Constantly Battling FAT

I have spent my entire life as the FAT person in the room.  I remember weighing 172 pounds when I was 12 years old (the lightest weight I can ever remember weighing).
By the time I was 17, I was up to 225 pounds. That was the first time I truly dieted.  I lost 50 pounds in six months, graduated from high school, wore my beautiful prom dress, and immediately jumped off the bandwagon.
It wasn't until I was 23 that I finally faced the fact I had gained SEVENTY pounds since high school. In October 2010, I weighed in at 245.5 pounds! I was disgusted with myself. I immediately went on a diet, started working out 5-6 times a week and by June 2011, I was down to 184 pounds (a 61.5 pound loss!!)
I maintained my new weight for a few months, but life happens and slowly, pound by pound, I was back up to 225 by the time I got pregnant in June 2014.
The day I gave birth I weighed 269 pounds. Within two weeks, I was back down to 225.... and a few months the weight was creeping back on.

One of my biggest problems is that I eat out of boredom. And being home on maternity leave, I had more free time than ever before. I had bacon, eggs, and toast for breakfast 4 or 5 days a week. I'd eat chicken fingers and fries for lunch or make homemade pizzas on english muffins.  I had so much free time and could plan to make my favourite foods while the baby napped.

My other huge problem is that I eat when I'm stressed.  A true food addict at heart, I can feel my stress diminishing when I am eating something super sugar and carb loaded.

 In May 2016, I suffered from a herniated disc. I know the reason why my disc herniated is because I have so much excess weight on my body and I live a sedentary lifestyle.  I decided to change that then and there and focused on losing weight without making many changes.  I lost forty pounds in the next seven months but when Christmas came and left I had gained eight pounds and couldn't lose any of it.

Last week, there was a health scare in my family.  Someone near and dear to me has been having heart problems and while there is no diagnosis yet, the doctors believe it is Angina. This health scare has really set me straight.  This isn't about losing weight.  This is my HEALTH.  This is my LIFE.  I have a CHILD that I need to live for, be healthy for, run around with.

So... I start again. Back at step one, ready to make changes. My ultimate goal is to lose 100 pounds total by my Champagne Birthday, I am turning 30 at the end of August and I have already lost 35 pounds so have 65 left to go.
So... here I go!!! Making my best effort possible. Knowing if I treat myself once it doesn't mean the entire day is a free for all.

What do you eat??

I get asked this question constantly. As soon as people hear I'm on a diet, they want to know two things. 1) What do I eat? 2) Do I work out?

At first, I found planning my diet to be incredibly hard. No matter what I tried, I seemed to be eating too much. And not enough.
I originally started (in January) by following the Canada food guide. 7-8 serving of vegetables and fruits, 6-7 grain products, 2 meats and alternatives, and 2 milk and alternatives. It was easy to create my own diet with so little guidelines!!
In February, when I started using loseit.com, my diet followed almost the exact same pattern every day. For breakfast I have a fruit, a grain, and a dairy. And I usually try to get some protein in (especially if I'm going to be heading to the gym!). Breakfast is usually:

• Boiled egg, one piece of toast, and a fruit
• 1/2 cup Oatmeal, 1/2 cup skim milk, and 1 tbsp pumpkin seeds and 1 tbsp dried cranberries
• 1 cup cereal, 1 cup milk, and fruit
• Vegetable omelette with egg whites and 2 tbsp low fat cheese with a piece of toast.

I rotate between these 4 breakfasts every day and never get bored!! Most of these breakfasts are around 350-400 calories. I try to always keep my breakfast under 400 calories.
The most important thing I do is measure my food. I cannot place enough importance on this. Measuring holds me accountable to portion sizes. Before I started dieting I used food as a coping mechanism for my stress/anger/sadness. Measuring my food gives me more control than my food.

