Say WHAT?

Every time I go over my daily goal, literally every single time I weigh myself the next day to see the "damage" done, and I always lose weight! I ate a whole bunch yesterday and terrible food at that, but I weighed myself and I was down over a whole pound from before I left!

I don't want to increase my daily goal just because of that, but it is sort of nice to know that's apparently how my body reacts.

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Side note: At this point, I can't help but think that losing weight is easy. I don't think I've even gone to the gym in over a month and I'm still steadily losing weight and I'm pretty sure I'm not losing muscle mass because I wasn't very muscular before and I'm really just continuing the same sort of lifestyle I was before I decided to live healthier, just eating better.

I am only 7.4 lbs away from my halfway goal!

I am 3.4 lbs away from the goal I set for when I move back to Gainesville in a week. Now, I know that it's completely unreasonable to think that I'm going to lose that much before I go back, but I set my goals so that if I can get within 5 lbs of it, I'm satisfied because I know I'm still making progress, and right now I am even closer than 5 lbs within my goal!


Life is going splendidly! I'm going to a Jason Mraz/ Christina Perri concert in 3 days; I move back to Gainesville in 8 days; M and I's one year anniversary is in 10 days; Gator football starts in 21 days. :D

AHHHH!!

Okay, so this isn't a HUGE deal, but I am SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS.
Today when I woke up, I weighed myself and I saw 169.8 looking back at me. Granted, it's only .2lbs less than the last time I weighed myself, but this is the first time I've seen a number in the 160's since I was 16 or 17 years old?
FINALLY!

EAT!!

Let me just start this off by saying that I am NOT an expert on anything I'm about to discuss, but I do know from personal experience that it works. Hopefully no one takes offense to this.

When first signing up for MFP, it asks you how many pounds you want to lose per week, what your goal is, what you daily goals should be, ect. I know for me, originally, based on MFP's estimates, it was recommended that I consume and net 1200 calories for the fastest weight loss possible. The very next day I began very strictly watching what I was eating and keeping my net around 1200 calories or less depending on my exercise. However, I soon realized that I was kind of cranky and a bit hungry throughout the day, but I figured it just meant that my body was adjusting to the amount of food that I was eating, after all, I didn't get to my highest weight ever by eating proper portion sizes!

Lo and behold, I come across a whole bunch of people saying that I  should be looking up my BMR and eating around there. Since I always need to know about anything, I Googled it, of course. I ended up coming across this website and my calculated BMR is around 1700 calories per day. Now, I'm no expert, but I believe that means that as long as my activity level stays the same, that is roughly how many calories my body uses up, per day, purely by existing. 

Now that just so happens to conflict with the number previously suggested to me by MFP, so I asked around to my friends on MFP and I couldn't find a single one that had tried it and had negative effects as a result, so I figured why not. I set my calorie goal to be around 1550, because apparently it's okay to eat a few hundred (200-300) calories below whatever your BMR is to speed up weight loss. Since then, I've pretty much continuously lost weight, regardless of going to the gym or not. (Going to the gym just helps, and I can eat a little more on days that I do go.)

I guess the concept behind it is that although 1200 calories is what your body needs to stay out of "starvation mode," at that mark, it's kind of difficult to eat exactly 1200 calories per day, and there's still a huge debate as to whether people should eat back exercise calories or not (whatever, another day for my opinion, I suppose). SO BASICALLY, it's a pain in the butt to eat that little each day. If you click "complete entry" with 1199 calories in your diary for the day, MFP will alert you that you are eating too little and that it would be best for you to eat more, so I think it's fair to say that maintaining ONE more calorie per day is NOT the magic number. 

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I know, I know, this was a bit of a rant, but I've recently told people in my real life about what I've been working towards (now that it's becoming more obvious) and I've ended up finding out that a few people I know in real life have MFP accounts and they are eating at/usually BELOW 1200 calories per day! Yeah, they've lost 5-10lbs maybe, but I can't seem to explain to them that it's not good to be doing that. I know I'm no expert, but I really want to help. I think I do happen to at least know something if I can manage to lose 22 lbs to date in 3 months, and pretty much keep it off (if I didn't want to lose plenty more still, that is).

