Sunday, March 31, 2019

New Food Plan

So little man was not as ready to stop nursing as I thought he was going to be.  His one year birthday came and went and he still loves to nurse.  But I have finally reached a breaking point.  I need to take action.  I can no longer do nothing and wait.

One of the very expensive lessons I learned when I did Optavia was that I do better psychologically tracking what I should be eating instead focusing on what I shouldn't be eating.  So basically I have a chart that tells me how much of each food category I need to eat, for instance: three servings of protein, etc.  That way I get to see my chart fill up throughout the day instead of setting a calorie goal and watching my allowed calories go down and run out throughout the day.  This worked very well for me when I was following the Optavia plan.  It was mentally a much better way to track my food without actually meticulously tracking every calorie I was eating, I just checked off the food I ate.  It was also easier than searching through the hundreds of possibilities of how many calories might be in chicken lo mein.  Instead I know its 2 starches, 1 protein, 1 fat and 100 discretionary calories (I was just throwing out numbers, that is in no way is specific to any restaurant or recipe).

I am going to start this plan tomorrow, here is what I have: a goal of about 2000 calories per day (at 1800 calories a day my milk dried up in three days, so I'm starting higher and I'm going to be taking the remainder of my more milk plus supplement.  Might as well use it since I bought it).  The breakdown looks like this:

Protein- 3 servings
Starches- 4 servings
Fats-4
Fruits/Vegetables- minimum of 5, but allowed unlimited amounts
Dairy - 1 serving
Discretionary Calories- 200
Health food- 300 calories

What I have done is taken the Optavia nursing moms program and changed it to what I think could work for me.  For example, you are supposed to eat three Optavia fuelings in a day which comes to a total of about 300 calories.  So instead of buying Optavia fuelings (which are ridiculously expensive) I could have a protein bar, or an RX bar, or I could make peanut butter energy bites and have about 300 calories worth of those.  I wasn't sure what to name that so it got labeled "health food".  I like this option because I like to be able to just grab things out of the pantry.  Another big change I made was in the dairy category.  A huge problem I had on Optavia and a big reason why I quit was the required amount of dairy you have.  I'm lactose intolerant, and I was supposed to be eating three servings of dairy a day plus almost every fueling had dairy in it.  That was wreaking havoc on my digestive system.  So the one serving of dairy is my one cup of almond milk I have with my breakfast.  What I did was take the other two servings and put one into protein and bumped up my discretionary calories by 50 to cover the other two servings of dairy.

Discretionary calories are just that- I can choose how to spend them.  Since I know myself and I shouldn't trust myself around sugar, I am going to stay away from desert for a little while.  I'm a binge eater when it comes to desert.  I eat all the deserts and everything I can find.  It needs to be off limits for a little while until I can get it under control a little better.  Besides when I was doing Optavia I actually liked using my discretionary calories to add more food to my meals or to indulge in pancakes with my family instead of eating a piece or two of chocolate.

So this is the plan and I'm feeling good about it.  Also my favorite gym is having $0 enrollment right now (I'm hoping they are still offering it in the morning.) and I'm planning on signing up tomorrow (as long as they are still doing $0 enrollment) so I can do Zumba, run on the treadmill and take the kids to the waterpark.

Tomorrow starts day 1.  Here we go again!

Tuesday, March 5, 2019

The New Why

Last time I started losing weight, it was out of a place of hatred.  I hated myself and everything about the way I looked.  I wanted to be thin and sexy.  Therefore, no accomplishment was ever enough for me.  It didn't matter that I was super fit, it didn't matter that I successfully competed in a triathlon, it didn't matter that I could run a 10k or do Zumba for two hours straight, or hike to the top of the mountain carrying kids on my back, or spend the whole day skiing without getting tired.  It wasn't enough, it wasn't the core of what I wanted.  I wanted to be skinny.  I wanted to be the pretty girl, and since I never made it to my goal weight, in fact I hovered around the border between being overweight and being normal weight, which for my height is 145.  I still considered myself fat, I still hated myself, I still saw all of my flaws.

I'm glad that I took the time off that I did.  I have gained all of the weight back, (although I have gained a new baby too) and while I still have a deeply rooted desire to lose weight, it is for a different reason.  Would I like to be skinny?  Sure!  Do I want to feel pretty?  Of course, what girl doesn't want to feel that way at least every now and then?  But I have come to accept myself the way I am.  I no longer hate myself.  I am a normal person, my children love me, my husband loves me, and my God loves me.  There are lots of good things going on in my life.  Sure there are a few things I would change if I could, like my best friends not moving away (such has been my curse for the past 10 years.  Every time I make a really good friend they move, I lost both of my best friends last year to moving and now I feel much more lonely.  I'm making new friends but no one who is really that best friend whom you do everything with and meet up with several times a week).