Lunch is probably my most varied meal of the day. Lunch can be leftovers from the night before, or I make lunch. Lunch is something like:

• 1/2 can tuna with 1 tbsp low fat mayo, one piece of bread, salad, 1 tbsp salad dressing, cucumber, and a fruit.
• Salad with 1 tbsp dressing, half a chicken breast, a tomato, and a fruit.
• A wrap (low fat wrap with vegetables and cheese) fruit, and a salad

I try to keep my lunch around 400-500 calories. Lunch is the meal I cheat the most on! I don't know why, maybe its cause it's in the middle of the day. Yesterday, for example. I packed a lunch and took it to work. Tuna and bread, cucumber, almonds, and pineapple. And yogurt. And instead of eating my packed lunch, I ate pizza. Why would I do that? I think I cheat then because its when I figure it's easiest to burn off the calories over the rest of the day than it is at supper time.

Supper is my favourite meal of the day. Anyone that knows me knows I love stir fry. Especially chicken stir fry. For supper, I'll make:

• Chicken stir fry; half a chicken breast and 2 cups of different vegetables, soya sauce, 1/2 cup rice, low cal pudding and fruit (dessert!!)
• Spaghetti sauce (1/2 cup) and 1 cup spaghetti, salad, 1 tbsp dressing, and yogurt.
• 1 cup chili on a bed of salad (especially on days when I overate carbs ALL day)
• Grilled chicken, 1 boiled potato, steamed vegetables, fruit salad

And so on. Supper is usually around 400-500 calories. I never have a hard time creating suppers and I don't worry about throwing weird stuff together. I always make chili and spaghetti sauce ahead because I eat it so frequently its worth my while. I make double recipes and freeze them in small containers that have just the right amount for me (and Mathew).

Snacks through my day are:

• 15 almonds and a fruit (especially if I'm heading to the gym, I'll eat almonds an hour before)
• Fruit smoothies (a combination of milk/yogurt/juice/real fruit, both fresh and frozen)
• Crackers and low fat cheese
• Popcorn (I love fresh popped popcorn!!!! and low fat bags of popcorn)
• ANY vegetables
• ANY fruit

I never the limit the amount of fruit or veggies I'll eat. If I'm over my 1400 calories for the day, I'll eat more fruit and vegetables if I'm still hungry. Not only are they healthy and low cal, but they are so good for you.

When I started my diet I remember reading somewhere... "does your food weigh you down?" and I thought "YES!!" Some weekend mornings, there's nothing more that I enjoy that McDonald's breakfast. I would go get my McGriddle and my two hashbrowns and love them.... and then need to take a nap after eating them. My food WAS weighing me down. Now my food gives me energy.

Since I started my healthy lifestyle, my body has adapted in many ways but the number one way... the amount of sleep I need. Before I would sleep about ten hours a night and still feel like I hadn't had enough. I now sleep about 7 hours a night. In fact, right now I'm awake (and its only 5:51) because I went to bed early last night (around 9) and my body just won't let me sleep anymore! Its times like this I take the sign, grab my running shoes, and head to the gym.

Healthy eating is easy. I hear excuses all the time about why people can't diet. I MADE those same excuses, too. It all has to come with a personal choice. Once YOU decide you're ready to make the changes that you have to to become the new you, it's easy to go from there. We're all in this together. Find yourself a support group of friends that are dieting, too, to hold you accountable. You'll find the further away from January you get, the more those friends will fall off the bandwagon.... but YOU don't have to! YOU can be the person that inspires your friends! All you have to do is make the choice. You want to be healthy! Your body is designed to work most optimally when you are healthy, when your heart is in good shape and you are in good shape and you're getting the right nutrients.

:) Thats my pep talk for the day! I'm off to the gym now!

From December 1st to now.

I've always loved people dedicated enough to continually blog. I've never been able to keep up on a blog for longer than two weeks, but, this time I'm blogging about something I'm really passionate about; weight loss.

For anyone that's known me longer than a second, it's pretty evident that I struggle with my weight. First of all, I was HUGE. Second of all, I eat like a pig. And third of all, I'm self conscious about it. I cannot count how many times I've taken a picture, then looked at it on the screen and deleted it right away... demanding that we take another picture. I constantly ask "Am I as big as that person??" I need to be compared to everyone.

