What I hoped would be a once or twice a week update has failed horribly. I begin again with a renewed hope of keeping the blog updated with our progress, at least mine as I wont speak for what Lisa has to say.
Let’s just begin with the first couple of weeks have been pretty tough. I have always been someone who eats what he wants when he wants which has pretty much led to the position I am in now. Having to change the way I live everyday has had it’s trials for sure. I now wake up to some kind of breakfast made at home and I try to stick to below a few hundred whereas before IF I even ate breakfast it was a fast food stop on the way to work.
Lunch has been the one meal that hasn’t had big big changes. While we stay away from the likes of McD’s and Burger King, and replaced it with Subway or another low calorie option we do still go out for lunch as it is what time allows. Neither of us are up early enough in the morning to make a lunch and prepackaged crap is just as bad as eating fast food in a lot of cases. Either way lunch accounts for between 600-900 calories depending on the day of the week. We have most days scheduled as to where we go to help the routine.
Dinners have been the big tribulation so far. Lisa has been trying a lot of new recipes not many of which have been to our liking so finding meals for dinner that both taste good an provide for a low dose of calories has been tough.
Overall snacking has gone down for both of us. A few 100 calories snacks here and there or a smoothie pretty much round out the day. The result for 2 weeks of this was a loss of right round 10 pounds. Hopefully next week I can follow it up with some more loss or at least allow for verification that last week wasn’t a fluke.
Dieting is certainly nothing that I’m new to. I’ve been on this ride before, but always I’ve strayed the course and put myself in a worse position than I was at the beginning of the diet. I lost 40 pounds from February 2009 to around July 2009. I was in sizes I hadn’t been in before and felt good and more confident about myself. But, I let things go and I’ve gained that and then some back. So thus the point of this post.. we’re starting over again. This time, it’s Chris and I working this out together. He’s never really been on board before. He’s been supportive of my efforts, but wasn’t dieting himself. Now we both have goals and reasons why this needs to work and last this time.
My personal goals are pretty simple. I want to lose weight, become more active, keep the weight off, and train my brain to accept healthier options and smaller portions as the norm. I want to curb my emotional eating and quit vegging out in front of the TV all the time. I would like to lose 57 pounds this year. It’s a big task, but not impossible. It’s a little over 1 pound a week and since doctors recommend losing no more than 2 I feel I’ve got a healthy, reasonable goal that I can stick to if I just work hard and don’t let myself go crazy anymore.
I’ve got new recipes to try that I’m counting calories on, and a big thing is that I need to start having a light 200-300 calorie breakfast in the mornings to keep myself going and avoid pigging out when lunch rolls around. I have the desire, and I’m gaining the motivation and hoping that we can stick this one out together with support of family and friends. I’m going to try to blog at least weekly about my progress to keep myself going, and I’m also using sparkpeople.net as a tool to help track my weight, food, and to find recipes and motvation from others out there going through this same struggle.
Tip – AllYou magazine at Wal-Mart has a 10.00 off any Healthometer scale. We bought a 29.99 scale last night and was only 19.99 after the coupon. The magazine is only 2.24 at Walmart so it pays for itself just using the one coupon, but they have 30+ dollars of other coupons in there as well as article and yummy recipes 
Today Lisa and I officially start our new diet. We started throwing out all the junk in the house and did some shopping for healthier alternatives. We are starting off by changing the types of food we eat. Since this isn’t just about losing weight but also about living healthier lifestyles we are increasing the amount of vegetables in our diet and even adding fish to the lineup(and I am nor a seafood person). Changing things we usually eat to light or fat free alternatives was also a goal. This is something that I can handle a little bit more since I only have to change a small perception of mine.
The Progress and Goal: My personal goal is to be down to about 225 by the end of the year. Considering I am currently at 350 lbs it is quite a task. Especially considering how sedentary my lifestyle is. This is another change we are attempting to make. While we are starting by just changing the diet we also are going t slowly add more physical activities to our daily routine.
We would appreciate everyone’s support in this, family or friend we will need your help. Keep a eye out for more updates as this is where we will do it.
