I'm Back!

Hi everyone,

I'm back! I'll admit it...I lost control. I managed to gain back all of the weight I lost and more. I don't even wear jeans anymore because they are too tight and uncomfortable. I just don't feel energetic or as happy as I once was. I even eat chips frequently and eat dessert after every meal, which is a habit I never used to have and don't want to have.

I am ready to start over and become the reformed (almost!) couch potato. Who's with me? I am going to take a new approach to these blogs, however, and really describe my journey to all of you. I need to do this for me, but I hope you all can learn from my accomplishments, as well as my setbacks. I can't wait!

I came to the realization that I needed to change my lifestyle after this past weekend. On Friday, I went out to eat and ordered an appetizer of chicken fingers and then ordered a very unhealthy salad. Yes, I know it was salad, but it was loaded with everything unhealthy such as bacon, buffalo chicken, Mexican cheese, blue cheese... the list goes on and on. Afterwards, I proceeded to order frozen yogurt with cookie dough, oreo, and Reese's Peanut Butter.

I know that one day won't kill me, but it continued throughout the whole weekend. Not only did I eat a giant meal at Maggianos (has anyone ever had their family style meal? It's FANTASTIC, but its a lot of food), I also had Chipotle before. After Maggianos, I thought I could never eat again. I was full to the point where I thought someone was going to need to roll me out of the restaurant. The next morning, I order a large chicken finger sub and another one of my famous cookie dough, oreo and Reese's frozen yogurts, and then proceeded to have chicken fingers and fries for dinner.

Basically, I let loose. I stopped caring about my health due to many factors. You could say it was stress, or you could also say it was laziness. Despite the reason, I realized I need to stop making excuses for myself and start taking action.

Its time to take my life back again and live the healthy lifestyle I am always envious of. Thanks for reading, and I can't wait to share my journey with you!

No excuses!

            This is just going to be a quick blog post, so it won’t be like the others, but I was watching TV the other day and this commercial came on and I really liked it.

           I really like this commercial because whether you know it or not, most people do make excuses to work out. I do it all the time! I will say “oh I have to finish this big project by tomorrow; I can’t go to the gym!” When in reality, I definitely could have put aside an hour to get in a good workout. Don’t make excuses like these and find time to work out because it will make you feel and look better.

Comfort Food

               Last week I was really in the mood for comfort foods, like mac and cheese, pizza, brownies, cookies etc. I decided that I would try to find a healthier way to make pizza and cookies. So instead of making regular pizza that has dough loaded with calories and tons of unhealthy cheese on top, I decided that English muffin pizzas would be a much better option. Don’t get me wrong, not all pizzas are unhealthy. You need to make sure you use a thin crust or use less dough because it is a lot of calories and use less cheese and low fat cheese. To make my pizza healthier, I bought whole wheat English muffins, cut them in half, spread a little pizza sauce on top and just sprinkled it with cheese. I only used two English muffins to make dinner for myself and they mostly filled me up. I don’t like vegetables on my pizza so I ate it on the side and that really filled me up. Vegetables will give you more fiber so you will feel fuller. 

                Later that night, I decided to use a cookie recipe that has less calories and sugar than most cookies that were also filling! I found this recipe in Good Housekeeping’s Drop 5 Pounds book. These chocolate chip cookies were VERY easy to make and did not take long at all. They actually called for more oats, like the quick oats used for oatmeal, than flour! Surprisingly, these are now my new favorite cookies. I loved the taste and I would prefer these cookies over any other kind. My dad, who is really picky and usually doesn’t like anything healthy, loved them! Remember though, even though these cookies are supposed to be healthier than most, you still need to limit yourself to one. If you have multiple cookies because you know they are healthier, then you will end up consuming a lot more calories than you think! The good thing about these cookies is that they do fill you up more than other cookies so you will hopefully feel satisfied after eating one.

Below is the recipe: Thank you to Good Housekeeping for this delicious recipe!

