Category: portion control

Healthy eating is a hard habit to make, and an easy habit to break

November 21st, 2022

After just over a year on OA, and working hard to improve my eating and exercise, things are finally falling into place.

These days, I eat 2-3 healthy meals a day, exercise roughly 5x a week at the gym, and am attending OA meetings regularly.

I’m feeling better, eating better, and the muscle that atrophied over the last five years of not exercising is coming back.

It’s taken – is taking – a lot of dedication and consistency, and the results are starting to show.

Gone are my old habits of eating family sized blocks of chocolate and litres of Pepsi Max every night. Instead I drink plain bubbly water (thanks to my soda stream), and when I feel like a snack I have a piece of fruit or some low calorie jelly.

It’s nowhere near perfect yet. I still occasionally binge, and I’d like to be able to say no on our weekly workplace morning teas, but I’m getting better.

It’s true what they say about consistency. You just have to keep coming back to OA, and keep practicing the good habits instead of the bad. It’s not easy – not one bit – but it will become a lifestyle if you keep working.

It’s becoming a lifestyle for me 😁

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Diet + gym = happiness

November 14th, 2022

I’m loving my return to the gym.

I’m finding that I sleep much better, and just feel better overall.

Gym keeps me sane. I forgot how well it keeps me sane, and wish I’d never stopped going. But covid happened, and everything ground to a halt, and the gym was closed.

Then when I could have gone back, I didn’t.

However, I’m back now.

I’m feeling very weak in comparison to where I was – I’m back doing baby weights again.

It’ll soon improve. I’m taking things very cautiously, as I don’t want to injure myself. It’s easy to forget I’m not young any more! (I’m in my 50s now…yikes!)

But I am loving the movement. I love feeling better about myself. I love eating better too.

I’m fully aware these days that junk food, like drugs or alcohol, is addictive. And I am an addict. So I have to keep away from junk, or it sets me off, the monster inside is released from its cage, and everything goes to hell.

I’m better off just eating well. I’ve learned from experience that I can’t control myself with certain foods, so more and more I’m just ruling them out of my life. That doesn’t mean I’m fully successful at ruling them out. But I’m doing the best I can.

Today’s food is prawns (well, shrimp really), and asparagus for lunch. Dinner will be chicken and asparagus. 1 cup of chicken, and a fair bit of asparagus (I’ve learned that I don’t have to count or limit green veggies).

So that’s where I’m at. Still doing OA, still eating well (mostly), and still doing gym every weekday.

Life is – dare I say it? – good. 😁
The mind games of weight loss

May 7th, 2022

“It’s all in your head, it was never about the weight” – quote from successful OA member.

That’s so true. When I first joined OA, I was desperate to lose weight. I thought OA might provide an easy answer.

But the longer I’ve been in OA, the more I’ve learned there are no easy answers. You can’t just sign up to something and magically, suddenly lose heaps of weight.

Life doesn’t work like that.

What I have learned is success follows action. You won’t lose weight until you perform the actions that result in weight loss.

Those actions are different for everyone, but for me that’s 2-3 meals and no snacks. Sometimes I have breakfast, sometimes I don’t. I also incorporate regular fasting and exercise into my plan. But the big thing is no snacking.

When I think back to how things were when I was a kid in the 1970s and pretty much everyone was lean, I remember how snacking was frowned upon.

We’ve got fatter as a society because 3 regular meals have become 6, or 8, or just one long meal that lasts all day.

The other difference is people eating out a lot more. These days it’s a regular hobby for many.

I was nine years old before I went to my first restaurant for dinner. I remember it clearly. And my experience was typical of our generation.

These days there are many people who don’t ever eat at home! I know some of them, and being overweight is the norm.

I don’t eat out very often, so that hasn’t been a huge problem for me. My problem is snacking. But for many people, the eating out incessantly is a huge part of their weight problem.

But yes, I’ve learned that my biggest mind game has been recognising that snacking causes weight gain. And some of the so-called ” healthy” snacks – often found in the “health food” section of the supermarket – are the worst offenders. The advertising is so slick they convince you a 500 calorie snack is “healthy”. It’s not, not for me.

When I stick to a regular plan of 3 meals a day, nothing in between, a daily walk and occasional fasting, I lose weight. When I don’t, I gain.

The mind game of this simple realisation is accepting the truth that restraint in my life – a balance with commonsense – is getting me closer to my goal.
Still losing weight…still doing OA

March 18th, 2022

Here I am again, about 15 pounds lighter than when I started late last year.

OA works. However, what also works is OA with a combination of meal prepping and portion control.

Portion control is that butt-ugly phrase that nobody likes to use. All the diets keep on claiming eat as much as you want and lose weight!

It’s not true. What is true is that modern-day portions are mindbogglingly huge in comparison to what people ate in the past, and that’s a big part of why we’re all getting fatter.

I’ve had a big wake up call recently because I bought a meal prep book that provides easy keto recipes in controlled portions. The book is Easy Keto Meal Prep by Aaron Day. It not only makes meal prep easy, but it takes the guesswork out of the big question: how much should I be eating?

(I’m not getting a kickback for mentioning the book…it’s just an awesome resource that deserves to be shared.)

At first I was stunned when I saw the size of the portions. I thought, “That’ll NEVER keep me full!” And I was right. At first it didn’t. But now I’m adjusting to smaller portions and it’s enough. Adjustment took a couple of weeks, but I’m doing fine now. And my weight is dropping fast.

So that’s where I’m at. OA is providing the emotional and spiritual support I needed, while meal prepping is giving me a common sense path to eating well.

Life is good ☺️
Portion control

February 7th, 2022

I can be a real idiot.

For the last two years, I’ve wondered why I can’t lose weight. But I finally figured it out.

Two words: portion control.

I started actually tracking my calories in food I eat, together with carbs, sugar and fat.

This sounds really basic, but if you eat double the amount, you’ll consume double the calories and nutrients.

So while that breakfast smoothie might be very healthy, if it’s too large a portion, I’m not going to lose weight having it.

Same with meat, fish or any other food. No matter how healthy, if I eat too much of it I’m not going to lose weight.

Checking my portions is really important. I just made some curry egg omelettes for work lunches this week. I didn’t realize how much cheese I was going to put on them until I measured it. What I thought was “about right” was actually about 1.5 cups of cheese. I would never have guessed that!

Now, cheese is a great food, but it’s high in calories. A cup and a half of cheese would have easily stymied my weight loss efforts for the week. And get this: I wouldn’t have even realised it.

So for the next few weeks I’m weighing and measuring everything. Sounds Draconian, I know, but it’s the best way to get my intake down to reasonable amounts.

This has been a wake up call for me.

Likewise, I would normally have eaten two egg omelettes for lunch, instead of one. Not because I was hungry enough to need it, but because it “looked right”.

That was stupid. I didn’t need two. It was just a bad habit to eat two, nothing more.

And here’s the great thing: if I cut my servings of such things in half, I’m having my calories.

While eating one egg omelette is about 250 calories, two egg omelettes is 500 calories.

And if I eat them at work every day, I’m swapping out 2500 calories and instead eating 1250 over five days at work.

Make that one small change, and I’ll be dropping 3750 calories every 3 weeks, which is a pound of weight loss.

That’s a huge improvement for something I don’t even need!

They say life is a learning curve. That’s true, but you can’t learn if you don’t open your eyes to begin with!

Category: portion control

Healthy eating is a hard habit to make, and an easy habit to break

Diet + gym = happiness

The mind games of weight loss

Still losing weight…still doing OA

Portion control