Second day

Couple of weeks ago I could not fit into none of my shorts I was fitting into perfectly lasts summer. It was probably the strongest motivation for this round. Second day went smooth. Not hungry at all

First success

2 lbs off. I started at 134... had some fun on weekend ehehhhee. This morning I was 132.  I also took 1.5 Hour ballet class last night

Starting again

I got Victoria Secret swim suite catalog, very inspiring. I understand that all those girls are under 25. I never has and never will have body like theirs. The sad part: in my early 20s I was size 12. Now I am getting closer to 40, my metabolism slowing down. It is much more difficult to lose anything. I look pretty good for my age, but I would like to get as close as possible to VS beach body. What I have now: 133 lb of weight. I am exercising about 6-7 hours a week. Nothing extreme: ballet, jazz, yoga, pilates. Some crunches at home. People say that I need hard core cardio to lose weight, but I do not like doing it. I believe to be successful I need to do what I like, otherwise I will quit sooner or later. I brought weights to my office and do some weight “moves” actually it works , just 10 minutes here in thee,, those weights are getting too light, will have to buy heavier ones. I eat protein and good carbs, but my weight is stuck at 133. It is time for me to start my Japanese diet again. I am going back this Monday. My goal is to loose 10 lb. Will see if it is possible in my age,, today and tomorrow, I will enjoy brown rice sushi, wine, cheese. Today and tomorrow. Monday is a good day to start.

Phase 2

Read here about phase 2 of my diet.

Calories counting vs. meal plan.

Some nutritionists say: you can eat everything, only calories matter. If you stay in 1200 calories a day, you will lose weight. Others say: avoid fat, carbs, etc.. Then you will lose.
As an experienced weigh loser I say do both, I did and still do low carb and 1200 calories, combination of both works the best.

Weight loss: phase one

Read here about the first phase:

Weight Loss: Keeping it Off

Keeping weight off is just like sailing for me. Have you ever sailed?? To keep on truck you go a little bit to the right and the a little bit to the left. That’s how you stay on the course. If you go too much to the side, you need to adjust. For me keeping weight in limit is just like sailing. I get on scale every morning, if I weight too much, I adjust my diet to low carb, eat protein and veggies. Forget about sweets breads, pasta, even fruits for couple of days. Then my weight goes down, and I adjust back to more joyful eating. The key is not to go too far. Just to keep sailing in healthy weight.

Weight Loss - Method

I do not like to call it diet. Diet is usually short term temporary food plan. I call it life style or Method. Since my life style didn’t work really well for my figure, I had to change it. I studied many different approaches and came up with combination of few, which I felt comfortable with and it worked for me.
Read more

Weight Loss - Read the Label

Most of the prepared foods we buy in the supermarket have tons of unnecessary ingredients, which supposed to make it taste better. Let say tomato pasta sauce. It contains corn starch, corn syrup, other ingredients; I do not even know what they are. Or let’s say yogurt. You buy fat free yogurt, it should be healthy right? I am not sure why they insist to add starch and sugar everywhere. After a while, our taste is adjusting and if we try something more natural, it does not taste sweet enough. But you can train your taste to adjust back. And start to enjoy healthy food, without extra calories, starch and sweetness. Strawberries are sweet without corn syrup. Tomato sauce tastes great without corn starch. Sour cream does not need corn starch to be creamier, it is good naturally.

Weight Loss: Japanese Diet

My friend gave me print out of this diet. Russians call it Japanese. I am not sure why. There is nothing Japanese in this diet, but I still call it this way. This is flush diet, it worked for me every time I used it. I’ve lot up to 14 lb in 2 weeks on this diet. Larger I was more I was loosing. In average it is about 10lb of weight loss. The theory is that this diet also speeds up your metabolism. I am not a doctor, cannot prove if it is or it is not. I know some people ( with slight weight problem) who claim that they did that diet for 2 weeks and then kept result for at least a year, eating exactly the same as they were eating before this diet. Read more here

Weight Loss: Scale.

You do not need any fancy scale, but you need one. Many doctors are saying do not do it everyday, I do. Every morning I get on my scale to see what I can eat today. If my weight goes up, I adjust my diet, to avoid carbs. If it goes down I enjoy some bread or cookies. It is only one way for me to stay in the same weight.

