Losing Weight During the Winter

I feel like giving up. This morning I tried on a pair of pants, a 36" inseam. They were almost too tight to button. Three months I was comfortably wearing a 34" inseam. I can't get over the reality that I put that much weight in such a short amount of time. It's disheartening to say the least.

Add on top this the weather, and it makes a perfect stew for depression. I'm an avid walker, I love being outdoors and feeling a fresh breeze across my face. But now the sidewalks are covered in inches of snow and the weather is dipping below 20 degrees. I've tried walking inside the mall but it just isn't the same. I call it the early winter blues.

Now for my progress.

I've been eating fast food a lot. I don't eat a lot of fast food, so I'm going to blame this is on my new medication for my bipolar disorder. There's no other way around it. I've started eating a spinach salad with ham for lunch and cottage cheese and sausage for snacks. For breakfast I have sausage gravy and biscuits. I plan on mixing this up with bacon and eggs for breakfast. Every morning I get a large cup of coffee at Biggby with half and half cream.

For exercise, I swim for a half hour three days a week and lift weights two days. I take the weekends off to relax.

I've noticed that before I go to bed I have the strongest desire to snack. To curb this I'm going to start splitting my dinner into two meals. One that I eat at dinner time and one I eat closer to bed.

I've set a new goal for my next week, which is to cut out all pop from diet. As I mentioned before, I'm an avid diet pop drinker, and research says this is distorting my taste buds. According to this article over on Fooducate, one of the dangers of drinking diet pop is that it "infantilizes" our sense of sweetness. According to the article:

Artificial sweeteners are a hundredfold sweeter than sucrose (table sugar). By getting ourselves used to so much sweet, normal sweet flavors, of fruit for example, become bland and so do other healthful foods such as grains and vegetables, thus reducing our willingness to consume them and ultimately the quality of our diet.

That's the goal then. Get rid of diet pop and replace it with tea and water. And the occasional hot cocoa.

Update

It's been over a year since I've last posted, and much has happened during that time. I found a job at the local Jeep plant and quit working out. The monotony of staying at home and living off disability was too much to bear. When the opportunity of a good paying job came up, I couldn't resist the offer. This wasn't to last though.

About three months ago the voices came back. It had been over a year and I thought I was good, but BAM, out of nowhere I was talking to Lady Gaga. The good news is I didn't take a road trip this time. No, instead I went to the hospital, four times in two months to be exact. My meds were switched around a few times and that brings everything up to the present.

Now it's back on disability and being unemployed. Working to 4 am every night proved to be too much. At one point I went five days without sleeping. the good news is that the voices are now gone and everything feels normal again. For how long, we'll have to see.

In other news, I decided to change my life for the better. I've started writing full time with the intention of getting my fiction published. I've written about 13 short stories and and started work on a novella. It's exciting to say the least. I also have plans to restart an editing company I ran a few years ago.

If this wasn't enough, I'm starting personal research on trying to lose weight without counting calories. The hope is to publish a book eventually, perhaps in a year's time. First I have to lose the weight and then I have to keep the weight off for my research to be successful. No one wants to buy a book that doesn't work, right? This is obviously is very personal because I've gained about 60 lbs. since last year. I plan on using this blog as my starting point of recording my results and charting my progress. My first post will be about describing my current health situation, which I'll begin tomorrow. For the meantime, cheers! It feels good to be back.