(no subject)

[tinyjo]

Right. I weighed myself this morning and I am 15 stone. This is way significantly too much. The last 3 stone of that has been put on in the last 4 months pretty much (although I haven't been formally tracking so I could be remembering that wrong). I need to do something about this. I'm going to make an appointment with my GP at the beginning of next year and see if she's got anything to say or any suggestions but for now I'm looking for suggestions from you lot. This is my experience so far:

• Slimming clubs per se don't help motivate me. If they've got a good program and my willpower is good then I'm happy to pay for them but the being weighed by someone else bit isn't a motivator for me and I generally find that most of the people at the meetings have completly different lifestyles to me so I don't get much from the discussion. That being said, if you know a good one with a good system, feel free to recommend it.
• Previous experience shows that unless I actively enjoy an exercise I don't stick to it and also that there are very few exercises that I actively enjoy. I quite liked swimming but found that if you do that every day you end up smelling of chlorine all the time, which I really didn't like. I like riding horses but that requires a regular timing and somewhere to do it (none of the Oxfordshire stables I've tried have ever answered their phones or called me back!). Now that I've finally recovered from my cold I'm cycling to work again but any other suggestions for exercising are welcome
• I've had a huge increase in my desire to snack during the second half of this year. I notice it particularly when I'm watching TV - if I'm settling in for an evening of Veronica Mars, I'll usually do it with a couple of glasses of wine and half a pack of (low fat) cream crackers. Any good tactics for distracting myself from my desire to snack? (n.b. I can't knit while watching TV :) ) Previously I haven't had much of a problem with this - I've snacked before but it's been much more under my control.

So, any ideas?

Comments

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

either you've been eating/drinking almost twice as much as you should do (which I find hard to believe) or something odd is going on.

Yikes! It never occured to me to do the maths before. I certainly don't think my intake has gone up that much.

When you had the thyroid test, did you explain all this or just ask for a thyroid test?

Well, I did explain that I'd put on a lot of weight but I don't think I gave figures.

Have you thought of trying a different approach - low-GI, maybe, rather than straightforward counting calories/points etc

I've wondered about it but I'm not really sure what to try. I suspect that I'd end up having the same trouble of sticking within the limits whatever I tried though.

As far as the snacking goes, the best thing is just not to have stuff in the house in the first place!

Ah, but then I just snack on something that is in the house. This is usually pitta breads, toasted in the toaster. Or a cup full of cornflakes (you can eat them like crisps, you know!). Or get into a filthy temper. Or, in the worst case, make a mini pasta dish for self. Yes I really did do that one evening!

There's not many raw veg that I relish straight out of the fridge, but maybe steamed stuff would work, possibly? Tomatoes would be too juicy for what I generally want but steamed carrots might work, possibly. I'm generally drinking for the taste rather than thirst so water wouldn't really work. That does tend to be a tricky one - teas take time to make and cool, juices are generally too sweet and things like tonic water are fridge temperature. I've yet to come up with a low fat wine equivalent. If pushed off it I'd generally go to the teas side though.

The other thing that strikes me is that you eat out fairly regularly, don't you?

True. And I am terrible at choosing sensible things from menus as well. And I find it hard not to finish my dinner - legacy of childhood. At home, I generally weigh everything - a legacy of my weighwatchers days - so I know my portion sizes are not crazy when I'm cooking for myself but when I'm out it's a different matter.

[white_hart]

I actually thought about the maths after the last girly - I mean, I went from 8 stone to 12.5, but that was 8 stone in 1994 to 12.5 in 2002/3 - more or less half a stone a year. And the fact that it sounds as though you're hitting the carbs all the time does chime in with what I've read about PCOS...

I agree with brixtonbrood about the wine/willpower thing. My suggestion for a drink would be cold fruit tea - I tend to find they don't taste of much hot, but if you make up a jugful in advance and leave the teabags in by the time it's cold it tastes quite nice.

If you're snacking that much I also wonder whether you should think about bulking out your meals more? I normally eat smallish meals with lots of veg/salad; if I eat half a raw/lightly cooked cabbage it's hours before I want to eat again, whereas if I just had the pasta and sauce or whatever I suspect I might well feel hungry again much sooner.

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

I got kind of bored with salad but I can see myself adding more veg. Brocolli maybe, with a bit of salt on. That would be a nice snack.

I quite like the room temp fruit tea idea - maybe I could make up a jug when I get in from work which would be ready to help myself once I got to the later evening and started getting the urge...