Day 16 - One Tenth

Diet tip of the day: If you feel frustrated with a diet, change it up. If you try to force yourself to eat something day in and day out, you're more likely to break your diet completely than if you give yourself a little leniency from time to time. Allow yourself to have that really fatty thing you want, but have it as a side, not the main event of your meal. Plus, 1 cup of lettuce is only 10 calories, and you'll end up more satisfied with a plate full of salad than the tiny sliver of 5 cheese lasagna you'd get for the same amount of calories.

I am going through the moment I dreaded: the time that I realize I cannot and will not eat cereal for 14 of my 21 meals a week. It's funny this should happen exactly 2 weeks after we started the diet, and that they recommend you only do it for 2 weeks. Do you think they planned it that way? "Let's see how long we can get people to eat our cereal for the majority of their meals and then build a diet around it!" Well, I am certainly not complaining. My looser fitting jeans are a testament to how well the program works.

But I know how frustrating diets can be, especially when they are strict or monotonous. I think I was a senior in high school when my family tried Nutrisystem. My mom, my dad, and I would get our huge box of food for the month or two months or whatever it was, and every day we would pick out our meals from those boxes. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert/snack. This wouldn't have been a problem if they hadn't kept on running out of my favorites. I'd go to my box and dig for macaroni and cheese. (You saw my last post. It's my weakness.) And what did I find? Let's see... stir fry, stir fry, stir fry, dehydrated burger, dehydrated burger, rubbery chicken, rubbery chicken, stir fry, stir fry, black bean thing that explodes in the microwave every single time, stir fry. By the way, I hate peppers, so stir fry is my enemy.

At the time, I was also taking a medication for my PCOS that causes a lot of nausea. One night, I sat down in front of my box, trying to muster the strength to pick something, and I remember reaching for things, then pulling my arm back, knowing I couldn't do it. I felt absolutely sick to my stomach to even think about eating one of those meals for dinner. I was gaining weight from all the sodium in those prepackaged meals, and I was worse off than where I started. I just started crying right there on the living room floor.

When you feel defeated by a diet, it's the worst feeling. You wonder why you're torturing yourself and not getting results. It breaks you down psychologically when you can't achieve even the smallest of goals. I know what it's like, which is why this time I am refusing to let my confidence by shaken or to be deterred from my weightloss path.

And now for the weigh in. I don't know if I said this in an earlier post, but I was definitely thinking that I didn't lose any weight this week. So, I admit it, I prayed when I stepped on the scale today. Even after eating my big meal of the day (a salad w/ 1/2 slice of turkey, 6 whole wheat crackers, 1 Tbs thous. island dressing, and an apple), I lost weight.

My current weight: 271.6 lbs
Weight lost this week: 2.6 lbs
Weight loss total: 10.4 lbs
Pounds to lose: 96.6 lbs

As one of my roommates pointed out, I'm about one tenth of the way to my goal. I'm really pleased with my weight loss this week. I noticed today that I wasn't hungry when my break came around at work (I actually forgot about it and ended up having to take it 30 min before my shift was up!) and I didn't feel sore or tired after work at all.

My boyfriend and I are going to go for a walk tonight, either once around the block and eat cereal for dinner or a long walk to the center of campus to eat something healthy there.

For my exercise tip, I'm throwing you guys a question. My stomach is a problem area. I have a big ol' saggy belly and a big ol' droopy gut. How do I make sure I target my upper and lower abs? What is your best or favorite ab workout? How do you keep you prevent a tubby tummy?

Day 15 - Mongolian and Macaroni

Diet tip of the day: When you want to go out for dinner, go somewhere where you can build your own meal. I'm not talking about an all-you-can-eat buffet, but instead a Mongolian BBQ style place. Flattop Grill and BD's Mongolian are two great places to go. They have low-calorie sauces, and you choose exactly what you put on your plate. You can have chicken or steak, shrimp or calamari, even tofu, then load up on veggies. Most of these places have low calorie sauce options (like my favorite at BD's, Mongolian Ginger) and even some options for people with food allergies. Just try to remember what you put in your bowl.

Can you guess where I went for lunch yesterday? BD's Mongolian! I had a 15% off coupon from my work, so my boyfriend and I went to enjoy a healthy and filling meal. That was the first time I've had red meat since I started this diet, which I don't think is technically cheating, but I got a little over exited about the NY Strip. I like to make a sauce using their Mongolian Ginger, Lemon, and Sweet Orange Peel sauces and add a little ginger and cayenne pepper from their spice selection. I am almost positive those other two sauces aren't low calorie, so I'm gonna have to work off those calories this week.

I also broke my diet last night, which I am not proud of. It was homemade macaroni and cheese night at my boyfriend's house. Can you blame me? Well, yes, you can. That's why I'm telling you... so I'll actually do the exercise to work it off. I didn't have a whole plateful. I actually filled up my plate with salad and light Thousand Island dressing. But I'm sure the little bit of Mac n Cheese I ate will have me on the treadmill or exercise bike when I step on the scale tomorrow.

That's my main thought today. I don't think I've lost anything this week. I haven't been as strict with my diet this week as I was the first week. I don't expect to lose 8 pounds every week. I know I have to be realistic and know that any diet change would cause me to lose the weight I did last week. My parents remind me about the whole water weight concept, and that I might just fall into a rut right away again. So this exercise plan needs to kick into high gear sooner rather than later.

