End of Cycle 5... down 3 pounds

Congratulations to me.....! for I lost 3 more pounds during the last 12 days...... making a grand total of 21 pounds of embarrassing fat that I am no longer lugging around with me every where I go.

5 cycles, one was a double so that's roughly 60 days. 2 months. and 21 pounds are now gone, hopefully forever. That's one pound every 3 days or 1/3 of a pound every day, and all I had to do was eat fresh fruits and vegetables and drink a little whole milk. That and stay out of the kitchen.

Just imagine how much more I could be losing if only I would exercise (and stop cheating!!!!!!). 

Steven suggested I walk 30 minutes a night after seven pm, but to be honest, I don't even do that. My foot is feeling better though and I will begin walking (at least a little if not the whole kitten kabootal) soon. I really do enjoy the cool breeze so I am rapidly running out of excuses.

I once read that a good visual is: buy sticks of butter equivalent to the number of pounds you would like to loose and every time you lose a pound throw away a pound of the butter. I wonder how much space 60 pounds of butter would take up in my refrigerator?  I already know how much space it takes up in a bathtub so in there I still seem as fat as I was two months ago.

But seriously folks, physically I do feel much better. It isn't such a chore just to get up off the bed in the morning. I use to have to raise my feet high in the air and sorta bounce myself up but not any more. Now I can just swing my legs off the bed and just stand up. What a difference 20 pounds make!

According to Steven I lost 3 1/2 inches from my waist. Another congratulations to me!!!!!

Now my clothing is looser than it use to be. My skirts use to be skin tight around the waist but now when I gather up all the free space at the top it appears that I lost more than the tape measure indicated. It looks like 8 inches instead of 3 inches. Wonder why that is?

Yesterday I ate: 2 golden delicious apples, 2 grapefruits, 1 head of romaine lettuce and 2 sweet bell peppers (one yellow, one orange). And I wasn't hungry at all.... not before I ate nor after. In fact, I'm still full but so far today I have already eaten one apple because Steven told me: if I don't eat my body will shut down. So, I do as i am told and I eat..... even when I'm not hungry.

Yes, you read that right: I've been cheating. But, in my defense, I was mindful of my cheats and therefore I cheated the best way I know how: I ate more of what I am allowed to eat.

One night, I don't remember which, I just wanted to eat. It had to be my brain that wanted to eat because my body definitely was NOT hungry. And to top that off: nothing would satisfy me.

At first I thought: maybe my body is craving protein. So I ate a can of water-packed tuna. But that didn't make me stop wanting more food. so I ate all the fruits and vegetables I had eaten that day. By then my belly was --- really stuffed --- so I had to quit eating. Was my mind off of eating after that? I guess so.... coz now I was thinking: boy! am I full!

At least I was mindful of what I was doing so I only ate what I was allowed to eat (minus the tuna - that's really NOT allowed!!!!) . 

I could have reached for cookies or ice cream like I use to. I could have and probably would have had those things been in my kitchen but they aren't so that's half the battle right there. I wonder how the ladies do it: I am sure that some ladies have to have other foods in their house for other people to eat. I think that would make it even more difficult for me. 

But, as my life is today, I live alone so I am in charge of what I choose to have in my kitchen and I choose to NOT have ready-to-eat junk food lying around in my cabinets. Yes, I have a few bags of peanut butter cookie mix tied up in not one but two grocery bags, stuffed waaaay down in the back of my most-difficult-to-reach cabinet.

Why? you may ask. Because the stores are still going to have then no matter what. And it is up to me to not eat them. So, yes, sticking them way out of my reach makes me forget they are there. But later (in a year from now) I might want to make a batch to share with someone (or to eat all by myself) and why should I have to spend more of my hard-earned-money on buying more of what I already have? 

To be honest: cookies aren't even a temptation for me now for a few reasons. Mainly because I am starting to realize that fruit is very sweet (and sticky, I always have to wash my hands after I eat an apple). Secondly, mentally I am starting to realize that eating incorrectly makes me feel bogged down and sluggish whereas eating fruit makes my digestion work soooo much better. 

And, I have been reading more of that book i bought: 80/10/10. As it turns out, this is a raw vegan book. And, as you know, the 80 is 80% carbohydrates. But not just any carbohydrates mind you. This book features delicious, ripe, fresh fruit as it's main source of carbohydrates. The two 10's are for fat and protein which you should get from adding a small amount of nuts and seeds to your diet. 

