Getting There, Slowly But Surely

I've been taking a four-week weight loss course at Kaiser Permanente, and last night was Week Two, where I learned more about the nature of my weight loss, and why it's behaved the way it has. Learned about that initial 8-pound loss (mostly water), which I knew was coming and not indicative of future weeks, and about building muscle mass, and how scales alone can seem frustrating if you don't understand about the fat loss/muscle gain that's going on.

So I have lost a total of ten pounds net weight so far, which means I've lost more than ten pounds of fat and gained some muscle to make up a part of the difference.

The main thing is that I feel so much better than I did before. And I've already lost desire for some of the things I always thought of as de facto additions to every meal. Bread is one of them.

We worked on appropriate portions last night, which was an eye-opener. I knew I had to reduce portion size and have been doing so, but now I have some solid guidelines to work with.

I'm also changing my idea of what a snack is. I had already shifted to things like whole wheat Triscuits and Claussen Kosher Mini Dill pickles (fantastic diet snack), but I'm going to focus more on vegetables from now on. Good thing I adore green vegetables. There's going to be a whole lot of steaming going on around here from now on, let me tell you.

Learning about cheese and alcohol and how my body metabolizes them was also an eye opener. I knew about half of the cheese stuff, but I had no idea that alcohol is metabolized more like it was fat. And the caloric value of alcohol is amazingly high, too. So it's one glass of wine per day -- maximum -- from now on.

Going to get the old free weights out of storage this weekend...

KBO!