This week has been very rough. I had my official weigh in Saturday and had not lost a single pound even though I was walking 16 miles a week, for 2 weeks. We measured me to see if I was smaller, and nope I wasn't smaller either. I literally broke down in tears because I was working so hard to exercise every single day, but had had no results. So we are starting over. It's been a year and a half since I counted calories and boy does it take the joy out of eating. I love food, obviously, so having to sit down and analyze every little thing that goes into my mouth is disheartening. But I have to do it if I want to lose the last 55 lbs. I visited the Mayo Clinic website and they have a calculator that tells you how many calories you need to consume to lose weight based on your current weight, height, age, and gender. Based on my stats of 220 lbs, 5' 6", 23 years old, and female, I need to consume 1200 calories to lose about a pound of weight a week. I never thought getting down to 1200 calories would be so hard. I was easily consuming 1800 calories, which isn't bad.....if I want to maintain my weight. One of my husband's and my favorite breakfast foods is chocolate muffins. I know it isn't the healthiest thing, but we both love chocolate and these were a semi-healthy way of getting it. After calculating my portion (3 small muffins with 1 cup fat free milk to drink) these are the stats:
560 calories
16.25 g fat
630 mg sodium
90 carbs
20 mg cholesterol
16 g protein
488 mg potassium
3 g fiber
Needless to say, these chocolate muffins no longer have a place in my 1200 calorie diet. So I searched and searched and searched for chocolate muffin recipes that 1) would fit in my diet, 2) had as few ingredients as possible (I'm no chef!), and 3) would be quick, easy, and inexpensive to make.
I finally found a recipe, though, and I tried it out this morning. They were very good, very natural tasting. The only thing missing were a few chocolate chips. And the great thing is that they are so much healthier than our packaged muffins that I have the extra room to add some chocolate chips (the healthiest kind I can find of course). But without the chocolate chips, here is the new values for 3 muffins (my portion with 1 cup fat free milk to drink):
274 calories
.5 g fat
717.5 mg sodium
55 carbs
830 mg potassium
2 g fiber
13.5 g protein
I'll update the stats once I add in some chocolate chips, but if any of you are interested in the recipe, just give me a shout and I'll post it.
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Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Fruit Shake for 2
My husband and I love to make fruit protein shakes for lunch or dinner. And they are especially good for my weight loss, since they have only 1 g of fat per serving, and I get my fruit servings for the day as well! Here is the recipe:
6 ice cubes
1 cup of fat free milk
8 frozen strawberries
12 slices frozen peaches
1 fresh banana
1 container Activia vanilla yogurt
2 scoop vanilla protein powder
4 teaspoons fiber powder
Add ice cubes, milk, strawberries, protein powder, peaches, fiber powder, yogurt, and banana, in that order -- it blends the easiest that way. Blend for about 10 seconds until the frozen ingredients have been blended together. It makes enough to fill 2 tall glasses. And because of the protein and fiber powder, it is a very filling shake. If it weren't for the yogurt, it would be fat free as well! Enjoy!
6 ice cubes
1 cup of fat free milk
8 frozen strawberries
12 slices frozen peaches
1 fresh banana
1 container Activia vanilla yogurt
2 scoop vanilla protein powder
4 teaspoons fiber powder
Add ice cubes, milk, strawberries, protein powder, peaches, fiber powder, yogurt, and banana, in that order -- it blends the easiest that way. Blend for about 10 seconds until the frozen ingredients have been blended together. It makes enough to fill 2 tall glasses. And because of the protein and fiber powder, it is a very filling shake. If it weren't for the yogurt, it would be fat free as well! Enjoy!
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Letting it all hang out
I've created a slideshow of pictures of my weightloss over the last year and a half. My husband took the pictures while I was in my underwear so that we could really grasp the changes in my body over time. Some will say it is brave of me to "bare it all" on the web, but I think the pictures are an important part of inspiring myself and inspiring others in weight loss.
And since I'm recently married, I couldn't help but include pictures of me in my wedding dress when I bought it at 250 lbs and when I had my first fitting and at the wedding at 220 lbs.
I hope someone somewhere can use this blog as an inspiration to either start or continue his or her weight loss. This has been a crazy roller coaster for me, and even though I've been at a plateau for the last 6 months with my weight, I look at it positively. I've learned what it takes to maintain my weight which is just as important as losing it. Now, once I reach my goal weight, I'll know what I need to do to stay at that weight, which will ensure I keep it off in the long run.
And since I'm recently married, I couldn't help but include pictures of me in my wedding dress when I bought it at 250 lbs and when I had my first fitting and at the wedding at 220 lbs.
I hope someone somewhere can use this blog as an inspiration to either start or continue his or her weight loss. This has been a crazy roller coaster for me, and even though I've been at a plateau for the last 6 months with my weight, I look at it positively. I've learned what it takes to maintain my weight which is just as important as losing it. Now, once I reach my goal weight, I'll know what I need to do to stay at that weight, which will ensure I keep it off in the long run.
