Weigh-Ins From Last Week & This Week

Hello! I hope your holiday was fantastic! Mine was pretty amazing, although I ate too many sweets. I did however enjoy the flavor. I didn't have my camera with me when weighing in the past couple of weeks, but I wanted to post the results still. I have indeed gained weight, but I expected to with things that are going on in my life. It's that me turning to food to cope with things tendency that I have which needs to be worked on. Nonetheless, last weeks weigh-in was at 281.4 and this weeks was 283.2.

The issues I have been dealing with are not yet resolved and I have been sick for about the past week. I am hoping that getting back on track with eating healthy will also help me get over my illness. I feel pretty awful. I also hope to be posting every day again starting tomorrow. I hope I can keep my promises!  Until tomorrow!

It Has Been Some Time....

Hello! I feel like it has been forever since I was last on my blog. And it has been... I didn't have a weigh-in last week. I have been having a very difficult two weeks and am trying to bet back into the swing of things.  On a side note, I truly believe that God has a reason for everything that happens and I am hoping whatever comes of these hard times is going to make me a better, stronger, and more thankful person in life. I know that for every door that closes one is bound to open and I am trying to see the positive light through all this darkness. Many of you have no idea what issue I am referring to, but these words can be applied to any part of our life that may be tough. I am nervous about this weeks weigh-in. I have not been watching what I have been eating this past week. I am just thankful I can eat again. I literally didn't eat for several days and at one point my weight was down to 272 lbs. I very unhealthy 272! I was weak and very fatigue from not eating. So, I am not going to beat myself up over my weigh in this week, but instead just see where I stand and move on. I've missed blogging the past two weeks. I hope to never leave you again! :)

Weigh-In # 3

Ok, so my weigh in was amazing this week, but I'm not sure I won't gain any of this back. I experienced a tragedy this week and for the past two days I have not really been able to eat. So, I will not be suprised if some of this comes back once I start feeling better. But for now it's a great loss!

Do You Know Your Body Fat %

Two weeks ago I ordered an OMRON Body Fat Analyzer. It is the NEATEST thing ever! I love knowing my body fat percentage that way I have three ways to measure my weight loss: weight, inches and now body fat percentage. Just because the scale doesn't move doesn't mean we're not making progress. The gadget is very simple to use. You enter body type (athletic or normal), height, weight, age and sex then press start and hold on to it while it scans and tells you your body fat percentage and your BMI. I will check this once a month to see what my change in body fat and BMI is. I am excited to be able to report this as well.

My Current Body Fat Percentage: 46.6% --- WHOA!
My Current BMI: 47.2

So, I have a ton of work to do, but excited to be able to track my progress!

If you have not seen this gadget, check it out! It is worth it to know your overall health and to make a goal to work towards!

Food Diary from Saturday

Hello! I have been missing from my blog this week and it makes me sad. I've just been super busy with work! Yesterday I stuck to my eating plan really well. My days food is as follows:

Breakfast:
Light Whole Wheat English Muffin
1 egg
1 slice of cheese
1 clementine

Snack:
Apples with low fat caramel dip

Lunch:
Lean Cuisine Pizza
Small Salad
1/2 fat ranch dressing
2 slices of a Chocolate Orange

Snack:
slice of cheddar cheese
1 wheat cracker

Dinner:
Parmesan Encrusted Tilapia
1/2 weight watchers mac & cheese
1/2 low fat creamed spinach
1 hard boiled egg
2 slices of Chocolate Orange

Snack:
1 cup of popcorn

I have NEVER eaten tilapia before last night and I LOVED it! I know it is not the healthiest kind that I ate, but if you knew me you would know I typically hate seafood. Literally, the only kind of seafood that I normally eat is canned tuna. I don't really care for shrimp although I am trying to change that and I don't like any other fish just yet. I baked the tilapia instead of frying it like the package mentioned. I will be having it for dinner tonight as well. I am hoping to slowly move up to buying tilapia that has no seasoning on it so that I can season it myself and make it very flavorful and healthy.

