eating goals

Found some old pictures. The two on the right are my father's parents. On the left is my father's uncle.

I had my second run since the marathon the other day - and it was only 2 miles at about a 10 minute pace. It's strange - even though that is a pretty good performance, I am quick to tire lately, especially when running quickly. All of my runs seem to take a lot more effort than they used to. And my heart rate seems to be just a little higher than normal. I don't know why.

Did an an interesting on myself. I wore my heart rate monitor overnight - while I was sleeping - to get a true indication of what my resting heart rate was. Since I've been unable to get a reading below 60 while I was awake in some time, I had a gadget monitor and record my heart rate overnight and see what the lowest reading was: 55. Good, but I really wish I had done this a month ago before when I could induce a sub-60 just by sitting quietly for a few minutes - I wonder if I ever went below 50 while I was asleep - and if the 55 was really good.

I also seem to have fallen back into a trap of non-discipline regarding what I eat. I don't need this right now: routinely giving into my cravings. Looking back to this spring where I lost all that weight, there was a period for about two weeks at the beginning where I had seriously intense cravings for starch - that I managed to resist. I posted about it in this blog. The cravings went away after that - so it was good, until I took a 3-week trip to California where I disregarded any idea of dieting for a while. Even after the trip, I was pretty disciplined - but looking back at the last three months I can see myself slowly returning to my old habits- culminating in these past couple of weeks where my parents were visiting from California. I again disregarded any idea of a diet and was literally on the same habits that caused me to stay at 350 lbs for all those years. Now that they have returned, I have said that I would return to the non-starch diet - but haven't been doing a good job at it. As of this morning, the scale read 294.8 - almost 10 lbs above where I was a month ago.

It's not all bad news though - I am writing this immediately after lunch, and am thinking about what I ate. A medium-sized sandwich from Quiznos. I finished it, along with half-a-dozen pickled jalapeños, and some iced tea. A year ago, this would have been a small meal for me, and I would have been able to easily chomp down half a pizza after this. But right now, sans pizza, my body is telling me that I just ate a tremendous amount of food - I feel like I overate. Truthfully, I did - I should have eaten less since my immediate goal is to lose 44.8 lbs. But frankly, this is a normal or even small amount of food for most people. Bottom line: apparently, my body is accustomed to portion control.

The problem I've had in the last month especially is food choices and snacking. High-calorie foods are ubiquitous in my kitchen at the moment and I really need to clean house. Also, unplanned meals between meals - which could contain good foods but usually doesn't - is a huge problem.

So, starting tomorrow (since it's too late for today - I already had a sandwich!) - I am announcing right here and now about how I'll eat until October 15:

No wheat, rice or white potatoes
No dairy products
No red meat
No sweets
No salty or otherwise "snack"-style foods
Exactly 3 meals per day

"Authorized" foods include:
fruits
vegetables
melons
squash
corn
sweet potatoes
chicken
fish
protein supplements

that's how it shall be. i am counting on all of you loyal readers of my blog (two if i'm lucky) to hold me accountable to this.. if all goes as planned, I'll be well on my way too 250 lbs by then.. any maybe already actually 'overweight' rather than 'obese.'