I’m losing weight again. I still take ACV every morning, just for energy and iron absorption, but the weight loss benefits tapered off pretty quickly… and up crept the number on the scale. Slowly, veeeery slowly, but it did. I cannot even tell you how frustrating this is. Or, you can probably imagine it because it’s not exactly an uncommon problem, right?
No one who observes my eating habits would think my diet was to blame. I eat a healthy, balanced diet. I eat vegetables. Lots of vegetables. Second on the list is protein and a decent amount of healthy fats. I have almost no sugar in my diet (a banana and/or apple every day, and a teaspoon in my coffee). Whole grains only. So I tried several things all at once, and I’m not completely sure which one is working, but I think it’s probably all of them.
My favorite: I drink a glass of red wine every night after the kids go to bed. Not to be dramatic or anything, but boxed wine is the single greatest trend of the last decade; I can nurse that box for weeks, without feeling like I have to drink it before it goes sour like I do with a bottle. I no longer feel the need to snack at night. I just don’t get hungry. It’s the weirdest thing. I started because I read an article claiming that, weight-loss-wise, calories from wine are better than calories from nighttime snacking. I don’t need an excuse to think of wine as a healthy choice, so I dove right in. I was amazed at the results. I was not expecting the nighttime hunger to vanish. It’s always been my biggest struggle.
I take a magnesium supplement, and I switched from what you normally find in the store (magnesium citrate) to magnesium malate. I switched because the citrate had some unfortunate side effects, without any sign that I was absorbing enough magnesium. I read up on it and decide to try the malate. I can take more of it without any side effects, and the results have been great. I’m getting stronger in my lifting again, it no longer takes me a full two miles to warm up when I run, and I no longer need to nap every single day. Which brings me to…
(first, a video that I watched three times before it no longer made me cry with laughter)
Bread and pasta. I have very mixed feelings on the subject. I know people who have Celiac disease. I know people who are allergic to gluten. I am not either of those. I am not claiming to be gluten intolerant. I have no idea what the real cause is. But after I eat any starchy food (it doesn’t have to be a wheat product, but it’s most pronounced after I eat those–probably because I love glutens and inhale them in massive quantities), I get sleepy, sluggish, and feel heavy. It sits like a brick in my stomach. So I all but stopped eating it. Another massive difference in how I feel throughout the day. When we do have bread or pasta with dinner, I take a tiny serving. It’s more like a garnish than anything else. After a meal, I feel satisfied much longer, and I don’t want to take a nap for six days.
(I keep eating it in small quantities because you can lose the ability to digest it, and then I WOULD be the person at the party who can’t eat anything because trace amounts of gluten makes her innards explode with lava.)
(Oh, and I also keep eating it for the same reason I eat anything else I think is bad for me: simple enjoyment of life is part of overall good health, even if it means occasionally indulging in the things that are not good for me physically.)
My weight is creeping down every so slowly. It drops by a fraction of a pound every couple days. I have ups and downs (I just went to a birthday party with beer and sandwiches and potato salad and cake and frostiiiiiiiiing), but within a day or two, it goes right back down to where it was and continues dropping. It’s been over a month, and the trend holds, and I’m now down very close to where I was when my weight first started creeping up a year ago. I saw a number on the scale this morning I haven’t seen in 11 months.
I’m just psyched that I get to tell people wine is (one of) the secret(s) to my recent weight loss.
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