60 Lbs GONE

It took nearly 9 months, but my weight loss is moving again!  I've been hovering in the 50+ lbs lost for a few months, but I'm thankful to report that today I hit that elusive -60 lb mark.

I'm loving the difference in my body, energy, strength and overall health.  I'm enjoying the benefits of healthier weight!  Smaller clothes, looking better, crossing my legs, high heels and actually enjoying working out!

Here's where what I'm doing...

I work with Bryan Beaune at Building Your Temple Training Facility in Oxford.  He gives me a customized meal plan to eat which includes whole, healthy foods in the right proportions and timing to make weight loss happen. 

In general, my meal plan consists of 5 mini meals with the first and last meals being eggs and the other 3 meals consisting of a lean protein, simple carb and veggie.  No, I can't share my specific meal plan with you, but Bryan would love to write one specifically for you taking into account your weight, activity level and favorite foods.  That's what he does for his clients and he's amazing at it!  I also get one "Whatever Meal" a week, I get to eat whatever I want but in modest portions.  It really helps keep me on track and reset my metabolism.  I take my meals with me in a small cooler everywhere I go and try an minimize eating out at restaurants.  It's a lot of work, but I've finally learned how to feed my body properly and I can live like this!

I work out 3 to 4 times a week.  Bryan opened a CrossFit facility in Oxford and I go there 2 to 3 times a week for amazing workout.  I love CrossFit, who knew!  I love going in and being challenged by new activities and getting to try them with a small group of people.  BTW - if you'd like to try out CrossFit, the first class is free.  Message me and I'll meet ya there!

I have also fallen in love with Yoga.  I now do it almost every day.  I met a fabulous Yoga instructor on vacation, Isabella Jones, I went to a couple of her classes and bought her DVD.  "Yoga is the un-exercise," she says.  It really works out the pain and suffering that I give my body at CrossFit.

Finally, I am training for a 5K, but I'm holding off a few more weeks so I can run outside (I hate the treadmill!).  I'm planning to debut my newfound running "skills" at the Big Run for the One at the Big Ticket Festival, June 20th in Gaylord.  Run with me!

Weight Loss is hard, honestly one of the hardest things I've ever done!  But it's very rewarding.  I'm sticking with it til the number on the scale says "HEALTHY." 

Still Shrinking.....

I'm still here, I'm still working out and following my meal plan, still seeing success little by little!  Total of 58lbs lost so far!

In my last blog, I told you about my New Year's Resolution, dropping the diet pop.  That resolution has been kept!  I make 2 pitchers of ice tea a day, regular black tea and passion tea, both sugar free.  I am really enjoying tea now, of course still drinking lots of water!  I've also discovered coffee.  I really needed an extra boost of caffeine that I was missing from the pop, coffee has filled that need and I'm almost starting to like it.  1 or 2 cups a day, that's all, definitely don't need a new addiction.

Training:  I'm in week 4 of training for a couch to 5k.  I'm going to run a 5K at the Big Run for the One at Big Ticket Festival  June 20, 2013.  Hope you can join us!  (shhhh, don't tell anyone, but I think I may actually LIKE running, who would have knew!)

I've been learning all kinds of new exercises and ways to work out.  I'm up to doing snatches with 30 lb weights, pretty cool considering I started with just 5 lbs.  I'm really amazed that our bodies can learn to adapt and change so much.

Feedback:  I have been getting great feedback from people who haven't seen me in a while.   I'll be honest, it's a little embarrassing!   Especially when it sounds like, "Oh my gosh, you aren't HUGE anymore!"  Wow, thanks for that.  LOL.  Apparently I've also inspired a few people to get in better shape.  That's encouraging to hear, probably more so than "oh my gosh, you're not HUGE anymore!"

- Living the {Healthy} Life!   Jenn

New Year - New Changes

 Today I must say goodbye to an old friend.  I've made a lot of changes in 2012 and those changes cause me to leave 58 lbs BEHIND (many from my behind ~ giggle ~ giggle).  However one of the bad things I've held on to is my LOVE for diet pop, especially Diet Pepsi.

