Counting Calories

Hello!

So things are going well for me! I have been losing weight already! I weighed in today 174.8, which is already 2.2 lbs weight loss! I changed my diet around a little bit. This will probably happen pretty often. I think change is good. Anyways, I spoke with a friend who had lost quite a bit of weight recently and asked her what she did. She gave me 2 big suggestions..

#1: Don't let yourself get "full". When I say full, I mean that overwhelming feeling of being stuffed. I think I have tricked my mind into thinking that I am not satisfied until I feel that feeling. It is horrible. That is why I eat way more than I should. So I am working on training my body to be satisfied with less.

#2. Track calories. There is an amazing app called My Fitness Pal that helps you track the calories of all your food and also the calories you burn with exercise! I love it! I have been using it the past couple of days and have noticed a big change. It helps me to really see the nutritional value of everything I eat. It breaks it down and gives you a goal for how much fat, protein, sugar, carbs, etc. you should be eating every day. My calorie limit is 1200 calories a day. So it is challenging but do-able.

I am excited to be documenting my progress as I try something new! Thanks for reading. :)

Tiffany

Healthy Lifestyle

So what am I doing? What will this healthy lifestyle look like? Well for one I have decided to not follow any specific "diet" or program. I am going to create my own program that is challenging but not impossible. I feel like that is why I fail at so many diets. I cannot stay on track and when I mess up, I feel like well I might as well stop now. So anyways, here it is:

For my 80% healthy lifestyle I will:

• Eat only whole grain products, no white flour.
• Limit my sugar intake.
• Drink only diet soda (eventually this will be cut out too, one step at a time). 
• Eat a lot of fruits and veggies. 
• Run 3 times a week and do Zumba 1 day a week (4 days of exercise).
• Limit processed food.
• Drink 8 glasses of water a day.

That is all I can think of right now. Overall, I am going to use good judgement on food choices. I am not expecting myself to be strict 100% of the time. That is why I love the 80/20 rule. I am allowing myself to have an occasional meal that doesn't follow this guideline, as long as it is occasional. 

I am going to weigh in once a week on Mondays and post it in the blog to share. 

Talk soon!

How It All Began

I'm Tiffany! I have been struggling with weight loss for years. The last time I would consider myself skinny was in high school and maybe my first couple years of college. Although looking back, I would love to be the weight I was just 3 or 4 years ago when I met my husband.

Let me first start out by saying I am currently 177 lbs. In high school I was 125-130. And 3 1/2 years ago when I met my husband, I was 149. I remember thinking then.. wow, I really don't want to be in the 150s. That is a lot! I need to do something about my weight! Well then add on a year of happy dating and lots of dinners out and wine and beer and then I was 25 pounds heavier. Actually.. let me be honest… I gained 25 lbs within 8 months! Not even a year's time span. And I have struggled with it ever since.

I do have a thyroid disease and unfortunately that has had a play in the weight gain and inability to lose.  Right around the time I stopped gaining weight and was finally able to at least maintain was when I found a thyroid specialist and changed my medicine. I do not think that was a coincidence.

So fast forward through our engagement and wedding and honeymoon and I was still in the 170s the entire time. Until last summer (2014) I joined weight watchers and started counting points and I also started running. My husband and I did the Couch to 5k program (since I have never been a runner). And over the course of 4 months I lost over 15 lbs and weighed about 160. I felt amazing. My clothes were fitting better.

And then life happened… my husband and I ended up getting word that we were going to have to move for his job and we started the trek from Florida to Nashville, Tennessee. We stopped thinking about dieting and started enjoying all the amazing food Tennessee had to offer. Pretty soon I was right back where I had been... in the 170s. Thanksgiving came. Christmas came. You know the drill. So I made yet another New Years resolution to be healthy and start exercising. And I did. For a while. I lost about 7 lbs. And guess what? I have since gained that back.

I know I have a million excuses as to why I have gained but I need to stop making excuses. I need to just do it. I need to work hard if I want results. So here I am, creating this blog in hopes that it will be an outlet for me to share my weight loss journey and that I will find the motivation I need. I fail at every diet I try. But this time is going to be different, right? I have decided that I need to stop calling it a diet and start calling it a healthy lifestyle. Because that is what it is. I have experienced the struggle of what happens when you stop your diet.. you gain all the weight back. This is going to be the new healthy me… forever. And yes there are days when you enjoy pizza and cookies and all sorts of yummy food. But the fact is that I want the majority of my days to be healthy. I read something on another blog a couple of days ago. It said.. 80% of your food should be healthy and 20% can be unhealthy. I think this is a good rule to live by.

Oh and don't let me forget.. we are trying to have a baby! We have been trying for about 7 months and it hasn't happened yet. I totally trust God and know that his timing is perfect. I am not too upset about it yet. I have started to really think about how much extra weight I will gain with pregnancy and I do not want to start out with my current weight. I also know that weight loss can help with infertility issues and overall I know that I need to focus more on losing weight before we try to have a baby. So here we go...