I get to celebrate the end of week one with a nice rest day. It feels pretty awesome and I’ve very thankful that my muscles get to rest for a little bit. The only places I’ve noticed some soreness are in my left calf, both upper arms, and whenever I sit down or get up from standing or sitting for prolonged periods of time. Other than that, I’m A-OK! Ready to start Week 2 tomorrow!!
So, since I don’t have to talk about the various forms of torture Shaun T likes to put me through (that I daily agree to), I suppose I could tell you a little bit about my eating habits since January (the beginning of this journey).
It might be more accurate to tell you about eating habits from 2011 and then tell you about them currently.
When I started off the year, I didn’t even bother to make a “New Year’s Resolution.” It’s statistically proven that most people don’t even continue it even after two weeks of the new year, so why try? I wasn’t married at the beginning of last year and I was separated from my fiancé because he still had some school to finish up. So, I pretty much ate whatever I could find. I ate what my parents cooked (which isn’t the healthiest food either) and I ate many snacks during the day because I kept telling myself that I was hungry. (I wasn’t hungry.) I even ate real late at night, foods high in sugar and fat and that is simply not good for your body at all!!
I went to the health department about a month prior to getting married and they said I weighed about 226. My iron was good, I was “healthy” and I’d never been exposed to things that would affect me or my soon-to-be-husband. So, I thought I was fine. Hefty, but healthy. When we got married, we ate what was cheap: frozen pizzas (a lot of frozen pizza because that’s my favorite food!), cookies, candy, spaghetti that covered the entire place, lots of bread items and meat prepared without draining the fat. (Of course, this isn’t all of it, but a good portion of the crap we ate.) Looking back on it all, I don’t know what the heck I was thinking. I was slowly killing myself if you want me to get brutally honest.
Occasionally, we would eat out, go to the movies, buy huge sodas, snarf chips and heavily buttered popcorn, eat our fatty leftovers right before going to bed. Yeah, pitiful and disgusting! We were so gross!
I also remember having an obsession with nacho cheese. When my husband and I got our first house in June 2011, we bought a huge can of the stuff from our local Sams Club. Hey, it was cheap, easy to prepare and DELICIOUS!! We’d find more and more uses for it every day and I would snack on chips and cheese quite often. Our tubby selves couldn’t get enough of it. I even told him one day that if he poked me, I’d bleed nacho cheese. (Yeah, get a load of that chunk buster!! HA!) From the time I got married to a few weeks before September 2nd (the day things took a turn down hill), I had gained ten more pounds: a whopping 236. And, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was more than that. After checking the scale and seeing those three numbers side by side, I didn’t ever want to look at a scale again. So, I didn’t; 236 is the last weight I remember being and that’s what I tell people I started out as because I don’t know how bad I had gotten.
As posted before, September through mid-November, I dropped about 20 pounds. I still ate the same kinds of food (just not as much or as frequent) and I still felt apathetic about how I looked and what I was eating. When things changed for me in November, I have become more aware of what I was eating, but still, I didn’t care too much.
Near the completion of the year, I remember being at a Christmas party with my sister’s in-laws (the ones who are close family to my husband and I, even though, by marriage, they aren’t that close at all) and my sister wanted to take a picture with me. (I cringed inside because I knew I had a problem and I knew I needed to change. She’s always been thinner than me and I always hated taking pictures beside her because it’s like standing a twig next to a log…I looked like a fat monster that is about to eat her. Not very photogenic if you ask me.) I took the picture anyway and was tempted to delete it when I saw how it turned out. But, since it was her brand new camera, I decided to leave it and hope to never see it ever again…and hope that she didn’t put it on Facebook either. Lol. (I don’t think she did. :D)
Shortly after that, I had just gotten home from my Dairy Queen cake decorating job and I was rummaging the cupboards for something to eat. Man! I was “hungry!” Oreos! Wa-la!! Awesome breakfast…needless to say, I demolished a sleeve of those cookies (with the exception of four; that was the last sleeve and I wanted to save some for later.) I ended up falling asleep trying to make myself get up and I just couldn’t do it. I was energy-less and fat and that’s when I decided to do something about my problem.
***
Now, thanks to the app on my phone called “myfitnesspal,” I’ve been able to manage my calories and record my decreasing weight from week to week. It’s been very helpful and I personally like it better than having to keep a diary with that information in it. You sign in, record your current weight, desired weight, how many days a week you exercise and it calculates how much you should be eating on a daily basis, changing the numbers and you lose weight. It’s great!
I am now very calorie conscious. I look at calorie information all the time when I shop, before we dine out, and even in my app for foods that I eat that don’t have that information (say, for instance, at the church potlucks we have). I eat breakfast at least 6 out of 7 days a week mainly consisting of fresh fruits or low calorie cereal with skim milk (oh yeah, I didn’t mention that I hardly ever ate breakfast in 2011 unless it was eggs, potatoes, sausage and pancakes.) I eat small, healthy snacks like fruit, 100 calorie granola bars, 100 calorie cheese and cracker packs, or 100 calorie light butter popcorn. And, for dinner, it’s usually a sandwich (when I work 3-11 at the hotel) made with 35 calorie bread and a low calorie meat with one ounce of baked chips, fresh fruit or another granola bar or cheese and cracker pack. On nights that we cook, it’s usually jasmine rice (low cal), wheat pasta or flax wraps. We’ve also changed our ground beef to ground turkey and we eat chicken and Boca burgers as well. Fresh fruits and usually canned or frozen vegetables are a common grocery in our house as well. We go through about 3 bunches of bananas a week, a few cans of green beans and a good portion of broccoli too. My dinner meals usually range from about 300-500 calories and with the way we eat now, that’s PLENTY of food.
Another tool that I use to help me keep my portions in control is our handy dandy kitchen scale. We bought this prior to moving into our second home. Before that, we used a smaller, spring-devised scale which ended up cracking and ultimately breaking. We paid $20 for the one we have now and it sets on our counter. It has a flat glass surface and it even measures in tenths of an ounce.
We also bought a scale prior to moving in. Before, we used the scale my mom had at her house and we liked it so much, we bought the same kind. That was $18 and it measures pounds in decimals. I have been using it about 2-3 times a day, but I think I’m going to cut back to once a week like I was doing with my mom’s scale. (By the way, my scale’s name is Simon.)
As you can see, sometimes a dramatic change is necessary in order to make even more dramatic changes. We eat healthier, feel healthier and look better. I’m so glad that I made my mind get over the doubt and fear and just decide to get up off the couch, put the Oreos down and do something.
Week 2, I’m ready!!
Signing Out,
It’s Possible!!
