You're Only As Fat As You Feel

I can't believe it has been a week since I've posted! Life has really gotten in the way this past week. I am doing great and losing fat little by little, but I do have a little confession to make...

I haven't been keeping up with my Bodybugg program at all. It isn't that I'm not eating well or exercising, because I'm doing great in those departments. I'm just letting go of the strict food logging and calorie counting, which negates the use of the Bugg. I'm able to "eye" my portion sizes and eat within my desired calorie range out of habit now, which is great. I still use the Bugg during workouts and when I want to do experiments with it, but as for the actual program, I'm done. If anyone is thinking of buying the BodyBugg, I would recommend it 100%. I can't begin to describe how much it has totally changed the way I think about physical activity. I have a much healthier outlook on things. I used to be all or nothing when it came to exercise, but now I know that everything you do adds up. I'm going to continue to post about my various experiments with the Bugg for sure.

Along with the Bugg program went the weigh-ins. I'm just not going to weigh-in for a while. I'll track my progress with pictures, clothes and overall emotional health. I believe it was important for me to weigh-in at first, but every time I do it now, I just get disappointed and the rush of negative energy takes over despite any progress I have made. I feel amazing right now. I feel at least 2 sizes smaller than I actually am, and I think that is OK. As long as I'm using this positive energy to push me even harder, what is the harm in feeling thinner than I actually am? I don't care if it takes me 2 years to reach my goal weight if I feel like I'm alive and living right now.

So over the course of the journey so far, I've made some great progress physically. I'm stronger. I'm slimmer. My skin looks amazing. I'm actually having to pack away (burn) various clothes and wear some new things. All of this is wonderful, but the real progress has been mental. I've let go of guilt. I've let go of self hatred and past failures. I'm looking forward now, and not just forward to the end of the weight-loss, but forward to the rest of my life from now into old age. Instead of feeling like I'm putting my life on hold until I lose weight, I feel like I've already begun my new life in which I love myself and deserve everything I used to reserve for thin people or "skinny val".

Now all of this sounds great, but I'm not so naive as to think I have it all this figured out. I don't. What I have figured out is that this is a process in which we all help each other get just a little stronger everyday. We can't do this overnight, and we can't do this alone. I've also figured out that it isn't about dieting, but rather incorporating healthy habits into our daily lives and keeping those habits over time.

I'm reading this really great book called The Weight-Loss Diaries by Courtney Rubin. Link to Amazon I'm only about half way through it, but I've laughed and cried like 10 times already. It has given me faith that we can lead normal, healthy lives no matter how seriously screwed up our relationship might be with food. It's out of stock on Amazon, but you can get it for 5 bucks plus shipping through their partners.



A word on my strategy this week:



Exercise - Alternating biggest loser and Jillian DVDs 6 days this week. These really combine cardio and strength, so I'm killing two birds with one stone. This isn't as structured as real strength training, but this is good for my fitness level. I'm working all muscle groups and really getting my heart pumping. I'm seeing results and feel a "sweet burn" to quote Tosca Reno after my workouts.



Diet - I've found that it works better for me to eat the same things for my early meals and then mix it up a little for dinner. I'm also consuming more fuel during mid-afternoon and really eating smaller meals in the evening. I'm really not hungry at night.



Sleep - I'm really learning that sleep is crucial to my mental well being and the stability of my healthy habits as I work to establish them. I'm shooting for 7 - 9 hours on most nights.



Other - Another observation I've made is that stress is a large contributor to my self-destructive behavior. My new habits are getting stronger, but they are still vulnerable, so I'm doing what I can to safeguard my mental well being and eliminate stress where possible. This week I'm going to focus on making sure I go to be with the house picked up so that when I wake up in the morning, it's nice and tidy. I'm also going to make sure I have my workout clothes ready for the morning. Baby steps....

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Amazing Clean Eating Chili

My husband made an amazing chili this weekend. It was super fast and easy. I mean he made it himself so it had to be pretty easy. ;-) We made a giant pot, so this recipe could be halved and still feed 4 people I think.

