A lot of people have been asking me for recipes, and asking
what I have been doing other than actual exercise. I figure the easiest way to
address everyone at the same time, and to add to my blog in the meantime would
be to ….. of course, blog about it! Lol….
Let’s start from the beginning….
Obviously, a huge part of the reason I gained so much weight
in the first place, was poor eating habits. You don’t just gain a bunch of
weight over night if you’re eating well. I told myself I was eating good, but
upon realistic and close inspection of what exactly it was I was consuming, it
was clear I was so very wrong.
·
FRUITS AND VEGGIES! At first, I started by
implementing a lot of fruits and veggies that I liked into my diet, wherever
possible. I have always loved them
anyways! I made the decision to use spinach instead of lettuce, and I’ve always
used fresh, raw veggies and fruit wherever possible. We make sure to have fresh
veggies at most meals, and to have fruit for snacks. [ TIP:: Boiling veggies
depletes them of their vitamins!! If you do this, save the water you boiled
them in, and pour it into a pitcher and chill in the fridge, and drink it as
vitamin water! ]
·
WHOLE GRAINS! I only use whole grain breads,
pastas, cereals, crackers, etc, and
brown rice instead of white. I don’t eat anything that’s ‘white’ other than occasional
potatoes, really. The whole grain alternatives REALLY don’t taste bad, as many
people presume! In fact, I can whole heartedly say I prefer the taste to their ‘white’
counterparts. Give it a try! Granola bars are also a healthy, and delicious snack!
And if you’re craving chocolate, just a tablespoon of Nutella on a Nature
Valley Crunchy granola bar totally does the trick for me!
·
EDUCATION! Working where I do has really been
helpful. My nutritionist was shocked that working in a kitchen setting wasn’t
tempting me to eat. The fact is, my job is to make healthy, good-looking and good-tasting
foods in the correct portion sizes. If
anything, working where I do has inspired me further, and been a huge help. I
think a huge problem for many people, is even if you THINK you know what a
correct portion size is, chances are you are wrong. My advice is, literally measure
your portion sizes out for a while! After some time of doing this, you will get
the jist of it and you won’t need to physically measure quite as often. A serving of juice for example, is a super
small glass….. Four ounces. Exactly half
of a cup. When my kids were young and first began drinking juice, I would give
them 2 ounces, and fill the rest of their cup with water so they would think
they had a lot even though they really didn’t. They still have a hard time
drinking juice if it isn’t cut with water, because juice is SO very sugary.
·
BALANCE! Also,
it is important to do your research and make sure you are eating
balanced meals. I don’t eat anything that is pre-prepared. Not even frozen
pizzas. I make my own pizzas at home, and they taste SO much better than the
frozen version. We do eat out occasionally, but VERY occasionally. And when we
do, it is more often than not Subway. When it’s not Subway, I ask for no mayo,
sauces, etc.. I eat small portions, and I make sure I look up and track those
calories! Incorporate fruits and veggies into EVERY meal!
·
NO BUTTER! I had been using coconut oil on
everything, because I saw all over pinterest and elsewhere how it’s so super
good for you in so many ways…. But my nutritionist advised against it. He said
there is no solid proof that it is THAT good for you and years ago it was
thought to be very bad for you. Plus, one tablespoon is about 120 calories. [
He DID inform me at our last meeting though, that consuming coconut oil has in
fact shown in studies to improve alzheimers in the elderly! ] Upon cutting that
out of my diet alone, and better calorie tracking, I have lost 6 pounds in 2
weeks in comparison to the 5/6 a month I typically lost through this whole
process. Obviously, no butter! If anything, use zero calorie cooking spray when
you’re cooking, and I DO use some coconut oil instead of butter where
necessary. But not much. I rarely find a need for butter in my life.
