Weight fluctuation are normal. I have heard people get a little discouraged when their weight goes up a little. A lot of that is water! A gallon of water weighs a little over 8 pounds. There are 128 ounces of water in a gallon, so you can get eight 16oz glasses of water from a gallon. So simply by drinking one 16oz glass of water, you will gain a pound! Does this mean you shouldn’t drink water! NO! You need to drink water! In fact if you are trying to lose weight, you want to drink more water. You need water to burn fat, and flush all the waste stuff out of your body. And you aren’t drinking enough water, your body goes into a survival mode, and starts storing it.
Anyway, depending on how much you have eaten, and drank, and how much you have sweated, or excreted, your weight is going to fluctuate from day to day, or even throughout the day. So don’t worry about it.
Don’t pay so much attention to the scale. Pay attention to what the mirror says, or what the tape measure says, or how your clothes are starting to feel a little loose.
If you are eating low fat healthy food, and exercising, then the weight will come off. Maybe slowly, but it will come off.
I just got off the treadmill after running 13 miles. I didn’t just decide to run that distance. I am following a marathon training schedule, and today I was scheduled to run 13 miles. I used a Polar brand heart rate monitor. According to the heart rate monitor, there were 1900 calories burned over the course of my run.
My goal was to run long slow distance (LSD), and keep my heart rate under 150 BPM. I wanted to stay in the aerobic zone. So the majority of those 1900 calories were probably fat calories.
Following my run, I was starving, so I ate a small tub of fat free cottage cheese with pineapple. 10 grams of protein, and 17 grams of carbs per serving. And the tub contained 4 servings. I ate the whole thing, for 440 calories! Now I have a boneless skinless chicken breast on the grill, and will make a couple chicken sandwiches with lettuce and tomatoe, and just a light spreading of mayonaise. Yum!
And I still have a karate class this afternoon. 
Next Sunday I get to run 14 miles! Such fun!
Often throughout the day, I want to eat something. But it is not time for a regular meal. So I try to eat healthy low fat snacks.
One of my favorite snacks are bananas. Fruits make great low fat snacks. Oranges are another one of my favorites. I also enjoy apples, but they are harder to eat with my braces. I would need to slice them up.
Another snack that I eat often (usually when I am at home) are small potatoes. I will slice them into quarters, sprinkle a little salt on them. Yummy.
For late night snacks, I will maybe eat a fat free pudding from Jello. These are really good! I have tried most of the available flavors so far, and have liked them all. The tapioca and the chocolate/vanilla are my favorites so far. But I limit myself to one an evening. I don’t want to load up on these, as there are healthier things I can be eating.
Another thing I will eat while at home is fat-free cottage cheese with pineapple. I get these at the local grocery store, and they are really good! 10 grams of protein, and 17 grams of carbs per serving!!! Yummy!
Last night, I ate a couple of tuna sandwiches made with Hellman’s reduced fat mayonnaise. I love mayonnaise, but unfortunately, mayonnaise is almost pure fat! The reduced fat mayonnaise is not as good as regular mayo, but it is decent enough. It tastes okay mixed in with the tuna.
But whatever you choose to snack on, make sure it is low fat!!! Try not to pick something that is pure sugar either. It is okay to eat sweets in SMALL quantities. When I was losing most of my weight, I had Jolly Rancher candies in my desk drawer. And if I wanted something sweet, I would take a single candy, put it into my mouth, and just let it slowly dissolve. These days, I have a friend at work who has an M&M dispenser on his desk. I will go over there, and get a small handful of M&Ms. I will make a couple trips over there during the work day. I even bought him a couple bags of M&Ms to keep it filled. If I kept a bag of M&Ms at my own desk, it would be gone within a day and a half.
My mom made the best chili. It’s a very mild chili, and different than most other chilis that I have tasted made by other people. I am currently making a big batch of it. When I say big, I mean I multiplied this recipe times six. I have a big stock pot! It’s about as easy to make a big batch, as a little batch. And this chili freezes great. We will divide it down into smaller amounts, freeze them, and pull them out occasionally when we want chili. The fat in this pretty much all comes from the ground beef. And if you use lean ground beef, you can reduce the fat. Then by pouring off the grease and fat, you can reduce it even more.
Ingredients:
1 lb. lean ground beef
1/2 cup diced onion
1/2 cup diced green pepper
1 can (15.5oz) red kidney beans
2 cans condensed tomato soup
1 can stewed tomatoes
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. chili powder
1/2 cup white wine
2 Tbsp. brown sugar
Directions:
Add ground beef, onion, green pepper into large pot, and cook until brown, stirring frequently. Place lid on top, and carefully pour off grease. Add remaining ingredients. Stir and cover.
Simmer for 20-25 minutes stirring occasionally.
Yield: 4 servings
Note: This recipe can easily be doubled, tripled, quadrupled, etc. It freezes well!
Lately I have been eating a Healthy Choice french bread pizza for breakfast. They are cheap, and easy to prepare in the microwave at work. We bought a bunch of em on sale for $1.25, and loaded our freezer with them. I prefer the Supreme, but will also eat the Pepperoni. I usually will also eat a banana or two as well. Sometimes when I am home, I will make some low fat scrambled eggs. I simply beat together one whole egg, and three or four egg whites, and a little salt and pepper. I will use a non-stick skillet, and spray a thin coat of vegetable oil. Then I will just make scrambled eggs as usual. The fat is all in the egg yoke, with almost nothing in the egg white. But I still leave in one yoke for the taste.
I haven’t tried it yet, but I was reading one suggestion for making toast. Just toast the bread as usual, then spray a thin coat of butter onto it. This will give you the butter taste, but the spray allows you to use only a small quantity of butter. I suppose you could make cinnamon toast by sprinkling on a little cinnamon and sugar on after the spray of butter.