Alisha's Little Corner of the World: January 2012

No, this is not the Christmas blog I promised (it will come ... I promise). This is about my New Year's resolution. I, like so many other people, have resolved to lose weight this year. This is something that is near and dear to my heart (among other parts of my body) and something that I've struggled with for most of my life. I've discovered what the problem is ... everything that is delicious is packed full of calories because that's where the flavour is hidden! : ) That's not the only problem (sorry if I'm repeating myself from my post about this last year when I decided to work on a new me). I also have a metabolism that's slow like molasses in January, I really don't have a lot of hobbies that involve physical activity, I have a husband that can just think about it and lose 5 lbs so he doesn't care what he eats, I have a job where I sit at a desk for 8 hours every day ... as you can see there are a lot of reasons.

So what makes me think I can succeed this time? Well, I believe I've found something that works for ME. I've tried different things in the past to lose weight that have worked for other people I know, but none of them have worked for me. So, at the beginning of the year I was talking with some girls from work about losing weight since it's a goal/resolution we all have for this year. One of the girls told me that she'd downloaded an App for her phone that counted calories for you. At first, I was like, "Well that just sounds like waaaaaaaay too much trouble." But my friend explained that this App has a HUGE invntory of nutritional information for food and even has a scanner feature that lets you scan the barcode on your food and then it will find that information for you itself. Well, that was pretty impressive for me. So I thought, "Well, it's free so really what does it hurt to try it out."

So on January 7th I started using "myfitnesspal." If you're interested in checking it out but don't have a smartphone, you can can also use it online at myfitnespal.com. After inputting my personal info, the app calculated how many calories I'm "allowed" in a day and I was off. Now, here's why I think this particular "program" is working for me. I worked OT on the 7th and a few of the girls wanted to get A&W for lunch. I love me a Teen burger and onion rings so I tagged along for the ride. Well, wouldn't you know that my new "pal"contained nutritional information for A&W? Here's what I learned: a Teen Burger and a small fries (I decided to go for fries instead thinking they'd be less calories) contains 760 calories. Yes, you read that correctly. That is just for the burger and a SMALL fries. That does not include a beverage.

Entering that into my "diary" was my "aha" moment. I thought to myself, "Well no wonder none of my dieting has ever worked." You see, as I've said before when discussing losing weight, I am VERY good at rationalizing why I should eat something, especially when it falls into the delicious category as described above. You know, loaded with calories. One of the main ways I rationalize is when I have exercised. I figure that since I burned x amount of calories on my eliptical in the morning I can eat that burger, or chips, or whatever and it won't matter because they'll balance each other out. Right? WRONGO!!! So when I "elipticize" in the morning, I have my eliptical set at resistance level 15 (and it goes up to level 16). I run for 33 minutes which allows me a bit of a warm up and cool down at the end and I usually burn around 600 calories doing so. So in this example, the Teen burger and small fries contained more calories than what I'd burned off, and that was only 1 meal! So that's not including what I'd eaten for breakfast, what I'd eat for dinner or for snacks.

Anyways. I've stuck with this calorie counting regime for 3 weeks now and I've lost 13 pounds! That's pretty exciting for me! Another reason why weight loss hasn't worked for me in the past is that I get frustrated when I don't see results. It doesn't matter how many times I tell myself, "You didn't put it on in a day/month so it's not going to come off in a day/month." (And I will once again say that putting it on is so much easier and fun than trying to take it off!) I need to see some sort of result that my hard work is paying off. And this time I am seeing it! I have become slightly obsessed (I have some OCD with inputting things into my phone) with what I eat and measuring things out, but it's working. Eventually I think I won't need to be quite so meticulous with my measuring as I get more used to what "1 cup' or '1 tbsp' looks like. But in the mean time I am driving my husband (and I'm sure my friends) a little crazy.

I also really like that I can eat whatever I want with this system. Now that doesn't mean that I should eat whatever I want. I got all cliche on Jay when I was explaining it and did use "It's a lifestyle/mindset change." It's not about denying myself (which really hasn't worked for me in the past). It's about making different decisions. So, if I want to have some chips, I can have them. But instead of eating the whole bag, I only eat the 16 chips or whatever is in a serving. Or I can opt for baked chips which have fewer calories. Or, if I know that I'm going to eat out for dinner (like last night when we went to Cheesecake Cafe) perhaps I have something that's lower in calories for lunch like a salad. Or, rather than ordering a burger and fries from Original Joe's (which has their nutritional info online) I ordered a chicken quesadilla and spring mix salad. I also really like that you can add recipes into the app (or online) and it will figure out how many calories are in a serving. This is really great for me since we do most of our eating at home and from scratch.

Anyway, that's my pep talk for the day. It's working for me, but that doesn't mean it's right for everyone. If you want to try it out, good for you. If you don't, that's fine too. It hasn't been all sunshine and lollipops and I have gained back 2 pounds that I'd previously lost during this 3 week stretch. The important thing to me is that I didn't let that stop me. I kept on keeping on and lost those 2 pounds again as well as 2 additional ones! I know that there will be fluctuations and plateaus in my weight loss future, but I'm feeling good about the success I've had so far and looking forward to the day when I can say that I've achieved my goal. Look at me being all "glass half full." I've added a tracker to my sidebar that'll keep track of my progress, so feel free to check in on me from time to time. And I'm feeling brave, so here are some pictures: