Restricting yourself

Once I did pledge to lose some weight this semester. Last night at a Money Club meeting, because my friends and I decided to do something about our financial situations, before everyone headed off to wherever they were going to go my friend asked me (ok, she really told me) we were going walking this morning.

She called, a little after the time she originally told me, and I couldn't get ahold of the third friend that wanted to come. So, we'll just call these people WF1 and WF2 for the time being. WF2 has a test today, so I suppose she was studying all night long. WF1 probably has work at 8 AM. We're all not only walking in the morning (which we haven't left and it's 15 or so minutes after we were supposed to go so everyone would make it through their daily activities on time), but we're all starting diets today too.

WF1 has a roommate that started the "diabetic" diet, supposedly sponsored by the American Diabetes Association. I'm kind of skeptical of diets, because not only do they restrict usually my favorite foods, but they don't work the same for everyone and they don't always have the same effects.

I don't believe that walking alone will make me reach my weight goal, but I'm considering starting to train for Karate again and to walk with one set of friends in the morning and one set of friends in the evening. The evening friends don't always go, but it seems like I'm going to have the same problem with the morning friends too.

I did read the information on the American Diabetes Association website and it recommends not only a balanced diet, but a diet consisting of more specific information about the types of carbohydrates you should be eating and, really the website is well put together. They even have a recommended food pyramid that tells you more about the food groups they recommend for people with diabetes or those trying to prevent diabetes.

Recently, the United States Department of Agriculture released a new food pyramid. The American Diabetes Association supports the new food pyramid, but I realized very quickly that you kind of have to take the information from the USDA pyramid and put it together with the information from the Amer. Diabetes Ass. websites recommended plan too.

So I'm not sure how the diet is really going to work. I've always thought that we should look out for our trouble zones, mine is sometimes candy, but most of the time it's processed flour as a whole. If I ate more Whole Grain foods (which I like, it's just that I live on campus, without a stove or any type of cooking station) then I'd be more on track with this food plan.

I really like green vegetables and whole grains, but I don't have too much power over what I can eat because the cafeteria dictates what we should be eating, and when we should be eating. It's very sad actually. But that's an argument for another day. I'm going to lay down for a while, I think I'm getting sick, at least until I have to get up to go to my first class or something. Or something... (btw, just in case you were wondering, at the time I finished this post it's about 45 minutes after we were supposed to take off walking.)