Ingredients:

-          ½ cup (packed) of brown sugar

-          ½ cup granulated sugar

-          ½ cup trans-fat-free vegetable oil spread (60% to 70% oil)

-          1 large egg

-          1 large egg white

-          2 teaspoons vanilla extract

-          1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

-          1 teaspoon baking soda

-          ½ teaspoon salt

-          2 ½ cups quick-cooking or old-fashioned oats, uncooked

-          1 cup bittersweet (62 % cacao) or semisweet chocolate chips

Directions:

1.       Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2.       In large bowl, with mixer on medium-low speed, beat sugars and vegetable spread until well blended occasionally scraping bowl with rubber spatula. Add egg, egg white, and vanilla; beat until smooth. Beat in flour, baking soda, and salt until mixed.

3.       With wooden spoon, stir in oats and chocolate chips until well combined. Drop dough by rounded measuring tablespoons, 2 inches apart, on ungreased large cookie sheet. Bake 12 to 13 minutes or until golden. With wide metal spatula, transfer cookies to wire rack to cool. Repeat until all batter is used.

Nutrition facts:

(1 cookie)

-80 calories

-1g protein

-11g carbohydrates

-4g total fat (1g saturated)

-4 mg cholesterol

-70mg sodium

-1g fiber

Tips for eating less without feeling hungry

 

18 Helpful Tips

-       -Chew slowly! I like to chew every bite 40 times (unless it is a really small bite).

-       -Limit yourself. Go get a piece of gum instead of getting more food.

-       - Put your fork or spoon down after every bite so you don’t have more food already on your utensil waiting for you. I like to take sips of my drink between bites.

-       -Drink a lot of water. If you drink two glasses of water a half hour before you eat, you will feel fuller when you go to eat.

-        -Eat foods with a high water content (Nutrition Diva).

-        -Eat foods with more fiber.

-        -Replace some of the starches in your diet with protein because carbohydrates are broken down into glucose much more quickly than protein. The more quickly your food is converted into glucose, the more quickly you are going to feel hungry again (Nutrition Diva).

-        -When you feel like you are hungry, ask yourself if you are hungry enough to eat an apple. If you aren’t, you probably aren’t hungry so grab a piece of gum! Unless you just don’t like apples.

-        -Portion out snacks. Don’t just keep grabbing handfuls from a bag of goldfish or you will end up eating a lot more than you think you are.

-       - Don’t watch TV or be on the computer while eating because you won’t realize how much you have actually eaten.

-        -Avoid artificial sweeteners in drinks. Read the previous blog “What not to drink” for reasons why.

-        -Eat smaller, but more meals a day.

-        -When eating out, since portion sizes are typically huge, try boxing up half of your food before you stop eating or share a meal with someone. This stops you from eating just because the food is on your plate.

-        -If you are serving yourself, put less on your plate. If you are really hungry you can go back for more, but wait 20 minutes before you get more so your stomach has time to realize it has food in it. Try not to have seconds.

-       - Serve food on a smaller plate because it makes it look like you are eating more food when in reality you are probably eating a lot less.

-        -This doesn’t have much to do with eating less, but avoid eating late at night because it causes weight gain.

-        -Try eating a small, healthy and filling snack 30 minutes before you eat a meal. Then, you are less likely to over eat at lunch or dinner time with foods that are most likely less healthy.

-        -Start meal with a healthy water-based soup, a salad, or fruit. If you fill up on that, you will eat less of the food that is most likely less healthy and you will feel full longer.

*These tips might help for the holidays, especially Thanksgiving!

What Not to Drink

         

     So the other day I realized that I have talked a lot about different foods that are healthy and foods that are unhealthy, but I really haven’t talked much about healthy and unhealthy drinks. Many people focus too much on eating foods that are healthier and don’t realize that they drink a lot of the calories they consume on a day to day basis. In order to maintain a healthy diet, you need to eat healthy foods and consume drinks that don’t have too much sugar in calories. One drink that is terrible for you is soda. Soda is full of sugar, caffeine and empty calories. It has no nutritional value whatsoever. If you look at a typical can of soda, you will see that it has 140 calories and 39 grams of sugar. That is a lot of sugar and calories for one small drink. Even Diet Coke isn’t good for you because it contains artificial sweeteners. According to UnitedHealthCare.com, artificial sweeteners increase your sugar cravings. This is because your insulin response is generated when sweetness hits the tongue. Your body craves sugar when you consume drinks with sweetener, but the sweetener does not satisfy the sugar cravings, therefore you are more likely to consume more sugar later on.

