weight loss

Weightloss Wars

/ Quilly / 7 Comments

Why do diets fail?  Because most dieters are struggling alone and they have no one to help keep them on track and monitor their progress.  Some of us even have the challenge of french fry munching, ice cream eating, schedule hijacking partners to overcome.  We need an incentive to get on track and stay there.  Either a friend to walk along beside us, or someone to challenge us — or maybe even both.

We all want to be biggest loser, but none of us want to put in the effort all by ourselves. It is just too hard to diet and exercise alone. We need a little outside incentive to fire us up until we build our own intrinsic incentives.

There is a new online community ready and willing to help with that. WeightLossWars.com makes it possible for people to build their own online weight loss communities and challenges. You can join a public competition, or start your own private competition. You can compete for tangible prizes, or the ultimate prize of good health.

Registration is free. Head on over to the website and check it out. Your find leader boards for the public competitions. You’ll know at a glance who is ahead and how long he or she has held the number one spot. You’ll also find great recipes, discussion boards, and gain access to graphs and charts that will help you track your weigh tloss progress. If you’ve been looking for a weight loss competition, you don’t have to look any further than Weight Loss Wars.

Lifestyle Refurbishment

/ Quilly / 10 Comments

I am not certain how many of my readers are aware that a certain diet book I reviewed recently really impacted the way I think about losing weight. Many of you might recall my 30 pound weight loss several years ago. Well, I have gained most of it back.

Losing weight is a lot harder than putting weight on, especially when one considers we pack it on while enjoying food and friends and laughter and good-times, but we try to take the weight off grimly and seriously all on our own. There has to be a better way.

Sure there are dozens of weight loss programs one can try. Seems like a new one hits the market everyday. But what really works?

I don’t think it is a specific exercise program, or exercise product, or menu plan that makes the difference. When people jump up and yell, “I’ve found the secret to weight loss!” what they mean is they have found what works for them. Will it work for you? Maybe. Maybe not.

Before you can lose weight the first thing you have to change is your mindset. If you expect to fail, you will. In fact, if you think at all in terms of long range success or failure, there is a very good chance you will fail. Most long range plans rely on perfection. We can’t do perfection, so we fail.

Give yourself permission to have set backs and make mistakes, but don’t give yourself permission to quit. Set daily goals and set them based on what you know the day will bring. If you know you are going out to your favorite restaurant, then make your goal relate. “I will ask for a go box and take half the food off my plate before I eat.” That is a fabulous restaurant goal! Or, vow to forgo a cocktail (empty calories untold!) and/or dessert.

You don’t have to suffer to take the weight off, you just have to persevere.

A Weight Loss Journey

/ Quilly / 17 Comments

It’s not whats on the outside that matters,
It’s how healthy you are on the inside.

Come meet The Healthy Bitch. Don’t ask me why she has chosen that name for herself. She seems to be a perfectly nice lady.  She has invited us to join her as she documents her weight loss.  She’s been at it a little over two months and she’s lost 17+ pounds (official count 9 days ago).  She shares recipes, health tips and research articles on the foods we eat.

Give her a visit.  I’ve already copied a couple of her recipes.  She offers tips for a vegan diet, a vegetarian diet, and juice fasting.  If I were to try this I would have to wean myself off meat, but I already eat pretty much organic.  We don’t care for steroids, additives or pesticides in our food.

The Healthy Bitch also shares her meal menus and her healthy diet and exercise weight plan. This is her live weight loss record, not a commercial product site.   Check her out.

Waffling

/ Quilly / 18 Comments

OC and I frequently recycle the same conversation. Each time it has a slight variation. It always starts with my apparent curiosity. Today we were discussing maple syrup. The real stuff. OC is a New Englander, you know.

Me: [while pouring syrup on my waffle] My uncle called this, “tree blood.”

OC: Really it’s closer to lymph.

Me: [curious look] Lymphs?

OC: [bunches of scientific techno babble].

Me: Thanks, Hon. Good English. I understood every word.

OC: [laughing] Really?

Me: Oh, yeah. [I roll my eyes.]

OC: Not so much, huh?

Me: [shaking my head] Not so much.

OC: What did you get?

Me: [smiling] You want another waffle?

Defenestraphobia – Fear of Windows

/ Quilly / 23 Comments

My friend, aged 60+, decided to buy a computer. She had been fearfully using them at work and knew she could do a much better job if she gained more expertise. The day her computer arrived via UPS she called me on the telephone. “It has too many parts. How do I hook it together?”

“Everything is color coded,” I told her, but still she asked me to come and help. I went.

After hooking her computer together and making certain her programs were in operating order, I left her to play, search, and discover. I reminded her that I was as close as her phone should she need anything, then I returned home.

Forty-five minutes later my phone rang. I answered. My friend’s voice came across the line — urgent. Seriously stressed. “When will they be here? How long do I have?”

“When will who what?” I felt like I’d walked into the middle of some suspense theater episode. “Slow down and explain.”

She answered, her voice high and tense, “I don’t know what I did. I tried to open Word and a warning came up on my computer. It said I operated something illegally and my computer was shutting down! When will they be here?”

I did not laugh. Instead I asked — very dryly — ” When will who be there? The computer police?”

Several seconds of silence were followed by her rueful query, “I’m over-reacting, huh?”

Then I laughed.

I told OC the above story over breakfast this morning. He responded very formally, “Really, her reaction was perfectly understandable given the unfortunate use of the word illegal.”

I smiled. “You did the same thing, didn’t you?”

He shrugged sheepishly, “Well, pretty close — but I didn’t call anybody.”

I laughed.

“Besides,” he defended, “Windows should be illegal!”