Looking Back on My Weight Loss

When I started losing weight for this blog, I'd already lost some weight. At my heaviest, I was 212 pounds. I lost a dozen pounds and then participated in a Biggest Loser-style fitness competition with some friends, then lost 15 more. My weight went up a bit and down a bit and then I found huge huge success through a combination of three things: weekly weigh ins, tracking my calories, and increased physical activity.

After a few weeks of this, I settled into a rhythm and have lost more weight more consistently and with less effort than I expected. Oh, there's effort, but it's less than I thought there'd be, especially after a few months, when I knew the basics and just had to stick to them.

The fact is that counting my calories allows me to see exactly what I'm eating, and has opened my eyes to what foods break the bank and what foods are calorie bargains. Even if I stopped counting calories today (which I won't!), I'd be better prepared to cook for myself and go to restaurants because I have a much more accurate picture of just what I'm consuming.

As for this blog, while I haven't always been as diligent as I'd like in updating every week, it has been a persistent reminder. I publicly committed to losing weight and checking in every week until I reach my deadline or my goal, and it pops into my head every day.

When it comes to being more active, that's something I've tackled intermittently and without the routine or dedication I've given logging my food or even updating this blog. It's something I've gotten away with neglecting, but I suspect these last ten pounds I want to lose won't come off without increased physical activity on my part. Yes, I walk around at work, but I really want to incorporate in some strength and more intense cardio. Also I really liked yoga. Between my personal tendency toward spontaneity and my irregular work schedule, I haven't had a lot of success nailing down an exercise routine. This week I hope to improve that.

So that's my not very secret secret. Food, exercise, goal setting, goal sharing, and record keeping. I've got a ways to go, but I've come so far. I'm really, really proud of my success and hope for anyone who wants to accomplish this to actually do it. Certain parts are easier than I expected, like tracking my food (a food scale and measuring cups sure help!) and certain parts are harder (like making myself work out). It's all attainable, though, and you do get partial credit, so don't think you have to be perfect from the get go. I wasn't and I'm still not, and look what I've accomplished!

A Quick Reminder:

Thanks The Oatmeal for these!

Lazy Tasty Dinner

Today was a great day for me, because I got to watch another Disney Cruiseline show with Cat, this time from a different cast. It was adorable, and I loved it. Afterward I came home and was pretty wiped from walking so much today in addition to my return to working out last night with jogging, jump rope, and strength training. I didn't want to have to stand over a stove, so I thought about what food we had and came up with a filling, delicious meal that didn't involve much standing on my poor feet, particularly at the beginning.

Dinner a la Whit:

• Cook some brown rice according to the directions. I cooked about four servings so we'd have leftovers. This takes around 45 minutes.
• Throw a tiny bit of olive oil on a frying pan that's on medium heat. Once the oil heats up, put in a couple handfuls of spinach. For two servings, I used two cups of spinach, because it cooks way down. After pushing the whole thing around a bit to get the spinach mixed in with the oil, pop a lid on the pan and let is cook for a few minutes. After a bit, just set it on a burner that has no heat or a pot holder or a trivet or something. The spinach is going to be between two hot things, so letting it cool is no big deal. You could reverse the order of this and the next step, or do them simultaneously. I'm not that coordinated, though, so I did this.
• Put two frozen turkey burgers on a frying pan and cook them according to the instructions on the box.
• Throw a slice of processed cheese (that's American cheese if you're in the States) on the turkey burger, or put some grated cheese on top. This is optional, but Chris and I love cheese, and it helps add some flavor to the dish.
• Grab a bowl and layer brown rice, spinach, and your burger on top. Cut up the burger and mix it all together and eat it. 
• Be happy forever.

It's not cooking as much as it is warming and assembling, but it's simple and easy, and the first thirty minutes, I sat on the couch. The turkey burgers we eat are 220 calories, though you could probably save some calories with home-made turkey burgers, or just browned turkey. That sacrifices some of the laziness I liked about the dish, though, so make your choices as you see fit.