 

Energy drinks and sports drinks (like Gatorade) can also be linked to weight gain because of the large amounts of caffeine and sugar. Vitamin water is also a drink that deceives many people. People think that because it contains a lot of vitamins, it is automatically healthy. In reality, Vitamin Water is loaded with sugar and calories. Vitamin water has about 33 grams of sugar per bottle and 125 calories. This is almost as much sugar and calories as a 12 OZ can of soda! Be careful with fruit juices as well because most contain a lot of sugar! If you are going to have fruit juice, make sure it is 100 percent fruit juice and even then, only drink it in moderation because it still has a good amount of sugar. 

My favorite juice is Ocean Spray’s cranberry-raspberry juice, but it contains a lot of sugar! What I do instead of drinking a full glass of that juice, I add a little bit to a glass of water which gives the water a little bit of that flavor that I love. Whenever I crave soda, I replace it with seltzer water and a little bit of that same cranberry juice to give me the satisfaction of having a carbonated drink. One last thing to stay away from is Alcohol because it contains a lot of calories. The amount of calories depends on which drink you have, but the majority of alcoholic beverages do contain a lot of calories. For example, a 12 OZ serving of Budweiser has 143 calories. Remember, you don’t have to completely cut these drinks out of your life, just have them in moderation. If you often drink soda or some of the other drinks on this list, try limiting yourself to having it on a certain day only, like Friday.

****On a side note, if you like my blog I would love if you showed your support by becoming a follower and spreading the word of my blog!

Other Ways to Exercise

        Since it is beginning to be told cold to run outside and I HATE running on the treadmill, I knew that I needed to find another way of doing cardio workouts. I heard of this workout video called “Insanity” and I thought I might as well give it a shot. Personally, I am not good at workout videos. When I am working out at my house, I have no motivation to actually go through with the workouts and find that I give up very easily. If you are going to do this work out, push yourself. Don’t let yourself give up as easily as I did or else you won’t see any results. To solve my problem, I found a friend to do the workout with me because I have more motivation when other people are around me that are also trying to get in shape. “Insanity” is very convenient because you can get a good work out right at your house and not have to go anywhere. Also, you don’t need to buy anything besides the video- no weights, no resistance bands, etc. If you are interested in trying Insanity, make sure you have a decent amount of space near your TV before you buy the video. Be ready to give it your all because even the warm up is very difficult! This video will provide you with an extreme cardio workout and will make you more toned and fit in only 60 days as long as you stick to it.

      If you don’t like working out in front of TVs or if “Insanity” just doesn’t seem like the right workout for you, try getting a membership at a local gym. Some gyms are very cheap, like Planet Fitness which is only ten dollars a month. I go to Planet Fitness and I love the judgement-free environment. Yesterday I went to the gym for the first time in forever. What I love about the gym is that it gives you a variety of things to do. If you hate running on the treadmill, then you can use the elliptical or the bikes. Also, you can do cardio, do weights, or use strengthening machines. For example, yesterday I stretched, worked out on the elliptical for 20 minutes with some resistance, did machines that work your arm like the chest press and the rowing machine. I also used the abs and back machine. Then, I ran for about 15 minutes and walked for 5 to cool down. My goal is to work different muscles everyday so while I might do a lot of arm strengthening one day, I might do leg strengthening the next day and switch off every day to give my muscles a break. It is important to give your muscles a break so you don’t run the risk of an over training injury. Your body won’t be able to build new muscle if you don’t give it time to heal. If you keep overdoing the same muscles, they won’t be able to keep up with the workouts. I used to never go to the gym because I would convince myself that I had no time. If you think about, all the time you most likely spend procrastinating, you could be spending it by working out.  What is great about the gym is that it gives you a break from your work and it is a good time to think about everything on your mind while getting your blood flowing. Some people listen to music and some even read a book on certain machines like the bike. If you feel like you have limited time, don’t go for long. Going for a short amount of time is better than not going at all. While working out, make sure you stretch, push yourself and NEVER give up.

