How I lost 100 lbs. Part 2
80% diet 20% exercise
Ok I'm not telling you to throw away your tennis shoes by any means. Exercise is very important, it's important for heart health and has been proven to release endorphins that make people happy. However if you REALLY want to lose weight you are ABSOLUTELY going to have to change your eating habits. The reality is you don't have enough time in the day to exercise enough to seriously burn calories.
Running for 30 min burns about 200 cal. Ok so you ran today and then decided you deserve an afternoon pick me up at Starbucks well a Latte (200 cal - btws I've just negated my 30 min run completely) oh and that Maple Pecan Scone looks delicious (440 cal) = Hello 660 (empty!) calories of the day. And I haven't gotten to breakfast, lunch or dinner yet.
I didn't do anything truly crazy with exercise. I brisk walk a minimum of 3x a week for about 30 min. sometimes an hour or longer. Turn on Doctors, Dr. Oz and all you hear is that the best medicine you could have now is walking. Current guidelines actually suggest you should walk 10,000 steps a day (approx 5 miles). That's A LOT! Admittedly I'm still far from it but I'm trying to increase it on the daily. And that's the point!
Now my secret quickie exercise??
JUMPING ROPE!
Yes I jumped rope!!
I'm the queen of excuses. I hate exercising with a passion. And I can come up with any type of excuse under the sun. Don't feel like running/jogging/walking, the weathers bad, there's rain/snow/sleet/hail whatever!
Well you can literally jump rope ANYWHERE. All you need is a $10 dollar jump rope. I can do it in my apartment, I can do it traveling/vacation (I pack it in my luggage and do it in my hotel room!).
You can actually burn off more calories jumping rope in the same amount of time it would take you to run a 8 min mile!
You can burn 135 cals in just a 10 min session! So there's literally no excuse. 135 cals a day x 7 days a week is nearly 1000 calories! Which translates to 4,200 calories a month and almost 50,000 calories a year! That's almost 15 pounds a year by JUST jumping rope for 10 min a day!
Jumping rope is one of the few exercises that you can do that literally works almost every single muscle in your body. And it's obscenely heart healthy. I know we all secretly think that if you're "thin" that automatically means you're healthy. But that's not really the truth.. you still need to get your heart pumping a couple of times a week. And jump rope gets your heart pumping FAST.
I just about passed out when I first started doing it. I said "ok I'm going to do this 30 min a day 2 to 3x a week" ... Well the first time I tried it I barely made it to 5 min lol. It's really exhausting! But I will say this that very first day that I did 5 min my entire body felt incredibly freakishly toned even The Hubs commented my body looked toned (without prompting on my part either LOL!) It was amazing. And it encouraged me to do it again the next day.. and then I basically just added an extra minute every week or so.. and after about a month worked my way up to 10 min a day!
Portion Sizes
I never learned proper portion sizing growing up. My parents are highly intelligent, extremely educated individuals. They taught me how to be a decent human however they both have very busy and amazing careers. Now before you jump down my throat and and say I'm whining "Woo is me I was a latch key kid yada yada" I'm by no means saying that. They were immigrants from Taiwan who came to the US to pursue their post graduate degrees. They were taught to chase the "American Dream". You can have it all as long as you are educated, willing to sacrifice and work super hard. I often came home to an empty house and lots of microwaveable pre-packaged food or whatever fast food I could procure on my own.
This is what my plate usually looked like
I realized my portion sizes were totally out of whack. And that's how I started my "lifestyle change" (BTW's I don't do the word Diet because if I had 5 pounds to lose that's a diet. If you want to lose a significant amount of weight it's not going to happen over night/next month and in my case even within a year.)
I started with what I was use to. I mean I had spent nearly 30 years of my life shoving pre-packaged microwaveable and fast food meals down my pie hole and I didn't really know any other way. If you've ever joined Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem ect you'll know that everything is essentially a pre-packaged program.
Instead of doing that I just created my own pre-packaged program. Based on all of the literature I found online I knew that I set a goal to stay between 1200 to 1300 cals per day.
I started with all the pre-packaged foods.
Breakfast: Pre-packaged Oatmeal 1 Piece of Fruit (300 cals)
Lunch: One frozen meal (300 cals.) and for filler I added in 2 cups of broccoli (50 cals)
Snack: A pre-packaged 100 calorie pack/Pringles small chip pack (100 cals)
Dinner: Same as lunch one frozen meal (300 cal) broccoli (50 cal)
Dessert: A Skinny Cow Ice Cream bar (150 cals)
Total: 1250 cals
I also purchased child sized plates and utensils to eat my food on. It LITERALLY forced me to eat less and eat slower. I never realized it before but the plates we're all using are actually much bigger then you're suppose to. And eating with child utensils I was forced to take smaller bites of everything I ate.
After about 6 months or so my stomach started to "shrink" I would become full much quicker. As time went on when portion size became more intuitive for me I started weening myself off of the pre-packaged foods. I would make dinner for the Hubs and I would eat it to but just in smaller portions. And as time went on I found that I actually WANTED to eat junk food less and started replacing the pre-packaged snacks with fresh baby carrots/celery/cucumber slices w/ yogurt based spinach dip/hummus/peanut butter ect. And now after dinner I would say 5x out of the week I'll opt for a piece of fruit vs. ice cream! I also try to limit myself to two pieces of fruit a day because fruit itself can be quite high in sugar. However on that note an extra piece of fruit is always better then reaching for a cupcake or candy lol.
This is what a normal meal looks like now.
I made a big pot of chili for the Hubs.. and I got to eat it to. But instead of putting my chili in a big bowl like the Hubs I used a small mug. Low fat cheese & low fat sour cream! But look at how much veggies & fruit! I'm filling up on lots of healthy low calorie fiber but I also get to indulge in chili, cheese and sour cream. This is extremely important because it prevents me from binge eating later on because I feel so "deprived".
Hey you want to get healthy but let's be realistic here are you REALLY going to eat boiled chicken breast w/ a side of quinoa night after night? And can you REALLY eat salad day after day after day? If you can then you should stop reading this post immediately, contact me and PLEASE let me know how you do it! LOL!
But when I eat out I'll indulge - within reason. And what I mean by that is I'll order that that giant plate of cream pasta (2000 cals) but I'll also order a side of steamed broccoli. And when my food comes I'll immediately ask for a box. Before I've even started eating I'll divide my plate in half (sometimes even thirds) and put the remaining portion into the take away box immediately. When I'm at home I'll eat my leftovers with yes more broccoli!! The leftovers will stretch into a 2nd and even a 3rd meal! 2000 calories divided by 3 meals isn't so bad after all.
Below is chart of what portion sizes for certain items should actually looks like
More posts from Bloglover
