30 Day Healthy Meals Weight Loss Diet 1: Day 20

February 21, 2009 by Trevor Watkinson · No Comments »»

It really has not been very difficult to make it this far through my first 30 Day Healthy Meals Weight Loss Diet of the year.

I never do find it taxing to stick to a diet that consists mostly of fresh fruit and vegetables.

I have said before that I find a healthy diet far more appetizing than a junk food diet. It has been a relief having so much variety to choose from when preparing my plates this month.

The most challenging task I have faced this month is finding something to occupy my time each day that takes my mind off of food. Boredom is actually the number one cause of obesity. People who keep their minds and their bodies active in any fashion are far less likely to develop a problem with their weight.

A lot of people talk about retirement like a time when they will cease to be productive at all. If you ask 100 people what they will do when they retire, most of them will say they plan on doing nothing. This response is totally ludicrous. Regardless of the fact that you are no longer part of the “rat race” once you retire, you will still end up doing something to fill up your time. Even doing nothing is doing something because you have to choose to do nothing.

Those individuals who claim to want to do nothing in retirement will quickly tire of their chosen course of action. Human beings can only sit still and do nothing for so long before going what I like to call “shack wacky.” Why do you think that kids have such a hard time to sit still and be quiet? We adults usually have our work dominating our thought processes. We are too spent at the end of the day to want to do anything else and we demand quiet and relaxation. We want to do nothing.

Children never want to do nothing because they do not have the burdens of the working world weighing them down every day. When we get home from work, we are emotionally spent. Without any financial burdens, kids are free to spend their energy any way they like. They are totally free to express themselves and use their imaginations to amuse themselves. I remember always being able to find something to do when I was a kid.

This month, I have been faced with trying to equal the inventiveness and imagination I once possessed as a child. Given that I have only been working 6 hours per week, I have had a tremendous amount of time on my hands. There is no question in my mind that God put us here on this earth to work. We have to work at something. We have to do something. We can not stay immobile for an extended period of time. If the amount of free time I have had this month is any indication of what a traditional retirement might be like, then I can assure you that I will be picking up a hobby of some sort to enjoy once I leave the working world behind.

I happen to love comfort foods like potatoes, pasta and bread so much that I need to do something to keep my mind occupied during the day or I end up hanging around in the kitchen and staring into all the cupboards. People end up eating out of boredom all the time. I say that our time here on earth is far too short to be spending it staring into the bottom of an empty bag of processed white bread and feeling guilty.

Part of my free time this month has been spent making initial plans to move out of province. I have also used some of the open hours of the day to clean up around our home and to tackle various business related projects I had been putting off for a while. I also recently ran our collective score on the computer game Dynomite over the 71,000,000 point mark. If you have never played “Dynomite,” it is a great game, but I am a little sick of it now that our score is so high.

I used to play a lot of video games, but now find them a complete waste of time. It is far more preferable to complete some worthwhile activities such as participating in charity work than to rot your brain in front of a glowing little box. In the days where I did play a lot of video games, I usually found myself craving junk food. So now you have two great reasons to surrender your controller.

If you can not find something productive to do with your free time each day, or if you have a serious reduction in your working hours like I have experienced recently, you must find something to keep yourself busy or you will be tempted to cheat on your diet. I am fortunate in that I can defeat my cravings by baking stuff and freezing it right away. Just the smell of fresh baked cookies or bar squares is enough to quell my cravings and the process of baking keeps me occupied for a while. I am all for anything that makes the hands of time move a little faster once in a while.

I try to stay involved in the preparation of my meals each day because that also helps to make time go by. Sometimes it is really hard to wait for supper to come around. Lyann and I usually attempt to hold off from preparing our supper until 5:00 p.m. each day. Our supper is normally ready at about 5:45 p.m. and the 45 minutes we spend in preparation keeps our minds off of our rumbling stomachs. We ate pretty close to 6:00 p.m. today and I had the following meal:

Homemade Vegetable Soup with Knorr OXO Beef Bouillon, Salmon Steak, Hard-Boiled Eggs, Craisins, Quaker Original Rice Cakes, Kraft Smooth Peanut Butter, Cucumber, Red Pepper, Tomato, Clementines

This meal looks like it has less volume than my meal from last night (and it does), but the calorie content is almost identical. You will notice that I only had 2 hard-boiled eggs tonight and that I did not have any cheese with my meal. I made up for the missing calories by increasing my allotment of Kraft Smooth Peanut Butter from 1 tablespoon to 2 tablespoons and by including a 100 calorie package of Ocean Spray Craisins with my meal.