My New Favorite Obsession...

I am in LOVE with a new recipe I have come up with. I REALLY like Qdoba Mexican grill and mainly because of their lime cilantro rice (not to mention their queso sauce). So, the other day I was craving Qdoba, but their portion sizes are just huge and I knew if I went there to get a burrito, I would eat the whole thing! I decided to make my own! I looked up a recipe for lime cilantro rice, tweaked it a little bit and made it. The rice recipe is as follows:

• 2 cups of cold water
• 1 cup on long grain white rice
• 1/2 tbsp butter
• juice from 1 whole lime
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
• dash of salt

Pour the 2 cups of cold water into a sauce pan and bring to a boil. Once boiling stir in rice and butter. Cover and reduce heat to simmer for 15-20 minutes or until rice has soaked up all the water. After rice is cooked and right before serving mix in the lime juice and cilantro. Enjoy!


OK, so then I took a whole wheat tortilla and placed a decent amount of rice in the middle placed 1/8 cup of quesadilla cheese on top of the rice. I then took some heated seasoned black beans and placed them on top of the rice and cheese then topped the beans with another 1/8 cup of cheese. I then placed lots of fresh lettuce and a couple black olive slices in the burrito. I put a dab of fat free sour cream and then some verde sauce on top rolled it up and enjoyed!

The Scale & I Are Mad at Each Other

So, today was the dreaded post Thanksgiving weigh-in. And by the title of my post you can probably imagine what the number on the scale starring back at me looked like. :( This morning my weight was 287.2... UHHHH! This is no ones fault but my own. Nobody forced me to eat all the grams of carbohydrates with gravy that I did or the pie I ate with whipped cream! I am not proud of this moment, but I hope I learned my lesson and remember my lesson when Christmas rolls around. So, today I will just begin eating healthier again as if this slip up didn't happen.  I will not give up on this journey no matter what happens along the way. This, I promise to myself!

Before Pictures

This is a HUGE deal for me! I have never, NEVER posted pictures of myself as the weight I am.... especially in shorts! Please be nice to me, I am not stating that I am a model or that I look/feel amazing! I am here to lose weight and the get healthy... I am here to have a better healthier life and these pictures are for me to see how far I have come and know that I never want to be in this spot again. I am not pregnant although I feel like my belly kind of looks like it because it sticks out, but not for much longer! So, here goes nothing!

How Did I Do Over the Thanksgiving Holiday?

Thanksgiving is over, but I still have leftovers! I didn't do too terrible, but I definitely didn't eat healthy. I ate some white meat turkey with mashed potatoes, corn, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, rolls and stuffing... SO pretty much ONLY carbs! :( I don't know my official weight yet because my weigh-in is on Tuesday, but I feel like I may have gained a little back that I lost last week. We will see! Oh and in my next post tomorrow I will tell you about a really neat new device I just got to calculate body fat percentage! It is really neat. :)

Inspirational Quote

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. ~Thomas A. Edison

Happy Thanksgiving to All

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!! I just love this holiday. I love getting to spend time with my families and to eat hearty food. Food... why does it always boil down to foods. Any who, instead of getting to enjoy this holiday with my family, I am working. I am stuck inside a hospital building with limited natural light and no homemade turkey dinner just waiting until 11:00pm. At 11pm I get to hop in my car and drive three hours to meet my mother to do our annual black Friday shopping spree. Unfortunately for me this year it means that I will not be able to sleep until like noon on Friday. That's OK though because I love to shop with my mom. It's always been a great time for us! All in all though, I can't complain. I have so many things to be thankful for this year. A great husband, an amazing family, a job that I do enjoy doing, a house to live in (that is very amazingly decorated for Christmas already), a cat that my husband and I spoil rotten and my health. I am thankful that I am not seriously ill with anything other than obesity. But that battle is being fought. It is a difficult one, but I am excited to tackle it head on. I will learn so much about myself and I already have. I have learned that I do not have to eat sweets every day to feel satisfied. That is a HUGE deal to me. I always... ALWAYS had to eat something sweet after just about every meal, but not this past week. I felt so much better, not so bogged down by sugar. I look forward to more benefits due to eating healthy, exercising and losing weight. I will most likely not be on to blog for a couple days. Not until I get back from St. Louis, MO. I will talk to you all soon...

