The Amazing Shrinking Woman

Weird question right? It is, I know it, but think about it for a minute. When do you feel fattest? Look fattest? I don’t mean when during a week or month – I mean within 1 day. Do you feel better about yourself in the morning, afternoon or night? Does how you feel depend on what you eat that day, or drink? If you exercised or not?

There are a lot of things that can affect how you feel and how your body looks at different times of day and in my opinion that just sucks. 😛

I always look and feel thinner in the morning – I think it’s because  (1) I’ve been sleeping for however many hours and my body has had a chance to do it’s thing without me stuffing food in to it (2) the body re-generates at night so it feels better (3) you shrink during the day and regain that height while sleeping so even though it’s only a small height change it can change how you look – at least a bit and (4) well, I don’t have a 4 lol, but 3 is pretty good. 🙂 Most of my list is a combo of facts from medical science and my impressions of how my body actually works. I have a firm belief that while all those experts out there think they know how everything works when it comes to peoples’ bodies they shouldn’t generalize their rules for everyone cause ya know what, those rules don’t work for everybody!

Oh yeah, I said it, the rules we all try to remember and live by when losing weight don’t always apply! Take milk for instance, it produces acid and irritates most stomach conditions – I have lots of stomach problems but milk always helps my stomach instead of making it feel worse…this goes against the rules. tsk tsk stomach! lol What about ‘exercising gives you more energy and makes you feel better cause of the endorphines’, well, ha-bloody-ha! Days I exercise all I want to do is have a nap or at least get to bed way earlier then normal, I never have more energy, and I am thinking my endorphines are broken cause they never kick in and make me feel better. lol. These are observations I have made over the years, when I actually pay attention to my body.

I think the most important thing is to always pay attention to your body, listen to what it is telling you before you blindly follow what some “expert” says, after all, that expert isn’t living in your body, doesn’t know how it feels and even if you were to tell them words can only really express so much, your words may not properly convey what your body is experiencing and then you’re really gonna be in a bind. Hmm, long ranting sentence there…sorry!

Since starting my “healthy lifestyle” I have tried changing a lot of different habits, I worked on them one at a time to give me a better shot of keeping the new habits but some of these things I am trying to do just aren’t working out so well. The main one is my liquid intake, all the “rules” say drink 8 glasses of liquid per day…everyone knows this rule, it’s so commonly spouted that as soon as someone says they want to lose weight they will be reminded by friends to ‘drink their 8 glasses of water’. I increased my fluid intake over a span of days and even now I still find it easy to forget and not drink the amount I am s’posed to. Couple weeks ago I realized that every night my stomach is more rotound (trying to find a nice way to say it. lol), basically, I was fatter at night. I felt more bloated, was physically rounder and wasn’t feeling great – not that I was feeling sick, I just wan’t feeling up to par, ya know? I struggled with this, didn’t want to blog about it because I thought it meant I was failing, I seemed to be getting fatter instead of thinner and could find no good reason for it. Eventually it came to me, I was retaining way more water then what my body needed and it was settling in my abdomenal area, ugh. I started cutting back a bit on the fluids and bam! back to being, well, not thin at night, but closer to looking like what I look like during the day. 🙂 I think I will always look fatter at night, it’s how my body is, once I get home and I know I can relax cause no one can see me (the roomie doesn’t count, sorry R!) I slouch and my tummy sticks out farther and I become totally comfie. Maybe if I tried keeping my posture and sucking in my gut when I wash up at night and see myself in the mirror I won’t look larger but I think I’d rather have my couple hours where I am totally relaxed and look a bit bigger then be sucking it in all my waking hours and looking that tiny bit thinner. Or is that just crazy? shrug.

I am not saying all the rules are wrong; I just think you should try them out and see what works for your body and what hinders. Eventually you will find a combo that makes you look and feel better. 😀 I am slowly finding my combo, I think it’ll take a while longer to get it down pact but that’s ok, that’s why they call it a “lifestyle change”, cause it takes your whole life to figure it out. lol.

Today I ate:

3/4 cup Almond Special K = 2 points

1/2 cup 1% milk = 1 point

1 banana = 2 points

1 Shrimp and Scallop Pasta Bowl = 6 points

mixed veggies = 0 points

2 triangles Light Laughing Cow cheese = 1 point

2 hot dog weiners = 2 points

2 pieces bread = 2 points

2 cheese slices = 2 points

1 pckg Green Giant Essentials Omega 3 = 2 points

2 Hershey’s Oh Henry cookies = 3 points

Exercise Points Earned = 5

I ate 23 points but since I earned 5 exercise points I didn’t go over my food points in a bad way so it’s all good today! 😀

yum yum veggies

You may have noticed a new food in my list,  it is Green Giant Essentials, a new line of steamed veggies our fave giant has put on the market. They were on sale so I bought some, of course! lol. The first I tried was the Omega-3 it has carrots, cut green beans, zucchini, sugar snap peas and flax seeds with extra virgin olive oil and rosemary and it contains 0.1 g of Omega-6 and 0.5 g of Omega-3 per serving. I did not pick this one because of it’s omega stuff, omega shmega, I bought it cause I liked the list of veggies in it and the entire box is only 2 points! 🙂 I probaly should have just eaten half the box (100 grams) but I was hungry and I figured it was better to eat 1 more point of veggies then 1 more point of chocolate. lol. It was really tasty, and dead easy to make! Pop it in the microwave for 4 mins 30 secs then pour it into a bowl, stir, and there’s your vegg. You can also make it stove top if you don’t want to use your microwave…just sayin. shrug. I would definitly recommend these, be careful though, not all flavours are the same amount of points so check before you assume you know how many points it’s gonna cost ya. Oh, and the flax seed, not so bad…it’s the first time I have tried them and I learned they don’t really have a flavour, shrug, added an odd texture to the veggies but not a bad texture…just different. I think I may look in to sprinkling flax seed on other food items…after all, the “experts” do recommend it! 😛

Tags: exercise points, fat, flax seed, green giant, omega, points, weight loss, weight watchers