I have just eaten the healthiest meal of my life

I am actually quite excited by the fact that I am pretty sure I just ate something that can be considered to be a healthy meal. I haven't logged it into my Noom app yet but I am pretty sure it will be happy with my food choices for once.

I had boneless pork chops (just the middle bit, I cant have any fatty stuff), mushrooms which I fried with my Flora pro-active light butter stuff which supposedly lowers your cholesterol and is a green food in Noom, broccoli and salad. Yes I actually ate salad!

I have found a bagged salad I can tolerate, its called 'bistro salad' and it has a few (three I think) different salad leaves in it and some shredded beetroot which I actually completely forgot I knew I liked. I had tried it once before and liked it but never found a way to buy/cook it that made it the same. I tried boiling it but that made it soggy and I cant stand anything pickled so I have never been able to recreate the crunchy shredded stuff and I totally forgot all about liking it that way.

I am really weird about how I eat the salad, but I don't care at least I am eating it. I am only eating the leafy part of the leafs, I find the texture of the stalky bits too weird but hey that's a big improvement on even just a few weeks ago. Before I had eaten the occasional salad leaf but it certainly wasn't something I would say I enjoyed and it was something I very rarely bought because most of it would go to waste. This time I looked at all the different bags of salad available in the supermarket and looked for what looked the most similar to what I have eaten on those occasions. I think I have found one I can stick to and I am overjoyed.

Don't get me wrong I still couldn't eat a vegetable without something else in the same mouthful, so as soon as I ran out of pork I couldn't eat any more but progress is progress. Maybe I will always need to have my veggies with another food to accompany them, I honestly don't care as long as I find a way to eat them.

Add that to my recent one kilogram weight-loss and I am one pretty excited lady. I can do this!

Maybe this weight-loss thing will work out after all

I was at the gym a few hours ago. I have a routine when I get there which involves weighing myself before I start my workout. That's the best time to weigh yourself because you are usually slightly heavier after a workout due to your muscles tensing up and the fact that you drink extra water during exercise.

I have lost a kilogram! It has been weeks of work and over a week of following the Noom app's guidelines but I have actually lost something and I am really pleased.

Noom has been moaning at me that I have missed my weekly weigh in for the last few days, I don't understand why because I only ever do my weight on a Tuesday and I have only been using the app for a little over a week. I hope by doing it today it will make Tuesday my weekly weigh in day. Although my schedule will be changing next week and I have no idea when my free time will be, but I do know I will have a lot less of it.

I am still struggling a little with the colour coding system on Noom, I am often slightly over my amber allowance. However I am feeling more positive and I figure since I am always under my total and most days I don't eat any red food at all, being just a tiny bit over my amber allowance is not a huge deal.

The pro version of Noom allows you to join a group for support, it takes some details off you and then an actual person puts together a group for you. It takes a few days for them to set it up for you but the fact that an actual person does it means that you are put in a group with people who are similar to you in terms of their goals and their fitness level. My group went live today and I am quite excited to get support and encouragement from people like me. Although I highly doubt they will all be picky eaters, at least they are people who share my long term goal of losing this weight.

Overall I am feeling much more positive about things. I still plan to try and make changes to my diet where I can but I am also looking for more ways to work around it, just like I always have. My food issues are a part of me and they always will be, I guess I just need to learn to accept it like I did before I started on this journey.

I am still going to mention all this at my doctors appointment tomorrow. I doubt they can help me, I doubt they will even understand but its worth a try. The doctor I am seeing tomorrow is actually really nice, most of the doctors at my surgery are actually quite horrible but the woman I am seeing tomorrow is lovely. I hope she will be understanding even if she cant actually do anything to help. I guess I just need to feel somehow validated by the medical community, like I actually have an eating disorder - I am not just weird. Perhaps then people will understand that I am not this fat because I sit around and eat all day, or because I am lazy or any of those other things that people think fat people do. I am trying really hard, I don't need or want to be told to eat more vegetables, like that would be some sort of magic cure, even if it was possible.

Starting my weight-loss journey

Perhaps I should say I am restarting my weight-loss journey, because it is certainly not the first time I have tried. I do think this is the most dedicated to weight-loss I have been though and I am hoping this dedication will help me succeed this time.

 

I am using an app on my smartphone called Noom, I have used the free version of this app before and found it really easy to use but I have decided to opt for the paid version at least for a while so I signed up to a three month subscription. You can read more about the Noom app here: http://us.noom.com/ its available for iPhone and android.

 

I don't want to turn this post into a review of the app (although I may do that later) but I do want to point out the things it does well that makes it suitable for people with a limited diet like myself.

 

You are not actually forced to change your diet drastically, Noom works by calorie counting and using what's called 'volumetrics' to decide which foods you should eat more of and which foods you should use less of. It uses a handy traffic light system to help you see the good and bad foods you eat. Volumetrics is about how much the calories actually fill you up so something which is a green food may not necessarily have less calories than a red food, but those calories will make you feel full longer, in theory making you eat less.

 

Although Noom counts calories you actually don't have to count them often. The app has a great database of foods which have all the calories listed, you simply input what you ate and Noom tells you the calories and if its a green, red or amber food, although being honest the new version of the app is not as god at this as the old version, the display was better in the older one and it was easier to see if you had eaten green foods or not. If a food is not listed in their database you can easily add it and it even has a handy barcode scanner, although I am yet to actually get this to work.

 

I also went to the supermarket and had a browse round the shelves trying to work out what I can eat that is at least a little healthy. I left with the ingredients to make a chicken and mushroom risotto which I think will be a green food since rice is filling and it has one vegetable in it. I also picked up some mince and carrots which I will have tomorrow, although I forgot to grab potatoes which I will have to get on the way home tomorrow.

 

yesterday I was in the gym for an hour which according to Noom burned only 200 calories, I think I may have entered the information wrong as that doesn't seem like enough. I will take more care with it next time. Noom also has a built in pedometer as well as a separate pedometer app, I am unsure if you need to have both - one to count the steps and then transfer them into the app, or if just having the regular app would be enough. I have only taken 1864 steps today and my target is 8000. Your step target can go up and down depending on what you eat and your calorie allowance can change in relation to your exercise.

 

My big worry is university tomorrow, there is literally only a few things I can eat, none of which are likely to be green, or even amber foods. I know that the sensible option is to take something with me but I don't actually eat that many cold foods and there are no facilities to heat anything up. At least I only have two weeks left of classes before I start placement again where I will have access to a microwave and a toaster, not much but its something.

 

This weight-loss thing is not going to be easy, but I am determined.