Here we are....almost 10 years from when I started this blog. Why am I back? What happened?
Life and reality happened. As much as I loved the Isagenix system and firmly believe it could have "fixed" my weight issues way back then.....the truth is it simply wasn't sustainable and affordable for our family. I developed an intolerance to the taste of the cleanse products and could not justify spending money on a product that I could not take. I honestly tried all kinds of methods to get over my dislike. They offered a liquid form, I tried plugging my nose and just bolting that back, followed immediately by a glass of water to cleanse the pallet. Eventually I just gave up.
And of course, time and life moved on and the pounds I lost crept back on. Over the past 10 years I've been fairly good at maintaining my weight. I go up 10 lbs and back down 10 lbs, year to year. I found an exercise program that works for me - Water Aerobics! I love the water and in Guam's heat, there is no better place to work out!
Sadly with the pandemic, pools have been closed for well over a year now. But, I do live on a tropical island where it is summer year round. And we are surrounded by the ocean! So I braved my fear of squishy things in the sand and began going to Matapang beach to continue my water exercises. I've made friends with the fish and thoroughly enjoy the salt water's effects on my skin. You would think it would be drying, but honestly, after a year of 3-4 times a week hour long swims, my skin feels amazing!
But alas I still need to lose weight. My muscles are quite toned and friends say my butt doesn't jiggle when I walk. My knees are not nearly as sore as they used to be. I still have issues with sciatica pain in both hips and I can retain water if I am not careful about salt intake and moving!
This past week I decided to revisit one of the weight loss programs I tried a few years back. Noom. It's an online motivational app that analyzes the why's of what you eat and why you eat and gives you some tools to help keep you focused. When I tried it before, I lost about 10 lbs (that same 10 I keep losing and gaining...) but again, it cost money and just wasn't really something I felt I needed to keep paying for to keep me focused.
Well, as these things do, a 90% off for the year offer came up in my inbox, and thinking I needed another boost in the right direction I decided to go for it. It came with a 2 week free trial and I'm nearing the end of the 2nd week. Honestly, that first week I barely opened the app. As soon as I hit that food logging aspect I balked.
So here's where I decided to revisit this blog. I love to write. I'm good at it. I need to do it more. And I do find that when I write out my feelings/issues/anxieties then I deal with them better. My issue with food logging stems from two things. It takes time (silly excuse I know, we waste time daily and I could figure this one out). It's complicated. Not all foods I eat can be found on the lists. Inputting each item and amount and calculating the calories? I just am not going to do that. I know this about myself.
But here's where Noom is different than most diets. It categorizes foods as green, yellow, or red. And it's not to say that one color is better than the other (though green does imply a better choice in foods). What it suggests is that you eat more foods in the green category than the red category. The colors are all based on caloric density. So red foods are more dense in calories. meaning you can eat less of that food for the same amount of calories you can eat much more of in the other categories.
I don't like that Isagenix shakes are put in the red category because my brain still sees red foods as "bad" foods. I think that may have been one reason I quit Noom before besides the cost. Oh, yeah, I'm still drinking my Isagenix shakes. I admit, that I love them and as soon as I could I got myself back in the system and I only order those now. One canister a month. Because I don't take them every day this works for me and gives me my quick morning breakfast I need when I really don't want to take the time to prepare food.
So in order to make this work for me there are a few things I plan on doing. First of all, I will quit stressing about the food logging and just do the best I can. Yesterday I made homemade French dip and when logging it in, the calories listed was 691! But it put it as a yellow food. Now honestly I think that if I broke down the sandwich and logged it in by individual components then the calorie count would be much less. But you know what? I'm not supposed to be stressing over calories! I just need to be making the habits to trying to eat more healthy and to move more and to drink more water. Eat less sugar. Don't stress over food!
Drinking water and moving more are my other two goals. I've definitely gotten lax in these areas but I can fix it!
So here's to a new beginning. Cheers.
