Eating Out

I recently watched a video clip that talked about the worst restaurant foods.  These foods had calorie counts ranging from over 2,000-5,000+ !  What I noticed most though was the fact that several times it was mentioned that the servings for these dishes were 2+ people!  This means that one plate of food should feed more than one person!  However, all too often a single person eats the whole meal by themselves ( I do).  I believe that, as a country, we have lost all sense of portion size.  I remember a time before super size, biggie size, up size, and king size.  I remember when a small was the size of  a child's drink today and a medium was the size of a small today.  Up until this month I would eat fast food at least once a week and sometimes more, usually McDonald's or KFC and usually one of those Super, Biggie, King....  I have done better this month though, I've only had fast food twice!  I'm really trying to watch the fast food because I don't need to eat it and I don't need to spend the money.  
I'm really trying to cut down on all forms of eating out.  It is too expensive, and I don't eat right when I eat out.  When I eat out it is usually fast food, Chinese food, or pizza.  My husband and I are planning on going to Red Lobster for our anniversary next week.  I'm not cutting out dining out all together. I am going in with a plan though.  I've checked out the menu on-line.  I know what I want to order and, I'm asking for a to go box right off.  This way I can put half my food in the box right away and control my portion size.  And, as far as dessert goes, maybe I will share it with my husband or maybe it will join the other half of my entree in my to go box!

Counting Calories

I figured I'd do a bonus C since I didn't post yesterday :)  So, counting calories...  I recently posted about The Calorie Cost and provided several calorie counters on line.  A friend of mine recenlty told me about a calorie counter you can get on your phone too.  I personally have the Droid and the App is called My fitness pal.  I have been using it for 2 days now and I use it like a points counter.  For those of you not failure with Weight Watchers they have a points system where based on several factors you are given a certain number of points to use in a day and every food you eat is assigned a certain number of points.  For example, lets say you are allotted 50 points a day, your eggs and toast for breakfast could be 10 points, the Big Mac you have for lunch would be 30 points, etc.. things like water and apples have no points, you can eat as many as you want.  This app is sort of the same way.  You input how much you weigh and how much you want to loose, for me 2 pounds a week, and it calculates a number of calories per day.  As you eat you input your food into the program and is subtracts the number of points.  You can also input water intake ( 0 calories) and exercise (which actually increases the number of calories you get a day).  I think it will be a good tool we will see if it pays off.

The Calorie Cost

In my last post I talked about metabolism or the rate at which our bodies burn calories but what is a calorie?  This website has a really good discussion of metabolism and calories.  Basically a calorie is a unit of measure like a foot or a mile.  Calories use to be used to measure heat but now it is mostly used to measure food energy.  So, more calories=more energy and the more energy you consume the more energy you need to use or it gets stored...as fat.  This article I found on Yahoo, again on the front page,  talks about ways to cut calories from your diet.  If you google calorie you can find several calorie counters here, here, and here are some of them that popped up on the front page when I did.  I like the last one because it mentions the USDA 2000 calorie diet and allows you calculate the number of calories you actually need.  By the way the amount it said I actually need is over the 2000 calories and it comes in at 2260 calories a day and that is with a sedentary lifestyle.  Now, this is the amount of calories it would take to maintain my current weight, which ast last check was 250lbs.  In researching the USDA 2000 calorie diet most of what I found was talking about eating 2000 calories the right way.  There is a big difference between getting your 2000 calories from fruits and veggies than from cakes and pies.  Here you can find more informationa about the 2000 calorie diet.  So, even though my calorie counter says I burn about 2260 calories a day the simple fact is that I need to burn MORE in order to lose weight.  Well, burn more or eat less...

