Hunger hurts but starving works

I’m married to a health nut. My husband loves to exercise, will get up earlier than necessary to go run or stay up later to lift weights. Since he discovered he was allergic to pretty much every food known to man, he also started to eat healthier and has lost a lot of weight. Diet plus exercise equals a really nice set of abs I never thought I’d get to see again on my 38 year old husband.

But the exercise kick seems to run in his family, so I should not be surprised. My sister in law has always taken aerobics, dance or gone to the gym and she married a personal trainer – talk about taking your exercise seriously 🙂 – and my inlaws take long walks or bycicle rides on a regular basis. So from this perspective, I’m the only fat lazy bitch in the family.

Well, I have my excuses, off course. After all, three pregnancies in five years do take a toll on your body. But the truth is that I truly hate exercising and I love chocolate and ice cream (though not chocolate ice cream, for some odd reason. Anyway, that’s beside the point).

Because I did not want people pointing and saying ‘hey, there goes that hot guy with the fat wife’, as soon as my daughter gave up on breastfeeding, at 11 months, I started my diet. The detox from chocolate and pizza took a while but I managed ok and I eventually lost 3kg.It was tough adjusting to feeling hungry in between meals but I eventually got used to it.

By the time I lost 1 more kg we went on vacation and with stress (yes, when you have two small kids and your car dies, vacations are actually more stressful than regular days, trust me on this), eating out or ordering in more, and less impulse control, I gained it back.

Fortunately, soon both kids went back to school, I finished the last of the ice cream in the freezer and it became easier to track what I eat again. The hardest part is resisting buying more stuff you shouldn’t eat. You’re at the supermarket, the stuff is right there, sitting pretty on a shelf and you have to cover your eyes and walk on by. It’s an addiction like any other. Sugar may be easier to stop than heroin but the craving never goes away.

I’ve learned to deal with it in simple ways like buy a bottle of coke, keep it in the fridge but have just a sip whenever there’s a craving instead of filling up a glass. Buying soy deserts that are still sweet but have only 100 calories per serving instead of eating something else that would have 300 to 500 calories. Get cereal bars covered in white chocolate – once again, you get candy for a fraction of the calories – about 99 cal per bar. It seems to be the only way to reduce sugar and calory intake without caving and seems to be working so far. The rest is eating stuff you like but keeping it simple – salads with mozarella cheese, olives and smoked salmon were my favorite meal during the summer months.

I was stuck at 65kg at the beginning of the week, when I got my braces. So far it still hurts to chew anything hard so I’ve been having liquid yogurt, fresh mozarella or ricotta, some fish, etc – mostly light coloured food so I won’t stain the teeth and soft so it won’t hurt when I chew. This morning I was down to 64.8kg so it seems to be working on the diet side as well.

The hunger, however, has been getting worse, so today I did some food shopping to add some healthier stuff to my diet, such as soup and cooked vegetables. Should still be soft enough and will balance the lack of fruit (right now chewing and apple would be a nightmare). I only got vegetables that I actually like, such as green beans, carrots and peas. If I try to force myself to eat stuff I hate – like broccoli – it will never work.

The upside is that lately I’m naturally leaning more toward fish than meat (I tend to get sick of meat once in a while and even spent a whole year without touching the stuff at one point). Since it’s softer it’s easier right now and it’s also a healthier way to get protein.

Now i just need the drive to start exercising. I plan to start with yoga and some abs and try to find a dance exercise routine. if it’s just jumping up and down until you drop I’ll get sick of it in a week. If there’s a fun element to it, like learning a dance routine, I may keep it up longer. Yes, I really am that lazy.