Thanksgiving is Right Around the Corner

Thanksgiving... time with family to share what we are thankful for and a time to over indulge for most of us...  Last week I lost 8.4 lbs, and I think that is wonderful. This week, I am worried I will gain it all back and then some. I am going to do my best not to overindulge. Tomorrow night I will be driving 3 hours to my parents house so my mom and I can do our annual black Friday shopping event. I get off work at 11:00pm which will put me at my parents house at around 2:30am, just in time for shopping. Sleep you say... who needs sleep. So Thanksgiving day is my first worry about food because when I am really tired in order to keep my self awake, I snack... excessively. Then is Friday, mom and I will be out and about getting our shop on and we will most likely eat out somewhere and Friday for dinner leftover turkey dinner. I am leaving to return home to my husband on Saturday afternoon after I get my hair done at 2:30pm which will put me back in town around 8:00pm. You might say well that's not too bad, one day of overindulging. But wait, there is more. Saturday evening when I arrive back home, my in-laws will be here and they've decided to bring Thanksgiving to us! We will have a Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday night and then they will be staying in town visiting until Monday which means more eating out while we show them the town. This weekend could simply be a recipe for disaster for me! I guess we will have to wait and see.

2nd Official Weigh-In

So, today was my 2nd weigh-in, but my first official weigh in with after my initial weigh-in. I was feeling unsure about how it was going to turn out because on Saturday night I ate some pizza and just junk food. I am happy to announce that my weight this morning was 280.8 which means I had a loss of 8.4 lbs on my first week! I am VERY excited about that! I also was thinking that because I was expecting to lose 2lbs a week that this first weigh in is equivalent to 1 month of weight loss which brings my goal even closer to me!

Feeling A Little Under the Weather...

I haven't been feeling so well today. I think it's just stress related with the holidays coming up, but none the less I hate it when I don't feel well. I will have my weigh in tomorrow morning. I am nervous to see what the scale says. I hope to see some weight loss. We will see bright and early! Until tomorrow....

Fresh Fruit Crepes

I made some pretty amazing fresh fruit crepes for my husband and I for breakfast this morning. They are super easy to make and taste wonderful. The ingredients are as follows:

For the crepes:
1 cup of all purpose flour
2 eggs
1/2 cup of milk
1/2 cup of water
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp butter melted

Fruit:
I use fresh strawberries, bananas and kiwis are really good in it as well although I didn't use them today.

Topping:
Low fat strawberry yogurt
Granola
Sprinkle with powdered sugar and cinnamon

Ruby Gettinger's Theme Song

Ruby's Journey

One book I definitely recommend EVERYONE to read is Ruby's Diary: Reflections on All I've Lost and Gained. I read this book a couple months ago and my heart just went out for Ruby. When I first started reading her book, I really didn't know a lot about Ruby or her journey. I read this book within two days because I just couldn't put it down. It was so inspiring and so interesting to read how she feels about everything she has been going through. I am currently watching Ruby: Season 2 and I just love seeing her amazing smile and her dedication to losing weight. I get so motivated when I watch her show and just know that if she can beat her monster within, I can to. If she can lose all the weight she has, I can to. I love the theme song for her show as well. The song is called "I Can" by Johanna Stahley. If you have not heard this song and you are on a weight loss journey you NEED to listen to it! Actually here it is listen to it now!

If you have not heard Ruby's story, please look it up right now and read her story, her book, and watch her show! It will change your life!