Why Metabolism Matters

This is an article I found recenlty on the front page of Yahoo! that I found interesting.  Basically it discusses 5 ways you can boost your metabolism.  For those who don't know metabolism is basically the sum of all the chemical reactions that occur in your body.  You can find the wikipedia definition here.  In a nutshell the higher your metabolism the faster your burn calories and the slower your metabolism the slower you burn calories.  You can find a metabolism calculator here from WebMd.  Everyone wants a higher metabolism, at least everyone I know anyway. You can read the article if you want,  here are my thoughts on this article:
1.  Build Muscle  (I want a brick body not a feather body)
            This part talks about the fact that lean muscle burns fat, even when YOU are at rest.  That is why building muscle mass is so important and weight training is so good when you are trying to lose weight.  I have some hand weights running around somewhere guess it is time to dig those back out!  Here's where we can address a misconception for some as well.  It is often said that a pound of fat weighs more than a pound of muscle.  Last time I checked a pound was a pound was a pound no matter what you were weighing.  It is kind of like the riddle which weighs more a pound of feathers or a pound of bricks?  They both weight the same!!  A pound of muscle and a pound of fat are both a pound!  Here are the key differences:  1 pound of muscle is more compact than 1 pound of fat, like it takes way more feathers to make a pound than bricks and a pound of muscle will actually burn fat where as a pound of fat IS fat. 
2.  Start Eating!  (Sounds counterintuative right?)
          Think of your body as a machine and that machine needs regular fill ups.  The autor of the book Body Confidance reccomends that you start eating an hour after you wake up and continue eating every 3-4 hours until an hour before bedtime.  So, during the summer I get up at 6am and usually am in bed by 11 pm, I should be eating on about this schedule:  7am 11am 3pm 7pm 10pm.  Now, during the summer I can probably keep at least close to this schedule.  The problem is when school starts.  Usually I don't eat in the morning anyway becaue I'm not hungry and I've always been told if you are not hungry don't eat.  This becomes a problem when I'm in school because I uaually don't end up eating anything until 3-4pm and I get up between 5-6am that is a BIG gap especially when you consider I probably have not eaten anything since about 8pm the previous night.  So, my eathing schedule while in school should be the same as when I'm out of school...  I'll have to work on this for August!  Hopefully, if I can get in the habit now I can keep it up once school has started.  Basically, your metabolism needs energy to stay working.  Your metabolism does not know that there is a grocery store down the street, or an apple in the kitchen.  It only knows what you put into it.  If you are not regularly putting fuel into your body basically your body goes into starvation mode and instead of using what you put into it it stores that.  We all know what happens when your body stores energy right.... more fat is produced!  Fat is the body's way of storing energy and your body only has two options use it or store it.  So, if you are like me:  don't eat regularly and get little to know real regulary exercise it is a recipe for disaster!  Now, just because they are saying you should eat that means 1.  eating regularly (working on that) and 2. eating right (working on that too).  I can't eat unhealthy stuff and think "oh this is gonna boost my metabolism and I'll lose weight!"  um... NO!  I have to eat healthy and I have to eat on a regular basis like it or not.
3.  Nosh on Protein at every meal and snack  (Protein is tasty noms)
          Most people hear protein and they think meat.  This is not necessarily the case.  If it were all you vegetarians out there would be SOL cause your body can't make all the amino acids it needs (it can only make 14 out of 22) it has to get some from outside sources and you find amino acids in proteins.  You can get protein from meat but you can also get it from:  Beans, eggs, milk, cheese, yogurt, soy, and nuts.  The article suggests this plan:  For a quick and easy snack, keep peanuts in your pocketbook, trail mix in your desk drawer and hard-boiled eggs in the fridge.  You may be asking yourself why is protein at every meal and snack so important.  The answer is that the more complex your food is the more energy it will take to break that down and thus higher metabolism.  Complex foods are things like meat and fibrous veggies (get your fiber!)
4.  Get Moving (Duh!)
          We all know that in order to lose weight you have to exercise and move around.  As much as we all hate it you can't just lay on your couch and expect to lose weight I don't care how good you eat.  What this part of the article suggests is that you change the pace of your workout and include spurts of high intensity cardio.  So, instead of just walking around the block it is better to walk, jogg, and run around the block.  Keep your body guessing on how hard it will have to work so it doesn't get use to the same old thing all the time.
5.  Drink Water (Again, Duh!)
           This is anohter no brainer if you are trying to lose weight.  What the article suggests is that you drink water before you eat breakfast.  I need to start drinking water period really.  I drink tea which is really just flavored water right?  RIGHT?!  Again, NO.  I know the tea I drink is really like flavored suggary water.  Though, I am cutting down on the amount of sugar per gallon of tea.  What I need to do is to fill atleast 1 of my water bottles with only water and drink that instead of my 2 bottles of tea a day.

Choices

There is a George Jones song called Choices that has really been resonating with me lately.  Our life is basically a series of choices and the consequences of those choices.  I'm now living through the consequences of choices that were made years ago, and some that were made yesterday :)
For example, yesterday I went to lunch from some ladies from work and I made the choice to have salad and mostly vegetables with one piece of cube stake and one helping of peach cobbler. Pretty good in my opinion!  Then last night I chose to have a piece of lemon meringue pie for dessert, not the greatest choice... though I did only have one piece of pie and not 2!  Then, today, at lunch I chose to have a panini and a cup of fruit, good choice, but before that I chose to have 2 pieces of pizza, not such a good choice.  But, both were choices I made and as embarrassing as it is that is it, no one to blame by myself!  Well, I'll make better choices starting now :)  That is a great thing it is never too late to make good choices even if it is 7:00pm at night.
Another choice I make is weather or not to be active.  Usually I choose not to be active :(  However, I'm getting better with it.  Having a 3 year old will do that for ya!