I was looking at the poll about cheating on your diet. I voted that I cheat on my diet with carbs. Why am I surprised that I gave in to the temptation to eat pasta? :)

I'm so glad that more people are becoming followers. Keep on spreading the word! And thanks so much for commenting. I took the advice of one of my followers and made a Facebook group with the same title as the blog so you can invite your friends to check out the blog.

Finally, an exercise tip. If you don't want to walk around the block (whether it's because of a bad neighborhood or unfriendly neighbors), try walking up and down your stairs. When you go upstairs, walk back down and up again. You don't need to buy a Stairmaster to master the stairs in your house.

Day 13 - Planning Ahead

Diet tip of the day: If you need or even just want to go out to eat, look online before you go to see what your healthy options are. A salad can be worse than a burger if it has bacon, cheese, tortilla chip crumbles, and loads of dressing. You might have more options than you think.

Yesterday, I went to dinner at Chipotle with a good friend. I ordered a vegetarian burrito bowl with very little toppings. That's basically black beans with cilantro lime rice and pico de gallo, which I know I could make at home quite easily, but it was nice to go on a walk to enjoy the weather and catch up with someone I haven't seen in a while. I burned the extra calories on the walk there, so I don't feel guilty about it.
I looked up the information on my Restaurant Nutrition app on my iPod touch. They have information for fast food places as well as nicer sit-down restaurants, and it helps to know ahead of time how much exercise to plan on doing later in the day. I also recommend picking out a few things you can have rather than setting your heart on one thing. If it's only offered at lunch time or during a particular season, you're out of luck.

I ended up with 1,290 calories yesterday, but I burned 200 calories walking and doing some stretching exercises. I think I'm going to stop trying to compensate for my food choices with exercise and start eating like I'm not exercising so that my exercise pushes my weight loss into high gear. Now that it's nice out, I should have a much easier time going outside and getting active.

Tonight, I am eating dinner with my boyfriend's family. They'll be getting back from the soccer tournament around dinner time, so I'm not sure if we're going out to eat or having the usually Sunday night roast. Either way, I'll have to be very aware of everything I'm putting on my plate.

I'm hoping more people start to follow me on my journey. I'm a little disappointed that I don't have more feedback about it. I don't expect 10 comments a day and an extreme amount of followers, but I thought I would have a little more support by now. If you have a comment, please leave it. I would really appreciate feedback in any capacity.

As for exercise, when you're doing the dishes or making dinner, do some calf raises. It's as simple as going up on your toes 5-10 times in a row, taking a 30 second break, and doing a few more repetitions. If you want, you can alternate with a 10 second squat. (If you're just starting out, use the counter for balance.)
Good luck, and remember to give me your feedback.

The Journey Begins

Well this is it. This is the time when I realize just what I've done to myself. Let me start by explaining just what brings me to this point in my life.

I have struggled with weight my whole life. As a friend of mine jokes, "I've been on a diet since grade school." For me, it started on the last day of 4th grade. I told my parents we needed to diet that summer because I was sick of being made fun of. That next Saturday, we started Weight Watchers. I weighed in as a 144-pound 10 year-old and spent the next two years losing over 20 pounds, reaching my goal weight of 120 pounds just before starting 7th grade, having grown about 5 inches. I felt and looked healthy, but when I returned to school in Fall, the boys still teased me. They called me "Man Cow" and moo'd at me whenever I entered a room. I was devastated, and gained back every last pound by the time I went to high school.

This is where my weight gain kicked into high gear. By my sophomore year, I was up to 160 pounds, despite being an active member of my high school show choir. My junior year I hit 180 pounds, and was soon diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, a reproductive disorder that can either cause or be caused by obesity. My senior year, I researched PCOS to find that there are serious reproductive and health consequences involved with this disease, including a high risk of diabetes. People with PCOS also have a harder time losing weight. A specialist I saw put it this way: "A person with PCOS can eat half the amount of food as a normal person and not lose a pound." I lost control of my weight at that point, reaching 215 pounds by graduation. My freshman year of college I reached 250 pounds, and promised myself to take my dieting seriously over the summer. Unfortunately, my boyfriend tore his ACL and needed to have surgery, putting him out of commission for the whole summer and making it a chore just to get him outside. My summer was spent indoors, either working or watching movies with him. Not only did I not lose any weight, I kept gaining steadily, and on April 5th, 2010 during my sophomore year of college, I reached my highest weight, just over 280 pounds.

Here is what changed everything. I went home for Easter the weekend before, and my sister suggested that I try the Special K diet, saying that she had lost 6 pounds in one week. I needed a jump start, and I needed something so structured that I couldn't cheat. I talked to my boyfriend, who agreed we should start it as soon as we could go grocery shopping. One week into the diet, I am down 8 pounds, currently at 274 pounds. We plan on continuing with the Special K plan for a month (twice the recommended 2 weeks) or until we run out of all the cereal we bought at the beginning.

Once classes are over, we are going to continue on a more relaxed form of the diet, substituting cereal for dinner a few times a week instead of every day. We will also add regular exercise into the mix.

My goal is to lose over 100 pounds. My ideal weight is 175 pounds, and I hope to meet that goal within a year and a half. This goal is lofty, but I need to aim high to push myself.

I will be posting my weight 1 to 2 times a week, because if I learned anything from Weight Watchers, it's that you will drive yourself crazy if you're on the scale every two hours. I will also post my daily food diary with nutritional information provided by the Lose It! app for iPod Touch.

Please leave comments, join my diet plan, suggest exercises or recipes, and join my support system. I am dedicated to kicking this over-eating habit and changing my life around.