a natural spring originating deep within our 125 acre parcel of protected land in Ontario.

    Why should I like this one?  The natural spring that they are using is the same one that my mom's well pulls from!  The processing plant is just down the road from my mom's farm.  Yet somehow they manage to alter the taste of her fresh crisp water when they bottle it. 

    So for now I'm back to drinking tap water.  And this week it has made a difference on the scales for me, so I plan to keep it up.

    Thursday, September 13, 2012

    Weigh In - Sept 13

    Challenge Starting Weight   204
    Current Weight                     202.6
    Weight lost to date                   1.40
    Percentage lost                       -0.69%

    I took the last 2 weeks of August off and simply enjoyed my vacation.  I found though that when I got back I could not get myself motivated to eat right, exercise or even really care about weight loss.  I've finally turned that around and seem to be back in the swing of things.

    My frustration right now is that I cannot seem to get out of this current weight rut.  I first hit 205 lbs back on July 18th.  And since then I have bounced from as low as 200 to right back up to 205, never really being able to maintain the low for very long.  I started September back at 205, and since then have managed to get back down to 202.5. 

    My goal now is to focus more on how I feel and how my body moves then what the specific number is.  Though I know myself; I won't be able to completely step away from checking the numbers.  While I don't hyper-focus on the small changes, I do find that it motivates me to make better food choices throughout the day. 

    The good news is that I find that I can push myself further with exercise than I ever have before.  Case in point:  last night at TaeKwon-Do I was able to run all 10 laps of the gym without having to walk a portion of it.  That is a first!  My pushups are coming along as well.  While I can't get all the way down, I can at least support my weight with my arms.  I can also run for the bus without being winded, climb the flight of stairs at work and still be able to talk and I just generally feel better.

    And so the journey continues.