·
WATER! Drink TONS of water!! I have a few of
those plastic reusable straw-cups…..and I drink as many of those a day as I
can. I constantly keep it filled with ice water, and often I squirt some lemon
juice in it. Lemon juice is said to speed up your metabolism, among a bountiful
amount of other health benefits! I don’t
drink anything other than water, green tea, and coffee. This ensures that I
stay hydrated, and keep my metabolism and energy up so I have the energy and
hydration necessary to get in my work outs! Drinking sugary drinks such as
juice and soda has zero nutritional value for you! Despite common
misconceptions, juice isn’t close to HALF as good for you as the real deal,
fresh fruit! Even ‘real fruit juice’ is often not ONLY fruit juice. You’re
better off eating an apple. WAY less calories anyways!
·
GREEN TEA!! Green tea is a great detoxifier, and
removes things you don’t want from your body. I aim for drinking 4 cups a day, and the easy
way to do it is to drink it chilled, on ice. I fill up my teapot and put it on
the stove, and when it’s steaming hot, I remove it from the heat and put about
4 green tea bags in it and let it seep. Then I fill a pitcher with ice, and
after about 5 or so minutes [ sometimes I leave it about 10 minutes.. lol] I
pour the hot tea over the ice. Sometimes I’ll mix a squirt of local honey in
it, and some lemon. Gives it JUST a bit of flavor. But more often than not I
drink it plain.
[Sidenote: Local honey is said to be very
very good for you…I’ve heard that if you consume honey harvested in YOUR local
area, it prevents and fends off colds and allergies… but it has to be your
local area, where you live! Worth a try!]
Also, I know a lot of people ‘ don’t like tea’
. I never really drank tea before, but I
also heard that it speeds up your metabolism so I decided why not? It has about
half the caffeine that coffee does. So if you have a cup of green tea [ 8
ounces] that is about the same amount of caffeine as ½ cup [ 4 ounces] of
coffee. It gives you a different kind of energy rush than coffee does, which I like,
too. Coffee can sometimes make me jittery and scatter-brained, but green tea
makes me feel mellow, yet energetic. Never jittery. You’ll acquire the taste
for liking it after a while!
·
DRINK COFFEE! Drinking coffee has been one of my
‘secret’ weapons. In the beginning, I drank
a TON of coffee… I needed it for energy, especially once I started working out.
For a while, I opted for green tea INSTEAD of coffee, because coffee can make
me a little crazy. But sometimes, tea just doesn’t compare to a piping hot cut
of coffee in the morning! And the extra caffeine is sometimes necessary! Of
course, make sure you don’t put too much cream or sugar. That can pack in
HUNDREDS of calories into your day.
·
[TIP:
Drinking coffee before a workout can help your heart rate get, and stay in ,
the range it is supposed to be in to get the maximum amount of calorie burning
out of your work out! NOT all workouts, and heart rates, are created equal! Neither
are all people or heart rates, so do your research. See my previous blog about
target heart rate zones, or check out
livestrong.comfor more information! I urge you to browse around that website, there is a LOT of information on the site that is very useful.]
·
TRACK THOSE CALORIES!!!! I’ll be honest. Through
the first many months of this whole process, I didn’t ‘track’ my calories per
se’. I used my common sense by eating what I knew was healthy food, and making
sure I didn’t eat too much. Just doing that, eating really healthy, made me feel
hungry less often, so I was less prone to snacking. It of course really helps
if you’re in a household where everyone is on board to eating well. I refuse to
buy ‘bad’ foods, except when I have company over.. which typically ends up
being my cheat day. Lol
·
GET HELP! My nutritionist really pushed me to
physically track my calories. He had me write down what I was eating for 2
weeks, then he inspected it. I’ll admit, when I first started tracking I
realized that some days I was eating 1800-2000 calories where I would have
thought I was eating closer to 1500… tracking my calories really helped me
educate myself on where those hidden calories were hiding. Coffee creamer,
sugar, coconut oil, etc. Even when using coconut oil to fry your eggs, you need
to count the calories of the coconut oil… I hadn’t been doing that.
He said that what I was eating looked
really well, but that if I could squeeze down to 1500 calories everything would
happen much faster… and he was SO right. As I’ve stated a few times now, I lost
6 pounds in 2.5 weeks, whereas I was typically losing 5/6 a month.
