Diet Frustration

I'm trying to lose a couple of pounds.  I know why I put them on.  It's because I didn't have any baking shifts for several months.  The muscle mass I had put on melted away because I had not replaced the weightlifting aspect and higher level of activity with another kind of exercise.  Light hiking once in a while will not improve your metabolism.  Exercise has to be regular, and I don't do it.

I'm baking again a day or two a week, but I need to go back to some of my better diet habits as well.  I especially don't drink enough water.  It's just inconvenient to pee all the time while your body is adjusting.

So I started watching the new diet show on ABC that shows five different approaches to weight loss.  Everyone lost a respectable amount of weight the first week because you always lose more the first week, especially when you're seriously overweight.  It was just a cleanse and hydration reaction.  The second week, everyone lost about half as much, and one woman's weight was flat.  She was the one on the vegan/cleanse diet.  I don't blame her for dropping her trainer.  If my vegan diet wasn't making me lose weight and the guy on the all-meat diet had lost the most in two weeks, I'd be out of there too.

The real trick to making a diet work is to make it a lifestyle change.  You have to make foods you like, and get used to eating like that 90% of the time, while following whatever guideline works for your metabolism and health needs.  Drive-thru lunches are not on any nutrition plan, and I've been doing too many of those.

As for me, I'm going back on my portion-control, mainly Mediterranean diet.  It's also what the new Food Guide follows.  Except I don't like avocados without some serious help like onions and citrus.  Which are also good for you.  I planted a whole lot of salad greens, beets, more carrots, and some cilantro.  Eggy finally died, about two months after I was expecting her to, so I had more space than just the Pond.  An excess of salad greenery will not make me instantly healthy, but it will make me more likely to have a spontaneous salad, or even just stick a bit of lettuce into whatever I was making anyway.  I won't be thinking at the market about what I'm going to do with the rest of a head or bag of lettuce after the one meal I plan to make.  That's what all my vegetable gardening is about, flexibility and inspiration.

We'll see how long this takes.  I already got my fluids balanced, which is halfway there.  It's only two more pounds!  It should be a lot easier than this.