Food Journaling

    For those of you who are using a food Journal, where do you get you information on calories at? I have been using livestrong.com, which honestly is a great site that is very easy to use. Except that it has SO many options how do you choose. I bring this up because today was my weigh in date and I am still at 193.4. I only worked out twice this week but I thought I had done a great job at food journaling.  I have been trying to really watch what I eat and even added red meat back in to my diet (once a week) to help with my Iron level. 
   Here is my problem: Lets say for breakfast I eat a bacon and egg burrito, well my calorie options are any where from 210 – 1110 calories? How do you pick? So a little help , how are you guys choosing what calorie information to use.

Establishing the Basic

 

      So it looks like I might be over whatever it was that I had. No thanks to my doctor I might add. I actually started to feeling better on Thursday but of course that is when my allergies it. It was horrible my eyes were so swelled up  and red I looked like I had taken up a new past time, if you know what I mean. I could hardly breath and Claritin was doing nothing for me. I took a Zyrtec and let me tell you that is the best sleeping pill you could ever take. Problem is I took it at 8am. I honestly thought about calling my husband to leave work and pick up our son from school because I was really doubting my ability to drive our car.
   I did not work out these last 5 days but I did use my body bug to its best.  I have gotten a good idea about the amount of calories my body burns on days when I feel sick, days when I am really sick, and days when I’m feeling really tiered (see below). I feel I  am doing pretty good at adjusting my diet to fit it. I must admit I have been lenient with my diet allowing my self to have a cup cake or even fast food once. The thing is that I’m okay with that. I think it is going to be my key to really losing weight and keeping it off. If I just keep telling my self no no no to everything then I think its going to make me want to relapse and just end up eating half a dozen cup cakes.

This is a day where I was just not feeling well but just did not work out.

Example of a day where I felt okay,  did not work out, but had a very busy day. The high spike around 8 was when I realized how late my son was to school and hauled butt to get the kids ready.

And finally is an example of a regular day at home, once again the big spikes in the morning are getting the kids ready for bed, spikes around one are where i picked my son up from school. 

So current weight 193.3

Clothes

I have a question for those of you who have lost weight. When did you buy new clothes? When I started my diet I was a size 24, I had some size 22 items that fight kind of tight. At this time I am a size 18/16. The size 24 stuff just is to big and the size 22 fits with a belt or the shirts just look really baggy. The Problem is even though the pants don’t fall off with my belt tightened, they look horribly baggy. I look like I am trying to pass for a boy in these baggy shirts and baggy pants but I really don’t want to make the monetary investment in new clothes till I am a size 14/12. Hey maybe a 10? A girl can dream right? I have purchased two new pants and a four new shirts because I did not feel right going to church or fancy occasions dressed in my best tom boy gear.. the problem has arisen in the fact that I have started getting comments like: “Wow you really like that shirt hu?” and “You shouldn’t wear those you cant even tell you lost any weight.” ohh and my favorite : “Couldn’t keep the weight off hu, its okay its not for everyone.”
So what would you do? What did you do?

Where are we again?

      I’m sorry that I have not updated my website. I have been so sick this week, I’m not even sure where to turn at this point. I know I’m not contagious because no one in my family has caught anything. My doctor says that I am anemic again and they are going to rerun my blood suger test because I had eaten candy while I was in the waiting room but even then my blood sugar was borderline low. So with all that said I really need to watch my diet closer. 
     For some reason, which I guess has now been explained, I have been craving sweets and a hamburger and as you can imagine those are not the most diet friendly foods.This is what I get I guess for only counting calories. I need to do a better job of making sure to get enough milk, fruits and vegetables to my diet. Plus if I am going to cut out red meat out of my diet I need to look for other food that are rich in Iron. And no people I will not be eating trippitas (animal intestines ) no matter how rich in iron they are so please don’t suggest it!
     As many of you know I will be going back to the doctor in February would go sooner but she is on vacation… great. But I will keep you guys posted. She has asked me to keep all exercise moderate and not to get my heart rate to high till we get some more answers. Been listening to her a little to much because it has been a week since I worked out. But I’m going to start again today with light walking. 
   So another week at 194. Lets see if we can get to 192 this week!!