I've been drinking diet pop since I was a little kid.  Once I gave it up for 6 months, but I didn't have as much of a reason as to why to give it up, so I gradually picked it up again.

So why change??  My trainer, Bryan tells me that Diet pop messes with your metabolism.  The artificial sweetener activates your pancreas with it's fake sweetness, but when no calories are available your body thinks its starving and the next meal you consume goes right to storage....fat storage!

All this time I drank diet pop thinking I was saving calories, thinking it was like a free pass of fizzy goodness, instead I had been tricked. I would have probably been better off to drink the real stuff, but then again I have consumed a LOT of pop over my lifetime!

But NO more.  I'm done.  I've survived my first 24 hours pop free.  My head is aching, my body is giving shivers, my energy is all gone.  But that's OK, because I'll be better in a few days and I'll be much healthier in long run.  A few days (or weeks) of crankiness will be worth a lifetime free of something that is so addictive and bad for you.  Plus, if Bryan is right, it will help me lose more weight.  I hate to admit it, but he has been right on everything health related....so far!  So say a prayer for me....and stay out of my way til I get feeling better!

Why are WE so fat?

I went to out to dinner the other night.  As I looked down the rows of tables, I noticed obese person after obese person, then maybe a "just" overweight person and occasionally someone at a healthy weight.  Trust me I'm not judging, just noticing that I'm not the only one with a problem here.

So why are WE so fat?  I've been thinking about this question a lot lately.  I'm a firm believer (thanks to having an engineer for a husband) that if you don't know what's really broken, you can't fix it reliably. 

I know I've changed my diet and I work out now and I'm thrilled that I have lost so much weight.  But what made me so fat to start with??

Was I eating too much?  Was I eating the wrong things?  Was I just not getting enough exercise?? Why does this diet work, when NONE of the others did for me?  Is it possible that we've just been fed a lie and 10 or 20 years from now we'll look back at the experts and shake our fists at their ignorance of today?

Can you believe 50 years ago they didn't realize that smoking was dangerous??  Seriously what were they thinking, or not thinking??  So what is the thing now that we're doing NOW that's making us so fat? Will we figure it out and fix it??

As I think through my life I think it's a combination of factors.  Did I eat too much.  Yes!  Not a ton too much, but quite often more than I needed.  A little extra over a long period of time.

Did I exercise too little?  Exercise, what was that??  Guilty as charged.

Did I eat the wrong things??  Yes, apparently I did.  But isn't a calorie a just a calorie??  I don't think so.  I think the food we are eating today is so nutritionally defunct, but yet emotionally addictive that even though we eat more than any other generation in history, we're still starving nutritionally. 

I've been watching a lot of food related documentaries lately and reading a few book about eating, trying to figure out what it was that made me so fat (so I can be sure I don't ever go back there)!  They talk a lot about the combination of salt, fat and sugar and how addictive that combination is to us.  There is also a lot of discussion about diet pop and it's addictive qualities.  All along I was drinking diet thinking I was saving myself so many calories, now I learn it was doing just the opposite, that it was actually helping make me fat.  And it's sooooo addictive, I still haven't completely shaken its stronghold from my life ...not yet anyway!

I'm sorry this post has a lot more questions than answers.  That's kind of where I'm at right now.  I'm in the process of evaluating everything I used to believe about food and healthy eating.   I'm learning that a lot of what I used to believe is just wrong!  I'm convinced that if you eat the typical fast food American diet that unless you have incredible portion control or incredible genes, then you will be fat!

Oh, then add in all those other factors?!?!  Am I a stress eater (YES)?  Am I eating because something's eating me?   Am I eating to fill an emotional need or to make up for the fact that I never got the special toy I had asked Santa for??  Or was I eating too much to keep things away??  Or could I just be addicted to food??  YES - Absolutely YES.  I do love to eat and cook. 