2 packages Extra Lean Ground Turkey (2.5 lbs total)
1 envelope McCormick Low Sodium chili powder
2 cans Organic Red Kidney Beans rinsed well
2 cans Organic Tomato Paste
2 cans Organic Tomato Sauce (check label for added sugars)
1 large jar of chunky salsa (all natural, check label)

Reduced Fat Sour Cream (organic/all natural) - optional
Reduced Fat Cheese - optional
Beer - this isn't a clean eating choice, but I'm including it here because my husbands original recipe calls for it. We didn't use it last time. I didn't miss it.

Brown turkey in a large skillet. Add chili seasoning to the meat and stir in to coat meat with seasoning. The turkey will be dry because it is so lean, so I add a tablespoon of water to help the coating process.

In a large pot, combine all the other ingredients (including can of beer if you are going that route) and stir well. Then add the meat/seasoning mixure. Cook on medium high heat until mixture is hot, then reduce heat and simmer for an hour to two hours.

Top with cheese and sour cream if you wish. It does add something extra, but the chili is good by itself as well.

Enjoy!

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Before and After Pics - 4 Weeks

Well it's been a little over a month that I've been eating clean, using the Bugg and working out on a regular basis. I haven't gotten on the scale in about a week, and honestly, I might not for a while. I'm in a good place mentally, and while I'd like to make sure I'm on track with my BodyBugg program, I'm scared that my positive attitude will turn into desperation if I don't see the numbers I want.

Hopefully you can tell that the picture on the bottom is the "after" picture. I think there are some notable difference here. My face is starting to look more recognizable to me. I honestly don't recognize the person in the "before" pic and hardly the "after" pic either. I'm still about 20lbs heavier right now, after this 3rd kiddo, than I have ever been at any other point in my life, but it's ok. I'm doing something about it....

Instead of being worried about how large I was the day I took that "before" picture, I should have been thinking about the quickest means to burn that shirt/undershirt combo! I actually went to the gym like that. Oh man! The camera never lies!

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Damn that Jillian Michaels!

This has been my first week back at work. It hasn't been as stressful as I thought it would be. In fact, having my 3 year old son home all the time is WAY more stressful. I'm working now, so I'm not really feeling the gym in the middle of the night thing anymore. I just can't function without sleep, so I've been working out during my lunch break with workout videos at home. I've been doing some experiments the my BodyBugg to see which videos burn the most calories in the shortest amount of time. I think I found the mother of all videos today.

Here's a link to it on Amazon. They show some clips there as well.

Even running, my burn rate on the BodyBugg gets up to about 9 cals/min tops. With this workout, I saw my burn rate get up to 12.1!!! It is hard. I mean like I wanted to die and my face was bright red for hours afterward, but THIS is how to change your body. I burned nearly 600 calories in an hour and half. The video itself is only 45 minutes long. She does circuits and also talks through some of the methodology behind what she is having you do and why.

I also think this Biggest Loser workout is incredible. It also got the calories burn rate up extremely high. This DVD is really cool because it's cheap and you can customize it to play the different sections in whatever order or number of times you want. All three Biggest Loser trainer are featured in this one, but Jillian's 10 minutes segment burns as much as Bob's 20 minute segment. She is a machine. It really is no wonder that she has trained most of the actual winners from the show.

Here's a link to this one on Amazon as well. This one is a little cheaper.

Parts of these are also free on-demand if you have Comcast cable service. Good luck!

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Too Much, Too Soon

I had a crappy weigh-in this week. :-( I'm not really surprised. I had several "bad" days where I didn't fully account for my calories using my BodyBugg. I even had a day where I ate cake, chocolate and pizza, without much regard to how much, although I didn't stuff my face or anything. It was classic stress eating. There were a lot of negative emotions going on this week. I was down on myself for failing. I've also been stressing out about returning to work next week, as today marks my last day of maternity leave. Because my resolve is strong, I know that this is simply an "off" week and that I will be back on track going forward, but this has forced me to seriously take a look at my approach.