Day 13: Weigh in Day.

Okay so someone pointed out to me that my ticker changes on every single post when I update my info. So someone could not browse through the archive and see my progress. Sorry I did not even think about that. I am going to try to figure out how to just place it at the bottom of my blog that way its a quick reference point and I don't have to post it over and over.
So tomorrow is the official "weigh in date" but I think I should just change it cause I always end up updating about my weight on Wed. So the official weight for today is 194.0 ! thats down 2.6lbs from last week. the goal was 3lbs but hey I'll take it!
New goal is 192.0 by January 21, 2008.
Wish me luck!

Body Bug help!

This is an extended post from Sunday. I have a little question for you guys I really did not do any real exercise on this day. I went to church, then we went out to eat. Came home played with the kids, took a little nap and then went over to my brothers. Granted I did help clean a little bit but the spikes on here look like way to much for all the driving and sitting on my but I did. What could have caused all these spikes? Just being well rested ??

Day 10: Sunday the day of rest

Today I am a little ashamed to admit I was off the program. Then again its my program, I am writing it as I go. I have been so drained so tiered that I just needed a day of rest and what better day to rest than Sunday. Don’t get me wrong I did not just go out and eat what ever I wanted, I took a more logical approach. I have been shooting for a diet of 2,000 calories a day so I thought 500 calories should be enough to indulge in a little comfort food. I had a great day till I met the EVIL Chocolate Chip Muffin!!! Really how many calories would you expect a muffin to have?? I thought what 250 calories? and then lets add 100 calories for the chocolate chips: 350 calories for a muffin, yes indulgent by why the heck not! So I sit down to food journal and start looking online for the actual amount of calories in the muffin. (Because of course I could not do that BEFORE i ate the muffin!!) 620 calories in that evil muffin!!! 620 calories!!! So oppsie! Oh well I ate the muffin and its to late to do anything about that, except stay away from all evil muffins…no matter how yummy they might be.

Calories Consumed: 2,720
Calories Burned: 2, 660

Friday/ Saturday : Day 8 & 9

      Sorry that my post have begun to mesh with one another, to tell you the truth so have my days. I’m really struggling here; I don’t know if I’m going to be able to sleep at night and it seems when I do I spend the day crying. I know my family is worried. I do my best to put on a brave front for them but some times the tears just leak through. I don’t know how to express my emotions. I’m afraid if I speak it out loud that my emotions will be taken wrong. The last thing I need is for jealousy and unfounded accusations to bring more pain for me. After all as my parents have kindly pointed out to me so many times I’m a “married” woman who had no business with a male best friend. As you can imagine this has caused many problems with me being able to express my self, fear inside the pain.  Its hard for me to speak to anyone really; I know my extended family has their own life to live. I am still so angry with my mom for not telling me about this that I am afraid if I opened my mouth nothing but venom would seep through. No matter how long ago this happened no matter how long it has been since we talked the fact that me losing him is still fresh to me.

     I have from the last day we talked held on to the idea that it was not the end. I knew he was struggling but god if you guys could have seen him the way I did. He was an amazing musician who could have done so much with it all if he just gave up the stupid @#$ he was doing. It was hard for us, simply because we had different genders no one could understand our friendship. Yes I am not here to deny that we did date but I wish people could understand it went so much further than that trivial $#@#. I can’t understand why he did not call me that night, I would have been there for him, he had to have known that!!! We were always there for each other no matter what. No matter what other people thought, @%$@ them. Why did he have to give in to them, why couldn’t he keep fighting.

