Weight Loss Update

I thought this was quite fitting to post this amongst the Christmas cookies recipes.  It's been a couple months since I posted about the beginning of my weight loss journey so I thought I would give you an update of what I've been eating and doing, and how that has affected my weight loss.

October and November are always crazy months in our house.  John works for a tire company and work gets extremely busy during these months with people switching over to winter tires.  This means that he usually isn't home until 7:30/8pm which affects my weight loss in a couple ways.  First off I haven't been able to make it to DanceFit every Monday night.  Heavens knows John tries his best to get home in time for me to go, but it doesn't always work out.  The other problem is that I am a social eater.  Which means when John comes home at 7:30 and sits down for his supper, I often find myself suddenly sitting at the table talking about our days and stuffing something into my mouth, even though I just ate an hour before.  Lack of dancing combined with my social eating was starting to cause some problems.  So I quickly learnt to seclude myself in the living room, where I can still see John and we can talk, but I no longer feel the urge to stuff my face.  Small win!

Speaking of DanceFit, I am in love with this class!  It is something that I look forward to all week!  I no longer feel like I'm going to die after the first 10 minutes!  That happens around the 20 minute mark now haha.  There is something so satisfying about sweat burning your eyes mid workout and being a little shaky going down the stairs afterwards.  This session of DanceFit is over and we have a few weeks break before it starts up again, but I will most definitely be going back.  I recently signed up for a free demo fitness class at another gym in town.  It's a combination of Insanity and PiYo (Pilates/Yoga).  The class is in a week and I'm already a little concerned that I'm going to die half way through.  If you haven't heard of Insanity search it out on YouTube and you will see why I'm a little nervous.  I must have been having a really good day on the day I signed up because I clearly thought my abilities were way above what the actually are.  If my blog posts suddenly stop you'll know that the class killed me.

Food has been a fickle beast for me lately.  I'm not really on a schedule for my meals and snacks anymore.  I've gotten to the point that I consume most of my calories at my meals and found I was overdoing it with my snacks.  If I divide up my calories between my meals I don't feel I need I snack in between.  That being said I am a boredom eater, and if I am just sitting around with nothing to do I will demolish a handful of sugar cookies or a few slices of puffed wheat cake.  I've learnt that in order to keep my snacking under control I have to keep myself busy.  Which, as most of you know, isn't very hard to do.

My go to breakfast as of late has been 1/3 cup quick oats with 1-1.5 T of dark brown sugar and 3/4 cup of whole milk (because that's all we have in our house these days).  I like using dark brown sugar because it has more molasses in it and has a stronger taste.  This means I can use less and still get that delicious brown sugar flavor that I love.  Does anyone else like to eat straight brown sugar or is it just me?  Again, I wonder why I'm overweight haha. 

One of the hardest changes for me to make was to stop drinking my calories.  I LOVE milk, always have always will.  It's only been recently that I've actually forced myself to drink water when I'm thirsty rather than milk or orange juice.  Tea has actually been a great help in ditching the milk.  I'm not a huge fan of water because it has no flavor so I have really enjoyed cold steeping fruit teas.  I started out by adding a 1/4 cup of agave syrup to a pitcher of tea and slowly reduced the amount of sugar.  Now the sugar free tea tastes delicious to me, and it doesn't have any calories but it tastes like juice!

These two months haven't been without their struggles, such is life with weight loss.  I'd fallen off the rails a bit before and still managed to loose weight so I guess I got cocky.  With Christmas coming up there has been more baking sitting around and ending up in my mouth.  I would be sitting on the couch while Roman napped and 4 sugar cookies would jump right into my mouth.  Honest!  They climbed out of the container, ran across the kitchen and living room avoiding both dogs, scrambled up the couch and flung themselves into my mouth mid yawn.  Don't you hate when food force feeds itself to you?  I know I can't be alone on this one!  Oh look, here comes one now!!  In all seriousness there aren't enough DanceFit classes in the world to save me from the amount of baking that I can ingest over the holiday season, so it's up to me to be accountable and learn to keep my paws out of the treats!

When all is said and done I've now lost a total of 30 pounds!  I think that most people hope for a speedy weight loss but I'm quite happy with my average of one pound per week.  This is much easier to maintain and there is a lot less disappointment on the scale if every week is the same.  There is nothing more discouraging than loosing 3 pounds one week and one pound the next when you were expecting another 3.

For the first time in years I had to buy clothes because the ones I owned were too big!  Actually I don't ever remember having to buy clothes in a smaller size.  Also a first is that I was able to fit into a large Old Navy shirt and actually find pants there that fit me!  I even bought skinny jeans, which I swore I would never EVER wear, and now they are my favorite pair of jeans.

If you are joining me on this journey I hope that you are reaching your goals!  Don't be discouraged by the tough days.  If your eating falls off the wagon, embrace it, have one more cookie, and start the next day fresh.  Don't dwell on the small stumble just focus on the big picture and try again tomorrow!