The whole thing rings in at 435 calories if you use a teaspoon of olive oil (on the spinach), a cup of spinach, my particular brand of turkey burger, a thin slice of regular fat processed cheese, and half a cup of brown rice. Actually measure the rice, by the way, no eyeballing. I'm plenty full after that dinner, even though it wasn't very many calories. It's simple, tasty, and something different, and I love that I have a meat (premade frozen turkey burger patties) that I don't have to worry about thawing out, so it's always available when I'm not sure what to throw together for dinner.

Alright, time for me to work out. I hope everyone's making good choices, no matter what their goals, and getting up every time they're knocked down. We can do this.

Turning it Around

  It's officially too late to post last week's weigh-in. I took a picture on Friday morning but didn't get around to posting it due to a very busy weekend. What I would have posted, in brief, is that I haven't been eating well this week, and though I exercised and walked a decent (not great) amount, I stayed about the same weight because my eating has been off plan. We've been eating out a LOT lately. Those excuses, from, "We always said we'd eat here, and I'm leaving soon!" and, "It's our anniversary!" to, "I'm just so lazy," have added up. I even fell off my calorie counting for the first time in over a month.

We are, however, at the beginning of a new week. I'm ready to do this right. Leaving in nine days isn't an excuse, I'm going to have to eat well and exercise when I get home and when things are going on there. Sure, I'm really sad about leaving Chris and Monte and Chris's family and this amazing city, but going home is great and I miss my family so much. I need to be ready to export my good habits from here, where I have total pantry control, no job competing for my time, and where I've got a supportive boyfriend helping me get my butt in gear to home, where I have little control over what kinds of food we bring into the house, will probably have to get a job, and where, if I don't want to hear Chris asking me why I haven't worked out, I can just close the computer. I have to do this. I'm not saying that I haven't been living in the real world, but it's certainly been pretty great for making healthy decisions up here. I need to be adaptable, and it starts with firming up my habits here before I leave.

 

This morning I had my standard breakfast of half a cup of Kashi GoLean, half a cup of skim milk, and some blueberries. For lunch I had broccoli, roasted potatoes, half a sweet potato, corn, and some pork tenderloin, all leftovers, with water. Dinner's going to be a reasonable portion of whole wheat pasta with spaghetti sauce and meatballs from Chris's mom, and some steamed broccoli. It's not ideal, because I guess broccoli goes best with white sauce, but I've found steamed broccoli chunks mixed in with spaghetti sauce and noodles is really filling, particularly since you need something to compensate for the bulk of all that pasta you can't eat if you're trying to control your calories. Tonight we're doing at least one workout with EA Sports Active, and we might play a bit of the Raving Rabbids game Chris and I played last night. It was a lot of fun, and incorporated a bit of movement, as well, which is great.

Here's to admitting, hey, we've screwed up, and then letting it go. It's healthy. When you hold on to it, you think, "I messed up and had a Baconater for lunch, I might as well eat ice cream and pepperoni for dinner," instead of acknowledging that you gave into temptation, and that's not good, but now you should get back on plan to minimize the damage. One meal, one day, one week even can only be so bad. There's only so much you can eat or so little you can move. If you pick up right then and turn it around, you're set. If you live in your failures forever, that burger haunts you and affects your decisions for a long time to come.

People in Fat Houses Shouldn't Throw Scones

"Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' and behold, the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye." -New American Standard Bible





There are a LOT of things wrong with that clip from Rush Limbaugh's February 21st radio show. Here are just a few I want to address here, as it concerns nutrition/fitness/being a decent human being, things I think all have an important place on this blog:

• He's a straw-man argument, and not only that, the guy is attacking a single meal and demanding that it be the basis by which we judge ALL Michelle Obama's dietary practices, as well as the advice she gives.
• Rush Limbaugh is calling Michelle Obama fat or unhealthy, while he's overweight himself. Don't let the however many years old picture on his home page fool you, you can see right in the video that he's heavy again.
• It shows a profound disrespect of all women who don't meet the strictest of beauty standards. 
• It's the ramblings of a person who is totally disconnected from reality and who is surrounded by people who affirm his willfully ignorant and misleading crap. 
• It's intentionally misleading about the nutritional guidance offered by the first lady through the Let's Move program. 
• It paints the tired old image of healthy food being some variation of flavored air, 1/2 a cup of lettuce, or acorns, suggesting that healthy food is unappetizing and ridiculous. I'm sorry, but the Baconator is ridiculous. My stir-frys are delicious.
• It's not on the path of making this country better. 

