Tough It Out Tuesday (Week 3)

As usual (at least it’s becoming usual) I am linking up with Allie and Kay for Tough It Out Tuesday!

I don’t have good news as far as losing weight (although I haven’t gained any) so today’s post will be dedicated to explaining what I did in the late Summer/Fall of 2012 to lose 20+ pounds.

I’m not sure what kicked my butt into losing weight. It might have been my pants not fitting or how I looked in the mirror but something made me want to lose weight. I tried to just “eat less” and not eat “junk food” but it made me just want to eat ice cream even more. I remember one day that August when Thomas and I went to Smart & Final and I went to grab the small, single serving Ben & Jerry container. Thomas, trying to help me, called me a “fatty”. I did not take it well. I did what any girl would’ve done, I gave up (right after kicking his butt!). What was the use? I couldn’t do it.

Then I found My Fitness Pal and Reddit – LoseIt. Combining the support from LoseIt and the easy way I could count my calories on MFP I was able to lose weight. Of course it wasn’t as easy as signing up and posting I had to actually count calories. Sure, MFP is easy to use but I had to find the foods that would not only keep me under my calorie goal (I started at 1360 calories) but that would fill me up and not leave me wanting for more afterward. I came up with good meal plans that helped in my weight loss.

BREAKFAST / /

Many people eat cereal for breakfast but I’ve always found that I want more and more and more cereal which will eat up A LOT of calories. I wanted something that would fill me up until lunch time if possible without taking up too many of my calories.

OATMEAL! I compared all the flavored oatmeal’s out there (because I am not one to flavor them myself, although that probably will save a few calories) and found that the LOWER SUGAR version is the lowest calorie version. I cannot eat it with water, so I use FAT FREE milk instead.

(source)

I don’t like milk by itself (I always drank chocolate milk as a child) and I don’t drink coffee, so I always have a Swiss Miss hot chocolate (made with skim milk) in the morning. On the weekends I forgo the oatmeal and stick to the milk by itself.  There are “diet” Swiss Miss chocolate powder mix but I can’t stand them.

So…

• Swiss Miss Hot Chocolate w/ Skim Mile = 158 calories
• Lower Sugar Quaker Oatmeal w/ Skim Milk = 120 calories

LUNCH / /

My lunches generally weren’t very exciting. They consisted of Lean Cuisine entrees that were below 270 calories each. I could have higher calorie count ones, but I preferred to keep my extra calories for dinner and dessert. Sometimes I would have left overs that I would bring to work, but 9 out of 10 times it was a Lean Cuisine.

So…

• Lean Cuisine Entrée – 270 calories or fewer

DINNER / /

During this time I had to find alternatives to my usual staple of past and more pasta and even more pasta. My mom is 100% Italian and she grew up on pasta and so did I. Pasta is not great for a diet, at least for me, because I want to eat a lot of it and it is not low in calories.

Usually by the time dinner came I had somewhere between 550-650 calories left so I could afford to splurge on pasta sometimes.

My family is from Argentina and we often shop at a little market that has imported items. One day I found a spinach fettuccine pasta that had 50 calories fewer than most pastas. At 150 calories per 2 oz of pasta I could eat it without problem and sometimes I could double the servings and still only have a 300 calorie meal. I would add I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter spray that is 0 calories and some fresh (also imported) Argentinean parmesan cheese (from Trader Joe’s) for another 30-50 calories.

Of course I couldn’t eat pasta every day and I needed some protein. Although I love beef it is higher in calories than chicken  so most of the time my dinner meal included chicken. I would buy boneless – skinless chicken breasts and cut them up into bite size pieces. I would cook them in a pan with Pam for it not to stick, some lemon juice and other spices as I saw fit (since most don’t have calories). I would add some Green Giant veggies (35 calories per serving) as a side and I would have a dinner of under 250 calories (sometimes under 200!).  