Weight is never an easy thing to handle
For as long as I can remember, I've been overweight. I take that back. Before the 3rd grade, I wasn't overweight. I had baby fat, but I was within the healthy weight range for my age. That all changed when my family moved to a different county and I had to switch friends, schools, and neighborhoods. I started eating and I didn't stop. So growing up, I've always been overweight and it wasn't easy to deal with. It was especially difficult since I went to a high school with less than 50 people in my class and only 3 people were overweight, and I was one of those 3. At one point when I was 16 I decided to lose weight and I did. I walked a mile a day on our treadmill and went from 200 lbs to 165 lbs, a 35 lb weight loss. But I had no idea what I was doing, so when I got down to 165 lbs, I stopped exercising. I had no idea that I would gain the weight back since I had not learned how to maintain that weightloss. After that I never tried losing weight again, since I didn't see the point if I was just going to gain it all back.
I could never have gotten where I am today with regard to my weight loss if it wasn't for my husband. We met in March 2008 through two mutual friends, who are also recently married. I was probably 240 lbs then (and only 5' 6" tall). We were inseparable from the start and we moved in with one another after 6 months. I was happy, content, and I didn't pay attention to my weight since I was with a man who loved all of me. We got engaged on my birthday in November 2009. A few days after the proposal, I had a very bad sinus infection and I went to the doctor. As usual, I was weighed, but it had been a year since I had been to the doctor since I am hardly ever sick. When the nurse told me I weighed 260.4 lbs I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I was 22 and only 40 lbs from being 300 lbs!!! I knew that I had to do something, especially since heart disease and diabetes runs in my family. I came home and told my (now) husband and he helped me come up with a plan. I should mention that my husband is the most fit person I know. He rides his bike for 14 miles for fun, and he is extremely conscious about eating healthy.
So we did some research on the foods we had in our apartment. People just don't realize how much sodium and fat are in every day foods. I was consuming more than 2000 mg of sodium over what I was supposed to consume a day. We cut my fat intake to less than 45g a day and my sodium to less than 2400 mg a day. We chose to focus on my fat and sodium intake because fat contains the most calories than anything else, so by controlling how much fat you eat, you control how many calories you take in. We also concentrated on my sodium simply because of water retention and heart health reasons.
Pizza, bread, and chocolate are my weak points, and I knew from the beginning that if I had to deprive myself of the foods I love that I would never be able to lose weight in the long run. It was a little disheartening at first, but I soon realized that I didn't have to stop eating what I love. I just had to find the healthiest versions of it available to me. It took a couple of hours to go through the grocery store and look at all the labels for the foods we eat until we found the healthiest ones, but after that initial outing, we know exactly what to get. So instead of buying frozen pizza, I started making pizza. Now, I am no cooking genius, so I simply bought the small premade pizza crusts, pizza sauce, low or fat free shredded cheese, and veggies. I completely cut out pepperoni. By making the pizzas at home instead of buying them premade I was able to go from 14g of fat for ONE slice of pizza to 14g of fat for one ENTIRE small pizza. And the homemade pizzas took less time to prepare and cook than a frozen pizza, so I wasn't out any extra time. Next comes bread. Boy do I love bread. I'm not picky about the kind, wheat, white, whole grain, so we just focused on finding the healthiest bread out there when it comes to calories, fat, and sodium. People get messed up when they read labels, though. We would find a bread that seemed healthy, but a serving size was only one slice instead of two. We eventually found a bread that had excellent nutritional value with 2 slices as a serving size. I have a serious sweet tooth and chocolate is definitely a weakness. What I've done is I buy the bags of the individual chocolates (dark, since it's my favorite) and I buy the chocolate cake or brownie mixes that have the "low fat" alternative, which uses apple sauce instead of oil. I'm not a very good cook, so I haven't really tried making food truly "home made," but I plan to start that up eventually.
These are just a few of the things I've changed. So far I have gone from 260.4 lbs to 220 lbs. I am now smaller than I was when I met my husband and when I graduated high school. My current goal weight is 165 lbs, but I may decide to go down to 150 lbs since that would put me in the normal weight range, but we will see how it goes once I get to 165 lbs.
Even though I've had a relatively easy time adjusting to the healthier foods, weight loss still isn't easy. I'm not a very active person, so making myself exercise 3-4 days a week was really hard. Luckily, my husband was helpful in this area as well. He really pushed me to get out and exercise, and he exercised with me, so that I wouldn't have to do it alone. Now he didn't do this because he wanted me to be skinny, since he fell in love with me when I was heavy; he knew I wanted to be healthy and that I wouldn't be able to do it myself. I will be the first person to admit that if he hadn't exercised with me, I wouldn't be 40 lbs lighter today.
