Achieving A Healthier Life Style

My blog is going to temporarily turn into a weight loss/diet blog.
For many of you, maybe this sounds terrible and you're thinking "I'm out of here."

I'm thinking that I have not been blogging enough.
Partly, it's due to the fact that I have just been busy and haven't had a whole lot of excess time on my hands. Mostly, it's due to the fact that my life has been completely revolving around working out and getting fit these last couple of weeks.

So, let's start from the beginning.

Lance and I have both gained quite a few lbs since we got together. Most people would just label it as "comfortable relationship weight" and go on their merry way. We may have dismissed the first few lbs that way, but after awhile it was really getting out of hand.

I had gained 20 lbs since I met Lance and was no longer particularly comfortable in my skin. I went and bought a one piece swimsuit last year. I haven't worn one of those since I was 13 years old. Finally, just a few shorts weeks ago, we decided we were going to do something about it.

The concept of "dieting" for me has always been hard. I like very few fruits, no vegetables, and the only meat I eat is chicken. I have a hard enough time trying to find things I enjoy eating when I'm not looking for anything particularly good for me. Therefor, the idea of getting in shape seemed impossible to me because people always say that you can't just diet or just exercise to lose all the weight you'd like to.

I'm here to tell you that I didn't give up all the foods I love and I don't go to the gym for 6 hours a day and I'm still losing weight.

This is no scam, guys. I'm here to give you some helpful tips and stop in once a week for updates on how well their working and photographic proof of my progress.

I started at 162 lbs, but didn't think to take any pictures until I got down to a tad bit under  160.

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Here was week one:

When I looked at myself in the mirror, I really didn't think things looked this bad. When Lance took these photos of me, I realized that I had to start pushing harder and doing better if I wanted to get the majority of this weight off of me by the end of June (for a float trip I'm going on). My goal is to get down to 140.

Lance and I both downloaded this application called "MyFitnessPal." I know it's for free for android, I'm unsure if it costs for iphones. It is a super easy application that allows you to count calories (along with protein, vitamin A, C, iron, sugars, carbs, and sodium) and add in exercises to see how many calories you burn doing them based on your weight and gender. The great news for you is there's really no math that you have to do like in real calorie counting. The application does it all for you. It also gives you goals to meet.

When I got the application, it gave me a goal of 1200 calories. When I first saw that, I flipped out thinking that 1200 really isn't a lot of calories; I used to go over 2,000 daily. Then I realized that if I eat 1200 calories, then do a 2 hour hike, I will burn roughly 1,000 calories leaving my net calories at 200 or so. This would allow me to eat more if I still felt hungry or if not, leave be for the day knowing that I am under my calorie goal and will lose weight.

If I'm not eating fruits and veggies, you're probably curious as to what I am eating.

Let me first tell you what I was eating before I started counting calories and exercising.
1. Michelina's Zam 'Em Pizza Rolls
 We would bust open the bag with 40 and split them in half and eat the whole bag in one sitting between the two of us. In 20 of these pizza rolls lies 440 calories...over 1/3 of my daily goal.
2. Ramen:
 280 calories in just one block with the seasoning.

3. Spicy Nacho Doritos
Lance and I would eat most of the bag in one sitting--or at least in one day. 12 chips is 150 calories, so I'm wanting to say we would get at least 500 calories from this alone.

4. Mountain Dew-- We were drinking at least 60 oz of Mountain Dew per day after getting 2-3 bottles at work at least 1 32 oz or 44 oz fountain soda after work. Overall, this ended up being about 850 calories. This doesn't even include all the cups of overly sugared tea I was drinking.

5. We ate a lot of Taco Bell. We used to get 2 bean burritos each when we went, which totals about 740 calories.

On top of all of this, we weren't exercising. We used to believe we weren't eating as bad as a lot of people did or as bad as we could. We didn't eat McDonalds every single day or even go out to eat every single day. We didn't deepfry things at home or eat huge meals with thousands of calories.


Now, we have seen the error in our ways.
Here is really the key to it all, guys: Portioning.

We made small changes at first. We stopped getting soda at and after work and started drinking water instead. We substituted our soda craving with zero calorie Rip-Its, which are full of vitamins you need. Then we just stopped making tea all together and started drinking water at home as well. This has saved us overall about 1,000 calories a day.

Then we started paying attention to nutritional facts and exactly how much we were taking in. Instead of buying Doritos, we bought wheat thins. Instead of eating the whole damn box in one sitting, we looked at the serving size and made sure to only eat one serving in one sitting. So instead of getting over 500 calories from eating half a bag of Doritos, we get 140 from eating 15 wheat thins.