    As I said before I am sorry to unload out on you guys like this many of you hardly know me others are thinking wait I thought this was a weight loss blog. But the truth is this has so much to do with my weight loss. I am struggling and fighting every demon that I have right now. You guys don’t know how much I want just to sit on my @$$ and eat every comfort food you can think of. To just lie in bed all day and cry, and to be honest I guess I have given in to this a bit. I am at least sleeping seven hours a night now. That’s good. But I find that I am lacking the energy still to really even get off my but and do my day to day stuff. I did not work out for 2 days. But let me tell you I at least beat one demon. I kept my calories down to a minimum. You can not believe how strong the cravings have been, I have been wanting sugar with every ounce of my being. But nope I can’t give in! I’m going to keep living my life dam it, and I’m going to live it to its fullest and I cant do that fat. I want to live a long healthy life, I want to live to see my great grand children; and even though I can not control the other stuff that happens in life I can make sure that I don’t eat my self to death. Its scary to think that but at 235lbs that what I was doing.

So with all that said I am proud to announce that I have lost 1 more lb. Doing good on my Journey to lose 3lbs between day 7-14.

Day 8: Sleep Loss

 

  SO I write this a day late because Thursday was one of THOSE days.

It all started with wed night. As you can see above I really did not get much sleep. I’m not sure what I can blame it on except I found my self doing a whole lot of thinking. I’m still not sure how to process my best friends death. After all if I really cared for him as much as I did then why did it take me so long to find out about his death. I could have called his parents home at any time these last two years instead of looking for him online. I did send two letters to his home, I just assumed he got them. I really hoped it was just he made up with his girlfriend who told him she wanted him to have nothing to do with me. That he had moved on to a better part of his life and just choose not to include me. I feel cheated at a chance to grieve. I mean if someone had told me I could have gone to the funeral, I could have been there with other people sharing my emotions. How can I justify feeling this kind of pain for someone who  I had no contact with for that long. I guess I always hoped maybe with time he and his girlfriend.. mabye wives relationship would strengthen and she could see I was not a threat and he would call me out of the blue and be like hey stranger and Id say hey punk and it would all be the same again. I just don’t know what to do or what to feel.

So as you can imagine I felt like $#!* all day and honestly I feel like I’m just sick. I went to see the doctor first thing in the morning but they could not get me in till Friday. I still did not do to bad.

Calories taken in:1,493
Calories burned:2,978

Day Seven: Body bug time!

      Great day today! I got my Body bug in so now I can calculate how many calories I am really burning. The information I obtained was only from 12pm to 9:30pm. Tomorrow should provide some more accurate numbers I hope. Though I do have a doctors appointment so most of tomorrow might just be sitting.

Today I consumed: 1,571 Calories
Today I burned : 2,744 Calories

      Please forgive me as I try to add images, I am very new at this and doing my best.

Most of my calories were burned during my work out and that's great! Something about having that little gadget on just makes me want to follow my diet and do more activity so if that keeps up its paid for its self right then and there.
   What's really interesting is that the spikes for my calories burned while playing with my kids are a little work out with in them selves. That should tell you I should tell my dishes to take a hike and just play with my kids more.

As you can see I was really not right with my targets but today was a good day because I got my work out. I am going to collect info for a whole week and then see about changing my targets.

   I am really interested about my sleep patterns I wake up every few hours with my kids. They have issues at night that I am trying to help them overcome. Some nights I can sleep a whole 8 hours some nights I’m up every 2 hours.  I’m sure that has alot to do with how tiered I am during the day and why I am struggling to keep doing my work outs.

Day six : Half @$$ attempt

I know I should have weighed in tomorrow to make it a whole week but I don't predict much change between today and tomorrow. So my weigh in showed 1lb loss and I honestly say I have only my self to blame for that. This week really has not been my best effort. Honestly it has not even been a real effort. I am not tracking my food every day, just when its convenient and that really has to stop. I ordered a food journal to carry with me so I can not make the excuse that I do not have a computer near by or that I lost my paper I was keeping track of today on.
Also this week I commit to really focus on my work outs, I think I kinda have been going through the motions but not really putting my heart in to it. I am going to be getting a heart rate monitor tomorrow and I hope this will help me stay honest with how hard I am really working out.
So maybe with all of your help I can stick to my guns this week and lets shoot for loosing 3lbs on week 2!

