Choose To Lose – Revisited

I have written a number of posts about various programs and fitness mentors that I really like. Among those is Choose To Lose – The 7-Day Carb Cycle Solution by Chris Powell. If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you know that I took a stab at this, but it was right after my first Whole30, and I had a problem adding back carbs without eventually losing it (not weight) over sugar.

Now that I have been over 102 days, Whole30ish and without sugar, I feel like I can take another look at this program. The behavior element is in check now. I don’t feel like I need to push the envelope, or indulge in a full day “cheat” like the program offers you the opportunity to do. I realize this element was added into the program to make it a more sustainable program, but after Whole30, I don’t feel like I need “cheat” meals or cheat days. I do take “choice” meals from time to time, and we do take a “choice” day once a month. No cheating…just good, healthy choices that veer from our norm of Whole30 eating.

I thought I would have to forget the Choose to Lose program for good since I don’t eat grains, legumes or artificial or natural sweeteners, but after taking another pass at reading the nutrition section of the book, I see that you eat meat and fruit for breakfast (or meat and a starchy carb-sweet potato will work well here). Well, I can do the meat and fruit. No problem. On low carb days, it is meat and vegetables, and I do that every day. I feel like I can really do this! Incorporate both my Whole30Life way of eating and carb cycling–at the same time.

You may ask why I am wanting to try this again. Even eating Whole30 for over 100 days, I haven’t experienced weight loss to a degree that I feel I should be. Whole30 reduces your meals to just 3 meals a day. According to Choose to Lose, you need 5 meals a day (2 are snacks of course), to keep your metabolism stoked. I believe that people who are already near their ideal weight can do the 3 meals a day (Whole30) and still lose weight, but years of stubborn weight gain and a sluggish metabolism is just not responding to it. It’s time to try again.

Today, I stopped in at Curves and had her measure me again. For the most part, I am unchanged since January. Even given my awesome eating and recent added movement. It’s time to try something else that will not throw everything that I’ve accomplished to the wind but instead will build upon it.

I plan to incorporate the workout in Choose to Lose as well as the Wii Fit Plus running and yoga. I also accomplished a 1 mile walk for charity under 20 minutes. I am already planning to participate in my second one and I am marking them down on my calendar to become that “benefit walker/runner (eventually)” that you love to hate! 🙂 I actually want to start training, so I can reduce my time. Couch-to-5K has been suggested to help with that, so I will look at adding the app to my phone, so I can have some help in building the number of minutes that I jog instead of walk.

So my health fusion is growing. I’ll get my green back on with my green thickies soon. I do miss them. I need to prepare my sweet potatoes in advance for quick/easy morning use. If you’d like to know more about my health fusion, take a look at the categories section. I have more about it there.

I will also be looking to raise money for my Health Coach certification. It’s $600, which pays for the books, helps and tests. I do have a GoFundMe tab above if you would like to help me make that happen. I would greatly appreciate your help of any amount.

Getting Over Myself

This journey has been a long one, but wow, has it been worth it!! While I have overcome many obstacles to this straight and narrow of great nutrition and consistent exercise, now it’s time to get over the biggest obstacle of all — ME.

Yes, I totally get in my own way, CORRECTION, I DID get in my own way. Note the past tense!! I am conquering that obstacle now.

I need to get out of the way of my vision. I need to open my mind to what the future does indeed hold for me. With the knowledge that I have of where my journey is going, I need to begin preparing for the future. I was feeling like I needed to wait until my body reflected the changes that I’ve made, but that is a lot of wasted time. I shouldn’t wait to change my mind about myself just because others haven’t changed their mind about me yet.

SOOOO, I am preparing to take the BIGGEST step in my journey. Maybe even the bravest step in my journey. I am going to pursue certification as a Health Coach. EEEEEKKKK!! I just typed that in black and white! Yes, I DID AND I AM!! What an awesome way to further support my health goals than to further educate myself about health, fitness (Crystal, I said/typed it!) and behavior change specifically for people just like me (well, the me I used to be!). (I already hold a B.S. degree in Behavior Analysis, but this will be a specialization in the health side, which is really exciting)

So, please root me on. I could use your support! I am very excited about the future and the changes that are happening in my life. I can’t wait to begin sharing it with others, even beyond this blog.

Thank you for sharing in my journey. I would love to hear from you, so please comment to let me know that there is life out there!!

