TT Thursday : Week 12 weight loss challenge, 3 tips, and Chef Richard Blais on losing weight

TT Thursday : Week 12 weight loss challenge, 3 tips, and Chef Richard Blais on losing weight

Yay! I lost another 3.9 pounds this week on my HealthyWage weight loss challenge and dropped down to 226.6.  That’s the most I’ve lost in any one week!  My total loss so far is 25.5 pounds.

I’ve also decided to make more meals with vegetables and fruits but I’m not going vegetarian.  I made a tomato broth (Tummy Tuesday post) for the first time instead of opening a can of tomato paste and adding water.  It only called for two ingredients to make the soup but it’s a good base soup to create other soups, I think.  I’m going through a Bluprint video course on creating soups. Monday I brought home 30 pounds of vegetables and fruits.  Tuesday and Wednesday, I ate only vegetables and fruits.  Today I had a sudden craving for buffalo wings so I stopped off on my home from the library to have some with garlic and parmesan.  Well, it also came with fries and a drink.  I hadn’t had a coke in ages so I admit I indulged.

I am also finding I lose more weight with the occasional (emphasis on occasional) indulgence.  It seems like when I plateau, indulging a little and then going back to being strict has the effect of getting me off the plateau.  I know the body goes into starvation mode if you’re on a strict diet for awhile so maybe when I indulge for a day, it convinces my body there really is enough food readily available so it’s ok to burn off the fat?  The other thing is that it actually seems to work better with a little fat (butter) versus sugar (ok, I admit it.  The coke wasn’t a good idea but the wings were).

So what can I tell you today?  Never give up and give yourself a break now and again. It’s like riding a horse.  You’re not going get very far if you only ride the slowest and safest one.  However if you ride something more challenging, you might fall off.  If you’re like me, you will fall off.  No, big deal.  Brush yourself off.  Limp back to the horse and get back on.  It’s not so much that you will stay on the horse as it doesn’t matter if you fall off, you will complete the damn ride come hell or highwater and a part of you knows that.  Stubbornness is much better on weight challenges than willpower.

Also find a group of people who support you from the beginning, not just after you start losing weight.  The beginning is the hardest part and some of your friends and family may treat you with skepticism until after you’ve succeeded at losing ten pounds or so.  And that skepticism can return when you hit a plateau.  Having a group of people who believe in you even when you aren’t losing weight — it’s natural to have periods of not losing weight in any long-term weight-loss program — really helps a lot.  For me that group has been you all.  I meant my blog posts on the challenge to keep myself on track because it helps keep me on track if I report my progress.  I’ve been surprised at how much your comments have encouraged me.  My friends and family have started coming onboard but it has taken awhile.  Finally I’m not being offered cookies and chocolates when I walk through the door.  Thinks about that.  Darn!  Laughing, it’s fine.  For other people it might be their WeightWatcher’s group, facebook, spouse or bestfriend.  Some people do it completely on their own but it’s a lot harder so I advocate finding supporters.

Read at least one health blog or join a group that emails you at least one healthy bit of advice a day.  Yeah, you’re doing your own research, checking out cookbooks and following certain ideas.  However reading random blogs or having random advice sent to you means a) you get reminded to stay on course but also b) you may come across a good or fun idea (like watermelon pizza) that didn’t turn up in your current research.  Don’t spend all your time reading health blogs though.  Why not?  You need to get up and go walking and do stuff.  Just researching weight loss plans isn’t good enough.  You have to do it.

Eh? I’ve said all this before.  Well, I’m finding basically the same things keep coming up as I do this.  Ok, you’re bored with me?  I came across a cool article, Healthy Chefs: How Chefs Lose Weight & Keep It Off

In the 2011, Richard Blais of Top Chef fame lost sixty pounds by going vegan for 30 days. He was not the only chef from that article but I have a soft spot for him because I loved watching Top Chef although honestly I was rooting for Dale Talde.  Here he is making a falafal veggie burger.

 

And here he talks a little about losing weigh (video recorded 4 years ago)

I was curious to see if he had kept the weight off. Especially since there’s a video of him making a hamburger stuff with cheese on the inside and a fried chicken sandwich.  Lots of videos of him making different kinds of hamburgers actually as it looked he had a hamburger show.  Here he is making a healthier version of takeout pad thai this month. Looks he kept it off.

 

I liked watching those.  It’s fun seeing how chefs make things healthier.

On healthy and recipes, this post looked good.  Mama of Many Blessings did a list of great salad recipes at 20 blogs: 20 Farm to Table Summer Salads.  I liked all the links to other blogs although I’d liked to have seen more photos too.

Ok, progress report.

Again it’s close to midnight so quick finish.  Once again I am doing good on the smaller 6% goal and I am still playing catch up on the big goal for 65 pounds loss — that vacation plateau cost me so I am running to catch up.  However last week on HealthyWager I was 7 pounds behind but now I am 5.6 pounds behind so I am closing the gap.

I am still waiting for HealthyWager to show me that I’m approved on the video for the 6% loss I completed.

I’m not going to put that up the fireworks picture as the featured picture though until they say approved.  Just in case.

That’s it for this week.

 

Healthy Chefs: How Chefs Lose Weight & Keep It Off
Kristin Donnelly, Food & Wine, March 01, 2011

 

HealthyWage Disclosure: I generally sign up as an affiliate for things whenever I can.  I am signed up as a HealthyWage affiliate.  If you join through the links above, I’ll get a commission.  However, they also have a friends link, if you join up by clicking this friends link, it adds a $40 to your HealthyWager award if you complete your goal and $40 to my HealthyWager award if I complete my goal.  We don’t get the $40 if we fail.  I think the $40 is for HealthyWager challenges only and not the other ones like the 6% individual challenge or the team challenge. The HealthyWage affiliate link doesn’t matter if anyone succeeds but there is no benefit for the friend, just for the affiliate no matter what kind of challenge they join. I think joining through the friends link also lets you view your friend on the dashboard: you’ll see their name and what % they’ve lost so far but not the actual weight.  That’s private unless you make it public.  So far I have earned $0 commissions and no one has joined on as a friend.  If I do earn anything, I’ll post it just so you know.

 

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