Sam's weight loss diary

S

sam19

New member
I am putting myself on a diet because I want to lose weight. At present, I am unhappy with my weight because I struggle to fit into my favourite clothes and feel like a heifer next to my friends. I know and understand that to lose weight you need to eat healthily and exercise. I can do this, but I struggle with snacking and eating late at night. Take today, for example, I had muesli and fruit for breakfast, a tuna and chickpea salad for lunch and a Greek salad for dinner, I snacked on almonds and low-fat yoghurt. However, some stupid, self-destructivre part of my brain decided that at 11pm, it would be a good idea to eat a good 300 calories+ in chocolate fudge. Up until this point I have always thought that if I put myself on a diet I would lose the weight. I have been fooling myself under this delusion for six months, I am getting bigger as the year goes on, and I have come to the realisation that in order for my diet to be effective, I need to stick to it for longer than a week and that I can’t do this without considering the more emotional aspect of this as well. Let’s face it, it was pretty emotional putting the weight on so it surely follows that it will be just the same, if not worse getting it off.


That is why I have decided to start this diary, so that I can articulate about my weightloss in a manner that is proavtive, so that I can express what and how I am feeling about food, instead of bingeing and then trying to forget about it.


I am going to be open and honest, because sticking my head in the sand and eating healthy for three days then eating crap for the rest of the week is not helping. I think that if I write down my thoughts and actions I will be able to identify my destructive behaviour more easily and hopefully combat it. I also hope that it makes me more self-aware and reflective.


My goals …

My current weight is 69.9 kg and I want to get down to 62 kg.

Ideally I want to lose over one kilo a week, but as long as the weight comes off I will be happy :)
 
Hi!


First off, congrats on starting your diet and for posting about it here! I just started here as well, and for everything I've seen and read on this site, I've found that the people who have the most/longest threads are the ones that tend to get it right. Post EVERYTHING here! Be it good, bad, whatever. If it pertains to your weight loss, write it down. That way, you'll be accountable for everything you've done and when you look back, its a helpful, insightful guide to what works for you and what doesn't. Write down what you ate, how you exercised, how you felt about things that day; it all paints a picture, and the more details the easier it is to see.


Good luck with your weight loss!


~Sophia
 
Thanks Sophia!!


Okay, so my day today was good, I went to the gym and did a Bodypump class in the morning.

Before the class I have five strawberries, and then for brekky (which was actually at like 12pm as the class was a late one) I had two slices of sourdough rye with Cottage cheese and tomatoes, and then a tub of Forme yoghurt.

Than at about 3pm, I had a salad which was satay veggies on lettuce. Then for dinner, my family put out a gorgeous platter of cheese, dips, bread and crackers as a pre-dinner snack. But I had about sixteen crackers (Not good!!) and one piece of the bread and then had about twelve almonds. Then for actual dinner I had vegetarian sausages in a tomato based sauce with kidney beans, carrot and onion with a side of green beans.

Dinner was definitely the most unhealthy meal of the day, but I'm not going to lie, I'm pretty impressed that I didn't touch the cheese.

As a general rule, I am trying to steer clear of carbs after 5pm, so hopefully next time I can just stick to my vego sausages.

Overall, I'm annoyed that I ate so much close to the end of the day, but I'm glad that I didn't go full on crazy and binge.

Taking it a day at a time!!
 
Today was not a good day.

It started well, I went to the gym and did a 1hr boxing class which I really enjoyed.

Then during the day I ate healthily, until I got to work this afternoon.

I have to admit, the reason that I am probably in need of a diet in the first place is my work: One of my jobs is at a bakery, which is not at all conducive to weight loss.

So I'm going to run through what I ate, even though it's pretty disgusting and will definitely reveal what a pig I am.

Before the gym I had about half a cup of blueberries, and post-workout I had 1/3 cup muesli.

Then for my morning snack I had some dried fruit with about 12 almonds with a skinny cappuccino.

