January 12, 2010

Diet


Not so long ago, when I was pregnant with Alva, I ballooned to 68kg. That was me at my heaviest. After delivery, I went through two months of confinement with a diet of chicken soup, plain rice, veggie, bread and crackers. In no time, I managed to lose 10 kg and I wasn’t even trying. After that small success, I took for granted that I would lose the kilos naturally and I started to be more relaxed about losing weight. Apparently, I was wrong. Four months have passed and my weight has remained stagnant. I've reached a plateau.

This realization calls for drastic measures so I started a new diet last week. Today is my 8th day and so far it has been surprisingly good. It’s not without effort I assure you. I have to constantly tell myself that pastries are bad and fruits are good. Even a toast with peanut butter spread is considered a luxury now. That applies to all the demons of junk food out there like Oreos, Sneakers and Pringles. It's madness. There were times I was so tempted to eat a bag of chips lying in the cupboard, I had to close my eyes and count to 10 just to restrain myself from ripping the evil package. One wrong move could ruin a 24-hour effort you know.

So what do I eat? Well, my diet consists of easily prepared food and lots of fruits and veggies. For breakfast, I take Special-K Cornflakes which is 99% fat free with low fat milk. To make it a bit colourful I’d add a sprinkle of raisins and dried fruit so it'll appear more appetizing. For lunch, I'd make myself a chicken salad which consists of shredded chicken meat (mine’s usually taken from Alden's chicken soup) thinly sliced apples and cucumber. You mix them up and voila! you get a delicious chicken-apple salad. Sometimes, that’s not enough so to keep myself from going insane with hunger, I eat apples or whatever fruit available in the fridge.

Finally, dinner time. This is where things get a li-ttle challenging cos I usually have dinner with hubby and he normally prepares a heavy meal. For my diet to work I can only have a small portion of rice, say 5 tablespoon, a generous amount of veggie and whatever dish we’re having that night. Then when I feel like I want to have more, I close my eyes and imagine myself in a swimsuit. That's when all desire ceases and I get myself on track again.


Aside from food intake, regular exercise is equally if not more important. Who doesn't know that right? Back at home I used to play futsal twice a week and there were times I had four games in a week. It felt so good to be active. But that’s highly impossible now cos I don’t have the time nor a team to play with.  Still, I am planning to begin my exercise routine. My plan is to follow a fun workout video and spend around 40 minutes a day doing just that. Ambitious huh? I know you're not convinced. Even I'm not convinced, but to see it in writing makes it much more believable and resolute you see. So far I haven't decided how many days a week I will be working out and since the CD still hasn't arrived, this will have to wait.

So that's the plan. It's tough but it's all about baby steps right? I just hope I have enough will-power to stay in this path.


* Some useful tips for those like me

1 comment:

Caroline said...

hahah.. you go girl!