Tag Archives: my fitness pal

Weight Loss Journey Day 47

The Early Weight Loss Journey February 19, 2013 Leave a comment

IMAG0291What a blessing to enjoy traditions even though the kids are (mostly) grown up. We had a lovely  family day. Sarah came home for the afternoon, and we made snowflakes for the living room window—our annual winter tradition.

I have so much more energy these days! I got up BEFORE church, made a southern breakfast (which I ate, just in lesser quantities), and mixed up homemade chocolate chip cookies for everyone to enjoy with our traditional hot chocolate.

After my thoughts last week about needing a day of rest/worship/family time, I didn’t even try to exercise. I was about 1300 calories instead of 1200, but that’s not bad considering I had a few cookies! I ate light at supper—my shake and no extras in it. And I found I was content with herb tea (no calories) when the rest of the family had their hot chocolate. I didn’t feel left out or deprived. I just felt . . . intentional . . . as I made choices for less sweets and smaller meals, but still allowed myself a bit of cookie dough and a couple of small cookies during our family time. I love My Fitness Pal app. It keeps me accountable!

Oh! And a huge thing happened at church that encourages me to believe I’m hearing the Lord with these little nudges on my walk. I saw a young woman who teaches at the elementary school near our house—the one I thought the Lord told me to walk around a couple of times and pray for earlier this week. I told her about the experience, and she told me that the school has been taken over by the state for poor performance!

All the teachers will be fired at the end of the year, and only half will be invited back! I had prayed for hope as I walked around that school, not even knowing how hopeless things must feel for those there, having no idea what was going on! I’d also prayed for change, for revival. It’s incredible to think that the Holy Spirit is this personal, that He  shows a momma in Colorado how to pray about things she knew nothing about.                   ~December 9, 2012

Real Time Update:

Here we are two months later. I’ve been on this weight loss journey for 119 days. Last Thursday I shared that I took a week off from being bonded to My Fitness Pal. I wanted to see if I could keep losing weight without logging every calorie. I hoped I’d learned enough about eating well that it was now habit. Here’s what I noticed:

1) I mostly stuck to my new eating habits, but found it easier to snitch a piece of chocolate or something like that when I didn’t have to record it.

2) While I got in some exercise, that feeling of needing to burn calories to buy more at my meals was diminished, which resulted in less drive to get outside.

3) I lost weight at about the same rate I did the week before.

So, what’s the verdict? There’s NO way (in my mind) I could have changed my eating habits early on without the help of a calorie tracker. However, I’m pretty wise now about what I can and can’t do. Still, the accountability helps.

I thought about returning to My Fitness Pal, but my husband suggested I try to apply what I learned this week and fix it instead of going back to the more rigid approach. That said, I’m going to give this idea one more week. But if I don’t lose, I’m back to recording every bite.

I do have a mother-of-the-bride dress to buy!

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Weight Loss Journey Days 43 & 44

The Early Weight Loss Journey February 14, 2013 Leave a comment
taco salad cropped

Ground turkey is even less calories than beef. Measure the cheese, count out a serving of chips, and you have a low calories lunch . . .

Some days are easy. Some are harder. But forward progress is the goal, not perfection:

Day 43 Wednesday, December 5

Another rough Wednesday due to cheap, high-in-calorie food. But, thanks to walking and learning a little more self-control, I finished the day on track with my calorie intake!

And—here’s the good part—I lost that last three pounds to get down to a consistent 190. Truly 20 lbs down now! Yay! Not bad for six weeks of doing this. Thank you, BENew!

Day 44 Thursday, December

Had a wonderful salad with taco meat on top for lunch and walked! And . . . that left calories for a small piece of left-over birthday cake. Thanks to exercise finished the day with 208 calories still available to me!

Real Time Update:

Thought the above snippets showed the reality of a weight loss journey. It’s marathon, not a sprint, isn’t it? One day at a time, one choice at a time, we work our way to a healthier body–and the right to wear cute clothes again! Ha!