Then lunch was two poached eggs on rye bread with spinach and tomato.

Then I got to work :s

At my bakery we put out 'tasters' which is bite sized portions of our products for customers to try. I had a bit of a nibble of everything that I was cutting up, mostly I was eating white bread. Then I ate some Boston bun and then some of these jam buns that we make. The last thing that I had at work was some glace icing from one of the buns, which is made from icing sugar and water. Definitely not healthy!!

But it didn't stop there, when I got home I had crackers and dip, and then some zucchini fritters, followed by hot milo and ice-cream. And a home made chai latte.


So as you can see it was a bad day.

But it is behaviour like this that has led me to my current situation where I am seriously unhappy with the size and shape of my body.

But when I think about it, eating all of that food does not feel good, I hate that feeling where you are sitting at the table after eating and your stomach actually hurts because you fitted so much food in there. As a genuine statement, I actually feel better when i eat a normal portion of a healthy meal then when I over-eat on junk. It's ridiculous how bad junk food makes me feel as soon as I've eaten it. I know tomorrow morning I am going to wake up and feel full of regret and contempt, and that I'll probably feel a bit sick in the stomach as well.

What I need to do is start thinking about what I eat all of the time...because mindlessly eating Boston bun whilst I am bored at work is not the person that I want to be.
I've read a lot that you need to outmanoeuvre bad habits, and snacking in a bakery is definitely the worst habit that I have. Therefore, next week at work instead of eating, when I get to the middle of my shift I'll buy a diet coke instead which should give me a sufficient sugar hit without the awful bready carbs that I do not need to be eating in the afternoon.

I want to get my body back on track and that is going to take self-control and thinking before I eat.

Furthermore, my personal trainer added me on Facebook today, and the pics that she has also add to my slight feelings of insignificance, if I can get as toned as she is, that would be amazing.

But as a serious, short term goal, it is my best friend's birthday in exactly one month and I have a gorgeous black dress that I am determined to wear, it is very short, but I have high hopes for the weight loss that can be achieved in a month :)

Okay, so definitely feeling shit about my behaviour today, but I have to remember that this is one day in a diet that will last months and I just need to maintain my focus and learn from this awful feeling... that one where you're so full that you feel like you may spew...
 
Today was average, as far as healthy eating is concerned.

I went to RPM this morning, and then had 2/3cup muesli with blueberries. At work (my second job which is at a cafe0 I had a good lunch, which is a tuna/chickpea salad with a vinegar dressing. it's pretty healthy at about 200 calories in a serve. after work I had some almonds and dried fruit. But then when I got home I had two slices of cinnamon fruit loaf, which is not so healthy. It's really difficult, though, because I was waitressing from 8 - 5, with one half hour break at 11.30, so it kind of follows that when I get home I will be ravenous, however reaching for a loaf of bread is never a good idea.

I think what I will do is take my post-work snack tow work with me and munch on it before I get home, however, I will need to ensure that it is substantial enough to abate any chance of me heading to the pantry when I get home.

Dinner wasn't very good either, I went out for Mexican with my best friend, and got prawns in a tomato based sauce without cheese, except it came with rice and tortillas which I really should have stayed away from. The actual prawns in tomato seemed pretty healthy, it was only when you added the carbs that I realised that there was an additional 380 calories, which is ridiculous!!

So the down-side of today was that I need to avoid the post-work binge, and I can test this out when I work tomorrow, I should also definitely have my wits about me when I dine out, it was only the extra carbs at dinner that wrecked it for me.

On the up-side, I didn't have an epic binge like last night, and if I can slowly build healthy habits I'll be happy.
 
Hi Sam, fellow Sam here :)


I find that diet is the key thing to losing weight, it's good you work out but that doesn't really burn off many calories. Sounds like you actually have quite a healthy diet apart from the snacking/cheating you do. I found that calorie counting helped me the most, I went for the scientific approach of calories in vs calories out.


