Always Be Prepared

I had the pleasure of going to lunch with one of my good friends today. However, because of that I did something I have never done before. I made here decide where we were going the day before. Why? So I could look up the nutritional information for the restaurant, decide what I wanted the night before and log it into my food diary for the next day. She gave me the choice of Applebee's, sushi or a sandwich and tea shop. I picked Applebee's, which was not actually my first choice, but it was the easiest for me to find information for.  What is great is that they recently started including a section of the menu that is entrees under 550 calories. I had the grilled Dijon chicken and portobellos. YUMMY!

Bet you wish you ate this today! It was superb!

Here's the great news though...it was only 450 calories and delicious. It was also very filling and I almost couldn't finish it. But I had to because that is how my diet works. I gotta meet my goals. 

Anyways, the moral of the story is that while it may be embarrassing the best way to ensure that you stick to your healthy lifestyle is to plan ahead. Be prepared for anything. I have also taken to carrying around snacks with me so if I get super hungry and I am not somewhere I can eat I have a back up plan.

Of course I am not perfect and if you have been viewing my food diary you will know I am a big fan of fast food (subway, turkey burgers from Carl's Jr., salads from sonic) I just try and make healthy choices about the fast food I eat. What I really need to start doing and will do once I have a budget and a steady income is buy my food for the week and prepare my meals beforehand so they are heat and eat or require very little preparation at all. I hope to one day only eat the food I cook and save the food made by others for special occasions not an everyday occurrence. One step at a time....

In the meantime, I would love to know some of your healthy fast food finds. Please share what you have found to be healthy at your fav fast food place for me and the other readers in the comments section.

BTW: We also went to see the remake of  "Arthur", starring Russell Brand. I actually liked it and I thought it was sweet and funny.  I found myself laughing and even crying a wee bit and I did not walk away with any sense of disappointment.  Not the best movie ever made but still fun to watch.

25lbs gone...here's how I did it.

Well, I weighed myself today, although tomorrow is my actual weigh-in day, and I have lost a total of 25 pounds. Its gone away, far far away! I couldn't be more thrilled. This swimming thing certainly seems to be paying off big time! Just for the math geeks: I have lost 7.94% of my original body weight. So, I am slowly creeping toward being a B student in weight loss!!

I have been swimming four days in a row now and each time have swum a little longer. I ended up doing about 2 hours and fifteen minutes today. Burned approximately 1800 calories. I have decided to take the lowest estimate of calorie burn I could find out there on the web. Although, I am tempted to get a heart rate monitor and see exactly how many calories I do burn. I am not sure if there is one designed specifically for swimming but if there is I will find it.

So just to give an idea of what I have been doing to lose this weight.

1) You have to know your basal metabolic rate or BMR. This is essentially how many calories you would burn just to stay alive if you were lying in bed all day. Mine is currently 2530 based on my height and weight.

2) Secondly, you have to set a calorie consumption limit for yourself that is below your BMR. Mine is currently 1580 calories. Now, it is important to make healthy choices in regards to what you eat. Low fat and low sugar is excellent. There are also many people who proselytize the low sodium diet as king. I am not sure about this since I drink plenty of water, go over my suggested limit alot and am still dropping the LB's.

3) This brings me to my next point. Water, you have to drink water everyday. Eight 8 oz. glasses at least. More if you exercise.

4) I guess I have to say that exercise is truly the key here. You don't even have to do a whole lot of exercise to make it work. 30 minutes a day 5 days a week should cut it. The more you exercise the more it works.

5) Now here is where the magic happens. If I have a BMR of 2530 and I eat 1580 calories then I have burned a total of   950 calories doing nothing. Then if I exercise I burn even more. So today I burned 1820 calories swimming which leaves me at a calorie deficit of  2770 burned today.

Three important notes: You cannot let your body starve. If you do not eat enough calories then your body will go into what they call starvation mode. This means everything you eat that your body doesn't use to stay alive will try to turn into fat. The reason is because it thinks it is starving and doesn't know when you will get to eat again so it stores energy as fat. You have to eat to lose weight. Secondly, none of the numbers here are exact. You and I could be the same height and weight and still might have different BMR's. Also, metabolism is different for everyone. Calorie burn is different depending on the person as well. So all of these numbers are only estimates. However, it is better to have some numbers to work with than not at all. Finally, never eat below 1200 calories a day as this will automatically send you into starvation mode. It just isn't healthy and frankly its stupid.

Oh yeah and one more thing, I am not an expert on weight loss. This is just what has worked for me and I figured I would share.

Remember that tomorrow is a new day and a new beginning. Take it one day at a time and don't give up on whatever your goal may be.

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Don't forget to check out my food and exercise diaries on:
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Ride that Ostrich!!

So on the website I use to track my food and exercise, there is also a forum/message board. I stumbled across one that asked "What are your weird goals?" Meaning that most of our goals deal with weight loss or fitting into new clothes, ect. All very serious. Surely though, those who have needed to lose weight know that there are things that fit, healthy people would find weird, that would give us a sense of accomplishment and acknowledgment that what we did was worth it.  There were several that I found interesting that were posted by various MFP users that shall remain nameless. This is so you get a better idea of what I mean:

1) I want to lose another 15 lbs and tone up a bit so that I can look good in my Pittsburgh Penguins bikini by June 22nd. Why then you ask? Because that's the date of the NHL Awards at the Palms casino in Vegas and on the off chance that I'm there I want to to look hot in that suit by the poolside so that Marc-Andre Fleury checks me out.

2) I want to lose the weight so that the day my divorce is final my husband looks at me and thinks maybe he acted too hastily in ending our marriage. Lame, huh?