What foods should I eat?

When I first wanted to eat healthy foods, I found that it was hard to think of foods to eat that are healthy. I could think of things that were really unhealthy, like fried foods, but I could only think of fruits and vegetables for healthy foods. Day after day I would eat fruit as a snack, but I got tired of that easily and resorted to unhealthy foods just because I didn’t know what else to eat. For people that want to be a vegetarian or a vegan, it is hard to start because you really don’t know many recipes that don’t contain meat. This compares to eating healthy. To solve this problem, I made a list of certain foods that I always have in my house or that I should keep in my house that are healthy, so when I am hungry I can quickly find something healthy to eat. I also wrote a list of foods that I would eat often that were not healthy at all and that I should only eat once in a while.

Here is my list that I started when I first started being healthy: 

EAT THIS

Kombucha

Green Tea

The honest tea

Shake station

DRINK LOTS OF WATER…it fills you up

Tea (without sugar/ milk)

Eat fruit for a snack         

Chicken

Fish

Lara bars/ Kind Bars

Brown rice (don’t eat too much, but it is a lot better than white rice!)

Healthy Smoothies (do not use much sugar)

Need fruit with skin (eat skin because it is filling)
Light Balsamic Vinaigrette (Margetti)

Herbal Tea

Sweet Potatoes-->no butter

Wheat Germ (goes great with 1 minute eggs!)

Lentil Soup

Oatmeal

Veggies-->Broccoli has lots of Vitamin C (more than oranges)

Beans

Yogurt

Hummus

Whole wheat pita bread…not multi grain (unless made with whole grains, multi grain bread has the same nutritional value as white bread. Without the whole grains, there is not as much bran and germ, therefore there isn't a lot of fiber and nutrients.)

Dark Chocolate (only if you are really craving chocolate)

Walnuts

Almonds

Boiled Eggs

Apples + Peanut Butter

Mustard instead of mayonnaise

Saladà spinach mixed in

Miso Soup

Greek Yogurt or light Activia

Spicy food fills you up

Pickles

Peanut butter (in moderation because it has a lot of fat, it is just very filling)

Canned tuna- no mayo- sub balsamic vinaigrette

Kidney Beans (beans have a lot of fiber)

Tomatoes

Fiber 1 cereal

Wheat Chex

DON’T EAT THIS

Chips

Don’t drink anything over 10g of sugar per serving

Beef/Pork/Hamburg (can have in moderation)

French Fries

Dairy (can have in moderation)

High fructose corn syrup

Corn (very sugary and starchy grain)

Mac and Cheese

Goldfish, Cheez-its, Cheese Nips

Chocolate animal crackers

Cookies

Candy

Caesar dressing-->anything white and creamy

Cheddar cheese

Muffins

Bagels

Jelly

White bread

White chocolate

Ketchup (get the natural one)

Cream cheese

Buttery Popcorn (if you need to have butter on it try lightly buttered)

* Remember that you don’t need to cut out these foods completely, just eat them once in a while and eat them in moderation. Also, this is an exclusive list- there are many other foods that are healthy and many that are unhealthy. If you want, write a comment about foods you know are unhealthy or healthy and I will consider adding them to my list.

Sometimes people eat without realizing how much they eat or how bad the foods are that they are eating. I advise everyone to read labels before eating so you know the nutrition facts. Make sure you don’t skip over the part that says “serving size” because something might seem healthy because there aren’t that many calories, but the serving size might be so small that you eat multiple servings and consume more calories than you thought. For example, say your favorite cereal says 100 calories, that seems healthy, but if the serving size is ¼ a cup and you are eating a cup or more, then that is at least 400 calories that you would be consuming without even realizing it. A good strategy to making sure this doesn’t happen is measuring out how much you eat before you eat it. This stops you from over eating and consuming multiple servings without realizing it. Some people even find it helpful to keep a food diary. This is great because it allows you to see how much food you ate, what you ate and where you went wrong. When you have this written in front of you, then you might realize that you had too many snacks throughout the day or you ate too much of one thing. If you know that information, then you can fix what you did wrong the next day.