As I was writing up my Christmas wish list for my mom and Mathew (my boyfriend), I HATED that for the second year in a row, I was putting down my size as an 18. Or an x-large top. xxl if the top runs a bit small. I felt disgusted by myself.

When I was in grade 12 (2004-2005), I decided to start a diet. I was graduating high school and wanted to fit into a prom dress. And at a size 16 (what I was at the time), you barely fit into anything prom related. I was 225 pounds and my mom, my dad, and I all said no more. We dived into our healthy eating (no exercise!!) and I lost FIFTY pounds by my prom! In fact, I had to have my dress taken in!!! I was a size 12 and felt happy at that size. As soon as I'd had my last dress fitting, I abandoned the diet and started a new diet... the fast food diet. I ate everything I'd craved for the last six months while dieting. And continued. (I'm really trying to find some photos but this may have to wait until next week when I can do a more thorough search!!)

I moved onto res at ABU in 2006 and I started to gain more weight. Now into a size 14, I was still happy with where I had been, and knew I could lose the weight I wanted to... when I wanted to. I'd proven my determination before and lost 50 pounds!!!

Well, flash forward 4 more years, and I had gone from 175 pounds in 2005 to 245 pounds in 2010. It was time to stop. I weighed more than my mom. I weighed more than all three of my brothers (and some of them are six feet tall!!!) and I weight around the same amount as my dad. I was disgusted with myself.

The breaking point was when I had travelled home in November for a long weekend and got on the scale and it read "245.5". In October when I had gotten weighed, I had been 242. I started to panic as I realized that until I CHANGED something, this number would continue to grow.

Here are the things I changed:

I started small. I watched portion sizes. I stopped eating fastfood. I made stir fry pretty much every night. And by the time I got home for Christmas, I was wearing a size 16 (from my 18) and was down to 228!!! 16.5 pounds in less than two months, and all I'd done was start to pay attention to what I was shoving in my mouth.

My brother bought me a scale for Christmas, which was a huge blessing. Having a scale in my apartment in Moncton made me accountable to it. He got me the fancy "Biggest Loser" scale that tracks your weight, etc.... but it didn't come with an instruction book and I've never figured out how to use it. I get weighed EVERY day... eek! I know people say not to do this, but let me tell you the NUMBER ONE THING I've learned in MY weight loss journey... it's all about what makes YOU comfortable and what suits YOU best!!! People say not to get weighed every day because you can become discouraged if you're up from the day before. My scale weighs to even decimal numbers (.2, .4, .6 etc) The way I see it (and this isn't for everyone, but it is what works for me).... if I haven't lost at least .2 pounds in a day, I'm not doing something right. If it is healthy to lose 2 pounds a week, then I should be able to lose at least .2 pounds a day!!!

My friend introduced me to www.loseit.com - WOW. This website is incredible! If you're reading this now and you're not on it... JOIN! It's easy to use... and it's free. Some of my friends have said to me they stopped using it because they couldn't find the food they'd been eating, or the restaurants they'd been to. Well, there's a solution for that. EVERY SINGLE THING YOU EAT (with the exception of fresh food :) has a calorie count on it. You can add foods in! Keep track of how much you're eating so you can add in the portion sizes and everything. And, if you're eating out... most restaurants have their nutritional info available online so you can get an idea of how many calories you're eating from their website! And, when all else fails... I just google it! Google always has the answers. Loseit.com even allows you to enter your exercise in and it subtracts the calories to show you how many more calories you have to eat (I try to refrain from eating the calories I've burnt off, unless I've had a really insane day at the gym. If I burn more than 400 calories at the gym, then I start to eat back the calories I burnt off!!)

I got a gym membership! First at Goodlife, but then I cancelled that and joined the YMCA. I LOVE the Y! They have tons of classes, an incredibly friendly staff, tons of machines... and a POOL! You CAN lose weight without going to the gym, but somewheres along the way... my losing weight became a lot more than just losing weight, it became becoming healthy. I bought a heart rate monitor and whenever I exercise I closely watch it. You're supposed to maintain a level of 85% of your maximum heart rate when working out. For me, thats 165 beats per minute. I try not to go below 150 or above 175.

