Losin' It!

Hi everyone! I hope everyone is having a decent Monday so far.  I had a busy weekend but a good one.  I have been working with Habitat for Humanity a few weeks in a row so Saturday I got up early and worked all day painting doors in the heat.  I have so much more respect for people that do manual labor outside.  It is no joke.  I am done with Habitat for a while but it’s a great organization and I’m glad to have had the experience.  After Habitat on Saturday, I went up to Birmingham to see Sister Hazel with some friends and had a great time.  Yesterday, I got up early again and went to Atlanta with Jordan to see Evita.  The play was a little slow but I always love spending time with Jordan. So, it was an exhausting weekend that made for a sleepy Monday but it was worth it.  As I mentioned last week, I started using the Lose It app.  I first heard about this app from my Aunt Brenda who has had a great amount of success using it.  It’s really easy to use and I’m loving it.  I was at 100% Monday-Friday.  I’d say I was at about 90% for my calories on Saturday and I only say that because I ate dinner at a place where the nutrition facts weren’t easy to obtain so I did some guessing.  I might have eaten a bit too much but I didn’t drink and with all the manual labor from Habitat, I’d say if I did go over, it wasn’t by much.  On Sunday, I was only at about 50-60% because of my poor traveling and Sunday dinner eating habits.  I counted calories all day and then low balled my Mom’s cooking too much for Sunday dinner.  Eating Sunday dinner with my family has always been one of my weaknesses.  If you’ve had my Mom’s cooking, you understand.  It’s something I need to work on.  However, the positive from yesterday was that when we stopped at a gas station I had picked up some White Cheddar popcorn and a candy bar because I had given up for the day but talked myself out of it and went back and got some Special K Cracker Chips and a Fiber One bar.  So, that was big for me. The day wasn’t a complete loss.  My goal is to do better next Sunday.  I weighed Sunday morning and I was down 2.6 pounds from last week and that is definitely the direction I want to be going in.  I was happy with that and I hope I can produce similar results this weekend. 

I have had zero time to cook lately.  I have been going constantly on the weekends and I’m working from 8am to 9pm Monday-Thursday right now so I have had to buy things that I can take with me.  I spend way too much money eating $10-$15 meals here and there so I have been trying to eat more lunches at work and make sure I have easy access to portable snacks that I can take anywhere with me.  I eat a lot of string cheese and pre-packaged fruit but I have also started getting a couple other new snacks.  Cereal is pretty bad for you but sometimes it’s nice to have bite size pieces.  Froot Loops now come in tiny pouches that are only 70 calories per pack.  The pouch is small but there are several bites so it lasts a little longer.  Also, I’m not the biggest fan of yogurt.  It’s mostly a texture thing. When I go get frozen yogurt, I pack it with sprinkles and granola because I like to crunch it.  I found these packs of Key Lime yogurt that have added graham cracker pieces.  I’ve seen these types of yogurt before but sometimes they can be a little high in fat and calories.  This one isn’t too bad.  The whole pack, including the graham crackers, is 100 calories.  Make sure that when you look for snacks that you pay attention to the serving sizes and the nutrition facts.  Sometimes a pack that looks small enough for one has 2-3 servings.  Also, I’d been getting these packs of hummus that come with pretzels.  I was accidentally missing that the calories were separated…so they had facts for the hummus and facts for the pretzels on top of each other so I was eating something I thought was 120 calories but in reality it was 380.  I should have known better.  It was a lot of hummus and way too good to be that low in calories.  Live and learn I suppose. 

I am doing well with this app for now and I made some really strong adjustments last week.  Obviously, it’s important to have big goals and dreams in your life but those goals are merely glorified fantasies without short term goals.  You cannot achieve long term success without accomplishing short term goals.   I can’t stress this enough.  Ultimately, from this very moment, I’d like to lose 40 pounds.  In the beginning, I needed to lose over 100 (which I did and have mostly kept it off, I just never reached my goal weight…about 40 more to go).  If all I saw was the big number, I may have never gotten there.  I set monthly, weekly and daily goals because I don’t want to be overwhelmed.  Also, if you scratch a small goal off your list, you feel good about yourself and it motivates you to tackle another goal.  This isn’t just weight related.  If you set financial goals or life goals in general, you must set up action plans that include smaller goals.  I need to learn this in some areas myself. 

I am set up for another busy weekend.  My mom and I are going to celebrate Mother’s Day on Saturday.  I know it’s late  but we planned a day where she and I could hang out and I could treat her to lunch for once so I’m looking forward to that.  Then, Sunday is Father’s Day so I will get the opportunity to celebrate my Dad! Sometimes, it’s easy to take our parents for granted but I’ve learned this year that having both of my parents and three grandparents at the age of 30 is an enormous blessing that I no longer take lightly.  I hope both my parents know how important they are to me! I look forward to hanging out with them some this weekend. Hope you all have a great week! I know I will! There’s new music from Colbie Caillat out! Bye!

“If you need to someone to believe in,

If you’re reachin’ for a hand to guide you home,

Just take my hand and I won’t let you go,

I hope you know,

I’m never gonna let you down…” Never Gonna Let You Down – Colbie Caillat