It might do you some good to learn how to calorie count and that will put in perspective what your cheating is doing. Now when I see a chocolate bar or a doughnut laying around my first reaction is not "I want that in my face right now", it's more along the lines of "300 fucking calories for THAT?!". The perspective helps me a lot, I still cheat from time to time but my cheating is somewhat controlled, I guess you could say that I cheat at cheating by only cheating acceptable amounts, if that makes any sense?


If you want any help calorie counting just ask, I can tell you what I do, it works really well for me.
 
Hi Sam,


Thanks so much for your reply, I would love to know how you calorie count, I just found a site that does it all online, is that what you do as well??


My personal trainer has encouraged me to do the small six meals a day thing, so I think I will give that a go, but if I calorie counted properly then that will probably help me make sure that I'm eating six small meals as opposed to doubling my daily food intake :)


The past couple of days I have fallen off the diet bandwagon a bit, but what I want to do when this happens, is look at what went wrong instead of forgetting it happened. I can see that I am definitely a person who likes instant gratification and I think what I need to do is take it one day at a time and stop expecting to wake up one morning at size ten. What I think I'll do is weigh myself twice a week, once on a Sunday, so that the thought of a Sunday weigh-in discourages me from the post-clubbing 3am Maccas run on a Saturday, and also on a Wednesday because my best mate who is also attempting to diet with me weighs in then and then we share our results.


I really like the idea of focusing on what I eat I think I am definitely one of those people who will eat something and not even think while they're eating and then like ten minutes later be like 'I ate that??'


Would love to hear how your calorie counting works Sam, thanks for your reply :)
 
Well basically your body naturally burns off X amount of calories per day depending on your height, weight, age, gender and other factors.


You can work out how many calories you naturally burn per day with a calorie calculator such as http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm


This will tell you your maintenance calories, your maintenance calories is basically the number of calories you need in a day to maintain your current weight. If your total calories for the day is less than your maintenance then you'll lose weight, if it's higher you will gain weight.


You need a total deficit of about 3500 calories to burn off 1lb of fat, spread across a week that's a deficit of (3500 cals / 7 days = 500 per day)


For example if your maintenance value is about 2000 calories per day and you eat (2000-500 = 1500) every day for a week then you'll lose 1lb.


Exercise also counts towards your limit, so if you exercise off about 500 calories then you can minus that from your daily limit. You can find lots of websites that will tell you how many calories exercising will burn off, it's not a great deal.


You can track your calorie intake yourself or you can use a service to help, I use a feature called "myplate" at www.livestrong.com which is good because it has a calculator built in and you can set your weight and what your preferred weekly loss in lbs per week, then it will calculate your daily limit with the loss already taken into account, you can then add food each day when you eat it and it will add up the calories for you.


I've been doing this exclusively and I've had a steady loss for the last 18 weeks, went from 250lbs to 209 so far, I don't actually do any exercise I literally just keep my calories at -1000 below my maintenance (2600-1000 = 1600) per day.


Lastly, it's worth mentioning not to go too low, 1500 is lowest men should eat per day, 1200 for women, if you go much below this amount you'll find it harder to lose weight as your body's starvation response will start to kick in.
 
Thanks so much Sam, I just calculated the calorie goal and it put me at 1345, and I did my myplate total for today and it was 1348... even though I did have a small piee of cake for dessert

Obviously not going to do that every day haha


Thanks so much for your help :)
 
Cool, glad you got it all sorted. Don't worry too much about what you're eating as long as you keep the cals down you will lose the weight, nothing wrong with a bit of cake as long as you know the approx cals and make sure you don't exceed your daily limit. If you do exceed your daily limit try and make up for it over the next few days by being a few cals under.


Avoiding snacks will be easier because you know exactly what kind of consequence cheating will have on your weight loss. For example if you've eaten to your daily limit and you feel like cheating on a late night snack you'll know that doing so will stop any weight loss for that day.