I'm sorry, but unless you have a valid medical/scientific backup for your claims, you can't bitch and moan at someone trying to stop obesity and pretend you care about the well being of the United States. You don't care about two sides coming together and improving the nation because all you want is to tear down the other side and never give them credit for doing anything right. It's right to try to motivate people to exercise and eat healthier. It's right to eat a big meal after SKIING, an activity that burns over six hundred calories an hour for a 160 pound person, more if you're heavier. It's right not to mislead your listeners about what someone is saying in order to argue against it. If you have legitimate complaints about this program, address the points of it. You're not stretching the facts, man, you're lying. And that's a real bummer.

Are you kidding me?

It's really a drop in the bucket when it comes to all the unreasonable things Rush says, I know, but because I'd punch a baby in the face to be as fat as Michelle Obama, and because it's really frustrating for people to crap on the good work of others just because they're on the opposite side of the political spectrum, I wanted to address it.

Where are all the berries? Where is the tree bark?

Edit to add:

Apparently any kind of healthy changes intended to promote weight loss are negatively viewed by Mr. Limbaugh:

"I think those of you that regularly exercise -- playing softball, baseball, basketball, soccer, mountain biking, running, rock climbing, skiing, skating, running -- you're the people getting injured.  You're the people showing up at the hospital with busted knees and tendons and skin cancer, ankle sprains, knee and hip replacements, broken bones, concussions, muscle, ligament, tendon, cartilage strains and tears, tendinitis, rotator cuff tears.  All you exercise freaks, you're the ones putting stress on the health care system.  What happens when people don't regularly exercise and keep their weight relatively under control? Nothing! They probably don't even know their doctors' names." -Rush Limbaugh 

That kind of thinking is just scary.

Food Rant - It's Not That Hard to be Good

 I was going to combine this with my last entry, but I thought better of it. It's long and a bit negative in parts, so I tried not to post it. When that didn't work, I decided to quarantine it to this post right here.

I think the kind of eating that I did today, 400 calories in snacks and a 500+calorie dinner, might seem strange to people who live with food bipolar disorder, a term I just made up to describe my old and a lot of other people's conflicting attitudes toward food. This kind of feeling makes otherwise awesome and reasonable people fear food like eggs (such high cholesterol!) and bananas (such high sugar and calories!) because of the scare tactics used by magazines, the news, and fad diets. These people eschew such food but might later be seen eating something like a massive restaurant Caesar salad (hey, it's a salad!) or a breaded chicken sandwich because chicken is better than a burger, right?

Not to sound like a self-righteous health nut that no one ever wants to hang around, but if you've ever thought any of those things, you probably need a better picture of what you're eating. The best way to get that is by logging your calories. It's a great practice that if you can get into, even if just for a month, will allow you to see the massive dent certain foods make in your available daily calorie goal. When I think that I just ate this yummy and filling meal for less than half of the calories of the restaurant lunch Chris and I had the other day, which we SPLIT, it's kind of mind-boggling. In a good way! Sure, I used to eat piles of junk and spend hundreds of dollars a month eating at fast food and other restaurants, but I don't anymore!

I used to eat all this for one meal! I ate 20 more
calories than this on the entire day of Friday.

And it's so easy to cook for yourself. Almost every recipe I've tried since cooking has been a success, and all so far have been at least edible. It's so much more economical in terms of money and calories, it's just kind of a no brainer these days for all except special occasions. I'm not saying I don't still want to eat the junk, but once I make a good food decision, I generally don't think about the cruddy food any more.

