Losing Weight and Feeling Great

Archive for April, 2008

One thing I found out by accident earlier this week.  I don’t know if it’s the same for you as what I saw, but I thought it worth mentioning.

While you are losing weight and your skin is changing, it seems a little more sensitive to things like sunlight.  Now I’ve always tanned fairly easily, so perhaps I am a little lazy with slathering on the sunblock.

Looks like I need to be more careful now.

Sunlight and Your Skin Losing Weight

So, I put on the same amount of sunblock I would normally have used (pre-weight loss).  By the end of my little hike, I could tell I had gotten too much sun.

By the time I got to a mirror to survey the damage, it was both better and worse than I expected.  Better in that I was less red than I felt.  Worse in that the skin on my face seemed a little more painful, even though not as red.

It’s been 2 days now and I’m close to back to normal.  However, I haven’t been able to do my facercises the last couple of days, so my new set of photos may need to be a couple days later.

So why could the sun affect me more now, that I have had a good diet these past few months?  Why would a bad diet see less in the way of irritation?  Is there something in sugar and "the whites" (white bread, white rice, etc.) that affects the skin?

I’m going to do some investigating on that front, so stay tuned!

Ever feel like you’ve been at your diet for forever and not much seems to be happening?  You’ve come along way, perhaps, but it doesn’t really seem like it.

How about a novel way to document your weight loss — scrap it! 

The Power of a Scrapbook for Losing Weight

I discovered this quite by accident when I was around 13 or so.  I was probably around 40 pounds overweight and knew I needed to lose weight.  But being 13, I didn’t have the money for diet foods.  I didn’t know what I was supposed to eat (only that candy was bad).

I bought some of the teen magazines and in one, I remember a story about a teen who lost 100 pounds.  All kinds of pictures, and stories of what it was like, being fat and being thin.

I cut out that article and put it in a notebook.  And as I found other weight loss articles in other places, I put those in my notebook, too.  Whenever I was feeling low, I’d get out that notebook and look through all the pages.

(Yes, I did eventually lose the weight, got skinny and kept it off for many, many years.  Turning 40 did me in, but that’s a whole other story.)

Create Your Own!

So why not create a scrapbook about you and your weight loss?  No one else has to see it, but it can be there for you to page through when you’re feeling low on willpower.  Make it nice, just like you would any scrapbook.  Find old pictures and take some new ones.  Find motivational stories in magazines and cut ‘em out and scrap them.  Play around with it and have some fun!

Don’t know how to scrap?  If there’s a craft store near where you live (and there should be — they sprout like weeds), they probably have a intro class.  If there’s a scrapping store near to you, they will be more than happy to help you!

There are also some home scrapping parties around — someone you know probably knows someone who does one.

While learning in person is probably best, there are also scrapbooking magazines and books from which to learn.

And of course there is online information.  One place that seemed interesting is Scrapbooking101.  Another you might like to check out is Learn2Scrapbook.

So, scrap your weight loss!  You’ll be able to look back and realize how very, very far you’ve come.