Burning Calories While Entertaining A Toddler

I joined my husband in a challenge to intentionally exercise 30 minutes for 30 days. We just finished our 90th day on Whole30, which means our nutrition is in check, but our fitness is WAY off. If the 30 day challenge will be as effective as the Whole30 challenge was, then I am very excited about what my life is going to become within the next 30-90 days (I’m sure we won’t stop at 30–those days are over.)

I have the challenge of working full-time (like most people), and then picking up our toddler who wants every bit of our attention, which we love to give. The problem with that is that it gives little time for us to focus on fitness. Today, I found a way to accomplish my goal of exercising for 30 minutes while entertaining him at the same time.

Meet our Wii Fit Family

Cartoons & Exercise

Preparing for 5K Wii Style

I decided to use the Wii Fit Plus Running exercise to begin getting myself used to moving faster than a walk. There are many benefits of doing this. 1) My son loves cartoons, so he watched intently thinking it was one of his shows. 2) I was able to exercise without him pulling on me to stop. 3) I hope it will teach him to exercise with me. 4) As I progressed in the game, I opened longer distances, allowing me to fill my 30 minutes with running. 5) I am building my endurance, so I can take it to the road.

I plan to pick this back up tomorrow. Let’s see what happens when he sees the same “cartoon” again.  Do you have a story to share about incorporating fitness when you have children? Share in “Comments.”

GoFundMe/241Journey

I am SO excited to announce that I am taking the next step in my journey by starting a GoFundMe/241Journey campaign. This comes at a perfect time after the post on creating your own group of support. This, however, is a little different. It is my motivation.

I am highly motivated by helping others be successful. It causes a “practice what you preach” response in me, which really helps me dig deep in pursuit of my goals. I also feel that as I experience success in reaching my goals, my success will in turn motivate those who I am assisting. It’s an awesome cycle!

I have been faced with opportunities to help people who are obese/morbidly obese. I don’t charge anyone to help them, and in cases when I buy something that will help them reach a goal, I don’t request repayment. I am by no means rich. I just believe in paying it forward when I am able to. Limited funds, however, prevent me from being to cast a wider net. I can help one person here and one person there, but I would like to really be able to reach out and begin building a much larger network.

GoFundMe/241Journey will offer that opportunity. There are a lot of people out there who say, “Oh, I’d love to help but I don’t have the skill or the time,” and helping to fund this campaign will allow them to do just that without needing skill or time. They help others through making it financially possible for me to assist participants in eliminating as many obstacles to good health/nutrition/fitness as possible.

Notice the new menu at the top of this blog. I will be providing regular feedback also to allow donors to know just how effective their support was. NOTE: 100% of the funds received will be used to assist participants.

Please take time to share this post with your friends across all social media avenues. You’ll notice there is a list of share buttons at the end of this post. Thank you for sharing, and if you choose to support my campaign, thank you, thank you, thank you for paying it forward. May it return to you 100 fold!

 

Live in the Positive Zone

My second elaboration post from my article on being successful in a fat prejudiced society encourages you to live in the positive zone. What is the positive zone? It is anywhere there are positive messages and positive people. It is a zone that you create for yourself in your mind and in those you surround yourself with.

1. Positive messages.
The messages around people with a lot of weight to lose are grossly negative. It is very easy to be demotivated and even sabotaged by such negative messages, so be intentionally positive. Find positive messages that inspire you to work past the negative. Pin them on Pinterest for easy access.  Find them on Twitter. Share them on Facebook. Wake in the morning to positive messages, and before you sleep at night, end with positive messages.

2. Positive people
You know the type of people I am talking about. The ones that just seem to have “found it.” They have found the way to be excited about any type of success in health and nutrition or in mind and spirit. Surround yourself with those people. By the same, rid your life of negative energy that will zap your life of anything positive. They are bad for your health! Make changes where changes need to be. Sometimes, we set ourselves up for failure because of the places we decide to frequent. Think it through. Does it make you excited to be in this phase of your life? If not, change.

3. Social Media
Over the course of a year, I have gone through a major purging of social media. I started with things that would trip me, like Food Porn. What is food porn? You know what it is. Those photos that float around social media that you “Share,” “Pin,” and “Tweet” because they look so incredible you want to look at them over and over again. Those meals that you have no intention of making, but you want to dream about them. They are kryptonite! I’m not saying you have to do completely without good looking food, but I do have suggestions.

