50,000 Calories

I'd have to eat almost 50,000 calories on Thanksgiving to gain back the weight I've lost...I actually feel like I'm capable of that, haha.

So, yes, Thanksgiving is upon us, and I'm pretty nervous about it.  I LOVE the holidays.  From Halloween through New Years I'm always just a little bit happier than usual.  Even though I'm a grown up now and don't get nearly as many Christmas presents as I used to, I still love the season...the commercials on TV, the lights on houses, the weather, the sales, everything...especially the food.  Now here comes the nervous part:  Since, well, birth, the holidays have always been about food for me.  When I was little, we ate off of Thanksgiving leftovers for almost a week.  So it wasn't just one day of stuffing ourselves to the absolute max; it was a full week of turkey and ham and pie and my grandpa's "famous" banana pudding.  I've decided to lower my calorie intake from 1400/day to 1200/day for the week of Thanksgiving.  On Thanksgiving day I'm going to try to eat somewhere around my maintenance calories (a little under 2000).  As I said before, I don't really consider what I'm doing a diet as much as it is a lifestyle change, but I'm dreading the conversation that will surely transpire when I don't load my plate to maximum capacity:
"That's all you're eating?"
"Yeah."
"It's Thanksgiving!  Ya gotta get more than that!"
"(Awkwardly) I'm trying to watch what I eat."
"Ohhh, that's good!!"  Followed by the uncomfortable feeling I'll get because I'll think everyone is thinking, "Oh, the big girl is trying to lose weight."
Now, I'm sure (or I hope...) that's not what the aunts and uncles and cousins I only see once a year will actually be thinking, but I'm pretty sure I'll feel that way.  If you've never been severely overweight, you probably don't know the feeling I'm talking about.  It's almost like admitting you did something wrong and being embarrassed about it.  Which, it sort of is that.  I was eating wrong for years and years, and now I'm embarrassed about what I've done to my body.  I'm not ashamed to tell my immediate family and close friends about my weight loss goals; they've all been so unbelievably supportive.  They've cooked meals they know I can eat, counted the calories for me, asked me if I wanted to go to a specific restaurant that they knew had healthy choices, and so much more.  Most of the family members I see on Thanksgiving are pretty uppity and judgmental.  On the bright side, knowing they know I'm trying to lose weight and they more than likely suspect I will not succeed will be a pretty big motivator for me to keep going.
Speaking of motivation, my boss is one of the people aware of my goals, and he's been extremely supportive.  We've always been close.  I knew him before I started working here, and we're pretty close in age.  Every time I see or talk to him, he says, "So how many pounds have you lost now?"  Knowing he's going to ask gets me very excited to continue to lose weight.  I weighed myself on Sunday and (drum roll, please) I'm now at 247 pounds even.  I've lost 13 pounds in 30 days, and that's really motivation enough to keep going.  That's more than the 2.2 pounds per week goal I set for myself, but I've also been incorporating more walking into my plan.  I only work 3 days a week, but on those days I work 13 hours per day.  It's really hard to exercise on those days, and I don't get all that much exercise at work, so I really try to kick it up on the days I'm off.  Luckily I have a 15-year-old sister who really enjoys exercise, and she's been my walking buddy on those days.  So I get my exercise, and as an added bonus, I get to spend time with the best little sister in the land.  It's easier to eat right on the days I work.  There isn't a whole lot around my office, so lunch is at pretty much the same place every day.  Since I drive an hour and 10 minutes to work, I have a quick breakfast, and I usually make a quick dinner after my hour and 10 minute drive home.  The meals I eat on the days I work go something like this:

Breakfast
Thomas Better Start High Fiber English Muffin (Plain) - 100 calories per 52g serving
Banana - Calories vary depending on size (get a digital food scale! You'll love it!); mine are usually somewhere between 100 and 130 calories
Coffee with Splenda and half & half (usually around 70 calories...it depends how much half & half I use of course)

Lunch
6-inch Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki Sub on Flatbread from Subway (with lettuce, green peppers, onions, and sweet onion sauce {no cheese}) & Subway prepackaged apples - 380 calories for the sub, 35 calories for the apples

Dinner varies almost every single night.  I usually have some kind of sandwich on those Pepperidge Farm Deli Flats (100 calories per roll).  I LOVE them.  Sometimes I even put them in the George Foreman with some chicken breast or turkey on them so they're more like a panini.  So good.

I love love love the Skinny Cow ice cream bars.  They're 100 calories per bar, and they taste like something I'm "not supposed" to have.  Perfect. 

Anyway, like I said, I'm a little worried about Thanksgiving.  I feel like "cheating" won't be such a big deal next year, but here in the beginning, I'm a little worried about it.  I don't want to feel like I'm missing out on anything.  I guess I'll just do what I normally do when I get a craving...have what I like in a small portion.

