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I had what may be a blinding flash of the obvious last night - I think I figured out one of my dieting problems/eating triggers. A lot of diet books talk about this sort of thing and mostly they focus on eating when you're bored and when you're upset, neither of which quite rang true for me but when talking to Alex last night I suddenly realised: I eat when I'm tired.
This takes a few forms:
1) When I'm tired I am way less likely to be motivated to cook. This means that more often than not, we end up eating take out.
2) When I'm tired I'm much more likely to reach for a snack to keep me going because I feel the need for the energy boost. This tends to take the form of something carby.
3) When I'm tired, I'm much more impatient, so I'm much more suceptible to thinking "gah this diet isn't getting anywhere/is too slow/whatever so I might as well just give it up".
4) When I'm tired I am much less likely to be prepared to do exercise when it can be avoided (e.g. I'll drive to work instead of walking/cycling).
I've been tired a lot this week. This has been due to the fact that we had a couple of late nights at the start of the week and partly due to poor sleeping conditions. I sleep in fairly short cycles and I'm very sensitive to noise unless I'm quite deeply asleep. We've had problems with Charlie this week where if we let her in she'll decide to sharpen her claws on the mattress at 5am and if we shut her out she scrabbles at the door either at 5am or while we're trying to go to sleep. Really, we need to train her to not do one (or both) of these things but effective training is hard to pull off at 5am when you're already tired.
My thoughts about this currently are currently focusing on two main things - how can I avoid feeling tired and how can I avoid overeating when I do?
As far as avoiding tiredness goes, the ideas I've come up with so far are as follows:
1) Go to bed earlier (well duh!). The main problem here is the aforementioned short sleep cycles and light sleeping for large parts of them. If I go to bed earlier and then Alex comes up an hour or so later, it's almost impossible for him to avoid disturbing me. How do I find out what my optimum hours of sleep are anyway?
2) Get up earlier. This sounds crazy but hear me out. I've noticed a frequent pattern recently where I'll wake up around 6:30 or 7 quite suddenly. There generally won't be anything apparently to cause this and I'll feel quite alert but I look at the clock and think "too early" and settle back for more sleep. I suspect this may be putting me at the wrong point in my sleep cycle when I wake up at 7:30 with the alarm.
3) Deal with cat noise at night. Possibly shut them downstairs? This seems mean to Cassie because she is nice and well behaved in the spare bedroom but might work.
I suspect that the best plan for these is going to be to obsessivly diarise for a few weeks to figure out what works well and what doesn't but any suggestions/comments are welcome.
Then there's avoiding overeating when I do feel tired.
1) Force myself to exercise. This is a reasonable idea in principle but I am cautious about it mostly because I have a very strong antipathy to most exercise anyway. If I force myself into it when I feel less than good, is that going to risk putting me off it altogether? If I only did light exercise on those days would that make any difference or does it have to be at a certain level for the hormones to kick in?
2) Plan some low/no cook meals for days when I don't feel I can cope with cooking. The limiting factors here are going to be finding things that really do taste good so I brighten my mood and the size of my freezer, which is very small and mitigates against a lot of cooking in advance (although you could have some stuff like that). I have got some ready meals in there but I bought them because they're low fat ones and while they're not bad, I don't find them satisfying. It occurs to me that finding some ready meals or pasta sauces or whatever that I do find satisfying is likely to be less calories than take-out even if it's more calories than other ready meals. Any suggestions?
3) Corollary to (2). Stop feeling guilty about occasionally asking Alex to prepare said low/no cook meals. As long as it's not all the time (and experience suggests it wouldn't be) then it's perfectly fair and he's said before he'd be happy to so accept that it's a shared thing, damnit! I'm so used to being the one that feeds us that it's hard to get that head off.
4) Find some low calorie energy boosters which can be used as a temporary measure. No particular ideas for any - any suggestions?
5) Do something upstairs rather than watching TV downstairs on evenings when I'm tired - to physically make it more effort to get any snacky stuff.
Any more ideas?
This takes a few forms:
1) When I'm tired I am way less likely to be motivated to cook. This means that more often than not, we end up eating take out.
2) When I'm tired I'm much more likely to reach for a snack to keep me going because I feel the need for the energy boost. This tends to take the form of something carby.
3) When I'm tired, I'm much more impatient, so I'm much more suceptible to thinking "gah this diet isn't getting anywhere/is too slow/whatever so I might as well just give it up".
4) When I'm tired I am much less likely to be prepared to do exercise when it can be avoided (e.g. I'll drive to work instead of walking/cycling).
I've been tired a lot this week. This has been due to the fact that we had a couple of late nights at the start of the week and partly due to poor sleeping conditions. I sleep in fairly short cycles and I'm very sensitive to noise unless I'm quite deeply asleep. We've had problems with Charlie this week where if we let her in she'll decide to sharpen her claws on the mattress at 5am and if we shut her out she scrabbles at the door either at 5am or while we're trying to go to sleep. Really, we need to train her to not do one (or both) of these things but effective training is hard to pull off at 5am when you're already tired.
My thoughts about this currently are currently focusing on two main things - how can I avoid feeling tired and how can I avoid overeating when I do?
As far as avoiding tiredness goes, the ideas I've come up with so far are as follows:
1) Go to bed earlier (well duh!). The main problem here is the aforementioned short sleep cycles and light sleeping for large parts of them. If I go to bed earlier and then Alex comes up an hour or so later, it's almost impossible for him to avoid disturbing me. How do I find out what my optimum hours of sleep are anyway?
