I’ve been for the time being using a food diary program on my Palm handheld computer (Diet & Exercise Assistant, by Keyoe, Inc.) to keep track food intake & exercise, & use this info in conjunction with the glucose monitor to learn which carbohydrates are problematic for me. It ain’t perfect, but the food diary serves to help me be more mindful of portion sizes & also how much to eat for my activity levels so I can still lose weight. It also helps me to balance carbs against fats against proteins, & to know how much fiber I’m getting. Once I really get this way of eating integrated into my life, I may not need it any more, but for now it’s sure a help.
Exercise really needs to be part of the weight loss thing too. I’ve been spending a minimum of a half-hour daily plugging myself into my iPod & dancing (& I used pretty fast songs — I almost always break a sweat), but last night found I went just a bit over my “calorie budget” so did another half hour of dancing a couple of hours before bedtime. Which I think may have contributed to pretty good post-meal blood glucose & good fasting levels this morning as well. And I take the stairs to my office on the third floor now instead of using the elevator.
I seem to have lost about 5 lbs. since the start of the year. I think I would have lost more were it not for a recent trip to Spokane & Seattle to visit family — for the most part I was eating low GI, but there were a few meals I had less control over.
Yesterday I ran across a message in the Files for the LowGlycemicEating list (and now I’ve found a copy on the open Web too so I can link it here) called “Stalls — Why the Scales Can Lie” about stalls & plateaus in weight loss. It focused on low carb diets like Atkins, but I found it very encouraging nonetheless, & it has great info on how & why body weight fluctuates during the day & how plateaus or stalls don’t necessarily mean that you’re not losing the fat.
