Diary of a Fat Girl - Let's Get Physical

I think I’ve found the solution to weight loss for me. NO NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS! These past few weeks, I’ve really been kicking butt losing weight. Normally about this time, I’m depressed because I’m nowhere near hitting my resolutions. And it’s a relief not to feel the extra pressure from those failing resolutions. So that’s a small suggestion I give you for next year. If it worked for me, maybe it’ll work for you.

So let’s talk some numbers here. I’m down 18.2 lbs. in 10 weeks. (For those math challenged that’s 1.82 lbs. /week average.) Not too shabby!!!! So how am I reaching this you might ask? Basically, myfitnesspal.com. That’s it. I’m tracking my calories and striving to stay under my caloric goals for each day. And if I go over, I go over. Either way, I’m tracking and keeping an eye on what I’m eating. You’d be amazed what you’ll turn down once you realize how much calories/fat is in something. Knowledge is power folks.

But I’m not completely lethargic. I do have a part-time job that requires me to either roller skate or serve food for several hours. I bought a heart rate monitor to wear while and I usually average burning about 1,800 calories each time I work. So that has definitely helped too.

I’ve also had a weight loss competition going on at work to get me motivated in the first place. I’m a very visual person, so when I saw my name on the company bulletin board, I made it a goal to see me hitting my goals. Not only do I see this, but others will too. It was nice getting congrats throughout the 12 week challenge. And I’m happy to announce that I came in 2nd place. (And I’m $95 richer, yahoo!)

So now, what? Well, I’m glad to see that my company is doing another competition starting April 18th. Despite being on a roll, I still don’t think I’m a fully reformed from my old eating habits. So the extra motivation is great to keep me eating healthy. I know for a fact that I still stress eat. When Desmond was sick last month, it was almost pretty much a free for all. But I didn’t let that week and a half dictate the rest of my year. I stopped the naughty behavior and moved on. And as a dear friend pointed out; I didn’t stress eat completely like I would have. I may have gained two pounds but had I been the old/old Michelle, that would have been ten instead. So not all is fail.

Another thing I have going for me….DIRTY GIRL! On June 30th, me and my teammates are running the Dirty Girl 5k. So, this is actually getting me pumped up to exercise. So I have introduced myself to Jillian. I borrowed a friend’s copy of 30 Day Shred and I’m fitting this into a night routine. I gotta say, it’s a butt kicker thus far. I like that it’s only a 20 minute workout. It’s long enough that I feel the pain the next day but short enough that I don’t really have an excuse not to do the video. Do I really want to work out at 8:30 when Desmond is in bed? No not really. But what would I be doing otherwise…watching TV or reading a book. So that’s my new routine for now.

So in a nutshell, things have just lined up for me. I’m in the zone mentally and since I’m already on the ball, I’m gonna keep it rolling. I’m hoping to get to my goal weight of 190 by the time of Dirty Girl; keep your fingers crossed for me.

And since I had so much fun taking silly photos at lunch…here are the photos that didn’t make top shot..

Diary of a Fat Girl - MyFitnessPal

AHHHHHH…take a whiff of the fresh air that a new year brings. Why is it we wait until the beginning of a new year to find that motivation to lose weight? Ok, not all of us wait. But if you are like me, even when I start a new diet in the middle of the year, I’ll wait till Monday. Like Monday is the new fresh start. Why is that?

Regardless of the psychology behind our decisions, I’ve finally gotten back on the ball. It could have been the start of the New Year or perhaps it was the weight loss competition at work that I entered but either way, it resulted in me making many dietary changes. (I’m just glad I found it somewhere.)

I have successfully started counting my calories on myfitnesspal.com. I just LOVE this site. For me, it has just the right amount of motivators to keep me interested. So what are those? First, logging in my calories is easy from my PC or Kindle, so basically anywhere that I go I can log in my food diary. Their database of foods is insane and if for some reason you can’t find a food, you can enter it. It has a recipe function where you can create your own meals and divide it into countable portions. You can save anything you eat under specific meal names making it very fast to track food you eat often. Now, to the part that really tickles my pickle. At the end of each day when I hit “Submit your food entry for the day” it’ll give me a message like “At this pace you’ll be 209 in 5 weeks.” It shows me a number that I want in amount of time that seems so near. It’s a daily motivator to keep it up. Now, for the really geeky part of me….it has graphs. There’s nothing I like more than seeing a little line graph chart showing my weight loss plummeting down or a bar graph showing the ups and downs of my calorie intakes. I’m not kidding. I love charts of all shapes and sizes. Weird? The last thing I love; after entering my weight and goals it tells me what my caloric intake should be to reach those goals. So, incase your curious, I put in that I’d like to lose 2 lbs per week and at my current weight it estimated 1380 calories per day. So that’s what I’m doing. Time will tell how accurate this thing will be.

So a mini wrap up of my first week counting calories on myfitnesspal…I lost 6.4 pounds! That’s huge! I think my best weight watchers week was 5.9 the first week. I don’t expect to see this kind of drop each week, but it sure doesn’t hurt to see it. And if any of you are on myfitnesspal, friend me, I’m under havenroo. I’d love to see your food diary and get meal ideas for the future. And with the positive attitude I’ve got going now and the desire I have to find new and interesting foods, I expect their to be some recipe blogs to come.

Happy Eating!

P.S. As a couponer I forgot another big part…myfitnesspal is $ Free.99!