3) Okay, this is gonna sound stupid, but, I'm supposed to wear glasses but quit wearing them when I got fat because, well, i didn't want anymore attn drawn to my face then necessary. But I did love my glasses, so I'm looking forward to loosing this weight, getting new glasses and rocking the sexy librarian thing lol

4) I want to be able to wrap a normal bath towell around myself...and not feel like my face is huge in a short haircut :)

 So anyways, you get the idea. These are goals fit, thin people really may never consider. But it gives me the idea that weight loss doesn't always have to be serious. There is some fun involved. Especially when we start to think about our weird goals. The strange things that motivate us or make us tick. It's these silly, weird or even vengeful goals that are so connected to who we are that can really drive us to make a change in our lives for the good.

Okay so of course I posted on the forum with my own weird goal:

I would like to be able to ride an ostrich. The weight limit is 160lbs.  I've got a way to go but I will do it. In the meantime I would like to be able to ride a horse again. The weight limit for that is 250 lbs.

Let me explain about the ostrich. I was watching this show called Globe Trekkers and it was about visiting some country in Africa. I can't recall which one. The girl host decided to ride an ostrich. She said very concisely, "The weight limit to ride an ostrich is 160 pounds. Thankfully, I am  below that." Then she proceeded to ride for about ten seconds and wanted off right away because she was scared. What a wuss. Just goes to show that skinny doesn't mean brave. I thought to myself that if I could ride that Ostrich I would really give it a go. I'd hang on as long as possible. I would do such a great job that everyone would be yelling "GO SARAH! GO! RIDE THAT OSTRICH!"  I would show that snooty girl whats what. LOL Weird, I know, and yet strangely motivating.

What are your weird goals? I think we all have them whether we have ten pounds to lose or 170lbs. Please share.

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Just keep swimming

For the first time in almost ten years, I am back in the water. Yesterday, I decided to go swim some laps. So I headed over to the Marty Robbins public pool off of George Dieter and Vista Del Sol. I swam for an hour, taking minimal breaks to adjust my cap and goggles. Boy was it tough. I mean I still have the strokes down but the endurance is almost gone. I found the easiest stroke for me to do was breast stroke because it didn't hurt my shoulders as much and because I had a difficult time breathing otherwise. I am sure this is due to the smoking. When I went home I was hungry, tired and hurting all over but it was great! I haven't felt like that in years. Getting back in the pool was like coming home again. Just me and the water.

It felt so great that I went back today. This time I went back to my old pool where I swam in high  school and swam for an hour again. This time practically non-stop. It wasn't so bad this time. I think I will go tomorrow too. I will keep on going every day for as long as I can. According to several websites I checked I burned 
3586.841142 calories today swimming laps of breaststroke continually. I basically swum off a pound. =) If you know how to swim it is really the best exercise out there. It's cardio, strength training and stretching all in one, not to mention its low impact. So at any rate, I think I have found my exercise. I can burn calories and meditate at the same time. So happy today!

When I was in high school I could swim a 50 freestyle, that's two laps, in under thirty seconds. So when I can do that again, I will know I have regained my former skill as a swimmer. So that is my long term goal. My short term goal is to swim a 500 freestyle non-stop. Who cares how long it takes! So for now I will just keep swimming. Feel free to post suggested workouts for swimming that I can use. I swim at a moderate to leisurely pace at this point.

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The elephant in the room.

So, here goes. I have been afraid to tell people how much I weighed to begin with and how much I weigh now and so on. I have this fantasy of losing all the weight and then telling people how much I weighed to begin with. To see the shock on their faces and be congratulated. Mostly, I had this idea that at some point I would be comfortable telling people the truth. But that is not going to work. Being this size and weight is not comfortable and I have this feeling that I may always be uncomfortable with how much I let myself go. That being said, I feel I have no choice but to spill. Here's why I haven't yet and why I need to:

There is all this stigma, especially for women, about telling how much you weigh. I think there is also a bit of fear on my part. I don't want people to know how far I've fallen. I have this fear of judgement. I am not even entirely sure it is an irrational fear. But I have been doing some soul searching and some heavy thinking (no pun intended), and in the spirit of honesty that I hope I have fostered on this blog, I have decided I will be honest about my weight and dress/pant size. I want people who are reading this to experience my full transformation with me. I want people who weigh around what I do, that may come across this blog, to know without a doubt that they can succeed. Besides, its much easier to write in this blog without having to obscure the truth with my words. Like a few blogs ago, I said something like, "At one point I weighed a certain amount and now I weigh sixteen pounds less than that." Fat lot of good that does someone who is seeking inspiration to lose the weight themselves. Perhaps, most importantly, while I may be embarrassed about how much I weigh, I refuse to be embarrassed by my progress or my goals. So....enough of my rambling, let's stop ignoring the elephant in the room (and no I am not talking about me) and see the truth.

So here goes:
Starting weight: 315 lbs
Current weight: 293 lbs
Goal weight: 145 lbs.

Starting pant size: 28/26
Current pant size: 24/22
Goal pant size: 8

A couple of things to note:
I am not giving myself an unrealistic goal. The goal weight and size are reasonable and healthy for someone who is my height. If I end up losing more than that then so be it but, that is what I am aiming for and what I will do my best to maintain. I haven't weighed that much since I was 12. I can't wait to get there, but I know it will happen with hard work and perseverance.

Some good news: I have lost another 5.3 pounds since Wednesday, making my total weight loss 22lbs!!! That is 6.98% of me gone. If I could give myself a grade on a paper based on that percentage I would have 93 out of a 100, an A-. For the first time in my life I can say I am not happy with an A. I would rather have a D.  In fact, I would be thrilled to be a D student in weight loss.

For now, one day at a time and one foot in front of the other.

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