Back on the Chart Games

I have lost weight! Not a ton, but enough to fit in a pair of my “fat” skinny jeans. This was the pair I tried on after my Weighing In entry when I was completely befuddled about the highest number I’d seen for a long time. After a little over two weeks, I weigh about five pounds less. I attribute it to two things. The first is embarrassing to state, but I will because I want to be truthful. To put it mildly, I was PMSing. This is something that rarely happens to me anymore, if you know what I mean. So I realize that part of my downer mood about weight gain two weeks ago was partly due to water retention. The second is the crux of this particular entry. I had to re-learn how to eat properly.

For more years than I’m willing to admit. I really didn't have to pay as close attention to eating perfectly balanced meals, and the goal in my brain, was usually to keep myself feeling hungry. I would wait until my stomach growled to eat. That was the best way for me to keep track of when to eat – when I felt hungry. I felt hungry a lot! Now that I am in my fifties, that strategy had stopped working. I needed to find a more effective way.

Determined to figure out why my weight was getting out of control, I began sleuthing it out by logging into my Kaiser Permanente member page. I was looking for a table that depicted what was a healthy weight for me was, in this stage of my life. In my quest, I discovered many interesting health assessments to help me figure out what I was doing wrong! It was actually fun filling out some of their forms and fiddling with the interactive tools. In the end, I opted to complete their total health assessment. Then I started branching out to see what else might be at my fingertips, and since I have several iDevices, I decided to look for apps (even more fun).

I found several, but the best of them is not just an app, it’s also a website that is available to anyone for free, and it’s called, MyNetDiary. It was this wonderfully designed place on the web that was the golden key to my weight loss lock out. It turns out that people who take the time to report (or log) their food intake, exercise, and weight, are the most likely ones to lose weight. Since I just wanted to stop gaining weight, I decided to try it out, and guess what? It worked. I didn’t change anything else. I just started reporting. Now I am NOT starving anymore, and I feel better. It is a huge relief.

There was one more thing worth noting from that day. I discovered a silly app that was free called, Eat This Not That. While it may be true that this app promotes fast food restaurants, it’s worth mentioning. Playing this game made me laugh, and also showed me that not all fast food items on the menu are bad. Seriously, I would have chosen to skip a meal, which I have learned is not a good idea, than eat fast food. It turns out, there are some healthy fast food choices out there, and this app taught me how to find them. The bottom line: what began as a quest to maintain my weight has become a success story in losing it.