With weightloss also comes frustration. For about six months now, I've been stuck at 220 lbs. Part of it was that we got married almost 4 weeks ago, and I wanted to be able to fit in my wedding dress, so I didn't want to lose too much weight. But part of it was that my workout got stagnant. But I didn't really workout. We walked a mile to a mile and a half 3-4 days a week. That was it, but it just got so boring being on a track. Now that the wedding is over, we have amped up our walking to 3 miles every morning on a back road in our community and so far we are on track. It's nice having a walking buddy since my husband and I spend that time simply talking about whatever comes to our minds, and if we don't have anything to say, we just listen to our music. Hopefully with the longer walks every morning, I'll be able to get over this plateau. But we'll see. More changes may be in store, but right now I'm just walking it off.
I could never have gotten where I am today with regard to my weight loss if it wasn't for my husband. We met in March 2008 through two mutual friends, who are also recently married. I was probably 240 lbs then (and only 5' 6" tall). We were inseparable from the start and we moved in with one another after 6 months. I was happy, content, and I didn't pay attention to my weight since I was with a man who loved all of me. We got engaged on my birthday in November 2009. A few days after the proposal, I had a very bad sinus infection and I went to the doctor. As usual, I was weighed, but it had been a year since I had been to the doctor since I am hardly ever sick. When the nurse told me I weighed 260.4 lbs I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I was 22 and only 40 lbs from being 300 lbs!!! I knew that I had to do something, especially since heart disease and diabetes runs in my family. I came home and told my (now) husband and he helped me come up with a plan. I should mention that my husband is the most fit person I know. He rides his bike for 14 miles for fun, and he is extremely conscious about eating healthy.
So we did some research on the foods we had in our apartment. People just don't realize how much sodium and fat are in every day foods. I was consuming more than 2000 mg of sodium over what I was supposed to consume a day. We cut my fat intake to less than 45g a day and my sodium to less than 2400 mg a day. We chose to focus on my fat and sodium intake because fat contains the most calories than anything else, so by controlling how much fat you eat, you control how many calories you take in. We also concentrated on my sodium simply because of water retention and heart health reasons.
Pizza, bread, and chocolate are my weak points, and I knew from the beginning that if I had to deprive myself of the foods I love that I would never be able to lose weight in the long run. It was a little disheartening at first, but I soon realized that I didn't have to stop eating what I love. I just had to find the healthiest versions of it available to me. It took a couple of hours to go through the grocery store and look at all the labels for the foods we eat until we found the healthiest ones, but after that initial outing, we know exactly what to get. So instead of buying frozen pizza, I started making pizza. Now, I am no cooking genius, so I simply bought the small premade pizza crusts, pizza sauce, low or fat free shredded cheese, and veggies. I completely cut out pepperoni. By making the pizzas at home instead of buying them premade I was able to go from 14g of fat for ONE slice of pizza to 14g of fat for one ENTIRE small pizza. And the homemade pizzas took less time to prepare and cook than a frozen pizza, so I wasn't out any extra time. Next comes bread. Boy do I love bread. I'm not picky about the kind, wheat, white, whole grain, so we just focused on finding the healthiest bread out there when it comes to calories, fat, and sodium. People get messed up when they read labels, though. We would find a bread that seemed healthy, but a serving size was only one slice instead of two. We eventually found a bread that had excellent nutritional value with 2 slices as a serving size. I have a serious sweet tooth and chocolate is definitely a weakness. What I've done is I buy the bags of the individual chocolates (dark, since it's my favorite) and I buy the chocolate cake or brownie mixes that have the "low fat" alternative, which uses apple sauce instead of oil. I'm not a very good cook, so I haven't really tried making food truly "home made," but I plan to start that up eventually.
These are just a few of the things I've changed. So far I have gone from 260.4 lbs to 220 lbs. I am now smaller than I was when I met my husband and when I graduated high school. My current goal weight is 165 lbs, but I may decide to go down to 150 lbs since that would put me in the normal weight range, but we will see how it goes once I get to 165 lbs.
Even though I've had a relatively easy time adjusting to the healthier foods, weight loss still isn't easy. I'm not a very active person, so making myself exercise 3-4 days a week was really hard. Luckily, my husband was helpful in this area as well. He really pushed me to get out and exercise, and he exercised with me, so that I wouldn't have to do it alone. Now he didn't do this because he wanted me to be skinny, since he fell in love with me when I was heavy; he knew I wanted to be healthy and that I wouldn't be able to do it myself. I will be the first person to admit that if he hadn't exercised with me, I wouldn't be 40 lbs lighter today.
With weightloss also comes frustration. For about six months now, I've been stuck at 220 lbs. Part of it was that we got married almost 4 weeks ago, and I wanted to be able to fit in my wedding dress, so I didn't want to lose too much weight. But part of it was that my workout got stagnant. But I didn't really workout. We walked a mile to a mile and a half 3-4 days a week. That was it, but it just got so boring being on a track. Now that the wedding is over, we have amped up our walking to 3 miles every morning on a back road in our community and so far we are on track. It's nice having a walking buddy since my husband and I spend that time simply talking about whatever comes to our minds, and if we don't have anything to say, we just listen to our music. Hopefully with the longer walks every morning, I'll be able to get over this plateau. But we'll see. More changes may be in store, but right now I'm just walking it off.