And, the book says it is better to not cook your food ..... which aside from the fish (baked salmon with skin on one side and nothing else on it baked 15 minutes in a toaster oven) all that I have eaten for the last two months has been ripe, fresh, uncooked fruits and vegetables. And I must admit: I like eating this way. And, to be honest, if it wasn't for others encouraging me to eat otherwise or me choosing to eat otherwise so as not to make other people uncomfortable, I really have no problem with eating like this - the raw vegan way - and I hope that I will continue eating this way for a long time after all my unwanted pounds are gone.

Since I'm not losing much weight Steven suggested I add yellow bell peppers, watermelon and grapefruits to my list of what I am eating. He says they are fat-burning foods. {note to self: look up fat-burning foods} It may be my imagination but the first day I ate two grapefruits I dropped two pounds on my scale overnight. And there I have stayed for the last three days. I wonder what would happen if I ate nothing but grapefruits for a whole day. I'm going to try it next week so I'll let you know what happens and how eating nothing but citrus fruits makes my body feel.

And I finally weighed my apples the other day and guess what.... each apple weighs one half of a pound. And I've been eating four a day plus other things on every one of my fruit and vegetable days. But Steven says that it's okay and that it is acceptable for me to go up to 3 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables every fruit and vegetables day. So, I'm going to continue eating them but now I'm going to add watermelon and grapefruits to my meals everyday. 

Which is just what the 80/10/10 book says to do: have meals of nothing but fruit. Did you know that all fruit has protein and fat in it too? I didn't. And avocados are listed in the fats list (along with the nuts and seeds) instead of the fruits list.

Half of this book is nutritional education and the second half is success stories of people who switched to eating the 80/10/10 raw vegan way. I am just about to start reading the second half of the book. I'll tell you about some of the success stories. What I read so far is that many health problems can be remedied by eating this way. And that excess fat is the number one cause of both heart disease and cancer. And that if you increase how much animal protein you eat you automatically increase how much fat you eat. And that the right way to calculate how much carbohydrates, fats and protein you are eating is as a percentage of how much you eat instead of counting calories of the type of food you are eating. And it recommends some internet sights that can help you do this and I will post them here in a few days.

I read in one of the Sadkhin sites that it is possible to lose weight by eating the way they (and this book) recommend but the advantage of going to your local Sadkhin Complex and getting those two teeny tiny stainless steel balls taped on top of corresponding organ sites behind your ears is this: you are never ever physically hungry! and to me, that is what is helping to make it easier for me to choose to eat the proper foods (as opposed to eating just whatever I can get my hands on because I am ravenously hungry!). And I am sure it will work for you too.

Oh! and the book also mentioned some kind of chemical exciters that are added to processed foods that are physically  addictive and that these actual physical cravings is what keeps us eating the fast foods and processed "junk" foods. And it says that eating raw fresh fruits and vegetables eliminates these cravings. Which is a good thing..... right?


..... wishing you a great weekend .....  ...gamzulatova...   this too is for the best!

What I've Been Eating This Week

Hello there my fellow Sadkhiners. This last week has gone very well as far as my being hungry is concerned (I am never ever actually hungry) but so far this week I haven't lost much weight and I believe I am finally doing everything correctly.

My last appointment was last Thursday. Needless to say: I didn't eat any canned fruit this week. And I drank only red whole milk on my two milk days. I always eat apples on my fresh fruit and vegetable days and since last week I've been eating one avocado each day. Then I added carrot chips one day and 3 heads of romaine lettuce hearts on the other.

So far today I have eaten 3 golden delicious apples. And I wasn't hungry I just ate them because Steven told me I should.

Here's what happened with my weight this week.

I weighed less on Steven's scale than I did that morning on my scale. And then when I weighed at home again that night I was still the heavier weight. It has taken me a whole week of watching very strictly to get down to where Steven's scale had already told me I weighed. Augh!!!!! frustration!

I went back into the previous post and corrected the In Honor of Shabbos incorrectly written information. I only get to eat 4 ounces of fish on Friday night and only 4 more ounces of protein (fish/beef/chicken in this order of preference) on Shabbos day. 

Needless to say I will start doing this part correctly too.

But Steven told me that it is permissible for me to make tuna patties with one egg with one can of tuna. I am looking forward to this. I plan to make then using the ingredients that lady used in her avocado dressing. I still haven't made that yet but I do have all the ingredients now. Maybe I will do it today.

I've been reading a lot of knitting books this week. I'm trying to learn as much as possible and it helps me to read the actual instructions on how to knit in lots of different books and then it's like magic..... all of a sudden I know exactly how to do everything. 

I'm also looking forward to actually knitting something. 

It's time to go. The library closes in half an hour and the computers close in 5 minutes.

I wish you all a very happy weekend! bye-bye.