Make your social media outlets all healthy food friendly. While you are working on getting your physical person healthy, this may require you “unfollowing” some friends. I have friends who I love to death. They are still my friends on all social media outlets, but I have unfollowed their posts because they haven’t reached the same point I have in eliminating food porn. If they tag me in a post, then I will see they are talking to me, but otherwise, I check out their profile to see what’s going on with them. It keeps me updated without having images pop up in my face at times when I may be vulnerable.

4. Follow Positive Blogs
Just like this blog, follow positive blogs that will encourage you every day. Be careful. Some blogs may appear to encourage you to be a better version of yourself health wise, but may in reality be a negative venting blog for someone who is trying to make their way to being positive. I know what that is like because my blog started out that way, but then I realized that positive-in equals positive-out. I’ve constantly made changes, and will probably continue to make changes. We aren’t growing if we aren’t changing.

I hope you found this post to be very positive and motivating. I ask you to share it with your friends. Maybe you’re already in a healthy place in your life. I am sure you have friends who could really use this advice, so please share it across all social media platforms. You’ll find the sharing links at the bottom of each post. I also encourage you to comment. Let me know how you’re doing on your journey. Until then, may you find much about your day to smile about!

Transforming In A Fat Prejudiced Society

Transforming in a fat prejudiced society is not an emotionally simple task. In the United States (and perhaps even worse elsewhere), people are judged by the condition of their body. Not even the true condition of their body, but the visual condition of their body. If you are small, you’re typically considered more attractive or desirable and healthy than if you’re large (there are some exceptions of course).

So how does someone who has 100, 200, 300 lbs to lose stay encouraged and motivated in a society that judges them on the basis of their body? For years, the demotivating stare of others would speak volumes to me. They may not have even been thinking about me, but the stare would communicate to me negative things that caused me to resort to behaviors that would comfort me. Eating was one of those because when someone has an eating disorder (and obviously you do when you have large numbers to lose), you seek silence while eating. You hide. This is dangerous behavior and one of the first ones that needs to go for your success.

Here are my top ways of transforming in a fat prejudiced society:

1. Join or create a small support group of people who will cheer you on and who you can cheer on.

2. Be proud of your journey. Find motivating messages on t-shirts and on social media.

3. Shop healthy. Cut all the bad stuff. Shopping healthy is one of the most motivating and empowering experiences I’ve ever experienced!

4. Smile at those who are looking at you. Look at them directly in their eyes and smile your beautiful smile. Let them see the beauty inside you.

5. Stop all negative self-talk (even in your head). Don’t assume others are thinking the worst about you.

I will write on each of these topics individually in the future because there’s more that can be said about each of them. If you have a suggestion for how you positively handle transforming in a fat prejudiced society, I would love to hear from you. You’ll find the comments link on the left of the article.

Let your inner beauty shine through.You may even have to do a little work, find it, and dust it off because you haven’t even appreciated your inner beauty in a long time. If you have problems with finding that beauty, you message me. I’ll help you get there.

Making Temporary Changes Lifelong

When I tried the food elimination program Whole30, I had no plans in making temporary changes lifelong. Since that first stint in July 2014, I have completed 2 consecutive Whole30 rounds, and I am on my third round. What started out as “I can do anything for 30 days,” resulted in the beginning of behavior change. I realized after Christmas that I would need longer than 30 days to make this something that will be with me the rest of my life.

My New Year’s Resolution would be to complete 3 consecutive Whole30 stints. I am now starting week 2 of my third round. The behavior change is deeply engrained now. I must admit that my husband joining me in this challenge has definitely helped me throughout this process. His excitement about the results continually reminds me of why we are doing what we’re doing.

I have no desire to change anything, which is good considering our goal to complete this entire year eating Whole30 with only one day a month as a break. The changes have been huge. Our behavior has changed so much that even on our off day, we are making really great choices.

Judge My Buggy NOT My Body

Lately, I have been thinking about how society views people who are overweight (obese, morbidly obese). For the largest segment of the population, the view is very superficial. We are measured by what we look like. Not just measured but judged. There are clicks where we won’t fit, stereotypically. There are jobs we won’t be offered, which is legal because being overweight isn’t a protected class. People judge based on the package–not the entire package but basically just the outside.

I want to send the message that just as we shouldn’t judge people based on their past because they could have changed over the years, a person’s body, thin or overweight, shouldn’t be judged. A thin person shouldn’t be assumed to have an eating disorder, and by the same token, it shouldn’t be assumed they eat healthy. The same applies to overweight people. Don’t assume that their current body accurately reflects the level of their discipline. The only way to properly determine the overall nutritional health of a person would be to judge their grocery buggy.