I'm happier in my skin and more content with my appearance.  Maybe it's because I'm finally growing up.  So why then do I still want to lose weight?  So many reasons but basically it boils down to three things: I want to be healthier, I want to be fit, I want to be free from the clutches of food.

Healthier
I don't feel great.  I have brain fog, I'm exhausted all the time.  I get headaches, lightheaded, my stomach hurts, I'm often bloated.  My mood is more melancholy than cheerful because I constantly feel like crap.  I get angry easily because I'm tired and don't feel well.  I know why this is happening.  It's because my diet is sub-par to say the least.  I eat too much sugar, diet soda, and processed foods.  Not fast foods, but plenty of chips, animal crackers, processed cookies.  You get the idea.

I want to eat healthier so I can feel better and be healthier.  The last thing I want is to develop some disease related towards eating like crap.  I want to lose weight so I have more energy and I'm not carrying around these extra 85 pounds that's weighing my down and making it harder to do basically everything.

Be Fit
I basically can't exercise.  It's pathetic and I feel pathetic.  Most of the time this isn't really an issue, who wants to exercise anyway right?  But the problem is I find myself making excuses not to go on family activities such as hikes or bike rides.  It's really hard to go on a hike with the family.  I feel embarrassed that my 6 year old is whooping my butt going up the mountain.  I can't run, I can't chase the kids around.  I can't take them sledding or play at the park with them.  I can't go skiing at this weight not to mention the physical exertion that would entail.  I'd be done before the first run was even over.  I feel like everything is a chore, everything is exhausting.  I don't want to make dinner, that's too much work, I don't want to do the grocery shopping that's going to take forever.  I don't want to do the laundry because I have to go up and down the stairs.

Can't I just move around and go about my day!?  Well, not right now I can't, because all I do all day long is sit on my but and eat cookies and chips.
I'm in charge of doing activities twice a month for girls age 8-11 in my church.  This week we are talking about the benefits of exercise and I offered to teach some Zumba songs.  It's always been a dream of mine to become a Zumba instructor and I've done a lot of Zumba in my life!  So I picked some songs and tried to choreograph some moves but found I wasn't too good at it lol.  No training.  So I went to good old YouTube and learned someone else's choreography and you know what?  It was so much fun! I loved dancing to these songs and learning the moves.  It made me realize how much I actually want to start moving again, and how much I want to go to Zumba class again.

Freedom
You know what the worst feeling is?  Feeling fat and hungry.  Its this weird sickening feeling that makes me so depressed.  But seriously, why can't I eat breakfast and make it a few hours without feeling like I need to shove food in my face hole!? Why does the afternoon strike and I feel like I need to sit on my butt and eat for three hours?  Its this drive, these intense cravings to eat more even though I may not necessarily want it, I feel driven to eat.  What is up with that?  Is it just a habit I've cultivated over the many years?  My husband can eat three meals a day and not snack in-between and not feel hungry.  He can eat lunch at noon and if he doesn't get dinner until 8:30, yeah he is hungry but he isn't dying like I am.  Why is it that he has such a normal relationship with food and I have such an abnormal one?  Granted he isn't usually spending most of his day in the kitchen, or even in the house for that matter, but still, that doesn't account for the vast difference I see in our eating behaviors.

So these are the things I want, these are the essence of my Why: I want to lose weight and change my eating habits so I can feel better, function better, move better, have better quality of life, and all these things should result in me having more energy, and my mood stabilizing which will make everyone happier all around.  I'm still tweaking my eating plan, I know if I go too extreme I won't be able to stick with it but if it isn't strict enough I won't lose weight and I'll get discouraged just the same.  It almost feels like I'm trying to find an impossible balance between the two.

So here are my current photos




















I'm around about 209 pounds, my first big goal is to get under 175.  Which takes me out of the obese category and also ensures I can wear my wedding ring finally.  I haven't started my new eating plan yet, but it will be soon.  Baby Boy turns one next week, so it will probably be right around there.  He needs to be introduced to whole milk before I do anything to jeopardize his milk supply.  In the meantime, I want to start working in some more exercise, even if it is only 20 minutes of Zumba a day.  I also want to get rid of all the snacking and gorging on sweets I usually do, but that is an entirely different post. 



Monday, March 4, 2019

I'm Back!