A family affair

Ever since I can remember I have struggled with weight and body image.  I know my mom struggled with weight too.  She is doing awesome though and I look forward to joining her.  I think part of my weight issues come from when I was younger and how I learned to eat and what/when I learned to eat.  Now I am having to retrain my body and my mind to form better eating habits.  I am discovering this is defiantly a family affair, from my mom to my mother-in-law.  Today was a really good day.  Well, most of it anyway.  I did have a melt down this morning.  I was making breakfast for my husband and EVERYTHING was going wrong.  Dishes I had created before with no problems were not cooking and other things were burning.  My husband had made a comment last night about making the presentation of food on a plate pretty.  Well, that was NOT happening this morning.  I felt like I was letting my husband down which only made it worse.  I got mad, he got mad, we had a fight.  But things settled down and we made up.  I made it up to him at dinner tonight.  I made stuffed Portabello Mushrooms.  I even made them look pretty and had them waiting for him when he got home from work :)  I am dragging my family along with me on my journey of better eating.  I went shopping while my husband was at work and got all fresh food.  We have been doing really well with our son Oliver and feeding him good food even though we don't eat good ourselves.  I have been trying really hard to raise my son with healthy food habits.  After my little episode  this morning the rest of the day went well.  Bobby and I relaxed and pretty much just chilled until it was time for him to go to work.  After he went to work I did laundry, cleaned up some, and made dinner.  I have noticed since I started eating better, even though it has only been a week, that I have had a lot more energy and so has my husband!  I told my mother-in-law about this blog.  She has always supported my various weight loss efforts even when they failed.  I hope she reads my blog and I won't let her down this time!  In the end though I know I must do this for me.  I really think this blog will help me stay on track and stay focused.  I even found a story on Yahoo about other people who have used blogs as a weight loss tool.  I'm off to do some reading!  Check back later because I'm sure I'll start following some of these blogs :)

Baby Steps

Well, my hubby wanted to order pizza tonight.  That was cool with me because I didn't really want to cook myself.  However, I didn't want to ruin my diet or our budget!  So, I ordered 2 small pizzas:  one pacific veggie with  Roasted red peppers, spinach, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes and black olives with feta and provolone cheeses on a Parmesan asiago crust and one America's Favorite Feast pizza with pepperoni, mushrooms, and sausage; and cheese sticks.  I ordered that instead of what I usually/use to order:  2 LARGE America's Favorite Feast Pizza, Cheese sticks (sometimes two orders), a 2 liter of coke, and sometimes even boneless chicken buffalo wings!  When it got here I only had ONE piece of cheese bread, not 2 like usual, and three pieces of a small (not a large) VEGGIE pizza!  Definitely steps in the right direction :)  And for desert strawberries, bananas, blueberries, honey, and Greek Yogurt!

Productive Day!

Well, I did Zumba for the first time today.  It was more like a dance class than an exercise class.  I'm bummed that I won't be able to go next week :(  but I will be working.  At least I'll be doing something productive and it is not a case of I'm too lazy to drag my fat butt out of bed!  Having a three year old and a working husband helps with that though.  When the hubby is gone and the baby is up you have to be up too!  So, got up and dressed and ready to go.  I was 40 minutes early and the second person there.  Which was good because the first person there had the keys.  After Zumba I headed out to grocery shop.  I had started to plan my trip last night.  I got out some books and started looking through them.  I used the book Eat This, Not That and some recipes to create my list.  I ended up going to four stores to grocery shop today.  Not one, FOUR!  I usually only go to Wal*Mart or Food Lion not BOTH, let alone four stores!  I started out going to World Market on Abercorn.  I didn't find much there but I did get some spices:  Cinnamon, Thyme, and Basil.  Then I went to Fresh Market and got some fresh mozzarella, Salmon (fresh), and Red Wine Vinegar. Fresh Market is AWESOME but expensive.  After that I came home to drop off my fresh stuff and pick up my baby to head to Wal*Mart.  At Wal*Mart I got more wonderful fresh food:  onions, potatoes, Portabella mushrooms, train mix, oats, Crasins, and Greek yogurt among other things.  Took the baby home and on the way heard that they are having a Cash for Gold expo right here in Port Wentworth.  So, I rounded up my gold, which I was planning on selling anyway, and headed out again.  I was surprised at how much I got for it.  Then, off to Food Lion for the last bit of groceries:  Special K Cereal (on sale there), Frozen veggies, and lettuce/spinach.  Finally home to rest and relax after my very productive day!