2) Get up earlier. This sounds crazy but hear me out. I've noticed a frequent pattern recently where I'll wake up around 6:30 or 7 quite suddenly. There generally won't be anything apparently to cause this and I'll feel quite alert but I look at the clock and think "too early" and settle back for more sleep. I suspect this may be putting me at the wrong point in my sleep cycle when I wake up at 7:30 with the alarm.
3) Deal with cat noise at night. Possibly shut them downstairs? This seems mean to Cassie because she is nice and well behaved in the spare bedroom but might work.
I suspect that the best plan for these is going to be to obsessivly diarise for a few weeks to figure out what works well and what doesn't but any suggestions/comments are welcome.
Then there's avoiding overeating when I do feel tired.
1) Force myself to exercise. This is a reasonable idea in principle but I am cautious about it mostly because I have a very strong antipathy to most exercise anyway. If I force myself into it when I feel less than good, is that going to risk putting me off it altogether? If I only did light exercise on those days would that make any difference or does it have to be at a certain level for the hormones to kick in?
2) Plan some low/no cook meals for days when I don't feel I can cope with cooking. The limiting factors here are going to be finding things that really do taste good so I brighten my mood and the size of my freezer, which is very small and mitigates against a lot of cooking in advance (although you could have some stuff like that). I have got some ready meals in there but I bought them because they're low fat ones and while they're not bad, I don't find them satisfying. It occurs to me that finding some ready meals or pasta sauces or whatever that I do find satisfying is likely to be less calories than take-out even if it's more calories than other ready meals. Any suggestions?
3) Corollary to (2). Stop feeling guilty about occasionally asking Alex to prepare said low/no cook meals. As long as it's not all the time (and experience suggests it wouldn't be) then it's perfectly fair and he's said before he'd be happy to so accept that it's a shared thing, damnit! I'm so used to being the one that feeds us that it's hard to get that head off.
4) Find some low calorie energy boosters which can be used as a temporary measure. No particular ideas for any - any suggestions?
5) Do something upstairs rather than watching TV downstairs on evenings when I'm tired - to physically make it more effort to get any snacky stuff.
Any more ideas?
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no subject
Date: July 27th, 2007 04:53 pm (UTC)From:Do you eat breakfast?
no subject
Date: July 27th, 2007 05:53 pm (UTC)From:I usually have something for breakfast in the week but usually we have a lie in on weekends so we tend to have early lunch instead.
no subject
Date: July 27th, 2007 06:34 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: July 28th, 2007 03:23 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: July 28th, 2007 10:40 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: July 27th, 2007 06:30 pm (UTC)From:But that's not the point.
The point is that there are plenty of different tips and tricks to try in regards to losing weight, and that none of them is going to work for everyone. There have been a lot of really good suggestions in the comments, including quite a few that I've tried and had varying success with.
I think my favorite "tip" ever was that it's a good idea to eat broth-based soup before your regular meal as often a possible, particularly if it's vegetable-y. Soup has a lot of good stuff in it, and the liquid will help you feel more content with a smaller portion of your main meal. You can get soups from takeout and they're cheap, too :)
Also, try eating half of what you get from takeout and saving the other half for lunch -- particularly if it's Chinese food or something.
Figure out which sauces you like too much to do without, which ones you are okay with but could stand to have a little less of, and which ones you can go without. I've discovered that a lot of salad dressing is a big turn off for me, but that a little bit of salad dressing (seriously, just a few drops) can make a salad delicious. I've stopped eating most mayo, sour cream and sauces because I've realized that for me they don't improve the taste of my food significantly but they add a LOT of fat and calories.
Drink diet cola if you can stand it. There are a number of low-or-no- calorie juice mixes that I find delicious if you can't.
Frozen veggies are a godsend. They're an easy, healthy side to any meal and if you're feeling really non-cooky they can become a meal with a little bit of rice and soy sauce.
In regards to sleep, everyone is different and needs to find their own sleep patterns. Too much sleep can make you feel as tired as, or even more tired than too little sleep. I would honestly suggest staying up when your body is sending you "awake" signals instead of trying for that extra hour of sleep. It could make a huge difference.
Most peoples' REM cycles are somewhere in the 90 minute range from start to finish. You may actually be able to find yours by taking a nap and getting up when you feel refreshed, then looking at the clock to see how long you slept. That's how I found mine.
Exercise does not have to be a chore. Exercise is just moving, whether it's slow or fast, really. There are tons of little things you can do... Park in a spot that's not as close to the door of a store or work as possible. If you're only going up a story or two, take the stairs. Take time during the day to stand up and move around your desk area, if you can. Or wander down the hall for a minute or two, even.
You could always look into getting one of those big... yoga?... balls to sit on. It's supposed to help muscles without really feeling like exercise, and personally I love the way it feels to be able to bounce around while I'm sitting. That's not a step I've personally taken, but I do enjoy sitting on other peoples' :)
...I hope something in here helps!
no subject
Date: July 28th, 2007 12:33 pm (UTC)From:Drink more water instead, I'd say. Aside from some of them being mild carcinogens (and saccharine being made by basically boiling up plastics) sweeteners can make your system intolerant to, er, sweeteners, and I know a couple of people who get headaches or flushes off aspartame. Promise yourself whatever it was you were going to eat, if you have a pint of water first.
Aside from the fact that the volume of water will make you less likely to eat (one of the sneaky premises of the GI diet, I think: eat something low-GI and stodgy first, then eat what you were going to eat anyway, only you don't have room), the water itself might make you feel less tired. Frequently I find myself weary unto death, and I'm actually dehydrated. It always surprises me how my spirits lift when I just drink some sodding water. My mother was right all along.
no subject
Date: July 28th, 2007 06:39 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: July 28th, 2007 03:28 pm (UTC)From: