Bright Line Eating: A follow up to the week 24 review 'or' Where did the year go

10-6-19     232.6     Started listening to Bright Line Eating and immediately cut flour and sugar
3-28-20     211.4     Completed 24 weeks of BLE, but flour and sugar are creeping back into my life

3-28-21      199.4    Still losing weight, albeit slowly, but I remain confident it's forever

I found the entry where I had done my initial review of Bright Line Eating, and decided to weigh in this morning to commemorate a year since making the decision to make BLE a part of my life. I'm not sure what I would have done if the number was still over 200 pounds. But it wasn't, and I'm glad to be on the other side of that hurdle. Whether it's my metabolism that was keeping me on the other side of that barrier or my rebel part doesn't matter, or maybe it does, but in any case I'm on the other side and looking forward to trying on Summer clothes.

I also thought this would be a good time to review how I've been eating in general. Dogma has it that being consistent is important to developing automatic habits. And I've found that I do have patterns of how I eat, and it makes it easy to 'know' where I am each day in terms of getting enough veggies. Because bottom line, that is one of the main reasons we weigh our food; get enough of the good stuff and not too much of the rest.

Breakfast

This is definitely my favorite meal of the day. If I have a starch with breakfast, say beans or potatoes, instead of a grain, then I have citrus for my fruit so that I am not weighed down by having a banana -my usual go-to at breakfast. Often this is grapes, and usually they are red.  I would like to be eating more melon, but they are too unpredictable when it comes to ripeness; often they are musty and I hate throwing them out. There are so many delicious meals to eat at breakfast just following the basic plan that I never mess with quantities. Here is a short list.  

Lunch and Dinner

If I have a salad for lunch, it's 8 ounces, then at dinner I'll have 12 ounces of cooked veggies. Often this will be a stoup, and my fat will be an ounce of cream cheese. With freshly ground black pepper this is a decadent meal, and it's especially satisfying if I am feeling needy or deprived. But doubling up on cooked veggies in the evening is more like a treat, and not usual.

If I have left overs for lunch, it will be 6 ounces of cooked veggies because that is how I pack up leftovers. This means 14 ounces of veg in the next meal. Dinner that day will vary with the weather. In the Winter I'll usually have another 6 ounces of cooked veg plus an 8 ounce salad, exactly how it's laid out in the weight loss plan. But in the Summer it's more likely that I will have a 14 ounce salad for dinner. 

I haven't really noticed a difference in how hungry I get later depending upon how I split out my cooked and raw veggies, but eating more raw veggies definitely makes an improved difference in my energy level and attitude. 

And working my 2nd job from 5pm - 9pm definitely helps keep me distracted and I rarely think about food then. I sometimes get a little rumbly in the tummy, but it's just a passing feeling that I notice and goes away with a sip of the night time tea that I always have on hand at the end of the day. By the time I've sipped my way through a large insulated 16oz  'cup' of tea, it's bed time and I'm ready to just lay down, watch a bit of tv, and then it's lights out.

I guess part of my night time habit stack is to use the last of my evening tea to take my meds, Immune, and Alfalfa. It's still on my mind that in another 30 pounds I'll be able to stop taking the meds. Why this isn't motivation enough to just stick with the program I don't know, but the inner parts work goes on and I know I'll eventually get there.

Bottom line, a year after deciding that Bright Line Eating is an answer I can live with, I am still doing battle. But it's a war worth winning, and I continue to be optimistic. I have a feeling that this may be my month, and that the next stretch of six Bright nights will become ten, and from there...well, I am looking forward to seeing what that means. Basically, I am still 'almost doing BLE', and haven't quite been able to fully commit. But I see it as a work in progress, always getting closer to being 100% fully committed.

As an aside, I recently heard that the average weight gain during this pandemic is 2 pounds a month. If I take into consideration the pounds that I haven't gained, it makes it easier to accept a 12 pound loss in a year where many gained 20 or more. Just sayin'.