A little bit of a recap of a previous post, but some updates too on my home cooking and calorie counting.
Funny how I originally said I had no "goals" for this year, except maybe get my license. Yeah, it's August and nothing has progressed on the license front; however, I HAVE gotten myself "healthy" this year. Not sure what really spurred me on. For a month or so end of last year I had started to cook and I enjoyed it (mostly to somewhat), but then I injured my back trying to exercise (yay!) so then I stopped on all fronts.
Then my sis-in-law started to do Once a Month Meals earlier this year, which got the idea into my head that I could do something like that once a week. I have a spreadsheet that I use to get myself organized (I don't pay for OAMM) for menus and ingredients and 26 weeks later (started end of February), I am still doing the once-a-week meals thing!
Making meals once a week helps on three fronts: Space, eating out, and being healthy. I don't have a lot of space, so doing it once a week allows me to be able to freeze meals, but also not completely eliminate my entire freezer space. I do sometimes still struggle with space (if I start freezing more than 8 days worth of meals, space gets tight), but I can do 5 meals a week with no problems. It's also helped me cut down on eating out. Not only were we eating out for dinner, but I was also eating out for lunch. That's a lot of wasted money on fast food or restaurants. In addition, eating out that often isn't good for you and I don't control my portions well when I eat out. I hadn't gained a lot of weight eating out because I was walking to work and I'm fairly active at work, but it definitely wasn't helping me lose any either.
Not that cooking has really made me lose weight, but it has made me healthier and helped my digestive track. I don't make EVERYTHING from scratch (still use a lot of pre-made chicken stock, tomatoes, and cream-of soup), but it's definitely better than buying frozen meals (also a prior staple of dinners) or can processed foods (mm...Dinty Moore stews...so unhealthy, but so tasty). I enjoy the tastes of homemade meals more and I don't get TIRED of eating the same frozen meals or the same fast food. It has been a work in progress to make sure I don't overwhelm my cooking time. I basically spend half a day that I'm off to cook, which isn't always something I want to do, but it's a necessity like doing my laundry. Not fun, but I need to do it. So I've learned to try and balance my time off because I find making the home meals I have enough leftovers for the next day and I always take leftovers for lunch (I'll occasionally still eat a frozen thing for lunch if we've run out) and we're feeding 3 people nightly and still having leftovers. My digestive track is SO much happier with me and since I'm lactose intolerant, that's saying something. I take a supplement to help me when I eat dairy, but sometimes, if I was really off kilter, the pills wouldn't help as they should. Now, I can eat small amounts of dairy without the supplement and not have a problem at all because my digestive track is happy with me.
Not sure what spurred it on, but almost 3 months ago I decided to download MyFitness Pal (friend recommended it) and start calorie counting. The first week was a bit of a struggle, but I quickly adapted to it. It's been amazing for me. It got me to exercise regularly, cut down my sugar intake (a constant struggle of mine since I've got a sweet tooth) and snacking, and...*drum roll*...I've lost 22 lbs in 80 days! I can't say it's always easy calorie counting, but it hasn't been as hard as I thought either.
Cutting the sugar down was really hard in the beginning and I go up and down in my urges to eat it, but not eating a lot of sugar has helped my teeth and myself. I was noticing for a bit that my teeth were starting to hurt from eating all the sour stuff I was eating. Eating that much candy isn't good for you in general too. I would sit down and eat a packet of Skittles in one night. Now, I won't open a packet of Skittles unless I know I can eat a portion of it and save the rest. I'll eat it in quarters or halves. Rips, one of my favorite candy, I can now eat in small portions (those bags used to be gone in 2 days).
The other struggle I've been trying to iron out is the snacking. I used to eat a lot of candy, but the snacking was pretty bad too. I mean, I was making home made meals, which you think would have made me lose weight on my own, but it wasn't. It's because of the candy and I was snacking a lot on junk food. The calorie counting has helped me cut down on junk food a LOT. I now think if I REALLY want to eat those chips or not. Most times I don't bother buying chips now because I know it'll take me too long to eat them before they go stale. :P
Calorie counting has also made me drink more water. I have never been a big soda drinker, but I am a fruit juice drinker. There are a lot of calories in fruit drinks! For the most part, I treat them like empty calories. I'm thirsty? Go drink water. No calories. :) I still don't like the taste of water (ugh), but I almost don't drink anything else now (maybe once a week I'll drink a fruit juice now). I will say, I haven't gotten out of the habit of ordering a drink at restaurants. I'll still instinctively order a soda or fruit juice at a restaurant. It's really the only time I used to regularly get soda was at a restaurant. I'm still trying to break that habit and getting better, but I don't eat out a lot anymore so it's harder to break.