New Favorite Salty Snack

So, I LOVE these popcorn puffs. They are not the healthiest, but better than chips. Again I am taking one step at a time!

The nutiritional facts in these are as follows:

Serving Size: 2.5 cups
Calories: 140
Total Fat: 5g
    Saturated Fat 1g
Cholesterol: 0g
Sodium: 150mg
Dietary Fiber: 2g
Suagrs: 1g

Anywho, if you have a Trader Joes in your area and you like white cheddar, CHECK THESE OUT!

Today's Food Diary & Thoughts

Hello whomever is reading my blog... if anyone is reading this blog. Today wasn't such a good day as far as my eating goes. It's not that I ate too much, but the foods I ate were not the healthiest choices.

Breakfast:
1 cup of Cinnamon Life cereal
1/2 cup of skim milk

Lunch:
Small bowl of cube steaks cooked with brown gravy and no-yolk dumpling noodles

Dinner:
Small bowl of cube steaks cooked with brown gravy and no-yolk dumpling noodles
1 cup of green beans
1 cup of applesauce with cinnamon

Snacks:
1 small banana with 1 Tbsp of peanut butter
1/2 bran muffin

Drinks:
Grande Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha made with nonfat milk and without whip cream
Water

I needed to each MANY more veggies and fruits today, but I didn't plan appropriately. This just shows that for me it is very important to plan all of my meals ahead of time to make sure that I am eating as healthy as possible.

This week I have been trying to get into a habit of working out. Now, I am starting VERY slow because I have been out of the gym for quite some time. I've been only working out for 15 minutes a day for the past 4 days. I've been using the elliptical machine at my gym. Thursday I used this new machine and it is an elliptical, but slightly different. I worked out for 15 minutes on a hill program setting and the distance I covered was 2.01 miles and burned 204 calories--- in 15 minutes! Can you imagine if I used this machine for an hour and covered 8 miles and burned 800 calories!  That would be amazing and is a new goal that I am working towards. I still need to do my measurements, but I can't find my tape to use. I am going to get a new one tomorrow. I want to do these before I lose weight because I want to know exactly how I far I have come.

Crunchy Fruit and Nut Granola

I LOVE this granola recipe. You can add so many different ingredients to make it exactly what you like.

Ingredients:

8 cups of old fashioned rolled oats
1/2 cup of brown sugar (I use dark)
1/2 cup of water
4 tsp of pure vanilla extract
1 tsp salt
2 cups of your favorite nut (I use walnuts, pecans and pistachios)
Dried fruit (optional) (I really like orange flavored cranberries purchased from Trader Joes)

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 275 degrees. Line two cookie sheets with parchment or wax paper and set aside. Place water and brown sugar in a medium sized microwave safe glass dish. Stir and then microwave for 5 minutes. Remove from microwave, give a quick stir and add vanilla and salt. In a very large mixing bowl combine oats, nuts and the already prepared brown sugar mixture. Stir until thoroughly mixed. Pour onto cookie sheets in an even layer and cook in over for 45 minutes to an hour or until granola is crunchy and golden. When the granola comes out of the oven and is still warm mix in the dried fruit. After it completely cools, store in an airtight container.

ENJOY!

Testing My Willpower

As I sit here blogging I like to have noise on in the background... tonight I have chosen a movie. One of my all time favorite movies, Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory. After I started watching the intro I thought about how much of a test this is for my willpower to stay away from sweets. Sweets, the downfall of my healthy eating; my bestfriend and my worst enemy. I am proud to say since I have started this new journey I have eaten only 3 snack size pieces of candy! ONLY 3! If you knew me, I'm not sure you would believe I could survive without sweets especially chocolate. ;) I'm doing well with it though. I feel better since I am not so bogged down with sugar. It's nice to have a clear almost sugar free mind. We will see how watching Willy Wonka is for me tonight. I will have to let you know if I give into temptation tomorrow.

