2024 Resolution — How Things Are Going (Month Four!)

Well, we’re now four months into this year, and I’m still going strong on my resolution for this year, which was to go the whole year without eating sugar. I explained exactly what I mean by that here.

Four months without sugar! That is a HUGE accomplishment for me! Part of my resolution was to give myself six cheat days throughout the year. But after four months, I still haven’t used a cheat day, and I’m not sure if I will. The first time I might even consider it is my birthday, which is at the end of June. But the longer I go without sugar, the more resolved I am to go the whole year without any cheat days. So I’ll have to wait and see how I feel about it on the actual day. I might set a goal for myself, like if I reach a weight loss goal of “X” number of pounds lost by that day, I can have cake. If not, then I’ll skip the cake. We’ll see.

But speaking of pounds lost, this last month was a strange one. While I didn’t eat sugar, I also wasn’t very careful with my eating on those days that I eat at restaurants, which is every Sunday and every Wednesday. Because of that, I only had a net loss of 1.5 pounds during the month of April, for a total loss of 25.5 pounds since January 1st.

I’m still very proud of that overall weight loss. I mean, 25.5 pounds is a significant difference! But I am a bit irritated at myself that I wasn’t more careful about my choices during those Sunday and Wednesday meals out.

But here’s the strange thing. While I wasn’t careful about those meals at all (except that I stayed away from sugar), I did continue my workouts almost every day (at least five days a week), and I continued to be diligent about what I ate during all of my other non-restaurant meals. And while the scale only showed a 1.5 pound loss, I went down a pant size during the month!

I started out the month wearing 16W in my Judy Blue jeans (which is my absolute favorite brand of jeans). I had purchased several 14W pairs of Judy Blues in anticipation of losing more weight and needing to go down in size. At the beginning of the month, I could get into all of the 14Ws and get them all buttoned and zipped, but they were all too tight and uncomfortable to actually wear in public. But about a week ago, I started being able to wear some of them very comfortably. That’s just fascinating to me, and just goes to validate what we’ve all been told over and over again, but still sometimes have a hard time believing — the scale isn’t the most reliable measure of fat loss.

Obviously, the scale has to move again at some point. It’s impossible to continue losing inches without the scale starting to move again at some point. But I’m not overly concerned about it. This next month, my goal is to be more mindful of what I eat on Sundays and Wednesdays so that I won’t continue to sabotage the good choices the rest of the week. And I’d also like to add 15 minutes of walking on my treadmill at the highest incline setting every day. Other than that, I’ll continue with my kettlebells and weights (I generally use the Ladder app for my workouts), and continue to be mindful of what I eat at home, and I think the scale will start to move again.

I’m still not ready to share any full-length “before” and “progress” pictures. I’ll get there eventually, but it may be late summer or fall before I’m ready for that. But for now, I’ll share another “before” and “progress” face picture. Both of these pictures were taken at the same restaurant with the same awful, harsh lighting, and with the same phone and same settings. I only edited them for brightness and color because the lighting is awful, and in addition to the harsh shadows, the lighting turns my pale skin beet red. 😀 Anyway, the picture on the left was January 7th, and the picture on the right was this past Sunday, April 28th.

Another interesting thing that happened this last month is that I got three unsolicited compliments from people commenting on how my weight loss was really starting to show in an obvious way. Again, I just find it so interesting that that happened during a month when the scale barely moved. It’s hard to understand how that happens.

On my last update at the end of March, I had some people ask me about what I’m eating. I’m not doing the ketogenic diet, which is generally my go-to diet. I’ve kind of settled into a low carb, mid-range fat, and high protein diet. When I’m not sabotaging myself with all the carbs on Wednesdays and Sundays 😀 , I try to keep carbs under 50 grams, fat under 90 grams, and protein at a minimum of 120 grams. That generally lands me between 1200 and 1700 calories per day.

I didn’t just come up with those numbers at random. I used the formulas from the Bodyhealth 30-Day Fat Loss Challenge. A friend of mine was doing their 30-Day Lean Bulk Challenge and told me about it. When I realized they had a fat loss challenge, I figured that would be more appropriate for me, but then I didn’t really start it. I only got so far as figuring my macros, putting those into my Carb Manager app (I use the free version), and then spending a few days tweaking the carbs until I found a ratio that my body seemed to respond to very positively. So that’s how I landed on those macros that I use now.

What I love about these new macros that I’m using is that I can eat fruit. I was never able to eat fruit when doing a ketogenic diet because one piece of fruit would put me over my carbs for the day. So I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the addition of fruit to my diet over this last month. And as I mentioned, my body loves these new macros that I’ve settled on over this last month.