Sometimes, I wish people would just listen to advice, but I know that sometimes it's best to let them learn on their own. It's just really difficult to do when you know it's going to hurt them in the long run. :/

I'm back!

My internet connection was cut off for somewhere between 3-4 weeks, so about a week after I started the Back 2 Basics challenge, I was procrastinating updating my progress on here, and right when I was about to do it, my internet got shut off!!
SO ANYWAY. Here's an update on what's been happening:
I started a new job and basically, the job and the operation hours of the Y are the opposite so I kind of stopped going (with the exception of Saturdays that I'm off work and the Y is open when I'm awake. lol) It kind of sucks because I actually enjoy going to the Y and working out, but I work from 4:30pm-12:45am and I can't be making myself wake up early to work out and then risk falling asleep on my 30min drive home in the middle of the night.
Even though I've hardly gone to the gym in the last few weeks, I've still been steadily losing weight regardless! I'm sure if I were able to keep going to the gym, I'd lose a bit faster, but I'm quite happy with the results that I've been seeing. :)

There's probably other things that I've left out, but it's difficult to update the last month of my life. haha

Oh and my pants still fit the same, but my tops finally look much better on me!

B2B Challenge: DAY ONE

Okay, so today is Day One of the Back 2 Basics Challenge and I'm excited to get back to the gym :) There's  not too much more to say about that right now, but I do have something to note for anyone who actually keeps up with reading my blog:

Today I finally started acknowledging the decimal part of my scale when I weigh in. It will help me be more accountable, as well as keep better track of my loss. So, today it doesn't look like I lost much weight, but hopefully it'll melt off throughout this competition.

But anyway! The disclaimer I wanted to mention was that on my "Stats & Weigh ins" section, as of today there will be decimals included in my weight. I'll be weighing in every Monday for the next 6 weeks (until the end of July), and I can't wait to see how much I lose! I also might take another set of pictures to compare if I get up to 20 lbs lost. :)

OH! And I'm super excited to share that I only have to lose 5.5 lbs to finally be out of the "Obese" category for my height! I know that BMI isn't everything, but for me right now, it is very important.

Back 2 Basics Challenge

I feel so lazy sitting on my butt all day and not doing anything. 
Screw this knee problem.
I'm over it.
Another one of my reasons for not pushing myself to get back to the gym is that I'm saving money by not paying for another month at the gym. BUT! I know that once I pay for that month, I'm going to get the most for my money. 


A friend of mine on MFP posted about a Back 2 Basics Challenge that she's doing and as the description says, it's a "a swift kick to get back on track" which, in my opinion, is what I need, as well as some nice strong pain meds for my knee (LOL!). It starts on Monday and runs until the end of July. Not only will it motivate me to keep working, but I am the type of person to work really hard to complete a goal/challenge, which is what this is!


There are four challenges:

• Weight loss: 5% of body weight 
• Miles: 90 (walk, run, jog, etc) 
• Calories burned: 18,000 
• Minutes exercised: 900 

I'm going to try to complete all four of them! 

SALAD!

I'll go ahead and say it right now. I do not like salads, at all. I prefer warm food over cold, I suppose, so the whole cold pieces of lettuce and various other things is just.. not appealing, at all! Yes, I know that vegetables are good for us and all of their nutritional benefits, and I LOVE veggies, but salads are a big NO for me.

I'm writing this to say that I've not eaten a single salad yet into this weight loss journey of mine and I've lost 14 lbs already. There's no need to necessarily eat more salads, it's to eat less junk. Salads can be healthy, with little dressing, but too much dressing and BAM it's right back to being an unhealthy meal.

The key to weight loss is LIFESTYLE CHANGE. I'm not going to eat salads to lose weight, because if I had to eat a salad everyday of the rest of my life, kill me now. I eat my veggies happily, but not in a salad. However, tonight's dinner was veggie cakes and oh my goodness they were sooo yummy and sooo healthy!! One day I'll post the recipe to them on here, but for now you can just wonder what they're like. ;)