{Check-In} November Fitness Report

Friends: I weigh 108.25lbs.

I am only 3.25lbs away from my goal weight.

I. AM. SO. EXCITED!!!

November was easier and harder than month one of this. I know you're sick of hearing about calorie counting, but since I'm still working on it, I'm still writing about it. This month it was easier, because I'm starting to get a feel for estimating calories and portion sizes, so I don't have to look everything up or measure/weigh everything quite as much. But I also got tired of watching what I eat. I love to eat. It was hard.

That said, I am kind of shocked that it is still working. I always thought weight loss was this mystical thing--some people exercise and fat melts off, others can't seem to kick it. For no apparent reason. And I was really stubborn about not wanting to count my calories, because lets face it--it sounds intense and obsessive. And kind of like a party-killer. But its not. I was wrong. It is the "magic" solution. Even if I didn't exercise, I could still lose about a pound a week just by knowing how much was going in and how much I used up during the day. It is crazy. Anyway, if you are trying and failing (like I was FOREVER) to lose weight, consider learning more about it.

Calorie-Counting-Without-Imploding Strategies


This month I noticed just how crazy I was going trying to stay within my 1200 weight-loss-calories per day, so I came up with some strategies to help me be a normal person but still get these last darn pounds off my body. Here they are:

• Save Them Up. I love eating with the hubs. I don't know why, I just do. Especially dessert. Seriously, what could be better than eating dessert with a cute guy, right? So I save up my calories for the meals I'm eating with him. I keep it low-cal for breakfast and lunch (under 300 if I can) so that I've got a good 600 calories waiting for me for dinner/dessert.
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• Work Out. Obviously. Earn more calories by exercising. Totally worth it to me to go 30 minutes on the elliptical so I can eat a Ghiradelli brownie. I think I've said this before.
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• Take a Day Off... Sort Of. Some days you need to have a smoothie without feeling bad about it. (Or, okay, a package of Reese's cups.) So on those days, I eat my "maintain your weight" amount of calories, which is 310 more (or even MORE if I exercise!) So like, Thanksgiving weekend? Every day was a 1510 day. I didn't lose an ounce--but I didn't gaine one either. And I got to eat lots of yummy things.
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• Remember Why. When I'm reaching for a cookie and hesitate, I think about why I'm doing this. Part of it is because I want to look good, but most of it is because I've never gone this far before. I've never bothered to take care of my body this well, or been on the track to look & feel this good. Some days I still need the cookie. But most days, I don't.

I don't feel that Kate Moss is a good role model as far as healthy weight goes, but she did say one thing that stuck in my mind, "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels." We should probably replace "skinny" with "healthy" or "fit" but other than that, its an interesting thought. I think it to myself a lot when I'm fighting my stubborn I-want-to-eat-all-day side.

The Rest

I'm glad I got off my butt and tried to do this, even though I thought I couldn't. It has been really empowering. I'm thankful for a husband who treats this as a real, legitimate goal--he goes to the gym when he can and high-fives me for going on my own when he can't. He counts calories when he cooks so I can enter my numbers, instead of treating that like an obnoxious woman thing that he doesn't want to deal with. I'm glad he's got my back.

I'm glad I started here, glad I've stuck with it, because this first victory is really gearing me up to feel like I can do the other things I want to do. Still scary to stretch, but it feels good once you get past the scary.

{Fitness} Recognizing Why We Eat

This past month of diet change and exercise has been eye opening for me. Not only have I discovered that I like (what????!?!?!) exercise (once I let go of pressure and found the things I enjoy), but also I discovered that my eating habits are not solely hunger-based.

Finding My "Tell"

Last month I was perusing a website and found this post about finding your "tell"--the thing you do outwardly that shows inner turmoil. As I read the post I recognized some of the things that I do when I'm upset--snuggle under covers, watch TV instead of doing my chores, and eating.

The past month has been an interesting test of that, because watching my calories has made me stop to think every time I reach for a snack. And I noticed in the first week that when something went wrong in my day, I immediately thought of grabbing a handful of chocolate chips. Baby woke up early from nap and is screaming for no reason? Man, I need a pudding cup. You see where this is going?

