Four Things...

Progress continues on the cakegrrl slimdown. I am down about 1.5 more pounds. Had the confidence to actually show my face at a party on Saturday evening. Small wine and appetizer party. The host served a delicious homemade olive tapenade. I went for that instead of the brownies that were also on the table and did not feel deprived in the least. Had a wonderful time.

There are four things I think have made my diet successful so far:

1. The Polar F6 heartrate monitor. I am not sure why I ever worked out without this thing. Technology is wonderful. My watch and cheststrap measure my heartrate and tell me exactly how many calories I burned. This makes me want to work out longer because I like getting the number really high! :) Feeling more like a real athlete again...


After a run!


2. Logging my calories for meals. All of them. Actually, my intake is more important than the exercise. I am usually not exceeding 1200 a day. I set my target at 1100 on Calorie King because I like having a 100 calorie safety buffer in case I forget to log something or for those things I eat marked "5 calories" or "0 calories" that truly contain a little more than that.


We'd never want to look like this again, now would we???


3. Eating absolutely NO refined or added sugar. Now all my sugars come in foods naturally. I read labels like crazy. There are so many things I can't buy now, but it's OK because I end up making a substitute for them. Ketchup, peanut butter, etc. I was a little disgusted yesterday when I was about to buy some vegetable broth. It contained added SUGAR. :(

4. The food scale. One cannot accurately journal their intake without a food scale. You would be surprised how small "serving sizes" as marked on the nutrition facts labels actually are. Who actually wants to stop at one cup of breakfast cereal? Not me! :)