I'm learning to love eat on my healthy weight loss plan and praying for strength to stay on the plan.  But I will admit while most people say "TGIF" for Friday, I say "TGICM" Thanking God its Cheat Meal time.   I get one cheat meal each week!

So why do you think we're so fat?  I'd love to hear your thoughts on it, because I do NOT have it all figured out, not by a long shot!

Also check out this article about obesity and restaurant eating!

Better than Bagged - Baked Corn Tortilla Chips!

One of the few carbs I'm allowed on my eating plan is corn tortillas.  I'm NOT allowed to have any bread (GASP - I know, how do I even survive!).  Ok, the problem is I don't like corn tortillas, they're gross and all rubbery....yuck!  But then one day I got the brilliant idea to bake them to see if they would turn into something resembling a chip??

So I got out my trusty baking sheet and using my pizza cutter (oh pizza, how I miss pizza!) and cut them into 6 wedges.

I generously spray them with non-stick cooking spray, flip, repeat on other side.  Place them on a single layer on your baking sheet.  Add favorite seasoning (try taco, garlic salt, buffalo chicken, Italian, etc).  Bake in a 400' pre-heated oven for 10 minutes.  Pull them out, flip them over and return to oven, watch and wait.  Seriously, this is important, they go from DONE to OOPS WELL DONE in a flash, so you need to watch them for a couple minutes and pull them out at the peek of lightly browned crispy perfection.  Wait too long and even your chickens won't eat them.

On my eating plan I can have these with hummus, beans or guacamole, not very many, but enough to satisfy my need for crunch!  However I encourage you to make a bunch of them they keep for several days in a plastic baggie....if your kids and spouse don't find them :(

This one of those foods I would make even if I wasn't trying to lose weight.  In fact we actually like them more than bagged tortilla chips and they're super cheap, you can get a huge stack of rubbery corn tortillas at the grocery store for $2 or less and turn them into tortilla chips in a jiffy.

Now if I could just find Doritos Nacho Cheese seasoning mix, I'd be in heaven!  Suggestions anyone?

Thankful for the little things!

This hasn't been the greatest week or two for weight loss (other than what I lost with the FLU!), but I have a lot to be thankful for and I'm really starting to notice some great little changes!

The Towel - we had gone to a resort over Thanksgiving week.  After a shower I had wrapped up in the hotel towel and was getting ready.  Then it hit me...I wrapped myself up in the hotel towel!  And it fit around my body!!!  Without parts playing peek-a-boo!  Woooo hooo!  Average hotel towels are usually 27 x 52", which didn't used to fit all the way around me.  But now, piece of cake!  Oh wait, I don't eat cake, well you get the idea! 

Tall Boots - It's been ages since I've been able to wear a pair of tall boots.  It's usually not worth the battle that pursues to get them over my "sturdy" calves.  I've even tried the "wide calf" boots in the past, but guess what, my calves were WIDER.  Not any more, I ordered a regular pair of brown leather tall boots and they look great.  Still a little tight, but after one wearing they adjusted nicely.

Weight really creeps up on you and you tend to forget what kind of things you have adjust or go without in your life because of your extra size.  As I'm losing weight and inches, I'm losing some baggage as well.  I'm appreciating the little things like towels and boots that fit the new me.  Especially enjoying shopping in the "regular" section of the clothing store!

Best wishes on your journey to health!

16 --Sweet--16

Still working on my meal plans and working my workouts!  We took some time out for Thanksgiving week for a VACATION!  Woot, woot!  I actually managed to lose 1 pound that week thanks to some awesome water aerobics offered each morning at the resort!

And even more exciting for me was fitting into a size 16 pair of jeans for the first time since...since...since... college maybe??

I'm not sure why a size 16 is so exciting for me??  Maybe because those jeans fit really well :)  Maybe because this really marks the beginning of being able to wear "regular" size clothing??

Technically in some stores, size 16 is in the plus section, but MOST regular stores carry up to size 16 on their racks!  So I'll take this little victory...oh yeah and I bought the jeans too (thank goodness they are sale!)  Just wanted to share that little victory with you - Happy Dance starting now!