Diet /Off

I've done it. I got rid of those 20 pounds I've gained since quitting smoking 2 and a half years ago. I've never really done a "lose weight" diet before since there was never really any need. I was always the one who could eat and drink anything with weight gain immunity. I learned not to gloat about this fact though since most people don't have that kind of metabolism. Well, now I don't either. You never really appreciate something until it's gone eh? So here are a few observations I can make now that I've reached my goal.

1. There really was no secret to losing weight. Ingest fewer calories than you burn. All I did was count calories and stay under my daily "budget" which started out at 2400 per day and then decreased to 2280 as the weight came off. Apparently the skinnier you are, the fewer calories you need.

2. The easiest way to lose weight probably would have been to quit drinking, my new favorite vice. I am a firm believer in having a singular goal though, and losing weight and teetotaling would have been too hard. I would have failed on both endeavors. So I drank, I ate ice cream (one tablespoon per day) and even had french fries (once) and pizza (one slice, twice).

3. I had a pretty regular chip habit with happy hour time and I had to cut that out. I couldn't find any low cal chips (probably an oxymoron, that) so I switched to carrots and celery. When I did have chips, I limited myself to a dozen. I will forever beware of chips now. So damn good (Hello Miss Vickie's Jalapeno!) but might as well just inject the lard into your love handles.

4. Oh my god do avocados have a ton of calories. My favorite fruit too. (It's a fruit, I just checked.) If you have chips and guacamole at a Mexican restaurant, you probably shouldn't eat anything else as you'll likely have had over half your daily calorie budget.

5. Salt makes your weight go all wonky. It's true. One nice thing about using Loseit.com, the app for the iphone, is that not only does it track calories, but also nutrients including salt. If I suddenly gained two pounds in one day, sure enough, I had taken in too much salt. (Once over 5000 milligrams, yikes!) Water retention will happen.

6. You have to be willing to feel hungry. In this consumerist world where "want" leads to "have" with such ease, we are not used to denying ourselves. Luckily, I've had a lot of practice with denying myself so it wasn't so bad. But numerous times every day for 3 and a half months, I have had hunger pangs. Still, those are nothing compared to nicotine pangs.

7. Mozzarella is the cheese to eat when dieting. It's way lower in calories than any of the other cheeses.

8. It is much better to have useless pants in your closet because you have lost weight. They are almost like trophies now. The useless clothing I had in the closet because I had gained weight was like Shame staring at me every day.

9. Restaurant food is the dieters worst enemy.

Now that it's over, the real trick is going to be to keep the weight from creeping back on. Luckily, loseit has a maintenance program. Sadly, I'm only gonna get 250 calories added to my daily budget.

Recompense? I see POUTINE in my future very very soon.