Going Out and Having Fun!! (With No Guilt)

So in case you were unaware I am a young single girl (know any hot, professional, nice, younger guys send them my way please ;) ) anyway that being said I do go out occasionally for dinner and drinks sometimes a movie and I've had to learn how to go out and not feel guilty the next day about the calories I ingest.

First I'm gonna tackle the movies, I don't snack at movies at all. No popcorn, No candy and I buy an overpriced bottle of water to drink. I know it sounds impossible, but honestly you are going to ingest 500 plus calories mindlessly during the movie and you just don't need it. First rule of thumb don't go to the movies hungry. Eat dinner first whether at home or a restaurant those calories are going to be better for you calories (nutrient rich) than a bucket of popcorn and a pound of red hots and if you're full then the smells won't make you as hungry and it will be easier to say no. If you absolutely NEED popcorn get a small one, no extra butter, no extra salt, it's plenty buttery and plenty salty all on it's own.

Next drinks, drinking probably won't make you put on weight but it does inhibit weight loss. So here are few tips to drink caloricly responsibly (because we all know not to drink and drive right? I hope so!) Don't drink a whole lot, we don't need to plastered to have a good time, I have three drink maximum on a night out that's enough now I'm not able to drive, but I'm not falling down drunk and its probably about 400 calories I ingested here, that's my snack maximum for the day. Also if you get plastered and you feel like crud the next day you aren't gonna want to work out, so not only did you you drink lots and lots and lots of calories, you don't burn them off the next day, that is bad, bad , bad. So three drinks, no hang over and work out the next day! Now what should you drink? No beer, not even light beer, honestly beer is liquid bread, are you going to eat a whole loaf of bread while on a diet? NO, so don't drink it either. If you loooove beer, have one, only one and make it a light one. Clear alcohols are the best, light rums, vodka, gin these have the least amount of calories and are always good mixed with a diet drink. Margaritas, i love me a margarita, most restaurants have a skinny version, this is great! TGIFridays has two skinny margaritas both only 130 calories. This is how you don't blow your work out at the bar :)

Dining out. When you go to a restaurant be smart okay? First ask yourself how much do I eat out, if your answer is once or twice a month go for it, treat yourself don't worry about it, that Alfredo pasta is not gonna kill you, you are good the other 28-29 days out of the month. If your answer is more like mine and you go out to eat 3 to 4 times a week (dinners and lunches, I told you I had an active social calender) you need to be more aware of what you eat. Stay away from cream sauces and fried foods. Eat lots of salads (not salads with fried chicken on top) and soups. Soups are a good way to one fill you up because it has lots of water and not get a lot of calories. The soups need to broth based not cream based, so get the minestrone over the cream of potato soup. Sandwiches are good, anything covered in gravy is bad (I'm from the south). Baked potatoes are good, make sure it's small about 5 ounces if you get cheese no sour cream, if you get sour cream not cheese. Veggie plates are great, at Chilli's i get the veggie tacos, super good very filling and I don't eat all the tortillas. Skip the desert, get some coffee instead. :)

Can you go out and have fun? YES and you should. If all you do is work, gym, home you aren't living and the whole purpose of being healthy is to live a better life. I believe in living in the moment, so if I REALLY want some pasta and white sauce I'll get it, but i am also aware I will have to put an extra hour on the treadmill the next day to work it off. So go out, have fun, but have fun responsibly and you won't have to stress about the extra calories. Always go strong no matter what!! :)

Progress Report Time (and other nifty stuff)

Hey guys so a friend of mine told me it was time to put a new picture, the one I have up is from August and I'm down about 30 pounds since then. The pic I'm gonna attach to this blog was actually about a month ago and I'm down another 13lbs since then. So it's me at 260 and I am actually down to 247! YAY I thought this was gonna be a bad week but I weighed myself Thursday and had lost three pounds. I try not to focus on pounds as much, because it fluctuates sooo much and I focus on inches and pant sizes and how I feel and how I look.

