Can this be called Food?

I was browsing the internet this morning on some motivational weight loss sites and came across a huge banner advertisement for Weight Watchers diet foods.

Oh my gawd!

Mint chocolate ice cream sandwiches, peanut butter cups and peanut butter soft cookies. I love this stuff…and I know that if I bought this, even with it being low calorie, that it would ruin my weight loss progress.

I’ve already been down the road of eating maltitol (sugar replacement) chocolate bars…you know how they say if you eat too much it could cause cramps. Well let me tell you, is that ever true! When I eat even one bar with this sugar substitute I get the worst runs and cramps...my stomach does NOT like this stuff.

I’ve tried almost every protein/low calorie bar and have come to the reality that they don’t help us in our efforts to take control of our eating habits and they do nothing to encourage a better lifestyle.

I had tried a membership at LA Weight Loss were you are encouraged to buy their bars - that ended my eating of these things.

They are trying to teach us to eat healthy - but you should buy their food products?. Read the labels on this stuff! Pure man made food. I can't even pronounce half of the ingredients! Nothing natural or real about it…it’s not even fair to call it ‘food’.

I am done with these low cal substitutes. This is not real food…it’s all junk food.

Plus I know that eating these foods just trigger the desire for more sweets. Diet Pepsi or Coke also triggers the urge for chocolate bars, so I just stay away from them and stay out of the locations I know which trigger the desire to buy this stuff.

There is one local variety store that I used to go and rent videos - but every time I’m in this particular store for some reason I buy a diet coke and a chocolate bar. In other places I can walk by the chocolate bar display and not even have the urge to check them out…how come this one store does this to me?

I have no idea and don’t care. I just know it happens and so I avoid this store now.

The only non real food that I am eating is my protein shakes, and even these I try use as a snack instead of a main meal replacements. I love my chocolate peanut butter banana protein shake. I have decided to cut out the peanut butter or banana to reduce the calories of the shake. What I really liked was using cashew butter instead of peanut butter BUT have you seen the calorie difference between the two of these. Peanut butter 100 calories per tbsp, Cashew butter 180 calories per tbsp!

I want to talk a bit about how I am going to try to lose the 60 lbs.

I figured out that I need just over 2000 calories per day to maintain my current weight. We all know that 1 lb is 3500 calories, so in order to reduce 6 lbs per month I need to have a deficit of 21,000 calories. That seems huge, but really it’s only 700 calories per day.

It isn’t good to just cut out my eating by 700 calories - I know that I have to incorporate exercise to burn at least 50% of this requirement.

That’s where this new Heart Rate Monitor is coming in so handy. It keeps track in the watch and then I upload the data to the Polar website where I have an online exercise calendar. The calendar gives me total workouts and total calories expended.

In my journal I set up a one week goal and each day I vary the food calories I will eat and the exercise calories I will burn. That way my body will not get used to a set routine and not go into that starvation slow down.

I know that it took years to gain the weight and that it will take a long time to lose it…but I want it gone NOW! I really need to work on the mental component obviously :>)

Robin