I know I haven’t blogged in awhile, but rest assured, I have been faithfully following my diet and exercise regime. Sadly, I had nothing earth shattering to report. After seven weeks of regular workouts and miserly calorie counting I had lost a solid seven pounds and then got stuck in the dreaded wasteland of diet plateau. For two whole weeks, my scales did not budge by so much as an ounce! Well, except for the one pound I gained temporarily after a day of ill-advised carb consumption. I had even declared a moratorium on red meat, prompted bythe agonizing guilt that I felt from consuming an enormous hamburger at Red Robin over two weeks ago. I succumbed to the questionable wisdom of most diet promoters (with the obvious exception of the Atkins Diet) and followed their advice to reduce my intake of red meat. Some diet promoters even say to cut it out completely, and oh what a difference you will see! Well, my answer to that is horse pucky!!! After over two weeks of abstinence and attempting to quell my red meat cravings with soy substitutes, I had not shed any weight! None. Nada.
And while we are on the subject of soy substitutes, let me just say that it is better to just give up red-meat-esque foods or allow yourself the occasional treat of real moo cow, because soy substitutes just don’t cut it! That’s not to say that I don’t like the Morningstar Spicy Black Bean Burgers. Those, I like because they don’t even remotely pretend to be a hamburger. And the Morningstar maple flavored breakfast sausages aren’t too bad, I suspect because the maple flavoring helps to disguise the faux sausage flavor. But the Grillers? Puh-leeeeze!!! This is the most miserable substitute for cow meat ever, with the possible exception of Boca Crumbles. I tried the Boca Crumbles in spaghetti sauce, foolishly thinking that the spices and tomatoes would disguise the tiny, flavorless pieces of cardboard. I choked down one serving and had to throw out the rest. So, I am going to allow myself the occasional splurge of real, mooing cow meat. In fact I have a date with a Draft House Olive Burger next week and plans for a steak cookout with friends and I am going to enjoy it! Every juicy, sinful bite! All the while, working hard to stay within my daily calorie limits, or as close as possible anyway.
But I digress. Yesterday I was bemoaning my weight loss plateau in my mind as I wiled away my lunch break on my elliptical trainer. I was angry that all of my faithful exercising and diet deprivation was getting me nowhere and trying to talk myself out of giving up outright. Although I was sweating and my heart rate was in the appropriate cardio and fat-burning zone, I realized that I wasn’t working all that hard. My body has gotten accustomed to this workout, like a favorite worn out tee shirt that you like to wear to bed every night. I realized that I needed to shake things up and work harder. And what do you know, staring me right there in the face was the up arrow button for increasing my resistance on the elliptical trainer. Quelle surprise! There was my answer! It had been mutely staring me in the face for weeks now and I had ignored it, probably on purpose, for fear of inducing a stroke or at the very least wobbly legs. But here I was, seven weeks into my workouts and my legs are strong, people! Strong, I tell you, and pretty muscular to boot. What the heck was I afraid of? So, I tentatively increased my resistance to a two. OK, not bad. After about five minutes, when I realized that I was not going to topple over dead, I increased it to three and then eventually four. Ah, now there was that burn in my thighs that I had been missing! So, I labored on and increased my workout to a full 60 minutes since I was having a slow day at work anyway. And this morning I was rewarded with a two pound weight loss. I hope it’s permanent, but just in case, I am going to be jabbing that button up to the highest setting I can stand from now on and going for a full 60 minutes whenever possible. The plateau has been busted and I remain hopeful that my endeavors will continue to be rewarded. Of course, that Olive Burger is a reward in and of itself and I am going to work extra hard this week to earn it!
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