I've adopted several new things all at once. I've started using BodyBugg. I've started going to the gym and weight training. I've also started a "clean eating" lifestyle. All of these things are wonderful and should help me attain my goal of losing weight and being healthy. Unfortunately, as I discovered this week, although my commitment is there, this new lifestyle is still fragile and can't handle a lot of external factors. I've identified some key factors that contributed to this week's poor results.

• My dad's birthday was this past weekend. I gave myself permission to have a small piece of cake and ice cream, but what I found is that my clean eating habits aren't well enough established to allow for sugar from time to time. It just started a string of cravings, and later, negative emotions as I gave into those cravings.


• I'm stressed out beyond belief about going back to work. I hope I can handle it all. The baby is only sleeping through the night occasionally, which leads me to my final challenge.


• Going to the gym in the middle of the night is not sustainable. I feel tired and can't wake up and take care of my business. I need to have the evenings to relax. Working out in the morning is the only way for me right now. This means the gym is out since I have the baby home. She also has a medical condition that makes me hesitant to put her in the gym daycare. I bought a weight bench and videos to help me get in a little extra activity.

All of these things contributed to a sense of feeling defeated this week. So, upon a great deal of reflection, I've come up with a new approach that allows me to forgive myself a little and focus on the task at hand.

1. Clean eating is the way I want to eat, but it is OK if I don't eat perfectly clean for every meal. Because losing weight is my primary goal this year, I will focus on eating cleaner, but still focusing more on calorie counting/deficit management, including allowing some diet foods that aren't 100% clean. If I manage my caloric deficit, I will lose weight whether I eat clean or not. Cooking for my family in the evenings has been so beneficial to everyone, so I will continue to make that a priority. My daughter has dropped a few pounds. We went clothes shopping for her yesterday. She was actually enjoying it instead of crying her eyes out when things didn't fit exactly right.


2. Exercise will help me lose weight faster, but I don't have to exercise to lose weight. While exercise will continue to be an important part of my lifestyle, I am going to focus more on being more active in my daily life and less about how many sets of how many reps of whatever exercise i have to do on whatever day. The structure is causing me to feel like a failure if I don't do it exactly right, and because feeling like a failure leads to self-destructive behavior, I'm letting go of it for now. I have the rest of my life to have a structured gym/lifting schedule. Right now, while I have so young kiddos and work full time, I will focus on being active and do what I can when I can.

Despite this horrible week, I'm still smaller than I was when I started this adventure 4 weeks ago. I had hoped to be about 12 lbs down by now, but I will accept the 4 - 5 I have actually lost and make the changes needed to be successful during the next 4 weeks. :-)

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Biggest Loser Night BodyBugg Experiment

So, like many other overweight Americans, I was glued to the TV tonight for The Biggest Loser. It was a shame that Joelle screwed things up for Carla, and let's face it, she REALLY needed to be there. I can't believe their friendship is ruined. Oh well, enough about that...

A few weeks ago, Bob Harper said that you could burn 300 calories by jogging in place during the commercials while watching the show. My daughter and I put this to the test tonight. I didn't count the number of commercial breaks, but I worked up a good sweat each time. At one point, they were breaking about once every 12 minutes. I found that my knees could hold out for a while and recover during the break just fine. Ok, now for the results....

During the 2 hours prior to starting The Biggest Loser, I was on the couch watching Jeopardy, then the Simpsons, and doing a scratch off lotto tickets with my husband (my guilty pleasure). I burned 202 calories during that time. Afterward, I sent my husband upstairs, so as not to be mortified by the living room workout session, and simply jogged in place during commercial breaks. I threw in a few jumping jacks and squats from time to time, but mostly I kept a easy paced jog. As it turns out, Bob was right! I burned an extra 366 calories on top of what I would have just sitting there. My total calorie burn for those 2 hours came to 568 calories! Not too shabby! I think it's safe to say that Tuesdays will be Biggest Loser Nights for as long as the show is running. :-)

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Clean Eating Tools & Resources

I've come across some really awesome things to support a clean eating lifestyle and thought I'd pass them along.