Dieting and Traveling.

I am visiting St Louis. I’ve sinned during traveling before, I’ve sinned this time. I had fired pickles, I drunk OJ in the morning with eggs and bacon, I had little ice cream in the zoo. It is very difficult to avoid food I am not supposed to eat during travel. I decided for myself to kinda relax and just try to do my best. I am surrounded with temptations: fried food everywhere, chocolate indulgence cake was served last night after dinner. I had tiny little bite, it was really difficult to stop but I stopped. I do not have scale here. I hope to keep my weight down. Will check when I come back.

Weight loss: Meal Schedule.

During my weight loss journey, I figured out that it matters not only what we eat but also when we eat it. In Russia we say: eat your breakfast your self, share lunch with friend and give dinner to your enemy. This is very true. I you want to eat something that your method does not allow, eat it for breakfast, then you will have no or minimal impact on your routine. It does not mean you can do it all the time, but as an exception, this trick works pretty darn good.
Russian people in general have a little different meal schedule. They have breakfast, dinner and supper. They eat the largest meal (like dinner in the US) for lunch. They do not call it lunch they call it dinner. At night they have light supper. This meal schedule works very well for weight loss routine.

Weight Loss: Second Strong Motivation

I was breastfeeding my daughter until she was about 11 months old. She just lost interest at some point. I was visiting my mother in Russia. My husband was in Ukraine. My mother offered for me to leave my daughter with her for few days, and go to visit my husband, just to spend weekend childfree. It was a great idea.
We went to Crimea. We stayed in the nice hotel on the beach. First time in 2 years, not pregnant… baby was safe with my mom… Romantic weekends by the sea. It was not Summer anymore, but weather was nice enough to walk on the beach or sit and listen to waves. It was really nice out there. We were sitting on beach reading book aloud. He was sitting I was lying down, head on his knees, reading book aloud. Very romantic! Then I had to move. He told me, that I was moving like a walrus or a seal.
It was it! The second huge kick into my fat butt.
Next morning I has salad for breakfast and went to swim in the pool. Well it was strong motivation, it took me couple of months to find my way. At this point I also figured out that my husband will most likely become ex soon. I do not know what thought kicked me better: his comments, or realization that I will have to go on dates again. But something did it. I started seriously searching for my method.

Weight Loss: My Lemon Pie Story.

To start dieting again I needed very strong motivation. I think most of us went through the process of going in and out.
For me the process started with understanding of need to lose weight.
Admitting to myself that I needed to lose weight.
Finding excuses why I could do it later.
Trying to diet and then finding another excuse: holidays, party, birth day, traveling etc..
I tried different methods.
I was trying to cut portions. I decided, I would eat everything, but will go with smaller portions.
At the time I was stay home mom, so refrigerator was dangerously too close. Yes I had smaller portions but was eating those more often, so as a result, I probably was consuming more food.
I really love lemon custard pie. I make it from scratch. Just love it. I was baking that pie and eating very tiny pieces. Tiny piece would not do any harm, right? By the end of the day I realized that I finished the whole pie.

Weight loss: After Pregnancy.

There is a mystery, I still do not understand, how it works. I was pregnant, baby inside, surrounded by waters… water supposes to be heavy. I gave birth. Baby was more than 8 pounds, plus water, plus other stuff. I was hoping for at least 10-15 pounds off. I was 3 pounds lighter after giving birth. Mystery. Some lucky people are losing weight just by breastfeeding,. Not me. I could not lose an ounce. Somebody explained it to me. In my case, my body was trying to collect more fat just in case for hunger, so I would have enough supply to feed the baby. I am not a doctor. All I know that I could not go extreme again, extreme diet while breastfeeding could not be healthy for the baby.
I tried to cut calories, cut fat, eat super healthy. Nothing worked. When I was cutting calories, I even started gaining.

Weight loss: Pregnancy.