The calorie content associated with the meal above is as follows:

2 cups of Homemade Vegetable Soup with Knorr OXO Beef Bouillon – zero calories because this soup only contains water and frozen vegetables.
One 4 oz Salmon Steak – 150 calories
3 Quaker Original Rice Cakes – 105 calories
2 tablespoons of Kraft Smooth Peanut Butter – 180 calories
2 Hard-Boiled Eggs – 150 calories
1 package of Craisins – 100 calories
Cucumber, Red Pepper, Tomato and Clementines – zero calories because these are all negative-calorie foods. You can eat as much of these as you like without gaining weight.

I also had another Hint O’ Mint square for my dessert today which brought my total calorie count for the day up to 800 calories even. Each Hint O’ Mint square normally has about 115 calories. I made some more of these today, but doubled the recipe in the same size pan to make them twice as thick. Unfortunately, that doubled the calorie count, so now I have some squares that contain 230 calories each (about the same as a regular size chocolate bar).

The only problem with eating this way all the time is that it can be very expensive. Fresh and frozen fruit and vegetables are definitely not cheap. Lyann and I spend quite a bit of money to be able to eat properly. We would eat a lot more vegetables and fruit with our meals if these items were not quite so cost-prohibitive. It is a sad comment on human nature and the state of our society that the foods that are the most nutritious for us and the most natural are the ones that are out of reach for most people.

It is twisted and incomprehensible that the foods that are the cheapest are the ones that have been processed the most. You would think that a food product that required less processing would be cheaper to produce and therefore cost less. The fact that the foods that require little or no processing are the most expensive speaks volumes about the lack of nutritional value in the cheap foods at the grocery store. Processing food is no cheap endeavour, yet there has to be some reason why you can buy a can of “spaghetti” for less than a dollar. The answer is poor nutrition and substandard quality.

Our food supply is the main reason why so many people in North America fall ill every day. The food we eat today is also responsible for the dramatic rise in allergies we have seen over the past 20 years. Genetic modification is ruining the food supply. I can not even buy a bag of oranges at my local Sobeys store without having to throw out part of what I purchased. It only takes a day or so for the “sale” items to begin to rot once you get them home. Food that is about to spoil is marketed to the poor people of North America as some kind of deal.

Canada and the USA are beginning to have difficulty just feeding their citizens. Another empire that had trouble feeding its populace in times past was Rome. A great part of the population of Rome was taking advantage of the government welfare system when Rome began its rapid decline. Food became scarce and of exceptionally poor quality as the empire began to erode. I submit to you that the same thing is happening now here in North America. There is no bright side to the downturn our two economies are experiencing. The end of our bounty and world dominance are upon us. History always repeats itself and we are the new Roman Empire.

The lack of quality food and associated exorbitant prices at grocery stores today are two of my reasons for conducting these twelve 30 Day Weight Loss Diets this year. Six 30 Day Weight Loss Diets to show people how to eat healthy and six additional 30 Day Weight Loss Diets to show people how to eat cheaply; both methods of consumption allowing for the maintenance of an ideal weight. There will soon come a time where gold will be thrown in the streets due to its worthlessness. The time to learn how to eat sparingly and cheaply is upon us all.

Here are my current stats:

Weight and Body Fat

There has been no big change in my weight or body fat percentage for some time now. I am consistently maintaining my weight under the 150.0 lb mark that I chose as my goal weight earlier this year. My Salter body fat percentage scale showed me weighing in at 149.2 lbs today, with a body fat percentage of 19.9% this morning. That means I have successfully kept off 12.0 lbs since the beginning of the year and kept my body fat percentage reduced by 3.1% since the beginning of January.

Though I do get a little apprehensive about my diet when my weight comes close to passing the 150.0 lb mark, I keep in mind that I have clothes in my closet that would not have fit me in high school. Pants that would have cut me in half only two short years ago now hang so loose on me that I can pull them down without undoing the button or zipper. These are the signs you should focus on when losing weight. You should weigh yourself every day, but your progress is best judged by how your favourite pants fit you.

Summary

I am still feeling healthy as far as my weight goes. I am feeling much better mentally since having the opportunity to purge some of my frustration in my post from yesterday. Today was a stress free day all around and I got to bake some stuff to keep myself occupied and away from the fridge.

There are only ten days left until my next free day now. I actually think there are only nine days left because I tend to not count the day following my nightly post. I figure that when midnight gets here, there really will be only nine days left because who counts the current day in a countdown?

I think we are still settled on having Fettuccine Alfredo on our next free day. Lyann is going to make us some roasted chicken sandwiches using fresh croissants for the bread. I think there is Caesar salad in our plans along with a cracker and meat tray we intended to have on our last free day. I am really looking forward to this next event. I am thankful that the time will pass quickly due to being on a 30 Day Healthy Meals Weight Loss Diet this month. It is only when eating “substandard” food without any variety that the time takes forever to pass.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, February 21st, 2009 at 10:49 pm and is filed under 30 Day Healthy Meals Weight Loss Diet 1, 30 Day Weight Loss Diets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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