·
WEBSITES! There is a GREAT website, which also
super conveniently also has an APP for your smart phone, called ‘ My Fitness
Pal.com’. The website
[CLICK HERE TO OPEN IT IN A NEW WINDOW] includes tons of different foods, which you can look up
the calories for. Also, the fantastic thing about the app, is it has a barcode
scanner on it.. so you can just scan the barcode of what ever it is you’re
eating, and the calories per serving size and other nutritional info will pop
right up for you, and you can enter it into your daily calorie intake that way.
So convenient! It has been such a life saver! Ironically, I got my ‘smarter
phone’ about 3 weeks ago, and it has definitely proven to be working! However,
please remember to take everything you read on the internet with a grain of
salt!
J Confer
with your nutritionist to confirm what you are reading!
·
KEEP IT SIMPLE! I don’t like to eat casseroles,
etc that make it hard to track exactly what they contain. Not to mention, that
you KNOW contain stuff like mayo, a lot of cheese, or white pasta. I avoid those
foods as much as possible. I eat whole grains, fruit, veggies, boneless/
skinless chicken breasts, etc that are easy to track and that are most healthy.
·
DO NOT DEPRIVE YOURSELF! There was one point in
time in the past months when I wasn’t eating ‘ enough’. I gained a few pounds
back and was really upset about it, but I believe my body went into starvation
mode and panicked. If your body isn’t getting enough calories to survive, when
you do eat, it will hoard anything that
you do eat and pack it on as fat so that you can sustain for a long period of
time, as if you were starving. Obviously, not good! On the flip side of
starving, lol.. it is also important to endulge a bit. I can honestly say I
haven’t felt deprived, or like I wasn’t getting what I wanted at all in the
past months. I have allowed myself small portions of dessert on occasion,
[occasion being maybe 2 times a week], I have allowed myself fast food, [ taco
bell maybe once a month], etc. I just make sure I track those calories! It
really does make a difference. But of course, do not let yourself be over
indulgent. Just a little!!!!! A cheat day a week is nice to have, but many
times my cheat day will come around and I don’t even want to cheat! One the
weight starts falling off you won’t like feeling like you’re setting yourself
back again. Like they say, “ Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels!” . But it’s
totally fine to do, and actually especially in the beginning, it is essential
to not make yourself feel like you have to give up ALL of your favorite things
in order to be successful… that is not the case!! Just be smart about it.
·
FIND YOUR MOTIVATION! Scour the internet
for success stories of people who have lost a
ton of weight. One of my motivators was Marilyn Ziebell, a local girl from Iron River who I know through a mutual friend. . she blogged about her weight loss journey, in which she lost over 100 pounds! Does it get any more inspirational than that?? Click
HERE to browse her blog!
Find and take to heart motivational phrases. Think of the bigger
picture. Evaluate your life, and where you’re at. Think of all of the things
you want to do, but aren’t confident enough or capable enough of doing. Think
of people who are disabled and would give ANYTHING to have your body, which is
perfectly capable of being healthy and strong. Think of your family; your
children, your significant other. Think of all of the things you can do
together, and all of the places you can go together, and all of the things you
can achieve together. Think of how inspiring you will be to them. Think of your
children looking back, and putting health high on their priority list in life,
and wanting to be just like you. Think of how great it will feel to wear what
you want to wear, and to rock it! Think of how you want to look back on your
life in your old age…. Did you live to the fullest?? Be your own inspiration!
Well, this should be a fairly good
set of advice for those of you who asked! I was hoping to incorporate some of
my favorite ‘ healthy’ recipes into this
posting, but I’ll have to save that for a later time! Stay tuned, and in the
meantime enjoy the first snowfall out there! Also, don’t think of it as ‘winter’s coming, I won’t lose as much weight. “ I’ve
heard so many people say that lately! I started all of this in February, when
it was still our winter time. I felt there wasn’t much else to do with my spare
time than work out anyhow. Summer time is when I struggled. Who wants to sweat
your bum off on an elliptical when you can be laying at the beach, soaking up
the sun, swimming, and grilling some steak!?! Lol… Use this time to make your
winter a great one, and change your life! You’ll be so glad you did when summer
does roll back around and you rock that bathing suit!