I assume you're female with such a low calorie goal, 1345 is pretty good for women. the good thing about myplate is you can click on the weight tab, enter your new weight as you get lighter, and it will automatically re-calculate your daily goals, it will also keep a history of your weight so you can go back and see a graph of your progress. Because your maintenance calories is calculated using your current weight it means as you lose weight your maintenance slowly drops, so keep an eye on that, when it reaches about 1200 calories you need to level out.


Best of luck avoiding the snacks, it's a real minefield sometimes :)
 
Have been using the MyPlate calorie counter the past few days and I love it!!

Even though I have been sneaking a few sweets, I've tried to control portions so that the calorie count doesn't go wild.

So I still managed to lose .9kg since Sunday :)

Yay!!
 
Originally Posted by sam19


Have been using the MyPlate calorie counter the past few days and I love it!!

Even though I have been sneaking a few sweets, I've tried to control portions so that the calorie count doesn't go wild.

So I still managed to lose .9kg since Sunday :)

Yay!!
Click to expand...


Very nice! :)


Yeah it's real easy to use, takes just a few seconds to put in the cals, you can do it at work after lunch and at home easy. I've been on target so far this week so I'm hoping for a decent loss by friday/sat.


I have ribs in the oven right now, 760 cals for the lot, that and lunch puts me at 350 cals under my target for today so I might treat myself to a snack later :D
 
Calorie counting is sooo important... When I finally got consistant with my calorie counting I lost 50lbs... I counted everyday and kept my calories down everysingle day. Unfortunately it has been a challenge since I stopped counting and started cheating now I need to relose some. So I found a site called Calorie King that gives calorie count for many foods. Good luck
 
Go Sam!!
Calorie counting actually makes you so much more aware!!


It's actually been such an eye-opener, last night I had a bit of a lightbulb moment, looking at my calorie consumption over the last few nights I've realised that consistently after dinner I will always have a snack on biccies or chocolate, so my goal for this week is to kick this bad habit to the curb. If I can do this, i think that I will be even more on track. Tt's my best friend's birthday next month and there is a gorgeous dress that I have my eye on, however, will definitely need to say goodbye to 9pm choc biccies, even if they are within the calorie count.


Thanks also Rainy, that site is really good because I'm form Australia and they cover a lot of our brands that MyPlate doesn't do :)
 
Yeah calorie counting is definitely the way to go, the scientific way is always better than fad diets.


Part of what lets us get overweight in the first place is bad habits and to keep weight off long term you need to replace your bad habits with good ones, it's not enough to crash diet using some fad because people who do that simply put back on the weight once their diet is finished.


However educating yourself as to the calories in food and how much is appropriate for your diet is a great way to make a lifestyle change you can maintain for life, hopefully once I'm done with my diet I'll be able to stick to my maintenance calories the same way I'm sticking to my deficit now, so I don't just baloon back out again, hehe :)


Just FYI you can manually enter calories on Myplate if you know what they are, you can also add any brands that are missing to their database, I just tend to add most of my food manually these days since I know off by heart the calories in most of my regular foods.


I hope you manage to get down to the size you want for your dress, we all need rewards for our effort. Next time you see a choc biccie work out the cals in it and ask yourself if it's worth adding that many cals to your daily total. Or better yet find some lower cal substitute, many of my bad habits I didn't end, I just swapped them for lower calorie bad habits for example diet fizzy drinks.
 
AI am another calorie counting advocate....I weight...measure....and over guesstimate...every morsel that goes it my mouth!!

I use my smart phone and the app sparkpeople mobile to keep a log of my food and activities for the day its a great app...it gives me a report every day of my calorie burn between the two..and when you compare my pounds gone its pretty close on a monthly bases of what I have been losing. I would say that app and this site is 90% the reason I am succeeding this time.

I hope you find the tools and the support you need too....they are a special gift!! GOOD LUCK :)
 
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