My healthy weight loss journey

My whole life, as long as I can remember, I’ve always just eaten whatever I wanted.  I never really thought about whether or not it was bad for me or if there were any consequences to eating it.  I can only remember going on one “diet” in my life.  I was in high school, and everyone thought they were fat, even if they weren’t.  It was the one where you count fat grams, and you were allowed to eat so many in a day based on your height.  I lost about 15 pounds and was happy with that, since that’s all I really needed to lose at the time.

Everyone gains the “freshman 15” in college.  I gained more like the freshman 30!  I never really weighed myself because I just didn’t care that much.  Over the years, I would look at myself in the mirror and think that I was gaining weight, and obviously when I had to buy a bigger size because my clothes no longer fit, I was faced with that reality.  I would think all the time that I really wanted to lose weight, but I just didn’t know how.  I was honestly too lazy to figure out how.  When I would go to a restaurant, I would know that the best thing on the menu to order was definitely not fries, but that’s what I wanted.  I’ve always loved vegetables and fruit, I’d just eat too much of them at one time.

My love of food only grew from watching Food Network.  To say I love Rachael Ray is an understatement.  I watch all her shows, have her cookbooks; the list goes on and on.  I’ve always loved to cook.  I love to try new recipes, and my husband, Justin, loves that too!  We just genuinely love to eat.  We love trying new things.  Butter was my friend.  Pasta was my friend.  Being married to an Italian, I learned all about how to cook Italian food, it was good and I really enjoyed it, making it and eating it.  And, if I do say so myself, I was pretty good at it!  I love to bake also, cakes, cookies, anything.  I took a cake decorating class just to try it.  It was very stressful, but interesting at the same time.  I am really into cupcakes and I enjoyed making them for my son’s birthdays.

I had my yearly doctor’s visit on Wednesday, July 28^th, 2010.  I wanted to ask my doctor for a recommendation for a healthy way to lose weight.  I didn’t want to have any sort of surgery, I know people that have done that, and it works, but that just isn’t for me.  I didn’t want to take any pills.  I know myself well enough to know that I couldn’t do those plans where you eat the frozen meals or pre-packaged food.  Also, since I love to cook so much, I had to be able to cook our food.  I knew Justin would not be eating anything weird!  He isn’t a picky eater, but come on, who would want to eat a frozen dinner for dinner every night?  My doctor suggested that I try Weight Watchers (WW).  He said that he was doing it himself and that he wasn’t endorsing it because he was doing it, but as a doctor who knew about these types of things, it was a healthy way to lose weight.  He said that he didn’t even think that I needed to start out being all that concerned with exercise.  He said that would come with time and that the WW plan was set up where you didn’t have to exercise to lose weight, it was all based on portion control and making better choices.

That night I made the decision that I would go online and join.  I didn’t even tell my husband that I was doing it.  I had made the decision and I didn’t even want to talk to anyone about it because I didn’t want anyone to try and discourage me.  Not that he would, I just didn’t want any feedback either way.

I called my best friend, Kelly, who had done WW before.  She had done it where you go to the meetings and she had done it where you just do it by yourself online.  I was leaning towards just doing it online since I had my son and I didn’t want to try to figure out how to not take him with me.  But after talking to her she suggested that I start out going to the meetings so I could get a good sense for how to do it and then once I felt comfortable that I could just do it on my own.

So, the next morning, Thursday, July 29^th, 2010 I got up and joined.  I couldn’t wait until Monday to start with a new week, I had to do it that day.  I had no idea what I was doing, but I was doing something.  I had taken the first step.  I decided that I had to go to a meeting that day to find out what I needed to do.  So, I told Justin what I had done, and told him that I needed for him to tell me, based on his schedule when a good time would be for me to go.  So, we decided on a time and I went.  I weighed in, and went to the meeting.  Afterward, there was a session where the leader meets with you to explain the program and answer any questions.  There was another lady there that was starting for the second time.  She had 7 pounds to loose.  Really?  7 pounds?  She couldn’t lose that on her own?  I have since realized that everyone has their own story and their own journey, no matter how long it may be.  Everyone has their own struggles and challenges.  Since it was her second time, maybe that would be the hardest 7 pounds that anyone could ever try to lose. 

If you know me at all you know that I am not a very outwardly emotional person.  Very few people in my life have ever seen me cry.  And if they have it has not been very often.  That session was very emotional for me.  I had made my decision and was determined.  But, I couldn’t believe how long a journey I had in front of me.  Luckily, Justin decided to start the journey with me.  I honestly don’t know what I would have done without his encouragement and support.

I had never really even stepped on the scale.  I honestly didn’t want to know what it would tell me.  The scale we had was very old, a hand me down from my parents.  It wasn’t even digital.  I decided to purchase a new one, so I went to my old trusty Wal-Mart and bought a cheap one for $20, a scale is a scale is a scale, right?  It actually ended up being very accurate and pretty right on to what I would weigh at WW.

Slowly I started telling people that I had joined.  This is the first time that a lot of people will even hear my story.  My close friends and support team know all about it, probably more than they’d like!  But it’s just not something that I’ve been really ready to share with the world.

