When Less is More
photo by What Makes the Pie Shops Tick?
It is not easy having a hypoactive thyroid.
I don’t mind taking the medication, the tests are kind of interesting because they reveal a lot about my inner chemistry, but the stubbornness of my body in clinging to the ever present ten pounds I have been trying to lose since forever drives me crazy.
I cannot lost weight.
For years, I have been dragging myself out of bed in the morning darkness to run five miles on the hard packed sand on the beach. This is everyday. I repeat, everyday. It does wonders for my cholesterol, my heart and muscle tone but do I lose weight? God forbid.
My friend Andrea who I run with shared this gloomy fact with me: every year during tax season (she is a CPA) she doesn’t run for two months and like clockwork, gains ten pounds. It is terribly unfair that running doesn’t take the weight off; it simply slows my backslide into obesity. An exercise in futility.
For me achieving any measure of success in weight loss is a counter intuitive process. Get less sleep, get more energy (from running). Run less miles, gain more weight.
Seth is very supportive of my early morning running obsession. “You don’t have to kill yourself doing this, you’ll always look good to me.” I could almost turn around, take off my sneakers and tumble back under the covers but no, I am determined to get out there and burn those calories. So as I walk out into the cool morning air, I toss my head and state with conviction,
“You will love me more when there is less of me.”
Are you weight loss challenged? How do you get to slim?
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Hoong Yee
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Good morning, Hoong Yee !
When we lived in the States, I was always battling 5 – 10 pounds that would not go away and stay away..they seemed to increase rather than decrease.
When we moved to Argentina, I did not have a scale for the first 3 months of living here.. we woke early, had terrible coffee then we were out the door, walking all over the city, doing the million things required of a new resident/househunter/shopper/discoverer.
I finally got a scale and was shocked to see how much weight had dropped off.
That was when I started to look back on my diet and lifestyle ( which changed drastically)..
I rarely ate carbs and then it was only pasta. I ate half the size portion of what I had been eating in a single sitting and I quit eating things like sandwiches with mayo, big fat slices of pizza, sweet sugary breakfast treats or desserts.
In other words, sugar and fat and carbs left my diet and salads , fish and chicken stayed.
( It was not hard nor done on purpose, I really cannot stand the taste of the mayo here, they don’t make desserts the way they do in the US and it was easy to skip it all )..
I walk miles a day. We just never bother with a taxi and we don’t have a car.. so we burn off the days calories.
I lost 20 lbs without trying, hardly knowing… I realized it was drastic when I had to buy a new wardrobe.
So I don’t think it is just about the running in the morning, your body adjusted to that .. it is the rest of the day and what you eat ( I remember your good eating habits) ..
I hope this helps some .. I know how frustrating it is .. it is ONLY 10 lbs but might as well be 30 for the difficulty there is in getting rid of it . Good luck !
ps- My husband reminded me that we probably eat much smaller portions than in the US .. we were eating out a lot before we moved ( since my habit is the pack the kitchen first – yes, I am sly) ..and restaurant food is a killer for any diet.
But here they don’t overload you with portions and they sort of cook the way people used to .. “plain” food .. not so much into the sauces and pretty food of todays restaurants. Of course, there are places like that here but for every day/night eating out , we go to places that serve a perfectly grilled piece of salmon with a great salad and perhaps some veggies on the side.
A trick would be to try cutting whatever your portions are .. in half . See if there is any change after a week.
hi candice
wow! great advice and great hearing about your food experiences abroad. i am going to try shaving down portions and rethinking what i eat during the day. i am sure being mindful of that will help a great deal in curbing impulse snacking and noshing.
speaking of noshing, there must be some fabulous dishes in argentina. what are your favorites?
xoxo hoong yee