Category Archives: health & fitness

A narrative of my journeys with diet, exercise, and various healthcare professionals

health & fitness 2 Comments

One Year and Fifty Pounds Ago

…I looked like this:

diana at the dayton air show, 19 july 2003

A year before that, even, I was saying things like this:

26 September 2002:

I really have gained a lot of weight. I realized this as I looked down at my shadow before me. Then I realized that my arms touch my sides when I walk. Not just at my hips, not just my armpits, and not just my boobs. My entire side. This was somehow more disturbing to me than my recent discovery of a “gut flap.” It only strengthened my resolve to somehow lose 45 pounds…

Today, I’m feeling so much better than I did back then. I know I still have a little ways to go to reach my weight and fitness goals, but being back to the weight I was in high school and early college makes me feel so much better about myself. I haven’t lost any major weight in a while, as I’m stabilizing at my new, healthier weight, so I’m not quite as giddy about my weight-loss as I was, say, in October or November.

I took this self-portrait in July, when I weighed only two pounds more than I do today.

I have collarbones! Holy shit! When did that happen? I also have ample space between my waist and my elbows, and the hideous “gut flap” mentioned above has thankfully shrunk down to a mere crease. I can’t imagine what I’ll look and feel like in another 25 pounds or so.

health & fitness

Food Glorious Food

This morning, I decided to be all spiffy and make Spicy Chicken Papaya Curry for lunch. Aside from some minor papaya issues (hey, the recipe didn’t say to peel the damn papaya!), it was quite tasty. I’d include a link to the recipe, but the people at the Cooking Club of America don’t have it listed on their site yet. Bah. Anyway, if you like fruity and spicy Thai-esque foods, lemme know and I’ll type out the recipe and post it. It was really delicious… after we sliced off the papaya skins. 🙂

Then, this afternoon, we stopped in at the Low-Carb Solutions store on Reynolds, hoping to pick up some Cinnamon & Butter Flavored Pork Rinds. Unfortunately, they were out of the pork rinds, but we found a new snacky food: Parmesan, Garlic & Olive Oil “Soy~Teins.” Yummy, yummy stuff… as was the Asher’s Sugar-Free Dark Liquid Raspberry chocolate bar we shared. And Heather, the owner, was nice enough to take down our name and number so she can call us when the pork rinds come in.

I also picked up a bottle of Da Vinci Gourmet Irish Cream Sugar Free Syrup. I’d heard those Da Vinci syrups were supposed to be absolutely scrumptious—and I’d heard right. When we got home, I looked up a recipe for Italian soda (since we have a whole two-liter of club soda leftover from making our low-carb pizza crust). OMG. So, so good. I’m going to be buying more of these Da Vinci syrups. *yum*

weight loss 3 Comments

Almost-normal-sized clothes again…

You know, self-portaiture isn’t quite as easy as it might seem, especially without a professional portraiture setup. In other words, finding an appropriate spot to set the digital-camera-on-a-timer in my house is a challenge. But I wanted to share my small joy with you, so… ph34r my new tank top. Rah.

To celebrate my return to this-is-how-fat- I-used-to-be- before-I-got-sloppy, I scrounged up a few pics of myself over the past 10 months or so and made a weight-loss montage. I didn’t seek out too many pictures, and I didn’t scan anything; it was just what I had already on the computer for whatever reason. But I think it gets the point across. And not only do you get to watch my double-chin melt away through the photos, you also get to watch my hair grow. 🙂

Aaaaaand I’m done.

weight loss

Atkins Progress

Just happened to notice, hidden in amongst My Documents, the Weight.xls chart I created once upon a time when I was more obsessive over my weight-loss regimen than I am now. So, I opened it up and added the latest plot point of date vs. weight, and made a discovery.

Even though it seems like my weight loss is slowing, it isn’t. I’ve been losing at the same rate, a little over half a pound a week, ever since October or November. If I keep up at this pace, I’ll be at my ultimate goal (for now, anyway) by late Winter of 2005. While that might seem like a long time… I don’t mind. And, when you think about it, it took me a few years to put it on; it seems fitting that it should take at least a year and a half to take it off.

(Just stay away from the candy machine… Hershey’s with Almonds bad…)

health & fitness

Yummy Crock Pot BBQ Wings

The wings were successful. All three pounds were gone by 3pm. I even got to eat some.

I was a bad Diana and cheated horribly on my diet today. Ate a couple sugar-free muffins, a couple small not-sugar-free cupcakes, one not-very-good chocolate chip cookie, and a chocolate-dipped strawberry, all in addition to the “real” food I ate. I was half-high for part of the day, half-asleep for the rest of it, and half had a headache while I came down from my sugar high. That’ll teach me, I guess.

In other news, I’m kind of bored. I’m going to go play Civ III for an hour.