In fact, I’ll just be honest, the effectiveness of these new macros is why I got so lax on my eating on Sundays and Wednesdays during the month of April. In the previous months, if I lost control of my eating on Sunday or Wednesday and gained weight, there was no guarantee I could get that weight off before I ate out the next time. So if I wasn’t extremely careful, my weight could creep up, and up, and up from Sunday to the next Wednesday.

With these new macros, it seems like no matter what or how much I eat on any given Sunday or Wednesday, and no matter how many pounds the scale shows I’m up on Monday morning or Thursday morning, the new macros help me drop that weight very quickly and easily. So I guess you could say that during the month of April, I abused the system. Rather than using the effectiveness of the new macros to help me drop as much weight as possible during the month of April, instead I abused the effectiveness of the new macros to eat whatever I wanted, and in any amount I wanted, on Sundays and Wednesdays, knowing that I’d drop that weight quickly over the next couple of days, and there would be no net gain.

Now don’t get me wrong. That would be a perfectly fine and effective method for weight maintenance. But I’m no where near a “maintenance” stage right now. 😀 I’ve got a long way to go before I can hit any kind of maintenance stage. So basically what I did was use my newfound knowledge to kind of lose control for a month. I wasted an entire month. So this next month, my goal is to do much better on Sundays and Wednesdays, and to stop allowing those days to sabotage my good decisions the rest of the week. , and use my newfound knowledge to give me the freedom to eat whatever I wanted, and in whatever amount I wanted (again, as long as I wasn’t eating sugar) every Sunday and Wednesday. I allowed the effectiveness of the new macros as an excuse The effectiveness of the new macros

So with all of that said, here is a sample of what I eat in a day. I only eat two meals a day. I tried eating breakfast for a while, but eating early upsets my stomach. So lunch is always my first meal of the day, and I try not to eat anything after 7:00pm. So here’s what a day might look like:

I started doing this for dinner because I had been eating one meal a day for so long, and I got used to the freedom that one meal a day gave me with my schedule. Adding another cooked meal to my schedule made me feel like I was spending my whole day caring for Matt and cooking, which left little to no time for me to get any work done. This shake is very quick to make, and since I put it into a stainless steel-lined cup that keeps it cold and icy, I can sip on it while I continue to work. I know that’s not idea. We’re supposed to sit down and enjoy our meals and be completely “present” when eating, but sometimes we just have to do what we have to do with the time we have. And I don’t have time to sit down for cooked meals twice a day, plus get everything else done that I need to do. So for now, this shake works for me, and I love it so much that I look forward to it every day.

I really could eat that lunch every day because it’s so good! But here are some other things I eat for lunch:

• Breakfast burritos with scrambled eggs, bacon, cheese, and salsa on Hero tortillas
• Hamburgers using Hero hamburger buns
• Chicken Caesar wrap with rotisserie chicken, creamy Caesar dressing, lettuce, grated Parmesan cheese, and Hero tortilla

You might notice that I don’t deprive myself of bread. I just make sure that I eat low carb bread, and there are two options that I’ve found that are actually quite amazing. Hero has tortillas, hamburger buns, white bread, wheat bread, Hawaiian rolls, and brioche slicer rolls. There’s another company called Royo that has amazing low carb sliced bread and bagels. (All of these products are low NET carb, to be clear.) All of the products I’ve tried from both companies are so good. I haven’t tried anything that I didn’t like.

Some days, if my macros allow (depending on what I had for lunch), I like to enjoy a mid-afternoon snack of a cinnamon raisin bagel, “toasted” in the air fryer, with about two tablespoons of Polaner sugar-free strawberry preserves. Again, I don’t get to have that every day (sadly), but it just depends on what I’ve had for lunch, and if I plan to have my protein shade for dinner. Generally, when I have this snack in the afternoon, I will forgo the protein shake for dinner (that’s way too much sweet food for me), and just grab some leftover rotisserie chicken and a veggie for dinner. And again, I just make sure I’m done eating for the day by 7:00pm. I’ll still drink iced tea with lemon and stevia in the evening, but I just don’t eat anything else after 7:00pm.

So I hope that’s helpful for those of you who asked! But again, these are MY macros. Go to that link I provided and figure your macros, and start there. Download the free version of the Carb Manager app, set it up with your macros in the settings, and then just start playing around with some meal ideas in the app and see what you can get to fit your macros. And then from there, you can spend a few days tweaking those macros to see what seems to work best for you. Some people may do better with more fat, while others do better with less. Same with carbs. The less-than-20-carbs-per-day of the keto diet has been my go-to diet for a decade now, but it seems that my body actually prefers around 50 grams of net carbs per day.

I know that most people want a quick fix and a definite, easy-to-follow plan. That’s what I always wanted, and that’s why the keto diet always appealed to me. But it might actually take a couple of weeks and lots of tweaking to find exactly what works for you. But I’ve realized that taking that time to find exactly what your own body thrives on, rather than using someone else’s numbers, is so worth it.

Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.