The first week was hard for me.  I was trying to figure it all out and figure out what to eat.  I struggled to find things to make for dinner.  I searched the WW website for recipes, but nothing really stood out to me.  I mostly made grilled meat, boiled brown rice and a vegetable on the side.  I talked to my WW friends all the time about recipes and they’d pass theirs on.  I’d search WW, and anywhere else to find stuff.  I signed up for Kraft foods to send me emails every day and I’d look to see if anything sounded good, see how many points it was, and either hit print or delete!

Kelly loaned me a few of her cookbooks to look through.  One of them was Hungry Girl.  I didn’t see any recipes that really stood out for me in her cookbook.  Then one day I was watching The Cooking Channel and saw a commercial that she was starting a new show, obviously called The Hungry Girl.  So I decided to DVR it and check it out.  And, I loved it!  I went to her website and you can sign up for daily emails from her with tips and tricks, recipes and store finds, very similar to her show.  Everything has WW points!  I was in love!

I have made up some things on my own, but mostly it’s from other people.  I can’t even really say that they are recipes, more just methods or dinners that I have put together.  People that just start WW ask for my recipes and I have forwarded them in an email, so I decided to start this blog as a centralized place for people to look.  Apparently I started a riot on Facebook the other day with a recipe I had shared with some friends!  It is one of my favorites so far.  I feel like I’d like to start with that one.  I got it from Kraft foods.  It is called Fiesta Chicken Enchiladas Made Over:

http://www.kraftrecipes.com/recipes/fiesta-chicken-enchiladas-made-121571.aspx

I did make a couple changes.  I didn’t use the PHILADELPHIA Neufchatel Cheese, mainly because I already had some PHILADELPHIA 1/3 less fat chive and onion cream cheese, I used that, but really any lower fat cream cheese would work.  I had heard some mysterious rumors about 1 point plus whole wheat tortillas, and I couldn’t find them.  Recently at Wal-mart I found Ole’ High Fiber Low Carb Whole Wheat Tortillas that are only 1 point plus.  So I used them.  I also just put all the cheese on top instead of stirring some of it in the mix.  When I calculated the points plus from the nutritional information on the website, it was 11 points plus for 2, um not so much.  When I ran it through the online WW recipe builder, it was only 8!  I’m not sure if the nutritional information was wrong or if it was reduced that significantly with the tortillas I used, either way I was much happier with 8 points plus!  So, I’ve made them twice, they are the bomb and I’ve passed them on to my friends and now on to you!

I remember when my clothes started to be too big.  I finally decided that it was time to clean out my closet and when I did there was nothing left!  I took 5 garbage bags full of clothes that were too big for me to Interact, an organization that is for abused women and children, I felt somehow better about that than I did just to donate them to Goodwill.

I have lost 67 pounds and counting to date.  There are days that I feel discouraged and days that I want to just go back to my carefree eating days.  And there are times that I have some mindless eating, but WW if a lifelong change for me.  It is not a DIEt, as in you are DIEing or killing yourself to lose weight, they call it a liveit.  I try to daily liveit.  I try to make it livable in my life.  I am able to eat just about what I want and just make smarter choices in general.  I make it lower in fat or just eat less of it.

So, that brings you up to date, and this is the purpose of my blog.  To help people out there who are looking for healthy meals to make for their families that don’t really taste like they’re healthy because they taste so good and are filling!  Because like the hungry girl, I am a hungry girl!  Since I struggled to find things to make for dinner and I have so many options to offer as help to other people now and I have been sharing them with my friends, I wanted to help others out there.  So each day I will post what I am making for dinner and I will kind of review it to say whether or not it was good, if I changed anything from the recipe or if I’d change it the next time I make it or if it was gross and I wouldn’t make it again.

Your body’s gonna lose what it wants to when it wants to.  There were weeks that I splurged a little more than I normally would and get “off plan” a little and loose more than I normally would.  There were weeks when I did everything perfectly “on plan” and I’d stay the same or go up or down a little.  There really isn’t a lot of psychology or physiology in that.  You cannot force your body to lose weight.  You can eat right and exercise and make good choices, but to lose weight the healthy way, your body has to do it on its own and on its own time.  You cannot force it to meet a goal by a certain deadline that you have chosen for yourself and become discouraged when it doesn’t happen.  You have to look at the big picture.  Look how far you’ve come.  Look at how healthy you are right this second in this very moment in time.  And, look forward to the future and what you can do better.  It will come, it will happen, you will lose the weight, but you cannot force your body to do it.  You just have to use the tools you have and the knowledge and resources available to you and the support that you have to surround yourself with and it will happen.

As my 10 year college reunion was approaching I had set a goal for myself.  As it gets closer, I am realizing that I am not going to reach that goal before the reunion.  I was starting to get discouraged and I had to remind myself that I have already lost 67 pounds.  I weigh less now than I did when I went to my 5 year reunion, and less than I weighed when I graduated from college.  I have already come a really long way.  I cannot force my body to lose the weight before the reunion.  I will lose it when my body is ready, and not before.

So, my current goal is to be within my healthy weight range by the time I go to my yearly doctor’s appointment again this year.  If I’m not there, I’ll at least be pretty close and if nothing else, I’ll be able to say that I lost 67 pounds.

After-for now!

Before