Then, we stopped eating pizza rolls and ramen and looked for a less calorie filled alternative.We started to choose things that took just as little time to make, but were overall still much better for us. We started making one can of tomato soup and splitting it between the two of us (half a can with water is only 150 calories) and dipped our serving of wheat thins into it instead of bread (or we get 100% whole grain wheat bread and dip that into it). We also starting making tuna salad the simple way. 1 can of tuna, 1 table spoon of lite miracle whip and one table spoon of relish and eating that for work: a wonderful, filling meal under 200 calories if you bail out on the bread.

We rarely eat out anymore. When we do, we eat less than we did previously.
When we go to the store now, we look at nutritional facts before we buy anything.
Most of all, we exercise now.
It's simple really.
If you don't think you have time to exercise, you do.

When we have our 15 minute breaks at work, we walk around the building at work. Even if we only walk around 10 out of the 15 minutes, that is 20 minutes just between our two breaks. At lunch, we eat our lunch, then we walk. We can usually get in another 25-30 more minutes here. On our off days, we drive to the local Pickle Springs and do a 2 mile hike. We've gotten to the point now where we can do the hike, take a little break and do it again. We've seen pretty good results already in the 5 days apart that we took pictures. We intend to take them every Sunday from here on out...or at least until we're happy with how we look. At that point, we'll continue with the healthier lifestyle we've begun, but will just no longer need photographic proof of where it has lead us.

Here are the pictures, just five days apart of my weight progress. Expect a new one to be posted next Sunday or Monday. I'm going to put the first one up again just so you can see progress side by side.

and here is Lance's progress.

We've come some way since we started this whole thing, but we still have quite a ways to go. I'll keep you updated on how we're doing and how we're getting there. So...make sure to check back.

Not So Beautiful

Here are some statistics I got from the Dove Website.

Only 4% of women around the world consider themselves beautiful.
Only 11% of girls globally are comfortable using the word beautiful to describe themselves.
72% of girls feel tremendous pressure to be beautiful
80% of women agree that every woman has something about her that is beautiful but do not see their own beauty. 

When I was younger, I was a chubby kid. This is the oldest photograph I could find, but here it is.

I'm the one in the black half jacket. In this photo, I was 13 years old, I believe. At this point in time, I didn't have a huge problem with my weight. My biggest issue was that I hadn't had any boys interested in me since the 4th grade. At 13, this should not have been my biggest worry, but it was. This was the age where all the other girls were getting boyfriends they actually kissed and I was stuck in the backround being fat little Brittany.


I decided that this is what I needed to look like. I needed this perfect shape and that lovely gap between my thighs. After I lost my virginity to a guy I didn't want to, I started to actively try to get my weight down. I've never liked healthy foods, so I didn't eat healthier. I didn't eat at all, actually. Maybe a couple of cookies a day, but that was it. This was the summer before my eighth grade year. I walked all the way across town and never sat down. I began losing weight and I liked what I saw.

This is the outlook I had. I couldn't be too skinny. The less I weighed, the better it was. My mother began to worry about me. When I got my first real boyfriend is September of 2006, I was proud of myself. I had lost a lot of weight. I was sticking to it. One day when he was over, we were all eating lunch. By this point, I had started eating a little more than I was during the summertime, but I still didn't eat as much as I used to. I walked into the kitchen and overheard my mother talking to him. "You need to watch her and make sure she eats, or she won't." I can still remember exactly the way she sounded. She knew.

I eventually fell away from practically starving myself as I become comfortable with who I was and what I had, but these images are still hard to stomach. When I see girls like this, I want to be them. I don't care if I am a great weight, I want hip bones like this. I want defined collarbones. I want to be skinny again.

The sad truth of the matter is, I will never be this thin. When Charles went to jail, I went back to practically starving myself, except it wasn't my choice. It didn't last for too long because I had some good people come into my life that fed me well. I did lose a lot of weight though. I lost nearly 20 pounds and got down to an average B.M.I. I became the thinnest I've ever been. It didn't look great on me, either.

I had the defined collarbones, but my cheeks began to sink in.
I began to look sickly instead of beautiful.
Here is a photo of that time:




My body is not built to be that kind of thin.
Even if I were to get down to such a small weight,
I would only look as though I had been doing hardcore drugs for the last few years.

There is no hope and it kills me a little inside.


Don't forget to take a look at Barbie Threatens Our Children's Self-Esteem

Optimism and losing it.

Optimism is a bizarre thing for me. I'm not sure if this is how it is for everyone else. Often enough, I'm the optimistic one of the group. My optimism rarely falters actually. Only when I am brought down by everything around me does my pessimism kick in. When it kicks in though, it does not go away. Pessimism overtakes my life. I can't find the light in anything. It's not easy to make me lose it, but when I do, it takes everything to get back.





I feel really accomplished. Tonight is my first night of work after being out of a job for nearly 3 months and I've lost 5 pounds this week. :) Being broke and having to walk everywhere is paying off!