The nice thing about calorie counting is it's not "dieting." I'm not telling myself I can't eat something or I have to eat LESS of something, it's simply giving me a choice of "Do I really want to consume those calories so I have less left to eat something else?" A lot of dieting and weight loss is psychological and calorie counting has allowed me to keep my "freedom" in what I eat, but also lose weight. It's also allowed me to see how much exercising I need to do. I don't exercise the same amount each day. I try to always exercise enough to get me to or below my calorie goal, but some days I had a better calorie intake day so I don't need to exercise as much or I feel like exercising so I'll exercise more. My FitBit Flex has also helped me exercise. Chris has been a dear by supporting my exercising in the ways he can (buying me new workout clothes, the FitBit, a yoga mat, etc). I thought the FitBit was overpriced and we both do, but we're techie people and he wanted to get it for me to help me out. I don't always try to make the 10,000 step goal that's defaulted, but I will exercise more if I'm close. So it's helped with that too.
I will say, breakfast has been my biggest hurdle with calorie counting and going on my vacation and coming back was also extremely difficult. I'm not a breakfast morning person. When I initially started this, I was doing the Greek yogurt with jam and granola mixed in. It was working, but I eventually got tired of eating it and got to a point where I didn't need breakfast anymore. I was used to the lower calorie intake and could skip breakfast and go to a morning snack (okay, practically pre-lunch since my snack would be at 11:30pm and lunch would be at 2:30pm - let's not discuss that I take my lunch later than I'm legally supposed to).
Then I went on my trip, didn't go crazy on my eating, but wasn't watching it as closely as I normally do (I was calorie counting, but not overly concerned). I was also eating when I wanted to and got out of my rhythm. I gained less than a pound on my trip, which wasn't too bad. Coming back home, though, and trying to get back into a rhythm was HARD. I felt like I was nonstop hungry. It also didn't help that I came back to close twice in a row and worked 8 days in a row. It's been 3 weeks since I got back and I was gone for 6 days. It took me over 2 weeks to get back to a schedule of eating where I don't feel like I'm starving all day all the time. I also lost that pound and got back onto my losing 2 pounds a week schedule. It took time and effort, but I'm proud of myself I did it!
As for breakfast, coming back from my trip, I learned to start eating something for breakfast again. I just couldn't do it and it was making me want to snack badly at work. I started with eggs in the morning and then made a yummy breakfast casserole. The casserole wasn't necessarily healthy, but it was tasty! Recently, though, the past week, I decided to start making smoothies and turned them green. I'm still not into the whole extra-green smoothie thing so I only add spinach or kale to mine, but it helps. So the smoothie is what I'm drinking for breakfast. Mine comprise of a green (kale or spinach), a handful or less of pineapple chunks (helps with Vitamin C to counteract the oxalic acid in spinach and kale), tablespoon or two of almond butter, a banana, and vanilla almond milk. Seriously, 20oz or so of the stuff and it keeps me going almost all day. It's keeps me fuller much better than anything else I was eating for breakfast, which means anything else I eat all day satisfies me more. It's also nice because it's liquid and I'm more easily able to consume it in the morning. Sometimes trying to eat in the morning wasn't appetizing to me. I'm hoping to increase my greens in it, but it's something I'll have to build up to. I also need to figure out a better way to get the kale in. Kale doesn't shred as nicely as spinach does so it tends to stay a little "chunkier," which is kind of gross after you drink it because I feel like I get kale stuck in my teeth. I might start cooking it a little first, letting it cool, and then blending it. Cooked kale and spinach are much healthier for you than having it raw. One of the few vegetables that eating it cooked is better.
My next goal is to try and get back into my FitnessBlender workout. I used to do it every other day, but then I started to read more and now I read on my elliptical or watch a movie on the elliptical. I can't do either if I do the FitnessBlender workout! I do want to start again, though, because it gets me more flexible and gives me a better full body workout. The elliptical is mostly the legs and some arm. I also got out of the habit of regularly stretching. I used to do it and it helped my back out a lot, but then I got lazy when it got better. Now that I'm not doing it and went back in to the chiropractor, my back is hurting again and I'm not as flexible. So, those are my two immediate goals other than getting to my weight goal.
At any rate, it's definitely the year of "healthy" for me. I need to lose another 38 lbs to reach my ideal weight. Once I hit it or get within 5 lbs, I'll switch to strength training and maintenance instead of all the cardio I've been doing. It also means I'll be able to increase my calorie in take. Should be interesting...I know for a fact I'll need to calorie count for a long, long while to make sure I don't slip into bad habits, but, at the rate I'm going, I should make my goal by the end of January next year! Not too bad. I do think I'll throw myself a "party" of sorts for when I break losing 30 pounds. :) I need to reward myself somehow, right?! Might be a nail polish buy instead of food...LoL
Anyway, I'll do a general update and movie update later. I know I've been saying I'll update on my movies, but with the cooking and exercising, my time hasn't been spent on the computer much lately. Also, I'm back to regularly reading so I'm definitely not on my computer much. I guess it's better for me!