I'll update on Friday and let you know how bad (or good?) I was.  Happeh Tanksgibbum!

Delicious Smoothie Recipe

So, I'm feeling super hyper (after my delicious mixed-berry smoothie breakfast).


Ingredients:
1 and 1/2 cups of Dannon Light 'n Fit Fat-Free Vanilla Yogurt (170 Calories)
4.2 oz of fresh strawberries (38 calories)
1.1 oz of fresh blueberries (18 calories)
1.3 oz of fresh raspberries (19 calories)
1/2 cup of ice


I put the yogurt in the blender first and then add the fruit and then the ice.  I blend until smooth and periodically stop to mix the contents until I'm sure everything is blended (since I use a very small blender).


Total Calories = 245


You may want to add a little of your preferred sweetener to the mix before blending.  It's a very tart mixture as is, but that's the way I like it.  I looooove my blender...I just pop it right off the base, put on the lid (which has a tab you can pull back so you can drink out of it easily), and I just use my blender as the serving cup.  This smoothie is so filling and delicious.  I needed something really filling for breakfast since I'm going to have a light lunch because I'm sure I'll be going out to dinner tonight with my best friend and her fiancé.  I'm about to get ready to head to Charlotte because I'M GOING TO SEE HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 1 at midnight.  I.cannot.wait.  I'm a die-hard HP fan through and through.  

My best friend's house is over an hour away, and I can't wait to see her.  This will be my first time seeing her as a newly engaged woman!  Which reminds me...as always, I'm running late! :)

Why Are Some People Just So Naturally Discouraging?

For convenience, I'm just going to copy/paste an online conversation I had with a very good friend yesterday.  Please forgive my grammar; we don't really pay much attention to it when we chat online:

Me: this other (company I work for) employee just came in and brought some candy
Me: (My coworker) said to have some, and I said I couldn't
Me: and she straight tried to make me eat some candy! she was like "fat is in", and I said "ok, well, regardless, I don't want to die an early death."
Me: i hate that people think overweight people only want to lose weight to look better.  i mean, yeah, sure, that's part of it.  but my end game is to stay alive, see.
Friend: i dont know why some people are so naturally discouraging

And my friend is right.  When she said that, I realized just how many people have already said discouraging things, and I've only been implementing this life-style change and these goals for 23 days!  I spend a lot of time reading other weight loss blogs and tips, and so many other people have listed "discouraging friends and family members" as a reason they never stuck with their weight loss goals before.  You would be surprised how many times, in just a little over 3 weeks, I've heard things like:  "Eating this isn't going to kill you", "Being bad for one day won't hurt", "This is healthy!".  To which I respond:  "Yes, in fact, eating that very well may kill me in the long run", "Being bad for one day in the beginning will completely throw me off track", and usually, "That's not as healthy as you think it is..."  Some people think because they're eating vegetables, they're being healthy.  Putting squash and zucchini in a vat of oil pretty much counteracts the healthy part and drains most of the nutritional value.  And throwing vegetables on top of a 1/2 pound cheeseburger and calling it healthy...well, wishful thinking. 

Basically, my BMR (BMR definition and calculator can be found here) is approximately 1970 calories per day.  I have a pretty sedentary lifestyle for the most part.  I began eating a maximum of 1500 calories per day.  Over the past couple of weeks, I have lowered that to 1400 calories per day.  I plan to stay at this maximum for a while.  So even if something is technically considered healthy, I have to plan my meals and know the caloric values of absolutely everything I eat.  I weigh my food (a digital kitchen scale is a must-have for me!); I generally only eat things I make at home.  If I am going out with a friend, I need to know where we're going beforehand so I can look at the nutrition values online (if a restaurant doesn't list their nutrition facts, I'm definitely not eating there).  I then over-estimate the calories (by about 100 or so) and then leave a little bit on my plate.  Since the person who's making my food probably isn't sitting back there measuring out exactly 1 teaspoon of mayo for my chicken wrap, I can be pretty sure the nutrition facts I find online aren't 100% accurate.  I feel much better about over-estimating the caloric content than I do about under-estimating.

But anyway, back to my original topic...I don't really think most friends and family members intend to be discouraging.  In fact, sometimes it's just the opposite:  They want me to know if I DO mess up, it isn't the absolute end of the world.   Of course there are the select few who probably do, on some level at least, want to be discouraging because perhaps they have failed with weight loss in the past and seeing someone else succeed would invoke jealousy of some sort.  Hopefully those aren't the kinds of people I have around in my life, but I'm sure it happens.  All I know is if I was the only person left on earth, I would still be eating this way and have the same goals because I want to lose weight for ME, not for anyone else.  Well, actually, let's be real...if I was the only person on earth, I would weigh 900 pounds as soon as I learned how to use the Bojangles fryers because who cares about an early death when you're the only person alive?  But hopefully you sort of get my point.

