Start!

It's time to restart my weight management. I've felt bad enough, now it's time to go back to the food pyramid, writing down what I eat, etc. I struggled with this decision. Should I join weight watchers? Should I retake my weight management class? Should I go back to the health educator once a month? My decision is to apply everything I learned and just work at it til I see results. I even want to go to this web site to make sure I'm hitting the mark correctly.

So, here's what I'm going for: 2 proteins; 3 vegetables; 3 fruits; 5 grains; 3 dairy; 3 oils; 2 sugar/fats; 8 glasses of H20. Exercise: 2,000 calories out (burned) per week.

Here's Monday's menu:

Breakfast

½ cup of 7 grain hot cereal

½ banana

½ blueberries

1 teaspoon of flax

1 cup of milk with tea or coffee

(2 fruit, 1 grain, 1 oil, 1 dairy)

Snack

1 ½ oz cheese

7 kashi whole grain crackers

½ banana

green tea

(1 grain, 1 dairy, 1 fruit)

Lunch

1 cup of squash soup

(2 veggies)

Snack

2 rice cakes, 3 T peanut butter

(1 grain, 1 protein)

Tea with 1 cup of milk

(1 dairy)

Dinner

3 oz salmon

½ rice

1 cup of kale

½ cup of sweet potatoes

(1 protein, 1 grain, 2 vegetable)

Snack

1 grain to use!

My health educator taught me many great things, including how to calculate the amount of calories you need to eat to lose weight. You multiply your ideal weight times 11 and that's the amount of calories. She prescribed me 1,400 calories a day and that's how come I lost over 40 lbs before pregnancy. I plan on following that plan again, I think is safe, comfortable and will yield results.

She told me I should try to burn 2,000 calories a week in order to help with the weight loss. They gave us a great sheet with the number of calories you burn per minute walking. Right now I burn 5.9 so I multiply that by whatever amount of minutes I walk. The more I lost weight, the more minutes I had to walk. In the midst of it all I got bored, so I changed exercise routines several times. I'm back to my good ole walks and I plan on keeping a variety of things in hand just in case.

My exercise goals for the week is to walk a total of 22 miles. That should give me the 2,000 calories I need. I'll keep my goals updated in the blog for accountability.

As a form of review, I want to share things I learned with my health educator. Last week I exercised 3 times, so this week we're going for more than that. I also felt super bad because the weight is not magically coming off (can anyone relate?), my cute clothes are in the very back of the closet and I refuse to wear all my maternity clothes (I still wear the pants). Every time I broke a good sweat this bad feeling went away but because I knew what it took to take it off the last time I knew I was missing the calorie counting part.

So, here I am, ready to start again, hoping to get awesome results and having the assurance that the weight will come off for good. This is a lifestyle I'm investing on, totally not a diet. The way I choose what to eat is based on what my husband wants for dinner (fish this week, no pasta cause he's tired of it) and based on things I like to eat (blueberries, peanut butter, 7 grain cereal, greek yogurt, etc). The great thing about the food pyramid is that there's even room for dessert. I get two, they are no more than 80 calories each. Yep, it's a challenge but I can also put it together and get something for 160 cal and still lose weight. At this point I'm trying to get back on the wagon, so I'll think about sweets later.

I also love the amount of food you eat - I eat all day and still lose weight, awesome!

I'm restarting people. I know it won't be perfect because it's a journey but one worth traveling - I know that by experience.

Have an awesome week everyone!

My Goals for this Week:

{1} To burn at least 2,000 calories by walking 22 miles - 18 miles left to go.
{2} To get the correct amounts of protein, dairy, veggies, fruits, grains and water daily.
{3} Focus on behavior change, not on the numbers on the scale.