After One Week

Well I had a fun experience with my scale this morning. I weighed myself and it said that I had lost 1 kilo. I tried again and it kept giving me different weights. It took 8 tries before I got one weight a second time. So I decided to use the least weight loss and it was the kilo. I don't know then how accurate my starting weight was. My waist was down 1 cm.

Eating fruit everyday was a struggle. It's not as if I buy fruits that I don't like! Hopefully after a few weeks it will become enough of a habit that I don't have to force myself to eat it.

The two new habits I'm adding this week are to eat my fruit before 9 in the evening and not to eat after midnight unless my stomach is grumbling (because I won't be able to sleep).

Banana Pancakes

Recently I saw a recipe for banana pancakes in a magazine. It had eggs and flour in it but I got the idea of subbing oat flour for the flour and leaving out the eggs. So I made them today.

Banana Pancakes

1.25 dl oatmeal, ground to flour
1 banana (used a 200 gram banana this time)
1 tsp maple syrup
dash cinnamon
1 ml ground flax seeds
(margarine or oil for frying)

Mash banana in a bowl until mushy. Add rest of ingredients and mix together. Let sit for 10 minutes. Form into 4 patties. Fry on first side until golden. Flip and flatten a bit and fry until golden.

These are quite dense and small and not really pancake-like but if you're wanting a treat and you haven't had your fruit yet, these are satisfying!

Writing a Food Journal

I really can't believe that I've been writing down everything I eat. Well almost. There have been a few spoon lickings and dish tasting that haven't made it, but I think I'm doing pretty well. And eating my fruit too!

I have often heard that it's a good idea to keep a food journal but I doubt that I'll be interested in writing amounts down. If you eat soup are you suppose to dig out each vegetable and tally them all? What if the soup is puréed? I thought that I'd google around and see what tips I could find.

1) Write it down immediately. You might forget something otherwise.
- I've been trying to write before I eat.
2) You can see if you've been treating yourself during the day or if you haven't, then at the end of the day you can decide if you want a treat.
3) Over time you can see how far you've come.
4) It isn't enough to keep a record, what you do with the information is also important.
5) Note both starting and finishing times, to see how long it takes you to eat.
6) At the end of the day look back at how you have done.

Most sites recommend writing down your mood but one site suggested keeping tract of how you feel afterwards. Chances are that you may want to avoid anything which does not satisfy you or bothers you and instead eat the foods which seemed to satisfy you the most. I hadn't thought of that before. Do I reach for certain foods for different reasons?

Still writing What I Eat

After breakfast I was putting the milk away and noticed the carrot pâté that I had made yesterday. I thought I'd take a spoonful but immediately wondered if was it worth having to write it down? It wasn't, but I thought it funny that my mind immediately thought of the food journal.

I started to look for weight loss blogs but most of the ones I found seem to be people on maintanence or young mothers! I don't know how many more blogs I want to start reading anyway. I read so many food and craft ones already.

And So It Begins (Again)

I know it is not necessary to start on a Monday but it was just a good place to start! My only child moved out on the weekend, so I'm on my own and don't have to think about his needs and wants unless he is at home (which I hope will be often!).

My first goal is 5 kilos just so I can get down below a certain weight but I don't want to begin by focusing on weight loss. I weighed myself and measured my waist today just so I can look back at where I started. There are some changes that I want to make and I'm going start with them. First is eating a piece of fruit every day. Though I like most fruits, I tended just to eat them when my son was around and not when I was on my own.

Second is not buying potato chips. I went almost 3 years without buying them. I made the provision that if my two favourite flavours came here, I could buy them, never thinking that they would. Well guess what happened! And so I started eating all of the other flavours that I'd hadn't had for years. I'm not going to say no if I'm offered any, but because that seldom happens, I don't think it will be a problem.

The last thing for now is keeping a food journal. I've tried in the past but usually forgot about it within a few days. I'm not going to keep track of amounts or anything but just what and when I eat. If I can keep it up then I'll think about adding more to the journal.