Even when you can't make your food, there are often choices you can make while you're out and about that will be better for you than your old ways of eating. I had eight pieces of brown rice California sushi rolls the other day when I was at the mall with Catherine, and while I could have had a burger, pizza, or evil wonderful evil poutine, I had a filling meal for under 300 calories. Even white rice sushi would have only been 50 calories more. That's less than a medium container of fries at McDonald's. Heck, that's less than a large Coke.

The point is that it's not hard. It's not as easy as a drive-thru meal, but it's kind of close. And it's miles better for you. I don't know what else I can say. Try it. Read some real health advice, take flash news stories about how one type of food is HORRIBLE or AMAZING with a grain of salt, and just try. And then try again. Give it a month. If you don't like what you see, stop. But I don't think that's going to happen.

Tonight's Dinner

We used to regularly make orange juice from concentrate and go through about one of those little tubes a week. Since recommitting to fitness after the New Year, we've had four of the things hanging around in the freezer and one in the fridge and have stuck to drinking water, milk, and tea. Tired of the sullen OJ glaring at me every time I opened the refrigerator, I dug around on the internet and found a recipe that uses the concentrate, egg, and soy sauce to coat chicken breasts that you then dip in bread crumbs and bake. I decided to try my hand at it tonight, though memories of chicken surprise still haunted me and I was a little scared of how it would taste. I also made a spinach salad with Craisens, sunflower seeds, mozzarella cheese, and ranch dressing, and some roasted Brussels sprouts as a side. I shouldn't have worried, it was an awesome dinner! It was filling, flavorful, and nutritious as heck.

This evening's delicious chicken. Click here to learn how to make it yourself, and if you choose
to use boneless breasts like we did, adjust the cooking time to around 30-35 minutes.

Breadcrumbs and sugary juice are by no means a regular part of my diet plan, but for a meal that provided good amounts of protein, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin E, Vitamin K, iron, fiber, and a bunch of other nutrients in smaller amounts, it was worth it. And I can always whip up something similar without the extra ingredients, it was just kind of fun to do something different with our plain old boneless skinless chicken breasts.

I was scared of these guys at first, too, but I promise that this simple recipe for
roasted Brussels sprouts will win you over if you're unsure about this vegetable.

Tracking my calories with MyFitnessPal, the whole meal was around 525 calories. This fit with a breakfast of 124 calories (Kashi GoLean, skim milk, and blackberries), a lunch of 323 calories (leftover broccoli/cabbage/baby corn/water chestnut stir fry with a chicken breast), and some snacks (a whole wheat toaster waffle, peanut butter, skim milk, and dark chocolate) adding up to 400 calories. My calorie intake for the day is around 1,400, give or take a few.

A Dinner Victory

So today was the Snowpocalypse. Or so they tell me. I've been inside all day. Chris has been working from home, so I got to spend the day with my boys. I kind of forgot to thaw anything out today, so right before dinner time I ended up asking Chris what he wanted for dinner. We had chili, brown rice, pasta sauce, healthy pasta, tuna, bread, refried black beans, tortillas, and some veggies. I was leaning toward chili and rice, tuna melts, or pasta with sauce, but Chris suggested something I hadn't even thought of: quesadillas. I was a little nervous about the two tortillas and tons of cheese, as well as the relatively low protein.

While Chris wanted a more traditional quesadilla, with just cheese and peppers, I wanted to try something more filling and also try to cut it from two tortillas with stuff in the middle to one tortilla folded in half over healthy stuff. We always get the small, 100% whole wheat tortillas, but I still hate how one tortilla packs on 15 carbs and 90 calories with decent fiber but no protein, which end with a relatively small dent in one's feeling of fullness.

