Day 2 of 28 Day Challenge and Weight Loss Epiphany

Roasted Sweet Potato and Red Onion Salad over Sauteed Kale


Some of you may know this already, but for those of you who have not been in here from the beginning, I am a HUGE fan of http://www.peertrainer.com/.   The wonderful people behind this website have a feature called "Tip of the Day" that users sign up for and every day a tip about healthy weight loss comes into their inbox.  Today I read a particularly poignant tip, considering the Plant Strong Challenge that many of us are embarking on. If you would like to give it a read, here is the link:

http://www.peertrainer.com/doing_everything_right_but_not_losing_weight.aspx

How are all of the Plant Strong Challengers doing today?  I'm loving it that a few of you are including what you ate for the day in your blog comments.  A little accountability never hurt anyone, especially me.

Speaking of accountability and healthy weight maintenance, I had an epiphany about my own yesterday in my yoga class.  You know that it has been a struggle for me to maintain my goal weight. I still haven't figured out a workable system for myself.  I tried continuing to log my food and count Weight Watchers points, and then for some unexplainable reason, I couldn't hold it together. So I ventured off into the world of raw food, only to find myself steadily gaining weight (the stuff is healthy, yes, but boy can it pack the pounds on if you don't watch out!).  Tried to follow the Weight Watcher's Simply Filling Plan but got frustrated because a lot of the allowable foods on the plan are from animal sources. Went back to counting points, only to fail again. Went to hear Dr. Esselstyn speak and decided right then and there to give Veganism a try. Had a hard time converting to a very, very low fat diet (it wasn't the vegan part that was hard, it was all of that yummy food with nuts and avocados). Got wind of the Whole Foods/Plant Strong/Engine 2 Challenge and here I am today, ready for action!

So what have I learned from all of this? That I love a game. Especially one where there are no losers. If this weight loss thing is a game for me, and I know how to play it and I know what the goal of the game is, I'm golden. If it's not a game, I simply lose it. I may try my best to "eat healthy" so that I can maintain my goal weight, but it just doesn't work for me. I inevitably gain weight if my food intake is not kept within strict guidelines. So do I think that the Engine 2 Challenge will result in me getting back to my goal weight? Hells yeah! But it's the other side of that challenge that I have to master.

Today's menu:

Breakfast:
coffee with soy creamer
Smoothie with 1 large frozen banana, 1 Tbsp chia seeds, 2 pitted dates, 1 cup frozen spinach, 1.5 cups unsweetened almond milk and ice cubes.

Midmorning snack:
1/2 apple

Lunch:
Salad at Chipotle: Loads of romaine lettuce (I keep asking them to "add more, no I mean more, really, more lettuce"), black beans, onion and pepper fajita mix, two scoops of tomato salsa, two scoops of corn salsa, one scoop of salsa verde, one scoop of guacamole.
Club Soda

Dinner:
Kale chips
Roasted Sweet Potato and Red Onion Salad over sauteed Kale (I'm not going to rave about this concoction. I thought combining something I loved (the Roasted Sweet Potato Salad) with a bed of kale would be good, but it was just okay.)
For the fantasticly wonderful Roasted Sweet Potato and Red Onion Salad recipe, please see my older blog posting:
http://healthygirlskitchen.blogspot.com/2010/02/big-family-dinner-1.html
raw banana ice "cream" with grape nuts topping

0 comments:

Post a Comment