I have been overweight since puberty. I have gained approximately 5 lbs a year over the course of my life. When you do the basic math of junk food calories, it doesn’t take a lot to equal a gain of 5 lbs a year. Given the terrible food choices I’ve made over the years, I think my body has been pretty forgiving to only add 5 lbs a year, but I digress. This fat suit that I have been wearing all these years is much more difficult to remove than it was to put on. The worst part is that although I have maintained a healthy eating lifestyle since July 2014 (excluding Christmas season–I went awol), my body still reflects the bad decisions I have made over the years.

Unless I wear a sign that says, “Don’t Judge My Body Based On My Past Choices”, people will still make assumptions about me that aren’t true. Now, the list of people that I really care what they think is very short, but it is still a societal prejudice that should be broken. I am trying to do my part by writing about it to educate others that a person’s buggy will tell far more about them than their body will. My buggy will tell you that there is ZERO junk in my house, and my family eats very healthy–despite our out of shape bodies.

Everything that goes in my buggy is whole (in their most natural state available in a grocery store without anything added to them and a very short ingredients list of only natural items and no sugar added). Meat, vegetables (and a lot of them), and fruit. I would be happy to be judged by my buggy now. I actually love grocery shopping. It is very empowering to know that I am making healthy decisions. What is unfortunate is that it takes a years of healthy grocery shopping/eating to undo the past as reflected by my body. This is why we shouldn’t judge others based on their body because it is not the most reliable source (even chronic illnesses make the body an unreliable source).

The same is true for people who are thin. It cannot be assumed that someone who is not overweight eats well. Genetics and heredity play far too much into that equation for it to be fair. We tend to use the body as a measurement here and assume that someone who isn’t overweight is healthy. Not necessarily so. Their buggy would tell you a lot, too. It’s just for whatever reason, their body doesn’t show their poor decisions on the outside of their body–yet.

When I visited my doctor after changing my eating, she was extremely pleased with the result of my blood work–all numbers were within normal limits! I had asked her to do a “before” blood panel, so I could chart my progress, and progress it was. The outside of me hasn’t caught up with the healthy changes that I have made in my life, but it will–eventually. Until then, I will accept myself for the healthy woman that I am. I encourage you to look at your buggy and make necessary changes. If you already have or when you do, accept yourself for the healthy person that you are, and help me spread this message by sharing this post with your friends. It will take a while to make a change, but the power of social media can spread the word quickly.

Check out Judge My Buggy on FB and join us in sending the message that the body doesn’t tell the whole story about a person!! Share your buggy with us.

Whole30 10.5 lb Loss So Far – 20 Overall

Ok, I wasn’t going to weigh for 30 days as Whole30 suggests, but the doctor’s office weighs you and writes your weight all over everything. I even told them that I wasn’t going to look at the scale, and not to tell me how much I weighed. They didn’t tell the doctor that apparently, and she was like, we’ll you’ve lost 14 lbs since you were last here. Well, that number sounded great, especially since I hadn’t been there in like 2 years, which means I had more gain that they didn’t have on their records. My peak was 330. So, when I noticed the amount 310.0 written on the doctor’s form, I was pretty excited! I’ve never, NOTE THE WORD NEVER, experienced that much weight loss.

I am very excited to say, here’s my current weight. Notes on the Whole30, today starts my 3rd week of Whole30. I average 1400 calories or so a day, generally eat 3 meals a day. Seldom eat a snack, but occasionally do: nuts, fruit, or another protein.

Dietbet Weigh-in

 

BATTLE–IF YOU DARE!

Yes, a Wii Fit Plus battle it is! This started out as a quick idea, but it is quickly coming together in my mind. It is an awesome opportunity for anyone with Wii Fit Plus to spend untold minutes or hours attempting to beat the top performer’s score. There is a lot of potential for exercise, but because it is a competition, it will be fun. It’s not like you’re just doing to do it. It will be to prove you are the most determined on that day.

The way I am going to start this competition is to start out with the games. We will start out with Balance Games and Aerobics games. I will then add the Strength Training, Yoga, and Training Plus options.

The WINNER IS DETERMINED by their score. They will also post their calories burned as determined by the Wii Fit Plus piggy bank. This is just to show how effective our battle is. We will share how many combined calories we have burned. Here are the graphics you will find on my FB page. Of course you can join me there by following me on FB over on the left side of this page.