So I opened a can of tuna (in water) and mixed it with shredded cheese, a dab of mayo, and some shredded spinach. I placed a pan on the burner at medium high and put a bit of olive oil in it. Once the pan and oil was hot, I put one tortilla in and spooned my cheesy tuna-ey spinachey mixture onto half of it. It warmed up and I turned the empty tortilla half onto the rest of the food, then flipped the whole thing over. I did this a few more times, and then put it on my plate. I ended up eating my healthy quesadilla with steamed broccoli, anise (a vegetable that's like a cross between licorice and celery), chickpeas, and water. It was great! The whole quesadilla, cooking oil included, was 305 calories, the majority of those coming from the cheese. It had 18 carbs and 21 grams of protein. It was very filling and TASTY. Plus, because I only used half my can of tuna, I have all the makings for another one of these bad boys tomorrow.

I guess the message of this post is that with a little creativity, your nutrition goals in mind, a fridge and pantry stocked with some of the ingredients to put together healthy meals, and an out of left field suggestion from your significant other, you can really come up with something great. The steps you can take today toward that goal are reading up on nutrition, shopping for staple foods at the grocery store that move you toward your goal, and be willing to roll with some off the wall suggestions from time to time.

Little Things

My boys on the sofa.

Last night Chris and I went to see True Grit with a couple of his friends. This required eating as soon as he came home and dashing off to the movies. I made a stir-fry with carrots, broccoli, squash, snow peas, bean sprouts, and chicken I'd baked a couple days before in ginger stir-fry sauce. I was running behind, so we didn't eat any rice. While it was a really tasty dinner and I'm now cured of my acute DROWN IT IN SOY SAUCE-itus, I was nervous we'd still be hungry when we got to the movies and make iffy choices.

I'm sure you see where this is going. Sneaking food into movies is nothing new, really. I've been doing it for years, and it was pretty bad when I worked as a dollar store cashier right next to a display of movie theater candy, from Reese's Pieces to Junior Mints to my favorite, Buncha Crunch. By the end of my time there, I'd gained considerable weight from the daily sodas, movie candy, and oh, did I mention the store was directly next door to a pizza place?

This was going to be different, though. Tonight, I'd be packing (with some help from Chris while I got dressed) healthy and quiet snacks. Quiet doesn't seem like a big deal, but trust me, no one wants to be the center of attention for cracking open a Coke Zero and crunching on carrot sticks. Trust the voice of experience here. This is what we packed: 5 or six strawberries with the tops cut off, about 10 or 15 blueberries, about two inches of sliced cucumbers, and one of those light Babybel mini cheeses.

I have my bag of contraband snacks and I'm all ready to enjoy the movie!

It was great! I forgot to grab water before we left, so we still ended up paying $3 a bottle for it, but in the end it's better than $10 soda, popcorn, and candy. Plus, smug superiority over eating the right thing without feeling guilty tastes pretty great, too.

Village on a Diet, and a rant about foodie elitism

I like to watch TV that reflects what I'm going through with this fitness thing. I won't lie, a big part of it is watching overweight people work out. I love it! I love watching them push past their limits and accept themselves as the athletes they can be. Also, yes, sometimes they fall off treadmills and that's pretty good, too.

In addition to The Biggest Loser, Chris and I have been watching Village on a Diet, a Canadian show about a small rural town in BC with a weight problem. 60% of its residents are overweight or obese, and many residents in the town are now working with a team of experts (a psychologist, two personal trainers, a dietitian, a doctor, and a chef) to try to lose a ton of weight in ten weeks.

Citizens of Taylor, BC, from Village on a Diet.

All in all, it's a great show. Unlike on TBL, you get to see people in their natural environment, making changes and having success, struggling with spousal indifference, and talking with a psychologist, trainer, or doctor about their struggles with their weight. The last episode cast light on issues people struggle with like childcare hassles and an unsupportive husband, a parent putting too much pressure on his overweight kid to lose weight, and adjusting expectations about the pace of weight loss. You trade the drama of competition and huge numbers for something a bit more real, if a bit less satisfying (where's my 100 lbs lost in ten weeks?).

The show has a serious weak point, though, and I'd like to see if you can find it. Here's a hint: it's in the picture below:

Who gives horrible cooking advice and plays
the invisible accordion? This guy.