I was always wondering how stars making it through the pregnancy and stay slim from behind, just having small watermelon in the front. It is huge mystery for me. As soon as I got pregnant, I gained so fast. And it is not only me.
My best friend, as soon as she gets pregnant, she has few kids, every time she stops fitting into her pants. Her thighs are getting huge. I mean next day. Has nothing to do with her diet. I got huge everywhere. I guess it was my fault also. All Russian women including my mother told me, that I had to eat for 2. I had to listen to my body and it whatever it was asking for,,, ahahahah it was asking for lots of yummys. And I was glad to give it to my body. I had great excuse. I enjoyed it. I gained so much during pregnancy. If I was doing it again, I would control it better. At least I would try. It was huge mistake to just let it go. When I was 4 month pregnant I had huge belly, looked like I was 8 moths pregnant by then.

Weight Loss: First try

I studied lots of diets. We didn’t have the Internet back then, so I’ve read books and magazines. Talked to people. I wanted to lose fast! I wanted it right away. Somebody gave me a print out of cabbage soup diet. Cabbage BTW is really great for weight loss. I will describe another much healthier diet with lots of cabbage later.
I was determined to lose, I started this diets and it was success. I got tired of that soup of course pretty quickly. I would not recumbent to repeat my experience. One week max on that. Will give you good start for something bigger. But you will not enjoy that week. Food wise at least. The funny part that you can eat it as much as you want.. great, the problem is that after all day of eating it, you just do not want it anymore,,
I got on this diet as soon as I came back to the US. And man I was losing. It was great, I started to fit into my old clothes. Sometimes in the middle of this, my ex got invited to Russian embassy on some art show, concert and reception. We went. With the reception they went completely overboard. They had Champagne fountains, all kid of caviars, smoked fish (sturgeon) was presented as a whole with face and everything on the big plate. They had all kinds of cheeses and salami. They had pate’s and foie gras. They had all kinds of pastries and desserts. And I was stack with bottle of water. My soup was waiting for me at home. I am still proud of myself. At this point I new, I was going to make it thin.
In a week later I got pregnant and had to quit extreme dieting for a while.

Weight Loss: Slow diets.

If your weight problems are based on your lifestyle, or your eating style, not on hormonal issues or other health problems, you can lose weight. You, probably already done it few times, but those pounds came back, as soon as you switch no your regular routine. If your goal is to lose weight and keep it off for good, you need to change your life style. Sounds hard, but it is possible. The key is to pick new life style you at least like. For example, if you cannot live without steak, switching to vegetarian, would not work for you. After a while you will hate it and quit. You need to start with adjusting your regular diet to the new healthier way. One little example: we all know that yogurts are healthy. There are many adds on TV about different flavors something like key lime pie. And it is labeled fat free. You think: Great I’ll eat it. Not too fast. Those sweet yogurts are full of sugar and starch. The healthier way is to buy plain yogurt with no artificial flavor and sweeten it with fresh fruit and/or honey, or even sugar, but just a little bit. After a while you will not even like those super sweet yogurts. I like whole-wheat crackers. My husband use to make fun of me saying I was eating cardboard. I actually felt the same while ago. But for me it was those crackers or no crackers. So I trained myself to like those. Now I love it! BTW my husband loves those too.
Slow diet probably will not get you in your goal weight right away, but slowly but surely you will get there and keep those pounds off for life.

Weight Loss: Flush diets.

Flush diets are great for fast weight loss. There is an opinion that those diets are not really good for you. They help to lose weight fast, but as soon as you finished and get back to your regular habits, you gain pounds back as fast, maybe even faster. Those diets are usually very monotone. You can eat very limited variety of food. It is unhealthy to stick to this type of diet for a long time. And frankly it is really hard. Common opinion: stay away from those.
I disagree.
Those diets can really help to boost up motivation, if used as a part of larger slow diet. Let me explain.
Let say you decided to start dieting. To lose weight and keep it off you need to change your lifestyle for good. Since your current lifestyle is not working for you, weight wise at least. There are many different ways. Some count calories, some go low fat, some go low carbs, etc. We are all different. We enjoy different stuff. Our bodies work differently. One thing all those diets have in common: they are slow working. When you switch to the diet, it starts pretty good you notice pounds melting away. Your body is tying to adjust to the new way of living. After a while, the process slows down. At this point it is really important not to lose motivation. Here comes flush diet to rescue. You switch to one of those for a week or two. Get rid of 5-6-10 pounds quick, and then switch back to regular routine. Flush diet is a really great way to start the long-term routine also.
Look at my Diet Page for a few examples that really work.