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.

Just a quick post, because I got excited about this.  A few days ago I started the Facercise challenge, where I took the before picture, would do the Facercise exercises for 2 weeks, then take more photos — hopefully there would be a change.  (Here’s the original post.)

There’s a change alright — after just 3 days!  Let me explain how I can tell.

There are three exercises for "hooded" eyes — you know, the kind of problem you want an eyelift for.  Saggy upper eyelids is another way to put it.

Of the three exercises, I have a problem doing two of them well with my right eye.  I can do them, but just barely (left eye is fine).

I looked in the mirror this morning.  I see a definite difference between my left eye and right, as far as the sagging/hooding.

After just three days of Facercises!

Of course, I still have a problem — how to coax my right eye muscles  to be able to do the exercises properly without involving my left eye muscles.  Gotta work on that.  But now I’ll be excited to show you the difference when I reach the 2 week mark!

I saw something interesting a week or so ago, and it was an article about how dieters who kept an online blog were more successful in losing weight.  More successful even than people who kept a journal.  Why?

Public accountability.

Sorry I can’t post the direct link to the article; I meant to bookmark it but it slipped my mind…and now I can’t find it again. 

Anyway, the whole idea is that blogging about your weight loss makes you more motivated.  Of course it could be that people who decided to blog are more motivated from the very beginning.  A chicken and egg proposition I guess.

I’ll raise my hand to be a poster child of how this can be; here’s the scoop.  In January 2005, I started a weight loss blog to give me some accountability, and hopefully give others some information.  I think I blogged pretty well for a month, then less and less.  And yes, that kind of paralleled my weight loss success.  The less I blogged about it, the less motivated.  The less motivated, the easier to go off the diet.  Which I did, in a big way.  You can see this old blog here.

Fast forward to Summer 2007.  I finally decided to lose weight again.  And this time keep it off.  I really needed some accountability, seeing as I had (gulp) 135 pounds to lose.  I’d need a ton of motivation and accountability for that!  You can see in the above blog that I had 7 posts from that time, then I quit the writing.  Why?

To start building my Losing Weight Over 40 website.  And then of course this blog as well.

No, you don’t have to build a whole website to get the weight loss benefit (although if you want to, contact me for some information).  Blogs are much cheaper (free, even) and much easier to set up and use — takes 10 minutes or less.

If you want to try this route, why not go for a free blog over at WordPress.com or Blogger?  Start up a blog and post.  You’ll not only help keep yourself motivated, but also perhaps help someone else with your writings.

If you think this blog you’re reading has helped you, why not put me on your blogroll of links?  Just use the address http://blog.losing-weight-over-40.com when you do (thanks!).

Maybe we can all help each other in our weight loss journey.  To our success!

By the way, is there anything in particular you’d like to see me cover in this blog?  Post a comment and let me know.