A sudden chocolate craving is one of my "tells." It actually freaked me out a little bit, because instead of dealing with the problem, assessing the situation and how to deal with it, I added this weird crutch of food-will-make-me-feel-better. Instead of thinking that I should make myself feel better by focusing, planning, or accepting whatever was happening.

Other Reasons I Eat

So then I started thinking about other reasons that I eat:

• Boredom
• Socializing/peer pressure
• Relaxation
• Because I just like food
• Oh, and hunger.

A couple of these are okay on occasion (like socializing at a baby shower or whatever), but should I really be eating because I'm bored? Or stressed?

I just found it interesting that there were so many reasons other than hunger that I strolled my little tushka over to the fridge.

Food for thought. (...get it? Sorry. That was a bad one. :p)

{Fitness} Tools: Scaling Back

Steve and I used to eat pizza while we watched the Biggest Loser. Terrible. It was a "healthy" pizza. But still. And many, many times while they were cooking in the kitchen I watched them weigh food on a scale thinking WHAT a pain in the butt! I would NEVER weigh my food!

I've got to learn not to say I will never do things that are good for me. Because I end up eating crow.

Anyway I finally realized that I was going to have to weigh my food if I didn't want to eat solely pre-packaged calorie-labeled stuff, so the kids and I made a pilgrimage to Macy*s to use the last of a gift card I had and I picked up a shiny silver food scale. (It is not the pretty and expensive one pictured above. That is the one I wanted, but I got the one I could get for free-with-my-giftcard instead. It is not cute enough to share a picture of it.)

The Verdict

Thumbs up.

It is a little more work, yes, but I am getting used to it now. It has become part of the cooking routine, and it is pretty fast. (It doesn't take as long as that 1-minute-to-weigh-a-human Biggest Loser scale. That thing drives me crazy.) It has made calorie counting way easier and more intuitive.

And the BEST PART is that I was over-estimating some things. A chicken breast I thought would weigh like 6oz, but it is only 3! And 1oz of cheese is enough to make a nicely cheesed grilled cheese sandwich. So that means I can eat more than I thought I could, and that is a big relief.

Because I love eating.

...wait, did I already mention that? Like 12 times?

{Food} Summer Salad, 248 Cal

Summer Salad (even though it is Fall) 248 Calories

7 oz raw spinach
1 oz strawberries (about 3-4, cut up)
2T Black River Blue Cheese crumbles
1 Jonagold apple
1T Ken's Light Poppyseed dressing

{Fitness} Why I'm Finally Calorie Counting

Okay, first of all, I'm not going to be talking about calories all the time. I do not like it when women obsess about "their" calories. So don't think we are going to be having real-life conversations about how many calories are in things for the rest of forever. I am still just figuring this all out. I would much rather talk about your baby, a book you're reading, how you scored a sweet deal on your super fly jeans, or whatever.

So this is just for the purposes of learning how calories feed our bodies energy and how weight loss happens. And I will get to that. But first let me show you WHY.

Why I'm Calorie Counting

So, before we had kids, I weighed 111 pounds. Right now I am swinging between 111 and 112, which is great post-10lb-second-baby. That is in the healthy BMI range for my height (crazy, crazy short: 4'10") but it is at the upper end of healthy. I want to be more in the middle.

Also, I may have gotten down to my pre-both-pregnancies weight, but I have NOT gotten back to that body type. I know that my weight distribution has forever changed. But I would like to NOT look pregnant when I'm not sucking it in. So here, at long last, are those before pictures the hubs was teasing me about because I don't look happy. I think I was just focused on trying to get the right angle so you could see the weird poochiness in all its glory.

9/30/11 - 113 lbs, no regular exercise

There it is. I am to embarrassed to show you the stomach itself, at least until I have a better "after" to show you. You're not missing out, though, I promise.

Anyway, that view in the mirror was my why. I decided it was worth the work.

