Weight Loss

So I’ve blogged a couple of times recently about my diet, and evan seemed to imply he wanted to learn more so doing a review blog- as I think I have blogged over the last few months all the steps to my diet. ( and Aimee has also been supportive of my efforts)
The first step, in my mind, I did not to lose weight but because I read Fast Food Nation. After reading Fast Food Nation, I decided that eating at Wendys, Burger King, et. al. was a bad idea, as these were not companies that I wanted to support. THAT decision I’m sure helped me to lower my caloric intake. I mean I’m sure that those FRIED chicken nuggets, fries and LARGE soda had huge calories in it.
The next step was at my father’s pushing and cajoling, I stopped drinking soda. I drank about a liter a day, which is prolly over 300 empty calories. My parents had often nagged me about my soda intake, but as I don’t drink coffee that’s how I get my caffeine. This time when my dad, and his wife, made their case- I wasn’t working, so I didn’t really need to be mentally awake in the morning. So I took my dad up on his challenge to stop drinking soda for two months.
I think I recently proved that I passed this test with flying colors. About two weeks ago I saw a couple of students and a BUNCH of sodas outside a college. I asked the kids if the soda was free, they said yes and I bent down to take one… And I froze before taking the soda. I was thinking of what soda I wanted, and then I remembered- I don’t drink soda. I did take one- as they were offered and I had bent down to take one… but then after walking around with it for a while I gave the soda can to a friend. And I felt good about this.
The next step was pretty natural after getting rid of the fast food. See I had to replace that fast food with SOMETHING. At first I just bought regular frozen meals, but then one night I was looking at the weight watchers meals… And they looked pretty good. So I bought a few of them. They tasted very good but weren’t very filling, which I felt meant they did their job- as the object of them was to be SMALL servings. So between the less calories of the Weight Watchers meals and getting rid of the empty soda calories, I lost a good amount of weight. I lost about 15 lbs. due to these two things alone. Though it might also have helped that I currently like eating organic breakfast bars- which I found out DOES have caffeine in it- bonus for me.
And thus far the final step was joining the gym. I currently do about 27 min a day of cardio workout- adding about a min. a day. I’ve also started to add weight lifting to my exercise regime- doing 9 different muscle exercises 2 times a week.

All this watching what I eat and exercise has led me to losing about 20 lbs. I haven’t weighed myself ‘officially’ this week so it could be more by now. My official weigh ins are about the same time of the day (10:45 am) usually on a weekly basis (Sundays). 10:45 just was the first time I weighed myself and recorded it- I try to stay at the same time as I’ve noticed that weight fluctuation A LOT during a normal day, so I decided rather then take the LOWEST weight each day (and thus weigh myself like 10x a day), that I would just stick with the random time I started with and weigh myself at that time for my ‘official’ weigh in.
I also want to state that I think it’s interesting that as I lose weight my muscles have become better defined- it’s NOT because of all the weight lifting( as I haven’t done much of that) but because I’m losing a level of fat- so my muscles aren’t surrounded by my fat. So not only has my waist gotten smaller but so has other parts (but not THAT part). So like for example, for a few months I stopped wearing my college ring because my finger was a bit too think… Now it fits no problem.
So again, I’m losing weight and I feel good about it.

Oh and on Thursday, I made sure to go to the gym after work. I was originally going to do weight lifting, but that was before I had the job… So I just did my cardio. I however made sure I went because I felt if I blew it off- saying “I worked today so I’m too tired to go to the gym…” then that would send a very bad precedent. So I went and did my stuff.