Today's Food Diary

Today I woke up super late so I didn't get to eat breakfast until like 1:15pm. Wow that's late! Anywho, here is my food diary for today:

Breakfast/Lunch:
3 scrambled eggs
1 1/2 cup of fresh spinach chopped
2tbsp chopped black olives
1/2 bran muffin

Dinner:
Piece of grilled chicken with bbq sauce and montery jack cheese
side salad
baked potato

Snack:
6 Rosemary & Olive Oil Triscuits
2 slices of smoked turkey breast
1 oz. of cheddar cheese

Drinks:
1 vanilla coffee javakula made with skim milk and without whip cream (I added some cinnamon and nutmeg)
water

Sneak Peak of My Weight Loss This Week

So, I was very anxious to see if I had lost any weight on my first week so I broke out the scale this morning! Down 9.4lbs!!! I started out as 289.2 three days ago! I know that my weight I have lost is mostly water weight, but still to see a loss is an amazing feeling. It really motivates me more to see lower and lower numbers on the scale. I will only post official weigh-ins each Tuesday but I wanted to share this great news. I'm excited to see what Tuesday brings as far as weight loss. I will post my body measurements in just a little bit when I do some more discussions of the book Fit from Within. :)

Book Review Chapter 1- Accept Yourself Today

This is my very first book review for the Book Fit from With: 101 Simple Secrets to Change Your Body and Your Life- Starting Today and Lasting Forever. 

Chapter 1: Accept Yourself Today

"If you don't accept yourself, you won't live fully, and if you don't live fully, you'll need to get full some other way."


This chapter is probably one of the most important chapters I have read thus far. Just reading the main quote from the chapter really sums up what it has to say. You can't accept yourself tomorrow, after you lose x amount of weight, when you get married, have kids, finish school or any other excuse. You have to accept yourself NOW. Today is the day.


We all know just how difficult it can be to accept ourselves for exactly who we are, especially if we feel like we need to lose weight. As the book discusses, today's media definitely doesn't push individuals to want to accept themselves as they are, with no changes. Everyday almost constantly we are bombarded with images of very thin, rich and "beautiful" women. Our perceptions of what success, beauty, wealth and ultimately happiness are very jaded by the media. There are millions of weight-loss products, pills and diets thrown our way everyday and as an overweight person, it is a constant reminder of how much I do not fit the "media ideal body". And speaking of "ideal" body, we are taught throughout life we need to be within a healthy weight range that is set by others based on our height and age yet the media gives us the implication that even people that are within their "normal" weight range still are not thin enough. It is terrible that those are the messages we are receiving daily from our society. It is very unfortunate these are the words that reach our ears and are embedded in our minds because many eating disorders stem from being constantly reminded that we are unattractive in the eyes of the media. We have to be stronger than the media messages, we need willpower to look past them. Willpower is something that I have struggled with a lot, but that is another post another day.

It is difficult to accept ourselves if we have self-defeating thoughts which can lead to self-destructive behavior like overeating and avoiding the gym. Learning to accept yourself today is vital. Learning that you have today to change the whole way you look at your life is almost mind-blowing. This week as a re-read this chapter in the book, it was like something clicked for me. Something changed in my head and went from saying "I can't accept myself and this weight, it's embarrassing!" to "I may be overweight, but I control my life, I control what my weight is, no one else can do that for me and today I chose to better my life, to life my life." It is very empowering. Try it today. Change the way you think about yourself.

To end this post I will leave you with another quote from this chapter: "Acceptance gives you peace of mind in the present and makes changes possible for the future."

Inspirational Quote #1

The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking places. ~Author Unknown

Some Missing Days...

OK, so it looks like I am missing some days in my postings as far as food diary goes. This is because I just today (like and hour ago) created a new blog for my journey. The other one I was using was outdated and I didn't like the appearance or the title, so I wanted to change it. I am very pleased to announce that I love the looks of this new blog which I spent forever designing with all the cute colors and stuff.