Calories & Weight Loss

You probably already know this, but basically to lose weight, you need to take in fewer calories than you expend doing exercise and your daily activities. I've been learning healthy ways to do this, but I didn't start out doing a very good job.

Here are some basics:

• Bodies need a baseline amount of calories just to function, that means your heart beating, breathing, all that stuff your body does even when you're sleeping, requires a certain amount of calories. This is called your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), and it is basically the number of calories your body would burn even if you stayed in bed all day. You can calculate it here or if you sign up for a calorie counting program, it will probably have a calculator there, too. I did mine at MyFitnessPal.
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• Burning more calories than you take in USUALLY means weight loss. If you take in 1700 calories, do 200 worth of exercise, and your BMR is 1500, you break even. Sweet! Your body will need to dip into its energy reserves (aka fat!) to fuel your body. But...
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• Taking in less calories than required by your BMR is STARVING. You don't want to do that, not only because starving is obviously unhealthy, but also because it is bad from a weight loss perspective. When your body goes into starvation mode, it freaks out and starts holding onto fat even harder, because it thinks you are in some crazy Hunger Games situation and have to forage for food and might die. So it is really important to get your baseline amount.
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• Calories aren't everything. Your body needs nutrients: vitamins, minerals, fats, proteins, etc. to be healthy. So eating a bunch of low-calorie junk food isn't going to cut it. You need real food, healthy portion sizes, and reasonable calories.

Calorie counting has been a humbling--very, very humbling--experience. I love food. I look forward to eating; lunch alone while the kids nap is a big treat for me. So finding out how many calories are in the food I thought were healthy was really a blow. Cereal and milk? Surprising number of calories, when you realize how many "servings" is in a normal sized bowl of cereal.

How I'm Doing

I'm doing okay. My weight loss has kind of plateaued the past two weeks at about 111.75 lbs, but there could be numerous factors contributing to that including:

(1) not drinking enough water
(2) hormones (we love them, right?) and
(3) inconstant eating, especially on the weekends

I am, however, doing great at my 3x week gym goal, sometimes I even hit 4 times. And things there are getting easier, so I'm having to increase intensity to keep it challenging.

I'm also learning to estimate calories in my head, which is making my eating habits a little easier.

And I'm doing crunches. I hate them more than most any other exercise, but there was no way around it. Baby bellies don't disappear on their own.

{Fitness} Tools: MyFitnessPal.com

As a teenager I swore never to count calories. But I guess you can see now how well that is going for me. But really, it sounds like a pain in the BUTT to try to figure out how many calories you need, how many you should take in if you want to be healthy but losing weight, and then track your daily intake of food. And I bet it was a pain before the internet.

MyFitnessPal: Dumb Name, Good Tool


When the hubs got his fabu new iPod Touch he got addicted to downloading free apps. Though he doesn't need to lose weight, he was intrigued by the fitness apps and found one called MyFitnessPal, which also happens to be a website (for those of us who aren't yet toting around one of those shiny silver pieces of machinery, but have at least entered the internet age).

Here's a peak at what my food log there looks like:

About a week ago I logged in, entered my stats (age, height, weight) and my weight loss goal, and it spit out a calories-per-day goal for me to follow. I actually really love it, and here's why:

1. It has a database of foods already set up so I don't have to look up the nutrition facts of every food I eat. It also saves foods I eat a lot so I can just click and add to track my meals. You can also add your own recipes of meals you eat or enter new foods with their nutrition facts if they don't show up.
2. It does the adding and subtracting for me so I don't have to add and subtract in my head, which I should never do, I am terrible at it.
3. It focuses on more than calories, showing if I go over or under my ideal protein and fat intakes, too.
4. It calculates extra calories for exercise and has a database of exercises so I can just look up what I did and get an estimate. Or if I do a machine at the gym, I can just enter in the calories I burned.

It also has space to track your water intake, and gives you an estimate of when you'll reach your weight loss goals. I'm not really into forums, but they have those, too, which I'm sure a lot of people would find helpful.

So the calorie counting thing has actually been pretty straightforward with this. It's the actual eating part that has been hard.