Mid-Week

Three days down, four to go.  I am happy to say that I have avoided the scale for three whole days!  I do still wonder what my weight is, and I have to resist the temptation to step on the scale before I get into the shower, but I think that this is better.  I shouldn't weigh myself every day because this week my mood has not been dependent on what the scale shows me in the morning.  I have to confess that I have not been tracking very well.  I have been eating healthy and I have been measuring my food so that is the good news.  I still measure my oatmeal for breakfast, I measure 1 tbsp of peanut butter to eat with my apple in the afternoon, I count how many slices of meat I am putting on my sandwiches.  So I don't think that I am really going over my calorie limit, but I haven't forgotten about tracking and I do plan to be better about tracking in the future, I just seem to go through phases.  All last year was the same way.  I would have a month or so where I tracked everything I ate, then I would have a month where I tracked half the things I ate and then eventually I wouldn't track anything for a while, and then I would get back to tracking.  I just have to ride this phase out and I will eventually get really into tracking again.  Instead of beating myself up about not being as consistent with my tracking, I am focusing on eating healthy food and making sure that I don't over eat.  I am eating one portion size for dinner, I am still getting my regular snacks and I have not been eating any desserts or candy.  I haven't had very much in the way of junk food either.  The only junk food I have in the house that I eat regularly at the moment is BBQ chips, and I usually only eat those for lunch and not even every day.  For instance, I have only eaten chips with my lunch today, and the other days I had grapes and veggies with hummus!  On that note, one thing I should probably be measuring but am not is the amount of hummus that I eat with my vegetables.  That is really the only thing I have been splurging on lately, and at least it is a healthy thing to splurge on!  Focusing on choosing the healthy food is great because it gives me something to focus on and it makes me feel good about myself that I am making healthy choices and not going for the junk food.  For instance, I have been snacking on grapes, strawberries, sugar snap peas, Greek yogurt, apples, carrots, hummus, and string cheese instead of chips, crackers, gold fish, those muffins Matt made me buy from Costco, chocolate chips, and other various things that still linger around the house.

On a completely different note, I got my eyebrows waxed today for Emily's wedding on Saturday.  It was long overdue and I love the way they turned out.

Bushy eyebrows no more! 

Today was my rest day and so I made the most of it by going to a meetup and it was lots of fun!  Today is the first really nice day in quite some time and it was great to go outside and let the kids play outside and run around and hang out with other kids.  It was also nice to see some of my friends from the group I haven't seen in a while.  The two people I usually hang out with canceled due to sick kids so I was forced to meet new people and catch up with some of the others I haven't seen in a long time.  It was good for me, I don't always do well making new friends since after the basic introductions conversation tends to trickle out.  I guess I just really click with some people and with others I don't.  I think that is normal though.  And I like familiarity, so I like to hang out with people I know. 

We spent most of the afternoon playing around outside since it is supposed to get cold again tomorrow.  I always try to be more active on my rest days since I am not exercising. 

Getting Started Tips: Food Tracker

In my opinion the single most useful tool for weight loss is a food tracker.  Others may disagree with me if they choose, but I believe that tracking your food allows you to be more aware of what you are eating, and how much you are eating.  There is a lot of focus on the exercise aspect of weight loss and I believe that there is too much emphasis placed on exercising.  Yes it is important, but if you are not eating properly then your exercise is for naught.

Now, if I already knew how to eat, and how much to eat then I wouldn't have been in the predicament I found myself in back in January 2013.  I believe most people share a similar story.  If we knew how to eat, what to eat, and how much to eat we wouldn't have a problem!  I believe that eating right is 75% of the battle and that exercise is 25%.  You need both, but if you are going to pick only one to tackle at a time I recommend that you tackle food first.  Food because you eat every day, food because it is what we always think about.  Food is hard wired into our systems, we need food but in today's society we have too much food and all the wrong kinds of food.

That is where the food tracker comes in.  First you need to know how much food to eat.  There are two great programs that help with this.  The first is the one I currently use because they have accommodations for nursing moms, and that is Weight Watchers.

www.weightwatchers.com

I do their online program which is about $18/month as I think that their meetings are way too expensive ($11/meeting and you are supposed to go every week totaling an average of $44/ month.)  The online program is basically a food tracker where you track how many points plus are in the foods that you eat.  The Points Plus program takes into account fat, protein, carbohydrates, and fiber.  I like how they take into account all the nutrients of food instead of singling out one category.  If you feel like you need support you can participate in their online community.  However this program does not teach you how to eat but it does focus on making healthy choices and the best part is that vegetables and fruits are 0 points!  I love this, but you have to use it carefully because if you eat too many fruits it can stall your weight loss (a problem I have yet to encounter).  You are also given a weekly points allowance of extra points that you can use for anything you want.  (Example: Extra points for dinner, or dessert, or if you want to eat peanut butter and avocados which are high points foods you can and then apply that towards your weekly points allowance.)  You can also trade exercise points for more food if you like.  I do not recommend this as if you use all your exercise points you are essentially eating the same amount as you are burning and I find that it slows down your weight loss.  You can track online or on your iPhone.  They also have tools for creating recipes so if your recipes don't contain nutrition information or you want to make your own recipe you can plug your ingredients into their recipe maker and find out how many points plus are in your recipe.  They also have a bar code scanner which is great if the food is actually in their system, which I have come to find that most foods aren't.

If you need more support from a community and want more interaction with other people in person then you can do the weekly meetings, and that works well for many people.  You are able to buy the monthly pass for about $9.75 a week which makes it cheaper and gives you access to the e-tools from the online version.  Otherwise you get to use paper and pencil to track your points if you are a meeting member.

The second food tracker is My Fit Pal, which is FREE!  I will be switching to my fit pal as soon as I am no longer nursing.

www.myfitnesspal.com

 My fit pal is a calorie counter.  You create a profile and it will tell you how many calories to eat every day in order to lose x pounds a week.  They also have an iphone/ipad app and I believe they also have an android app as well.  There is also a community on my fit pal and you can link it up to your Facebook account and chat with your friends who also have my fit pal accounts to gain support that way.  They also have a bar code scanner which has just about everything in existence in their database so it is very useful.    I have not used My Fit Pal in years so I do not know all of the new features.  I will update this post after I use this product more once I am finished nursing.  But I love that it is free.

Another great program that I have recently learned about is Feel Great in 8.  This is basically an 8 week challenge that tackles not only weight loss but helps you become more well rounded.  To enter into the challenge you pay $18 and you are given points for completing tasks and points are taken away for making poor decisions (such as unhealthy food choices).  Whoever has the most points at the end of the 8 weeks gets half of the money that every contestant put in!  It is definitely great motivation for those who are competitive.  http://feelgreatineight.blogspot.com/

This is also a good way to boost your weight loss if you have stalled or plateaued or are lacking in motivation to keep going. This is directly from their website " Feel Great in 8 is an eight week competition that challenges you to become healthier physically, mentally and spiritually. For eight weeks challenge participants gain and/or lose points based on healthy or unhealthy choices. Weekly points are reported to Tiffany (me! the challenge creator/host). Each participant contributes $18. $10 to the prize money "pot" and $8 to pay me for my time as host. At the end of the eight weeks, the competitors with the most points will get a share of the prize money! There is also a small prize for the participant with the greatest weight loss percentage.

I have been hosting these challenges for almost 4 years now. In the past, winners have gotten as much as $250, and the greatest 8 week weight loss so far is 36 pounds!"