I fell in love with Jillian Michaels. Anyone that talks to me can tell you I quote Jillian Michaels at least 5 times in any given conversation. I joined her website (it was 52 dollars for 13 weeks but has been hugely helpful). I use some of her recipes, but don't follow her meal plan to a tee. I mostly use her website to learn different things to do during exercise. The first thing I learned was that cardio is not the best way to lose weight. I was SHOCKED! I always assumed that cardio cardio cardio was the way to go. No. Using a method of cardio interspersed with different strength moves is the best way. So, I'll do two strength moves, like bicep curls with lunges and then basic crunches, and then one minute of jumping jacks or skipping rope. This is good for you because it keeps your heart rate up constantly. I do about 30 minutes of this and can burn around 350 calories just by doing this! I always do cardio, too, though! It's a great way to strengthen your heart and its good for your joints. I prefer the elliptical because its a total body work out. I try to do half an hour of cardio every day. After my cardio, and my calisthenics (by the way, you can do this at home. If you're looking to lose weight, Jillian Michaels has a work out video called the 30 day shred and it is absolutely fabulous! You can get it at wal-mart or chapters. The only thing you need to do the video is hand weights. I know you're going to go to the store and go straight for the five pound hand weights. PUT THEM DOWN. Two pounds IS WAY MORE than enough for someone just starting out!!!!!) I then hit the pool. I try to swim some laps (not very good at it) and when I'm not doing laps, I just try to stay constantly moving in the pool. You're probably reading all this and thinking "wow, so much time". It's not. I spend an hour and a half at the gym five days a week. How much time did you spend in front of your computer today?? Or in front of the tv??

... I understand people need down time, I really, really do. But the benefits of a healthy lifestyle are UNREAL. I am constantly reading new statistics and am shocked at all the great things my body's going through!!! I am the happiest I've been in a long, long time. I have more energy, I need less sleep. I fight less often. And when I go off my diet (or "program" as I like to call it because its so much more than just a diet) I can tell. I don't mean just once, I mean for a couple days. Which brings me to one of the last changes I made.

I treat myself once a week! Unless I've been cheating and treating myself all week, hehe! But usually on Friday or Saturday I take a day off the gym and eat a couple foods I've been craving. I try to keep my treat under the 1000 calorie mark (which sounds really high, I know!! But a bonus 1000 calories a week if you've been doing really well is very, very okay. And is equal to about .3 of a pound.)

I have one more change in my "program", but its something I believe to be the most important so I don't want to just throw it in here. I'll do a new blog for it in a couple days. It's about proper nutrition!!

So, where am I now? From 245.5 on November 14 to March 30th, I'm down to 204.4. I've lost 40.1 pounds. I am incredibly proud of myself! People that are jealous say things to me like, "It's not healthy to lose that much weight that fast". And that may be true if you weigh 150 pounds. But I am losing weight in an incredibly healthy way. I eat a totally balanced diet, following the Canada Food Guide portion suggestions to a tee. I eat three meals a day, plus snacks. I consume 1400 calories a day (at least!!!). And I'm working out. I know when people say things like that they just don't understand the dedication that comes with PUSHING yourself to do something that means a lot to you.

My goal weight right now is 165 pounds and according to my loseit account, if I keep up the way I've been going, I'll be at my goal weight by August 16th, just in time for my birthday! And in time for me to start a new goal weight.

Jillian Michaels says it's just as important to have a fitness goal as it is to have a weight goal, and so I share with you, my friends, my fitness goal.

Next May, I will be running the Bluenose marathon (half-marathon!!!) I've started training and WOW is it hard!!! But I know it will be so worth it... to know I went from the girl who wouldn't even get off the couch to get my own drink.... to the girl that ran a half marathon!!!

I'm a little wordy tonight but I promise I won't always be! I just had so much to share with you for my first blog!!!

I hope you keep coming back and reading about my healthy lifestyle journey! and if you'd like to talk about you and your options with me, I'd LOVE to chat with you. I am incredibly passionate about helping people make choices that will change their life like they've changed mine.