So I’m staring at myself in the mirror thinking “Well that
can’t be me, when did I get this big?” My thoughts went even deeper because for
the first time I realized I had to make a decision. I wasn’t happy with what I
saw, it affected my confidence, my self-esteem and it wasn’t healthy.
What do you do when you get on the first step on your road
to recovery?
Ps: Just in case you were wondering, the first step is
acceptance. LOL!
After I accepted where I was on this journey, I decided to
map out a course. The hitch now was the fact that I knew next to nothing about
weight loss. I had the basic stuff down though, you know them: dieting and exercise.
Well here’s the kicker: I had tried both before.
FLASH BACK! Sophomore (2nd) year
of college, Second Semester (Always with this second semester. Oh, New Year -
New Resolutions) I decided to visit the school gym every morning as early as
6am. Guess what? I did. Weapon of choice: ‘elliptical’. I even got my roommate
in on it. We pushed each other every morning and we made it to the gym most
mornings. I didn’t lose any weight that year, in fact I gained a lot of weight.
So you’re probably thinking, ‘she definitely didn’t do something right’ and you
are right.
Every morning after I’d burnt 200 calories (according to the
monitor on my elliptical) I would reward myself with a large smoothie from this
Smoothie place downstairs at the gym. My reasoning? I deserve it, plus it’s
healthy; I mean it’s a friggin Smoothie! Well I was wrong, the smoothie I had,
had over 900 calories in it. Not to mention the various terrible food choices I
made during the day. Point is, Sophomore year was a bust for me, suffice it to
say I gave up on my morning exercises before March.
In recapping my previous losses, I had to deduce what went
wrong in order not to repeat the same errors. It all boiled down to one major
thing, FOOD!
I love food, I mean it smells great, tastes great, it comes
in all shapes and sizes and you need it to survive. So yeah, food is great;
heck food is awesome. Bottom line, I
knew I could go on a strict ‘no this or that’ diet and I’d probably last a week
or two (let’s keep it at a safe 1.5 weeks) before I cave and grab a slice of
cake, with caramel drizzle and ice-cream on the side. I needed a *cringe* diet
plan that would work long term. For me that meant I could eat all of the things
I liked (granted I had to substitute some food items. E.g white rice for brown
rice) but with controlled portions and just not every time I wanted it.
As time went on, I started to actually like healthy meals as
opposed to junk, and I removed certain things from my diet (but we’re getting
ahead of ourselves)
Step 1: Fill up Pantry.
I know, I know, I just said I could eat whatever I wanted.
But I still had to mix in whole foods, vegetables and what not. So I wrote an
amazing grocery list. It included Greens (Stringed Beans, Broccoli and
Spinach), Protein (White meat- Chicken and Fish), Grains (Brown Rice), Yoghurt,
Granola, Carrots, Fruits, Cereal (Oatmeal, Kix, Fruit & Fiber), Milk (my
regular Nido Powdered), Sweet and Salty Nature Valley Bars.
My reasoning was simple; I had to take control of what I was
eating. I couldn’t do that if I didn’t plan my meals ahead. Also I wanted to
minimize the number of times I ate out.
A tip; what you don’t buy, you won’t eat. If I didn’t have
that bar of snickers staring me in the face every time I opened my fridge, I won’t
be tempted to eat it.
Step 2: Eat!
Weird huh? But that’s what dieting actually is. I learnt not
to skip meals and why should I? I had a pantry full of the right stuff. I used
to think skipping meals was part of a good weight loss plan, I later realised
it could actually be counter-intuitive. The most important reason we eat food
is that we require it to survive. So of course our ‘busy-body’ bodies will feel
threatened when we stop eating. Hence the body reacts by slowing down
metabolism. Simply put, it stores up more of the food you do eat as fat. Not to
mention that I was more likely to over-eat when I did get around food.
Step 3: Snack Right
You remember those hunger pangs I wrote about in my previous
post? Well they are so real and they always appeared at night (Night Cap!) Back
then I did not have a bed-time, 10pm was the beginning of the evening. Come on
its college ‘Alarm clock who?’ I’d be up till about 3am on a good day, meaning
I’d be hungry at around midnight if I had dinner at 7:30pm. I quickly learnt
how truly delicious carrots could be. Bugs Bunny was definitely on to
something.
In my master plan, Breakfast came around 8am, snack at 11am,
Lunch at 1pm, Mid-day snack and fruit at 4pm, Dinner at 7pm and Night Snack at
midnight (if I was up)
Like now, I could head over to that pantry and reward myself
for writing a near awesome post but no, not until it's time... Not until I am
supposed to.
The goal was and is to control my hunger...