This left room for dessert! I didn’t over do it with dessert, though. I kept away from ice cream cartons since it is difficult to measure out portions and bought Lil’ Dippers which contained, on average, 120 calories.

Last year I started to make pork chops in addition to chicken. Pork chops are also pretty low in calories and they have a lot of flavor so it is not necessary to add anything to them.

I rarely have Lean Cuisine’s for dinner because I know it will bore me to death.

So…

• Sautéed chicken in lemon juice with different spices – Calories Vary
• Grilled pork chops – Calories vary
• Green Giant Veggies – 35 calories per serving (there are others that are a bit more, but still low)
• Low-calorie Pasta – 150 calories per serving (although they are not importing this anymore, which makes me sad.)

SNACKS / /

Of course I do get hungry in between meals. Working a desk job also makes you more likely to want to snack during the day and that is typically a calorie killer. At my job back in 2012 I was a receptionist and there was a lot of activity around me so snacking wasn’t too big an issue (at least not as big as it is at my current job) but I had to have something for in between meals.

I settled on blackberries and raspberries. Only a couple of calories each I could eat one at a time and eat them over a course of a few minutes, tricking myself into thinking I was eating more than I actually was. I also purchased the low-calorie snack bags sometimes, but those are typically 100 calories and I wanted to keep my snacks at under 50 calories. I have added Cutie mandarin/tangerines since they are around 37 calories each. More recently I found Rice Rollers at Costco which due the job at 45 calories each.

• Blackberries/raspberries
• Tangerine/mandarin
• Rice Rollers
• Popcorn (100 calorie bags, or split a 160 calorie bag with someone)

This all worked for me. At that employment I picked up donuts for the office every Friday and I usually ate one as well and I was still able to lose weight. This is mostly, I think, that I didn’t look at my calories on a day-by-day basis as much as on a weekly basis. This way, if I had a bad day one day I could make it up by eating fewer calories the next.

My parents are not fond of me cooking in the kitchen so it made it hard to continue to cook my chicken and pork chops. I know that once I am in my own home with my own kitchen and without my mom telling me how to clean up, I’ll be back on track to eating healthier and fewer portions so I can drop down to my ‘ideal weight’. I also hope that it will help my fiancée lose some weight and get healthier.

Tough It Out Tuesday (Week 2)

Well that wasn’t such a good week, was it?

I knew it wouldn’t be a good one because my family was coming to town and that could only mean one thing: FOOD! I come from a family that really likes to eat, especially sweets. Even though both my parents are diabetic they still buy pies and cakes and other sweets on a weekly basis. Usually I can keep back from eating them. But sometimes, sometimes they are too good to pass up. For example, this weekend my dad bought fresh cream puffs (I had only 1!) and pear tart from Trader Joe’s (I had 1/8^th of it!). But my mom also made Stouffer’s Five Cheese Lasagna and I had a good amount of that. I had bread dipped in olive oil and Taco Bell’s Cinnabon balls. I had fries and a sandwich from Steak Escape. Not to mention that on Friday I went to that breakfast where I had a lot of bacon. I never eat bacon, so I took advantage.

I’m sure I’m missing something (I also had those darn Peeps!). That is a lot of crappy food to eat in a span of 3 days. It was not really a surprise when my scale gave me a higher than usual number. I would like to add, however, that I am bloated (my rings won’t come off!) so I expect some of that gain to be related to that. I’m not saying it will all be because of the bloating, but maybe a few ounces.

I was supposed to go to a fitting for my wedding dress on Saturday. I cancelled it at the last minute because I know my dress fits. It’s a bight snug (as I’ve mentioned) but I’m not going to pay a boat load of money for them to let it out. It’s also the perfect length.

I am hoping that I can get myself back on track this week now that my family has left. I’m going to stay away from the Girl Scout cookies (yup, I ate several of those, too!) and the sugary cereal, I’ll ignore the rest of that tart and I’ll stick to MyFitnessPal to keep under my calorie goal (1200 is so low!). Then, I’ll try my dress on again on Saturday and see how it fits. I think that at this point I will need to try the dress on weekly to ensure that I remember that I can’t gain any weight until after the dress comes off.