It's been two years, and quite a crazy journey during that time.  But I'm finally ready to come back to my blog.  I've been thinking about it for a while now, and I think the time is finally right.  Or at least, I can no longer sit back and do nothing because I'm feeling lethargic, and tired all the time.  I get exhausted easily and find myself making excuses not to do things.  Every thing seems like a chore, and I find I don't want to do anything anymore because it just seems like too much work.  Every day tasks like making dinner and doing the laundry are daunting, and don't even think about getting outside for a walk or doing an indoor exercise routine.  Just changing into my exercise clothes is exhausting.  Now, I certainly take accountability for my follies but part of what is going on is the new addition to our family!



Little Peanut here was born just about a year ago, and unlike my other children he has pretty much refused to let me lose weight while nursing.  Every time I have tried, I have failed either because I was just too hungry, or because when I dropped my calories enough to lose weight, my milk supply plummeted.  I'm not sure why that is.  Maybe it is because I'm older.  Maybe it's because he's a boy and he is nursing more.  Who knows, but at 1 year old now I have to turn my attention towards my own health.  I'm still going to nurse him, and I plan on taking what is left of my more milk plus supplement when I start but he is old enough to start drinking whole milk and he is just going to have to deal if my milk drops because my health is suffering.  I honestly think he will be ok as he will still get some milk from me, and both my girls stopped nursing at 1 year and they seem just fine haha!

Pregnancy seems to always dump me off at the same weight.  About 215 pounds.  Regardless of where I start, I'm always 215 pounds after giving birth.  The one thing I tried while nursing that was successful was the Optavia Nursing Moms program.  I successfully went from 217 pounds to 199 pounds.  But I just couldn't sustain it for three reasons.  1. The program is outrageously expensive.  At over $400 a month I couldn't afford it.  Theoretically you are supposed to be able to cut back on your food bill to cover the costs of the food you are purchasing from them, but with a family of four other people to feed, the food bill didn't decrease at all.  2. The Nursing moms program required me to eat 3 servings of dairy a day and I'm lactose intolerant.  This was causing IBS, bloating, and a whole host of other issues.  Plus there is milk in almost every "fueling" they sell.  This was causing me so much distress I ended up giving up milk altogether and therefore couldn't eat their food anymore.  3. Every time I would adhere to the program and successfully lose weight, my milk would drop and I would fight to get it back up. It was such a pain, it wasn't worth it.  I need something I can just stick to and not have to tweak and mess around with too much.  The simpler the better because I've discovered something about myself:

I'm an all or nothing personality type.  As much as I wish I weren't, as much as I wish I could do things in moderation, that's just not me.  If I'm going to eat sweets, I'm not going to just eat one cookie or one piece of candy.  I'm going to eat cookies until my stomach is sick, or I'm going to eat the whole entire bag of candy.  You know how people always say to slowly change your eating habits, picking one thing to work on at a time and then over time all those changes will add up... Yeah that doesn't work for me.  I can't do just one thing because in my mind, it's not worth it.  Why work so hard to change something if it isn't going to yield the results I want?  Hence the all or nothing approach.  I'm either going to be eating in a way that yields weight loss and exercising to support that, or I'm not going to be exercising.  I'm either going to be drinking water as a part of a healthy eating regime or I'm not going to be drinking water.  That's the way it is with me, and anytime I try change it, I fail.  So I'm going to embrace who I am, and do something that I'm pretty sure will work for me.  

One thing I've really become interested in lately is the idea of Juicing.  I wish I could go on a juice fast but that's just not going to happen.  Even if I wasn't nursing, it would be excruciatingly difficult for me to do a juice fast since I am responsible for feeding four people besides myself.  Being around that much food every day would probably break me pretty quickly.  But I like the idea of getting lots of nutrients from fruits and vegetables via juicing.  Not just for me but for my kids as well.  
 As you can see I have one vegetable lover and one who loves pretty much anything but vegetables

So here is my plan:
Breakfast: Juicing from Juicer
Snack: Rx bar, Protein balls, or Protein shake
Lunch: salad
Snack: Juicing from Juicer
Dinner: paleo meal

I figure that gives me enough freedom to choose but also enough structure to know that the plan will yield results.  Also doing it this way means I don't have to count calories.  I absolutely refuse to count calories at the moment. I've tried it a billion times within the last several years since my miscarriage and I just can't do it.  There just seems to be a road block in my brain.

As this post is getting long I'm going to be posting my pictures next time, talking about getting started, my goals, my reasons, and what I hope to get out of picking up blogging again.