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Losing Weight (Our Daily Salad)

Losing Weight (Our Daily Salad)

Last updated on: January 5, 2016 at 11:49 am by James F. McGrath

Losing Weight (Our Daily Salad) 2016-01-05T11:49:10-05:00 James F. McGrath

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I will do a retrospective post about my sabbatical soon – I’m not considering it to be over just yet, since I am still finishing off one project, and classes don’t start until next week.

But I thought I would share a separate post about one of my sabbatical goals, which was to exercise regularly, and not merely lose some weight, but actually get within the recommended range for someone my height and age. That goal was successful, and although the process began before the sabbatical, during the past half a year I’ve been much more diligent and have made much better progress.

I was inspired to write this post at least in part by the fact that my wife has started a new blog, called “Our Daily Bread Recipe.” Her first few posts featured the recipes for some of my absolute favorite baked items that I enjoy eating. Incredible cakes that the Romanians call “buturugi.” Homemade bread. Those recipes on my wife’s blog illustrate the challenges I’ve faced when it comes to losing weight. My attitude used to be, “Who cares about how much you weigh, when you are eating homemade baked goods that are so delicious?” But that approach was unsustainable, and I haven’t had to give up these goodies entirely in order to achieve the aforementioned goal.

My wife’s most recent post is a salad recipe, and it is one of the keys to how I’ve lost so much weight over the past year or two. Almost every day, a salad is my lunch. It is filling and tasty, and switching up the meats, adding olives, and making other minor changes offers variety so that I don’t get bored. I’ve had a lot of people ask me lately how I’ve managed to lose so much weight (around 30 pounds or so over the past year and a half, I think). Exercising and cutting out snacking have made a big difference, but a key part has also been eating a healthy breakfast and lunch. I will have a boiled egg and/or some homemade muesli with homemade yogurt for breakfast (I expect that both of those recipes will appear on the “Our Daily Bread Recipe” blog at some point) almost every day (with an exception made for something like French toast on very rare occasions). And a salad for lunch.

salad In the morning, I usually exercise while getting caught up on a TV show that I feel I ought to watch, and otherwise would not find time for. A half hour lifting weights and/or on the exercise bike while watching Stargate kills two birds with one stone. I realize that not everyone has the “need” to watch science fiction for work-related purposes. But you can certainly combine something you’d like to watch for pleasure with an exercise routine.

And I think the thing that has made the biggest difference has been cutting out snacking. I did some of the other things and lost some weight, but it really kicked into high gear when I made the decision not only to not stuff myself at meal times, but also to accept being hungry in between meals. I’m hungry as I write this, and am simply going to wait until I have lunch. Yes, it can be distracting, but usually drinking some water, tea, or coffee is sufficient to take the edge off the hunger.

I’ll say more about other things I did during my sabbatical soon. But I thought I would share a whole post on this topic, since so many people have been asking me.

And now, time for lunch…

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