I am going to have to get creative, however. I need to trick myself into drinking more water so that I can feel a bit fuller and not want to snack between meals during the day at work. When I lost 20lbs previously it had a lot to do with me drinking a lot of tea. It made me use the bathroom a lot but it also made me feel full so a low-calorie fruit between meals kept me satisfied. At my current job the office is kept pretty warm so drinking a hot liquid is not something I want to do. I suppose, however, that being a bit hot for a little while is worth losing the weight I have to lose for the wedding. I can always turn on a fan, right?

Thomas’ parents invited us to dinner on Tuesday and this doesn’t always end up well for me (as I mentioned last week). Luckily they are taking us to a seafood restaurant and I HATE seafood so I might be able to stick to a salad (dressing on the side!) or something else that is a healthy option (I like shrimp, that’s healthy and low in calorie, right?)

Going into this post I thought I would be complaining and giving excuses, but I think I balanced it out with my own encouragement to get on track.

47 days left until the big day!

Tough It Out Tuesday!

My weight problems started after high school for the most part. Or at least that's what it seems like. I don't remember wanting to lose weight or feeling conscious about my weight then. For that matter, I didn't feel like I had a problem until my mid-twenties. 

At my heaviest I was a smidge under 200lbs. Not a lot for some but more than enough for me. This is a good time to point out that I am 5'2". 

(January 2010)

Around this time I bought a pair of those Sketcher Shape-Up shoes. I know they lost a law suit more recently, but it worked for me. I lost some weight simply by walking with them on (not extra walking, the same amount of walking I was doing before). Still I didn't really come up with a plan to lose weight. I hadn't heard about counting calories yet. I didn't exercise (I HATE sweating!). Slowly, though, I did begin to lose weight. Check out the link above - I've chronicled dates and my weight since April 2010 (with breaks here and there). As you can see it was slow, but my weight started to come down. 

In April 2011 I dated someone who broke my heart and in a week I dropped 10lbs and was down to 161lbs. You'll notice on the link above that I had gotten down to 157lbs in January 2012 only to be up 10lbs by the end of August that year. I blame this on a couple of things a) I started dating my fiancee and b) his parents would take us out to eat every Friday - and it usually was 3-4 course meal. At this point my pants, which had gone from a 14/16 to a solid 10 were creeping back to a size 12 and I was not happy at all, a lot less happy than I was when I was closer to 200lbs. 

In August 2012 I discovered Reddit LoseIt as well as My Fitness Pal.  Together they really helped me in dropping pounds. As you'll notice on the weight page I went from 167lbs in August 2012 to 146lbs in March 2013. 

Then I started working at my current job and sticking to a 1200 calorie diet became VERY difficult. My job has me on my butt most of the day and what's better than to snack when sitting at a computer for 8-9 hours a day? Currently I'm sticking strong to 152lbs. My "ideal" weight is 136lbs. My goal is to get back to 145lbs and try to stick to that for a bit and then maybe go down to 140. 

I am getting married 53 days and my wedding dress currently fits, however it is a bit on the snug side. I am hoping that I can drop to about 147 by my wedding day so that I can breath a bit easier on April 26th, but I'm finding it REALLY hard to get below 152. I've been stuck there for over a month. During the week I will go down to 151 but the weekend comes around and all hope is lost. 

I hope this Link-Up will help me reach my short-term goal. After my wedding I'm not going to worry as much and I am definitely not going to count calories during our honeymoon to Argentina in late May. However, when I return in June I will try to get back to sticking to 1200 until I reach a weight I am more comfortable at. Maybe that will be 145 or maybe it will be 140, I don't know until I get there. 

Current Weight: 152lbs

Goal Weight: 147lbs

Current Pant size: solid 6 (however, depending on brands I can be a 4 or an 8, 10's are way too big on me!)