This is a blender that makes amazing protein shakes in a flash. It has interchangeable parts and clean-up is a snap. It also makes great homemade hummus. The infomercial is really corny, but it does show the product off well. Click for Infomercial I bought mine on Amazon.com. Here's a link: Magic Bullet Deluxe-22-pc Blender Set,1set

If you are eating clean, you know that the shelf live of produce isn't very long. These bags keep your fruit and vegetables fresher longer. You'll still have to go often, but this gives you a few extra days and saves money in the long run. Debbie Meyer Storage Bags/ Bonus 30 Pack (Medium and Large) There are several YouTube videos showing these off, but I like this one. watch here

Of course, the ulitmate clean eating resources are Tosca Reno's books. I have all of them and use them every day for recipes and reference. I have a list of them over in the right column on this blog under "I Recommend". I also found Tosca's blog on Blogger! http://www.eatcleandiet.blogspot.com/

Last, but not least, Oxygen Magazine and Clean Eating Magazine. These are wonderful resources for clean eating and training smart!

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Week 3 Progress Update

It's time to post my Week 3 pictures, but my picture taker is in school right now, so I promise to get them up later today. I'm closing out Week 3 and heading into Week 4 at this point. Here is a quick summary of my progress so far.

Pounds lost - about 5
Five pounds in 3 weeks probably doesn't seem too great, but I'm training so hard that my muscles are in a constant state of repair. I know that I've lost more fat than 5 pounds. I've been tracking my measurements and plan to post a nice little graph showing my progress in a more accurate way. :-)

Eating Clean Update
This is going very well so far. My skin looks amazing and I do feel in control of things. I got a little off track this weekend, but nothing I can't recover from easily. I've learned that the real way to avoid pitfalls is by having food available on hand. I'm going to spend some time today cooking things I'll need to have available this week. I've discovered some items this week that I'm going to share in a separate post.

Exercise Update
While I'm still training hard everyday, I am unable to run on the treadmill anymore. Despite my daily dose of Glucosamine, my knees are protesting the impact. My knees were already bad, and trying to run on them as a nearly 200 pound person isn't working out. The Bodybugg gets up to about a 9 to 10 cal/min burn rate when I run. I haven't been able to top that with the other machines. The truth is that I'm just going to have to drop some pounds before I can run. The stepmill and the elliptical are my new machines of choice. I've also been doing WiiFit during the day, which has been fun. I plan on doing a WiiFit/BodyBugg experiment this week. If you aren't familiar with the Nintendo Wii, or WiiFit, I'll be posting on it soon.

Strength training is going pretty well. I still haven't claimed my place in the free-weight area at the gym, but I did buy weights and a bench to use at home. My weight training has been fairly unstructured up to this point. I've been doing machines at the gym and lifting enough weight to get a nice burn, but I didn't doucment what I did or do the same things in any sort of pattern as I had hoped to. This week I will add some consistency and documentation. Wish me luck!

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Let's Catch Up

I know I've been MIA for a while, but things have been really busy around here. Here's a quick weekend recap:

Friday was "date night". The first since the baby has been born, and honestly, the first since before I became pregnant. It had been almost a year. My mom watched the kids overnight so that we could sleep in and have a romantic evening (if you know what I mean). I spent most of the day Friday looking for something to wear that I would feel good in. Despite the fact that I have noticeable fat loss, finding something to wear that I felt good in proved to be an enormous challenge. I did finally settle on something, and date night went well. My husband has really been amazing with this weight problem I'm tackling. I really don't look like someone he would actually be with, but I'm working on it everyday. He treats me just as though I am "skinny me", which is honestly amazing and I'm so grateful for his support.

Saturday was spent sleeping, as we stayed out really late and I also had an upset stomach.

Sunday was the Superbowl, but we really aren't big football fans. I did fall off the clean eating wagon by eating some birthday cake I had for my dad last night. I also just overate a little in general, but mostly because I didn't eat enough the days before. I feel OK about it. I'm back on track today. :-)

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