I am so excited about writing this blog. It is going to be such an amazing outlet for me and like I said, I hope it helps others in similar positions. To give you all (whoever you are) and idea about what my blog has to offer within all of it's contents I will explain what I have planned. First and foremost, I will blog everyday (well almost everyday). I will be posting stories, inspirational quotes, pictures of food and myself, book reviews (first book up is Fit from Within by Victoria Moran), recipes, my successes as well as the many obstacles I will face along my journey. I would love it if anyone decides to follow my blog if you would comment or subscribe just to let me know who is out there and hopefully I can lend you some support as well.

As far as the book reviews go with this first book it is broken down into 101 mini chapters. I will discuss what each one covered and then write a little about my personal experience on that topic. I think by doing this I can truly get the full meaning of the book and really take a deep look into myself and the relationship I have with food. I have read to about chapter 33 so far so I will sit down maybe tomorrow and write out several of the overviews with discussions then. I really recommend this book to anyone who has struggled with food at any point in life. It makes you step back and analyze the real reason you eat, don't workout and continually make excuses for the reason we can't lose weight. It is a very honest and to the point book. I hope you will pick up a copy for yourself.

1st Weigh-In and Food Diary

My first weigh in was on 11/16/2010. And from the picture... you can see the results. This is only a starting point but I can say, never again will I see this number.

 

Here is my food diary for the day:

Breakfast:
2 scrambled eggs
2 turkey sausages
1/2 all bran muffin

Lunch:
Pre-packaged tuna salad with crackers
(I am totally aware that this is not the healthiest meal, but theres a story... not an excuse... a story. My husband and I had just got back from being out of town a day prior to this lunch and I had got ready for work an hour early so I could swing by the grocery store and pick up something healthy for lunch. Well, I went to get my car keys to leave and realized they are in his car at his work! So, needless to say the hour until work went by really slow while I waited for a friend to pick me up! :(

Dinner:
6" oven roasted chicken breast on honey oat bread with american cheese, spinach, tomatoes, cucmbers, oil & vinegar and fat free honey mustard
6" ham on wheat with spinach, tomatoes, cucmbers and fat free honey mustard
(Apparently I was starving.... :/)

Snack:
1 cup of homemade granola (you can find the recipe on my recipes page)

Drinks: 1 cup of coffee with pumpkin spice creamer and some sugar and the rest of the day I just drink water (thankfully that is not a habit I have to get into.. Thank you Mom!)

Hello World...

My name is Katie and I am starting this blog to share with you my journey of losing weight and getting healthy. I am 23 years old and weigh 289.2lbs! That is A LOT of weight to be carrying around each day. It's no wonder all I want to do is sleep and not move around, it gets heavy. This journey (lifestyle change if you will) is not going to happen fast nor do I want it to. This needs to take time, I need to make habit changes, not quick fixes. There is no quick fix to getting healthy, NONE. I will lose all my weight the old fashioned way; diet & exercise. I will not be taking any medication, drinking any weight loss drinks or taking any other kind of weight loss supplement. I have tried hundreds of diets (sigh...) throughout my lifetime and not one of them fixed the problem because if they did I would not be writing this blog.


I not only WANT to lose weight but I NEED to for my health. I have borderline hypertension and type 2 diabetes and I do have high cholesterol. AT 23 YEARS OLD! Can you imagine what my health would be like if I continued down this path... it wouldn't end pretty, but I feel it would end quickly. I have a predisposition for certain diseases, so I need to work extra hard to try and keep those diseases from running my life. My mother has diabetes and my father has hypertension and high cholesterol.

Anywho, I want this blog to be very raw and real. I will post pictures of myself as well as food I make, recipes I use and quotes that inspire me. I want to have a documented reminder of how far I have come. I am expecting to lose about 2lbs per week. I know that my first few weeks will probably have more weight loss than 2lbs (at least I hope) because you are kicking your body into full gear, preparing it if you will. I am very excited about this journey and I hope if anyone reads this blog, they will feel inspired and motivated to get their life in check as well.