Day Five: Depression and Eating

Day 4: Sorry I did not blog but I was out of the house all day. I did not log my food as I was away from the computer and did not work out. Lessons Learned.
1. Buy a portable food journal.
2. Work out at the beginning of the day because excuses become more
numerous as the day goes by.
January 4th begins the day with me facing my worst weight loss enemy - Depression. As many of you know I recently found out that a very close friend, in fact I would say the best friend I ever had took his life two years ago. The messed up thing is that I have been looking for him him these last two years. Everyone knew I was looking for him but no one thought to tell me. Of course everyone has their excuses; mostly that I was pregnant at the time and they thought the "stress" would hurt the baby. Fine .. the baby is now 2 years old, no one thought to tell me so I did not spend hours on the computer looking for him!? !?
So what does this have to do with my weight loss? As I have started coming to terms with all this I face a battery of emotions and instead of dealing with them in a healthy adult way, I deal with them with the way I know best- Food. I was lucky today that my kids were around me snapping me out of my fog from time to time and I was able to realize what I was doing. But I have been guilty many days of sitting down to drown my blues with cookies or ice cream and not realizing what I am doing, or maybe not caring, until the food is all gone.
To be honest I'm not sure how that started, I have heard people say that its learned behavior from when we are children. Parents give us food to shut us up if we are crying, help us celebrate if we are happy, so we tie our emotions to food. I don't know if this is true but as an adult there comes a time when I have to stop blaming my parents for my actions. So the lesson learned today was that I need to find a healthy outlet. I need to really reflect on this, maybe look for someone I can talk to about it all.

Overview for Today:
Calories taken in:1,690
Work out : 3 1/2 miles walked

Day Three: Can't sleep

I'm not sure if its related to my new effort at losing weight, but I just could not sleep last night. I was all over the place, could not get comfortable at all. The only think I can think of that was different was that I really made an effort to work out. I jogged/walked for 30 min. With intervals of 10 min of jogging and 5 min of walking in between. I was really tiered and my heart rate got up to about 170. I need to look up and see what my target heart rate should be. Its hard to keep it monitored because I can't jog on the treadmill and hold on to the heart rate monitor very well.

Diet went well I think. I started taking vitamins; was not really sure what to take, and since I still had some of my prenatal vitamins left I decided to take them. (Sad part I was thinking man 60 calories in 2 pills!)

Breakfast:290 calories
Lunch:530 calories
Snack: 190
Dinner: 472 calories

Total: 1,482

Once again below my target. ya!! I wonder when I should weight in next. I was trying to keep to weighing in once a week, but its hard not to jump on the scale. Plus to try to reason out why I should weigh now it will be helpful in keeping accurate how many calories I should be having each day, right? But hard to think their would be much if any of a chance in three days.
(Unless I was going crazy like fatcubemonkey.com and dropping a lb a day!! wow he is my hero.)


Oh and on a side note, I received a letter from my insurance today telling me that my premiums were going to go up. I know they are already high because of my weight. I was 215lbs when I applied for health insurance, so what I am thinking is I should call them on Monday and see if maybe I can get a reduction in premiums due to weight loss. What do you guys think?

Day Two: Diet is key as well

So Just to round it out with yesterday I DID work out yesterday, but man in two weeks my body really got out of the routine and I struggled to just get 2 miles done.
But here is where I messed up, we spent the day out of the house and I did not plan what I was going to eat-then I ate pizza (yup a dieters best friend)- so I went to bed with no clue about my calories.

Day two Breakfast:
Banna : 105 Calories
1/2 yogurt : 60 calories
Left overs: 460 (This was a stupid decision I should have kept bfast light)
625 breakfast is just out of the question!
Lunch:
1/2 Chicken Pasta-300 (Just a guess..)
1/2 Deli Wrap- 100 calories
Garlic Bread- 100 calories (hard to know so many kids out there)
8oz sprite-97 calories

Snack: Honey Mustard Pretzels -240 calories (should have had an apple!)

Dinner:
2 1/2 slices Garlic chicken Pizza -320 calories
1/2 Salad/w fat free dressing -125 calories
Simply Orange juice- 60

Total: 1,967

According to Live Strong I can Have 1,944 calories a day, I honestly thought that I had way more than that. It's so hard to accurately determine the calories one really eats. Many of the things were estimates but I did my best to do them accurately.