Tag: People

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General Weight Loss Tips

Do it Anyway

This poem by Mother Teresa has been on my mind lately…

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered;
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

I read this a few weeks ago and thought it was profound. It’s not directly related to weight loss, but I think we all worry too much about what other people think. We know people who will dissect every word and every action- do them anyway. I love that. Do it anyway. Take care of yourself regardless of what anyone may think. Find your own path.

Yesterday was another good day of food and exercise. I feel good that I’m building a little army of good days behind me. They will stand behind me on the days when I want to eat my weight in pizza. I will say that I’m glad I started this post PMS. It’s not a particularly unstressful time either, it’s just less of a struggle.

I realized this week that the hardest thing about eating less and counting calories is me. I had to get over my stubbornness, my unwillingness to admit that I needed to do this to lose weight. I had to arrive, yet again, to this conclusion on my own.

I’m eating anywhere from 1,200-1,700 calories a day and I’m not hungry- I thought I would be. I’m not deprived. I’m not unsatisfied. I’m not just eating salads and carrots-I’m eating what I truly want to eat. I’m full on less. And I think it’s important for me to remember this. That I can get by on less and I’ll be better for it.

Last night I really wanted to eat out. Even after having lunch out with a friend. I tried to use the excuse of chicken still being frozen. I kept going back and forth mentally and I knew, deep down, that if I ate out again I would go over my calories for the day. It’s so much easier to eat more quality food at home with less calories. When I’m in a restaurant I often find it too hard to stop eating the giant portions put in front of me.

And now on to yesterday’s food:

Quiche again. I ate about half of what you see here. And 6 oz. or so of orange juice. 363 Calories

Lamb burger from Natasha’s here in Floyd. So good! It felt pretty light to me, and was of course, very flavorful. I ate all of the burger and about half of the crisps. 650 calories

Chicken on mixed greens with cucumber, feta, bacon and vinaigrette dressing. About 400 calories.

Not pictured:

1 serving cashews- 160 calories

Glucosamine chews- 70 calories

Total calories: 1,643

Exercise: 45 minutes of Insanity Workout (400-500 calories)

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Weight Loss Exercise

Keeping a Food Journal for Weight Loss Success

Food Journal

Food Journal

Many of the better, and most successful, weight loss programs either come with a food journal or recommend that you keep one. If you take out a few minutes each day to write down what you eat, when you eat it, how you’re feeling, and other information you may like to include, you can have significantly more success with your weight loss efforts than people who don’t keep a food journal.

Why to have a Food Journal

It’s not necessary to keep a food journal for the rest of your life. After a couple of months, you should have an idea of which foods keep you feeling better and more energized, and which foods cause you problems. You should also have fine-tuned which amounts satisfied you and when you ate too much and how it made you feel.

Here is a list of some of the things you may want to track in your food journal. Remember, no one is going to see this journal but you, so be accurate and honest. That is the only way you will benefit from what you record.

  1. What you ate and in what quantities
  2. Calories, grams of fat, grams of protein, grams of carbohydrates, fiber
  3. Were you really hungry or just craving something?
  4. What time of day did you eat?
  5. What were you doing that may have triggered your desire to eat?
  6. How did you feel right after you ate? Satisfied, over-full, still hungry?
  7. How did you feel about two hours after you ate?

There are many food journals online that you can download and use if you do not have a diet program that includes one. A spread sheet, like those you can make with Microsoft Excel are also good. You can create as many, or as few, columns as you wish and expand the columns to fit any notes you might like to include.

What You Can Learn From a Food Journal

If you are subject to “emotional” eating, or eating when you aren’t really hungry, it is important to identify why. What was the emotional experience you were going through when you felt you needed to eat? Did you enjoy the food, or just bolt it down? Maybe you were having bad feelings that you wanted to suppress, and food worked to “push” down the feelings.

The important thing here is to tie the emotional eating with a particular situation. Then, when you are not caught up in this emotion, calmly think of a way you can satisfy whatever situation the food was solving for you with a non-food response. You may be amazed at how much you mindlessly eat when you are in the throes of an emotion and not really hungry at all. But you won’t get these connections if you don’t keep track in a food journal.

Keeping a food journal is not hard to do and it will go a long way towards insuring your weight loss success.

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Weight Loss Exercise

Step By Step Approach To Setting A Realistic Weight Loss Goal

A lot of people will say “I need to lose weight” but they do not know how much weight they really want to lose or how they are going to go about losing this weight. Having a plan and realistic goals can make a big difference in the success or failure of your weight loss plan. Most people do not know how to create a realistic weight loss goal though.

Weight loss goal setting is the first and most important step to losing weight. There is not a set method for setting weight loss goals, but there are some tips to make these goals more effective. These tips are easy to follow and are highly effective at creating realistic goals that can actually be achieved.

1. Determine how much weight you really want or need to lose in order to be healthy. Your medical professional can help you to determine how much weigh you need to lose. This will be done through a person’s BMI and body fat ratio.

2. Break this large goal into smaller goals. A good average to think of is a pound a week. This is a healthy amount of weight to lose in a short period of time and keep it off.

3. Write down your weight loss goals. This way the goals will be more solid and they can remain fresh in your mind. By writing them down, you can feel more accountable for the weight loss and less likely to cheat on these goals.

4. Write down how you plan to reach your weight loss goals. This can be through diet or exercise, but in general it is more effective to use a combination of exercise and dieting.

5. Focus on and celebrate the small weight loss goals, the 1 pound a week goals. This way you experience the joy success on a regular basis without the frustration of not completing the goals quickly. Be sure to celebrate the big goals with a bigger celebration than the small goals.

6. Review your weight loss goals on a regular basis. You may find that you need to change some of these goals based upon your changing body fat ratio and increased muscle mass. These changes can often indicate that you are further ahead than you think you are.

By taking this step by step approach to setting your weight loss goals and then completing them you have a higher chance for success. This can help you to become healthier and experience more energy. This can also improve your overall self confidence and self esteem as you complete the goals that you have set in front of yourself.

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