I LOST IT!!

Okay, so if anyone reads my blog with any amount of consistency (which can't be THAT much because, well, I don't update that much...) then you'll have seen my post in June about my Wii Fit purchase and how I was hoping to lose weight. Well...that didn't go so well. In fact, it did the opposite. Over the summer, I gained ~20lbs. Yeah. As soon as Scott got home, I realized that my whole "I don't like to be watched while working out" thing extended to him. So I stopped. And then when he's home we eat out a lot and eat a TON of crap: pizza by the box, Wendy's every couple of nights, lots of Red Robin, you name it. When I went home over the summer I tried on my wedding dress and...oops! It so didn't fit. I looked like the bulging bride from the great beyond. AWFUL!!

In October my best friend (and MOH) came to visit over Thanksgiving. While she was here we took a trip to Calgary, Banff, and Jasper. I don't remember exactly when, but at one point she was talking about wanting to lose some weight, and that she'd started using an app on her iPhone called Lose It! I downloaded the app simply because I was curious: what would it tell me I had to do to lose weight? I wasn't able to find out right away because it needed my current weight, so I had to wait till we got home. When we DID get home and I stepped on the scale, I was horrified. 180 lbs!! WHAT?! No no no...in May I weighed 157ish...NO WAY could I be 180! I then flashed back to my wedding dress that didn't fit in July and freaked out. OMG- I wasn't going to fit in my dress. I had to do something!!

So I started logging my food on Lose it! It really opened my eyes: I was just eating WAY TO MUCH. Like...WAY TO MUCH. I was eating 3-4 servings of a food, not 1. And the foods I was eating were REALLY high calorie. It was awful. My first week I was over my budget by 2000 calories. My second week I made it my mission to find lower-calorie alternatives to the food I usually eat and enjoy. I found lower-cal pudding cups, smaller chocolate bars, bread with less calories, and recipes that had less calories than my old standbys. I found ingredients that would cut the calories out of my favourite recipes too (I LOVE Splenda!) And I started to lose weight. Not a TON of weight at first...half a pound a week, 1 pound a week....and then it stopped. And I got frustrated. And then Scott went away and I got bored again and realised "Oh yeah. Exercise. Hm..." So I looked into it and I got myself a trainer. Now I know- "WHAT ABOUT YOUR PUBLIC EXERCISE THING?!"...I did some thinking and realised that my fear of exercising in public was that I was doing it wrong. And with a trainer that would be removed- he'd tell me how to do it. So I signed up, and started meeting with him 2x a week.

By Christmas I'd lost 10 lbs. Over Christmas break I switched to the maintenance plan on Lose It! (from my 1.5lbs/week weight loss plan) and was able to maintain my 10lb loss. When I got back to Edmonton and was in control of my own food again (and went back to working out) I lost another 5 lbs really fast. Now, halfway through February, I'm officially at 150lbs. And I feel fantastic. In fact, my pants are physically falling down!

I didn't do ANYTHING special. I committed to sticking to my calorie budget and worked out, that's it. I let myself have anything I wanted, as long as it fit within my budget. So cake, cookies, chips, pizza, pasta, chocolate: I ate it all. I just ate proper portion sizes. I measured all my food to make sure I was getting the right serving size (either using measuring cups, or on a food scale I bought.) I used a Calorie Calculator to figure out the content of my home-made recipes. I logged everything I put in my mouth. I ate a lot of those 100-cal snack packs. I learned how to eat what I wanted and stick to my budget, feel full, and make it sustainable. And no, for those of you who know me: I DIDN'T add in any veggies. So there! I'm a creature of habit so I found 300 calorie frozen lunches to take to school with me. I became very familiar with the nutrition information of all my favourite restaurants. I started to plan ahead. If I was going to a restaurant with someone for lunch, I'd look online before we went and make choices based on the calorie content. That way when I went I'd already made my choice, and I could just enjoy the meal, knowing I wasn't hurting my diet. And after I got the hang of it, it really wasn't that hard!! And every week seeing the pounds come off when I weighed in was REALLY motivating to keep going.

About the exercise: I go 2x a week to see my trainer for an hour. Before I meet him I try and do 20-30 minutes of cardio exercise. That's getting my heart rate up to 80%. At first this was torture...I could BARELY do it. But week by week it became easier and easier, and now it's not difficult at all (as long as they remember not to turn the heat on full blast in the gym...THEN I'm guzzling water!) I'm going to be getting a heart rate monitor soon to help me track this better, but at the moment I just use the sensors on the elliptical. When I meet up with him we do all "weight" exercise. When I started, I was told that weight loss is 90% weight work, 10% cardio. You only burn calories doing cardio WHILE you're doing it. As soon as you stop, the calorie burn stops. BUT: When you do weight work you damage your muscles. Your muscles are the most metabolically active cells in your body (which means they burn the most energy, even when sedentary.) If your muscles are damaged then it takes EXTRA calories to repair them, which burns more calories, even when you're not actively working your muscles. And then once they're repaired, you have MORE muscles, and thus more metabolically active cells to burn calories with. Basically: your muscles keep working for you AFTER your workout. So we do an hour of circuit weight training. It's HARD, and I'm POOPED by the end of it...but I'm telling you, I can really punch it out now! And I get better every time we do it. I also do 1 hour of Zumba a week as well. My gym has Zumba classes so I attend one a week. The golden rule I was given was cardio 3x a week, weights 2x a week...and so far it hasn't steered me wrong!!

So what else? Oh. As soon as you start Lose It, you'll notice that when you log exercise it gives you more calories to eat, or "erases" calories you've already consumed. Some people interpret this as "I can eat those calories again." I don't. I try to the best of my ability to stay under my food budget, whether or not I exercise. Sometimes I'll eat a few of them, and once or twice (on people's birthdays) I ate ALL of them back. But I tried not to make a habit of it, and I think that's why I've lost the weight so fast.

I also take L Carnitine supplements. What's L Carnitine? It's an amino acid that's already present in the food we eat. Problem is, we don't get enough of it. It helps turn long chain fatty acids (fat) into energy so it can be metabolized and burned off. I take 2 in the morning before breakfast, and I try to remember to take 2 at lunch (I'm definitely not perfect about this). I don't take any before dinner because I find it gives me a real energy boost and I can't sleep if I do. I also take 2 anytime before I work out. I think it's helped me, but I can't put my finger on how. I just feel better when I take them.

And that's...kinda it. I'll put a list of "resources" I use to help me along. Even though I've lost the weight I will continue to use Lose It! to log my calories- it's become part of my life, and if I want to maintain my weight I need to make sure I remain under my maintenance budget. If anyone has any questions, feel free to post them in a comment and I'll try to answer you as best I can. I hope this inspires someone to try Lose It! and to make the lifestyle change. It's true what they say: It's all about calories in vs. calories out.

Resources:
Lose It!
Calorie Calculator
Spark Recipes (REALLY great website for finding low-calorie recipes that actually taste good!)
World Health (where I work out...if you're in Alberta and you decide to check them out, tell them I sent you! We'll both get a free training session out of it!)
Perfect Portions Nutrition Scale
Reasonably priced L-Carnitine Supplements