Hungry for a Change

OK, so it’s been a LONG time since my last entry. Without going into too much detail, I’ll just say that life intervened and delayed my plans for this blog. But today marks a significant turning point in my relationship with food so I decided that this was as good a time as any to dive back into the fray.

Today I begin the Vtrim program that I spoke about in my last entry. Vtrim is a 24 week weight-loss program run by the nutrition department at the University of Vermont. It is a behavioral approach which combines journaling (writing down EVERTHING you eat as well as all your exercise), weekly lessons, and the support of a trained facilitator and other group members.

In all honesty, I actually started the program a week ago, but today marks my first day of calorie reduction. During the first week of the program, you don’t make any changes to your eating but you do still track everything you put in your mouth. The goal is to make you aware of the habits and choices that got you where you are. Wow – has that been a wake-up call! It’s one thing to track your eating and calorie intake when you are making good choices, but having to do it when you are eating junk, not to mention, way too much junk, is a powerful, and sometimes painful, lesson in awareness. Who knew that an average cupcake has around 450 calories? OUCH!

So stay tuned for this new chapter in my food journey. Who knows, maybe you’ll even get some great new recipes out of it. Time to get cooking!