What's my problem with him, besides the apron making him look like an old timey railroad conductor? He makes it all way too hard. For a majority of townspeople, dinner before the Village on a Diet crew showed up was eaten out, ordered in, or something moved from the freezer to the oven, like fries or chicken fingers. How does ol' stripey try to break the villagers into healthy eating? With wild rice with mushrooms, leeks, almonds and apple cider vinaigrette. I'm sure it's lovely. But by serving it right off the bat, along with other dishes like mango salsa, tofu kebabs, and bean and quinoa salad, Chef Jonathan Chovancek presents this all or nothing view of eating healthily that just isn't true.

You know how people who always buy prepackaged food feel about touching the raw ingredients that make up real meals?

• Fearful. What if I get salmonella from touching this?
  
• Frustrated. Why do I have to go to all this trouble when I could just open a box or a can and have a meal in just a couple minutes?
• Like failures before they even begin. I'm not a cook, why am I even trying something this out of my league? This is going to go so wrong, just like all the other times I've tried recipes.
  

I know this. I used to be scared of cooking. I can't tell you why, only that I was, and the more distance I could put between myself and the actual ingredients in my meals, the better. I congratulated myself for cooking a homemade meal when I made Hamburger Helper, and I sometimes ate fast food three times a day. I was really grossed out the first time I made anything with raw chicken in it, because it was so cold and slick and full of horrible diseases that, if not cooked the hell out of it, would kill me, or at least leave me with explosive diarrhea, right?

Here's what the chef should do:

1. Teach the citizens of Taylor about basic ways to prepare lots of veggies. Steaming, roasting, and pan-frying. Instead of presenting a few recipes with very specific ingredients and proportions, show these people, many of whom have never cooked a whole meal by themselves, a handful of ways to cook almost everything. Give them the basics to succeed.
   
2. Show them the leanest cuts of meat and how to prepare them. Again, building blocks. They don't need 23 ways to dress a Cornish game hen, just the basics about grilling, broiling, baking, and pan-frying meat.
   
3. Advise the villagers how to construct a meal. Instead of saying, "You're only supposed to have four ounces of meat on your plate!" and skipping off into the sunset, show us a balanced and filling meal and explain why it is so. Point out what has fiber, what has healthy fat (and what that even means), and why that would make you full, even without an entire rack of ribs.
   
4. Teach a lesson on herbs and spices. At this point, the people of Taylor will have basic cooking techniques down. Show them how to dress up a meal. When to add salt, how to change an entire dish with just a couple spices. Show them how easy it is to start an herb garden, but that for a lot of things, dried works well, too.
   
5. Before presenting them with the Top Five Healthiest Foods You Absolutely Must Cook Now (And if You Don't Eat Them, You're Going to Die from Obesity or at Least Vengeful Meteors), ask what they like to eat. Use their existing food preferences to guide what is presented. You'll have a lot more success that way.

I know, I know. I'm ranting. But it's stuff like this, this finicky foodie slow foods forced vegetarian antioxidant good cholesterol kale and barley and fiddlehead crap that makes it all seem so inaccessible to the average person. If you see that most residents can't make the room in their budget or schedule to go to the market, try to organize a car pool or something to get people there. Showing up with truckloads of veggies ONE TIME is a classic case of giving a man a fish, you know what I'm saying?

A huge part of getting healthier for me has involved cooking. I started from nothing. No knowledge at all. So what I'm going to do in my humble, non-foodblogger way, is present some simple recipes that will help anyone interested in cooking but freaking terrified of it jump in with simple things. I'm not a great cook! I haven't been doing this long! But I like to try new things, and as much as I've experimented, I haven't yet made anything yet that was inedible or lead to food poisoning.

I really believe that if you want to lose weight and you don't make an ungodly amount of money, you need to learn some basic cooking. In the days and weeks to come, I'll share what I know, and from there we can keep on learning, together.

Click here to buy this fantastic art print. For me.