On the flip-side, even though none of my friends really know about this blog yet (well, I'm actually probably the only person on the planet that knows about this blog), I do want to say thank you to the ones who have been supportive.  The friend I had the above conversation with has been my biggest supporter, and she has no idea what it's like to be overweight.  Usually the people who have no idea are the ones that say things like, "Why don't you just exercise?"  "Why don't you just eat less?"  Please.  You have no idea what it's like.  Or...a former boyfriend once said to me, "Have you ever considered losing weight?  You're so beautiful...I just can't imagine how beautiful you'd be if you did."  Why, no...no, I have NEVER considered losing weight (sarcasm)...ARE YOU FOR REAL? 

Anyway, here's a shout out to all of the people who know how important this is to me (and other people on the same journey as myself), all of the people who have been encouraging, and all of the people who have succeeded in their weight loss goals!  Heartyew.

102 Pounds to Go

So here I sit:  female, 24-years-old, 5'4" and 251 pounds.  3 weeks ago, something in me "clicked".  I've been overweight since the age of 8, and I've been obese since I was 16.  Obese sounds like such a dirty word.  I'll never forget something that happened when I was in 5th grade:  My class's health/P.E. teacher gave us the word 'obese' as a vocabulary word.  On Fridays, she would call on students to come write the definitions of our vocabulary words on the blackboard.  Beside the word obese, one of my (mean-spirited) male classmates wrote my name as the definition and then made a joke about how the word obese sounds like 'a beast'.  So Beast became my nickname...along with Biscuit, Bisquick, and probably a million other names.  As I got older, I became more "socially acceptable" due to the fact that I have a pretty kickin' personality (or so I like to think) and higher self-esteem than most girls my size, I'd guess.  Losing weight was put on the back burner because I've pretty much always been a happy girl despite the fact that I put on my size 20/22 (and sometimes even 24) pants every day and can't shop in some of the stores my friends shop in.  

In late October, my job (in sales) took me to the North Carolina State Fair to man our company's booth with other employees from different areas of the state.  One man I had the pleasure of working beside was using a calorie-counting application on his smartphone.  At the time I didn't really pay much attention. A few days later while I was playing with my phone, the application he was using crossed my mind, and I decided to download it.  For a few days, I used the application to input all of the food I was eating without changing my eating habits whatsoever.  I was consistently eating somewhere between 3000 and 4000 calories a day!  I never would have thought it.  I was always under the impression that I "ate just as much (or little) as my thin friends and just had a slow metabolism".  Foods I thought were on the healthy side were actually slam packed with calories.  Then came the moment of truth:  Weighing myself.  I purchased a scale (I had not even owned a scale in years!  Can you say "denial"?!), stood in front of it for a few minutes knowing I weighed around 240 pounds, and finally mentally prepared myself to get on and see that number.  I wished with all my might that my scale would not say 240 pounds, that I had somehow lost weight without changing my eating habits at all.  Well, my wish was granted but I probably should have been more specific and wished that it would say LESS THAN 240 pounds :)  260 pounds stared back at me.  Suddenly several things came rushing into my mind at once:  My grandpa's heart problems, the obesity epidemic that runs rampant through both sides of my family, and my future (or lack thereof). That was 21 days ago.  

I used the application on my phone to set a goal weight (after putting in my current information) and a goal date to reach that weight.  Based on my BMR, current weight, and activity level, the application recommended I eat around 1464 calories a day.  I adjusted it to 1400 (which estimated me losing about 2.2 pounds per week) and began my journey.  Everyone wants weight loss to be instant.  I've spent the last 16 years being fat; I don't mind spending 1-2 years getting down to my goal weight and then the rest of my life maintaining it.  By changing my portions, eating a healthy breakfast (I NEVER ate breakfast before), and staying at/under 1400 calories per day, I've lost 9 pounds in 21 days.  Some people lose faster, some slower, but so far I'm very very satisfied with my results.  I don't feel hungry between meals, I've incorporated some easy exercise (walking the dog, doing some exercises with 5lb hand weights, stretching) and tweaked my meals (replaced flavored coffee creamer with half-and-half, weighing my food with a digital food scale, buying healthier snack options like fruit, veggies, wheat crackers).  I'm in this for the long haul, so everything I'm doing is something I can live with for the rest of my life.

I'm so excited to have this blog as a resource, even if I'm the only person who ever reads it.  I know one day I will look back at this and be overwhelmingly proud of my accomplishments.  If I'm this proud at 9lbs lost, I really cannot imagine what I will feel like when I lose 102 more.  Anyone who happens to come across this that has advice or motivational words, please feel free to comment.  If you read this entire thing, thank you for your time.  I will post more later (my meals, screen shots of the application I'm using to assist me, etc).  

Have a blessed day!