Uuugghhhhh!

I am halfway through at least half a dozen posts … and I just can’t finish them. I have zero energy, I’m not eating much but feel bloated and exhausted, and my weight has been stuck for several weeks. Ugh ugh ugh!

I stayed with the Daniel diet until Day 36. By that point my weight had gone down 25 lbs, then crawled back up 5 lbs for no discernible reason, and there it stuck for about 10 days. I just got sick of it! So I switched to Phase 2 – Eating Like A Thin Person – a few days early. And that’s been kinda going okay, in that I have little desire to eat much or often and few serious cravings. However, I am still inclined to stuff down more than I actually need if the food is particularly yummy and it’s a social occasion and I’m hungry. And regardless of how much I eat, I feel completely disgusting and entirely disinclined to get on a scale.

Today I realized that I’d been sitting on the couch for hours. I mean, HOURS. I would read for a while, then come to the end of a chapter and think to myself, “Okay, get up and do this, this and this,” and then sit and stare into space, and then drift back into another chapter.

People in old age homes do this. I am 56. It’s ridiculous!

So I googled “ways to increase metabolism”, and here is the list.

• Green tea. Opinions vary regarding whether it’s best to take the tea or the supplements, but since I have the Green Tea Fat Burner supplements from Costco, I’m going to start with those. (They contain caffeine, which is also recommended in limited quantities, and I’m pleased it’s in the capsules since I rarely drink coffee or soda.) I think they made a difference in the past, but stopped taking all supplements (apart from thyroid tabs and a greatly reduced dose of Fluoxetine) when I started the Daniel diet.
• Fish oil. Hate the fish-breath the Costco capsules give me … but hate staring into space more.
• At least three veg and two fruit servings per day. I ate plenty of both while on the Daniel diet, but have cut way back recently, mainly because food preparation demands effort and I don’t have the energy. I am just going to have to battle through this one.
• Protein. Apparently digesting protein burns up more calories than digesting carbs. Argh … cooking … sigh.
• Spice it up. Capsicum and other spicy foods burn energy. Well, I guess if I’m cooking anyway… sigh some more.
• Exercise – both aerobic and muscle-burning. I was doing the 5BX exercises until I had a sciatica flare-up … but lately I’ve barely moved. Poor Argos is feeling the lack of serious training time. So … okay. As of tomorrow, I will set my alarm to go off every hour on the hour, and when it does I will get up and move for 15 minutes. Maybe clean house, maybe work with Argos, maybe do yardwork, maybe lift weights.
• Frequent snacking. UGH. I am not hungry! Except when I am, and then I want a LOT. Oh well … I’m just going to have to force down five (small) meals a day, because apparently that also keeps the metabolism chugging along better than fewer meals of whatever size.
• Drink more water. And it should be iced, because warming it up burns calories. I’ve been pretty good about a daily 2-3 liters, but I’m going to push it up to 4 liters per day. I Am Woman – Hear Me Slosh!
• Sleep. This has been the worst. A side effect of spending hours every day sitting on my butt staring into space / at a book / at my computer monitor has been that I don’t want to go to bed, and when I do I tend to read until way past midnight. And then I sleep late, and wake up exhausted. Woe and alackaday!

Yeah, I know this is an uninspired post on a boring topic – who wants to read about someone else’s flab woes, after all? But for some reason writing it here helps me, and since this is, after all, my blog, that will have to do.

I will post something more entertaining on Wednesday. In the meantime, here’s a picture of my beautiful boy. How could I not love walkies with such a companion?

Argos