To everyone who chooses to run – or walk - a marathon,
Congratulations !!! 
I won’t be joining you. 

I totally lack the herd instinct.
I don't like crowds, and I don't like to exercise with other people.

I like spending that time alone. I enjoy choosing music or programs of my personal choice or using the meditative aspect of exercise. I like the feeling of accomplishment when I'm finished, and the internal and external strength that exercise gives me.
 Small goals are worthy of celebration. Exercising for 10 minutes a day, running a mile or walking a 5K are all accomplishments of which to be proud.

We don't all have to run a marathon, cook everything from scratch, or bench press our own body weight. I choose not to feel like a quitter for deciding to set my exercise goals lower than others might, or for listening to my body and changing those goals

No one judges you but yourself,   and really, cut yourself some slack! Whether you need to lose 100 pounds or you're just trying to maintain a 5-pound loss, we're all fighting the same fight, taking the same journey.

My body is unique, and so is yours.
What works for me won't necessarily work for you, and
What motivates you might not be what inspires me.

Love yourself. 

"If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself."

This is a quote from Desiderata, music popular in 1972,
which I posted here on April 15, in 39 Years Later.

We can judge the progress of changes and improvements in ourselves 
by watching ourselves and our own individual behaviors.

At the end of the day, our ability to lose weight or maintain weight-loss
comes down to whether we're willing to pay the price;
whether we've reached the point of being sick and tired
of making the same old choices and excuses.

 Successful weight-loss requires consistently paying the price
by working to eliminate previous habits and to make healthy choices
over and over every day. It takes Consistency and Commitment.

When we commit ourselves to paying the price, we are improving our lives.
We're saying "No" to blame, shame, excuses, disappointment, and self-loathing.
We're saying "Yes" to purpose, striving, integrity, and character.

Paying the price over time doesn't require perfection.
It requires persistence.

On Saturday afternoon I was lying on my bed with my laptop,
feeling a bit out of sorts about the interruption to my activities
due to my broken wrist, along with a bit of self-pity for my physical discomfort. 

I decided to seek some online words of comfort and inspiration,
and I did an advanced Google search of the words:

“Inspiration, motivation, comfort, recovery broken wrist”.

On  Google's search results, page 2, I found MYSELF here at DietHobby
…one of this week’s articles. 
I was amused, more than comforted, but perhaps that was actually what I needed.

I also found an article that told me to nurture my spirit.
It told me to take care of myself and remember what makes me feel good:

“Comfort comes in a variety of ways and uses some or all of our senses:

the touch of feather pillows and a soft comforter while resting on an overstuffed sofa;

the sight of the stunning beauty of the colors of creation;

the smell of freshly cut lawns or flowers;

the sound of birds singing, wind chimes, relaxing music, or a phone call from a kind friend;

the taste of favorite comfort foods.”

 Okay…the taste issue got my attention. It seemed to be the most immediately appealing.
However, in my past I’ve frequently experienced the taste issue, and doing that made me really Fat
…so I chose to direct my Focus toward a different way of comfort and distraction.

                                 

To maintain one's current weight,
energy input needs to match energy output.

To lose weight,
energy input needs to be less than energy output.

Despite occasional contradictory statements of a few health food gurus,
and the understanding that any person's calorie numbers are estimates
depending upon many factors--and not a cut-and-dried issue--
the established scientific principle is still: Calories in, Calories out.

Each of us burns a different amount of energy (calories),
This is based on our heights, our weights, our sex, and our ages.
A smaller part of this is also based on our activity level.
Due to each of these factors most of our individual metabolisms differ.

I am a short, small, older female.
Within the past couple of years, I took a medical Resting Metabolism Rate (RMR)
computerized breathing test at a Hospital Facility.
It showed that my metabolism is NORMAL or AVERAGE for my height, weight, age, and sex:

That my "normal" "average" RMR is around 1000 daily calories, and
after adding an 1 hr or more, for 7 days a week, of intense low-impact exercise
(plus strength training) my normal daily calorie burn should be about 1400 calories.

Unfortunately, my personal calorie records do not verify this test’s results.
My own food data indicate that my entire calorie burn is a bit under 1100 calories.
and this includes both both my RMR and the activity factor together.
However that discrepancy is not the point of this discussion.
In this discussion, we can assume that these Metabolism Tests were accurate.

Looking at the food I would normally choose to eat
if I were allowed to eat 3 normal sized dinner plates of food each day,
or the equivalent of a similar food exchange program,
my calculation of the calories in 3 normal sized dinner plates
of whatever food I might like to eat is around 2000 calories daily.

 2000 Plus calories
is what some larger people need to maintain their weights.
However, 2000 minus 1400 calories equals a 600 daily calorie excess.
3500 calories = 1 fat lb.
Therefore every six days of eating in that manner
would cause me to have a fat gain of 1 lb.
365 days a year divided by 6 equals 60,
so I could gain around 60 lbs in one year by eating in this manner.
(It would actually be a bit less since this simple calculation
ignores the slight MR increase that would occur due to a weight gain.)

There are diets that use various meal size limitations,
along with other rules, as a substitute for calorie counting.
There are also many  diets that use “food exchange” charts for the same reason.
The intention is that eating in this manner will cause a "natural limitation"
of the food we eat, and result in us eating less (or at least the same) calories
as we burn up in energy.

Eating less food is good.

However, I frequently caution people who restrict calories in this manner
of this simple Truth.

 We are NOT All the same.

Although almost everyone needs to exercise conscious portion control,
How much food to eat is an individual call.
One that is based upon our sex, our age, our height, our weight,
the activities that we engage ourselves in….and our other genetic data.

We cannot all eat the exact same amounts of food
and expect to maintain our weight or to lose weight.
It simply is not physically possible.

Never completely TRUST a diet program that sells food.
I've belonged to many such diet programs,
and have benefitted from those memberships.

But in Physical matters ...(as opposed to Spiritual matters),  
Trust based on blind faith is unproductive.

It's good to take information from everyone, 

process it all.

...Then ....

use what works, and discard the rest.

Check out the mini-meals section of Recipes for
a newly posted video: Chicken Waldorf Salad,
one of the several recipes I shot before breaking my  wrist.