I’m learning that this isn’t a diet. It’s a lifestyle change. Once I reach the maintenance stage of my journey, I still have to live with intentionality. My life was desperate for balance, and thanks to BENew, I’m finding it. It is my goal to never again ignore the needs of my body.

This morning the scale was around 177 (I have the old-fashioned one, not a digital) Since I’m building muscle and almost 5 foot 9, this is looking better than it sounds. It’s a far cry from the 210 of October 24th when I started or the 190 of December 5. The weight is coming off more slowly now that I’m a more normal size with just a muffin top I’m working on, but it’s still coming. Even though the pounds are slower to disappear, the body continues to change–exemplified by earlier this week when I had to put a new hole in the belt and take a link from my watch.

Now that I’ve developed more healthy eating habits and have a concept of how calorie rich foodsphone are, I’m trying something new this week. I’m taking a break from My Fitness Pal app and NOT counting every bite that goes into my mouth. I’ll watch the scale. If it goes the wrong way I’ll return to counting, but I want to see if my new handle on healthy eating is wise enough that I can move forward without such precise record-keeping.

I’ll let you know how it goes!

Oh! And Happy Valentine’s Day!

What about you?

My Fitness Pal app on my phone has been invaluable in this journey. Do you track calories? Have a way to do it that you love? Or have you simply eliminated certain foods instead of tracking all of them? If you’ve done this for a while, have you been able to step away from your tracker and still find success?

Weight Loss Journey Day 7

The Early Weight Loss Journey January 7, 2013 Comments: 4
IMAG0150-1

Balsamic chicken over rice from Life Force‘s Meal plan recipes. Yum!

Tried the Balsamic Chicken from Life Force’s meal guide. It was SO good. Keeping the angel hair pasta portions small doesn’t rack up many calories. But this recipe also works with brown rice. I’ll serve it both ways . . .

Glad to be done with the cleanse. It doesn’t smell or taste bad. It’s just drinking green gunk at the end of my eating day . . . and there was that whole bloating, cramping, crying thing. lol

Yesterday was my birthday, but we didn’t do anything special, so it wasn’t hard to think about food. I’ll worry about that later this week when we go out with my neighbor for my annual birthday dinner.

It’s hard to believe I’ve been at this for a week now! At first it was overwhelming to think about what was going in my mouth. I wrote everything in a journal. I drove Jerry crazy asking, “how many ounces in this portion?” But once I got into the routine of paying attention, it wasn’t so hard.

Oh, and I’ve discovered My Fitness Pal. I put it on my phone. It makes it so much easier to track calories! It separates out nutrition, stores daily data, and even gives me daily and weekly averages. I love that it has a search engine connected to the tracking device, so I can just Google foods to learn how many calories they have, and it will put it directly into my log. AND if the food came packaged, I can just hover over the UPC code, click, and I have all the nutrition and calorie information imputed immediately!

Now that I’m more comfortable thinking about what to eat and how much (not that I’m done learning, but I no longer burst into tears at the thought), I want to get serious about walking most every day. There are many exercises I can’t do yet as I heal from the whiplash and other issues related to the accident. But I can walk. I walk slowly. I breathe hard even at that, especially up the hill by our house. I am so out of shape. But if I don’t what I can’t, if I don’t push so hard I feel unsuccessful or hate the experience, I can do this.

Real Time Update:

This post was originally written October 30th. Since then I find it much easier to eat responsibly. I still use the My Fitness Pal App and love it! I also have gone from walking short distances slowly to walking at least 3 miles most days–AND running part of the distance. As I started to become more active and continued to heal from my car accidents, I did the stretches given to me by my physical therapist, Ann. I’m much better now and have added in a few tummy exercises, like crunches 3-4 times a week.

How About You?

If you’re new to the journey, what are you struggling with today? What is your success? If you’ve been at it awhile, what helps you succeed?