I think the most important thing when you're trying to lose weight the right way and change your lifestyle is focusing on the small goals and keeping your eye on the big picture. I found this great little book at Target for 20 bucks called a Fit Book. It's a book that is a three month plan and you break your work outs (and food) down by weeks then by days. You put your 3 months weight loss goal and your weekly weight loss goal and your rewards for reaching your goals. It also allows you to write down and plan your workouts. I love it. Last week I didn't reach my weight loss goal, so no reward right? Well not exactly, I did do all my workouts and I tried my best so I still gave myself a small treat. If I hadn't tried my best and done all my workouts I wouldn't have treated myself at all.

So see it can't all be about the weight loss. I'm slowly learning that (VERY SLOWLY) and I'm learning to appreciate my pants getting to big and buying size 14 and size 16 jeans, a size 14 pair of shorts from Kohl's last night (shorts in December?!?! Hey I live in South Texas it could totally be 90 degress on Christmas day!) and size large dresses from stores I've never been able to buy clothes in before.

There are a lot of things in life that are out of our control, mine in particular and I'm a control freak that really likes to have everything in a nifty(total word of the day!) little box but I can't put everything in a box like I would want. One thing I can control is my workouts and how well I do there. I run till my thighs and calves kill me, I lift till everything hurts and I do so much abs it hurts to even touch my stomach. I let my body get out of control when I let myself get so big, and I will never do that again.

So having trouble keeping yourself honest with your workouts or tracking how much you really do? Go get this fit book. It is great tool to keep you honest and in control and on top of everything. Always go strong no matter what, even when you don't feel all that strong in the end it's so all worth it.

*Fitbook on Amazon.com : http://www.amazon.com/fitbook-by-fitlosophy-fitbook001-nutrition/dp/B002LU3DFG

Shopping Thinner!!!

So if you know me personally you know I love to shop. I am a girl, I love fashion, I like looking good and i LOVE finding bargains. At my biggest finding bargains was super hard to do, plus-size clothing just costs more and there is less of a selection, it is just a sad fact. Even though the woman in the United States (and western Europe and Australia) are getting bigger there is still not much of a selection out there for us curvy, bigger ladies and it sucks.









Shopping at 430lbs was a challenge, but I still loved it. I never got weepy or sad when I went shopping, there was just less of a selection. Don't get me wrong it sucked that the ONLY place I could buy jeans was Lane Bryant and only one style of those jeans AND they were getting tight. I always thought I looked good, and I liked to dress well. Dressing well when you are big is very expensive, I would do it but it made things difficult.









Now I'm no longer a size 30 jean (yes I said size 30, not the inches size, in inches i had a waist of of about 50 inches and hips of about 63 inches.) I'm a size 14 - a size 18 jean depending on where I buy them and I haven't been inside Lane Bryant in at least two months.









So like everything else in my life I'm having to learn how to shop thinner. Before if I tried on something cool and fashion forward if it fit i was ecstatic and I bought it. Nothing probably looked good on me per say, but if it didn't look horrible I got it. Now that I have a better selection I am more choosy in what I buy. Most shirts fit me now, I'm a size Large to Medium and I can pretty much walk into ANY store and find something that will fit, that I like, that I can buy and it is the most liberating feeling in the world.









Being thinner is also saving me money, the cheapest jeans at Lane Bryant are 50 bucks, now I can get a pair at most stores and I don't spend over 30 bucks now. I go shopping a lot with a friend of mine who is a size 4 and I am still amazed that we can both go into Macy's and find the same dress for both of us her in an XS and me in a Large. I had never been able to do that before. I love it! I am a fashionista at heart and it is nice to become more normal sized and being able to find clothes easier.









For me being able to buy smaller clothing is a huge motivator. No doubt in my mind at the end of this journey I am going to be a curvy girl, my boobs are still big (36 DD) and I have a big butt, the more I climb the StairMaster the rounder and higher and bigger it seems to get. I now have a 37 inch waist and 47 inch hips, which is a lot of inches down. I can't wait till my jeans aren't plus size at all ( I want to be a general size 8 pant) and I can buy EVERYTHING on sale.









Shopping is one of the things I take great pleasure in being smaller, it may not bring you the same kind of pleasure, the trick is to find what makes you happy and what you like to do smaller that you couldn't do heavier, maybe it's running or playing with your kids, or maybe it's bedroom time with you spouse. Whatever it is find it, embrace it, and don't let it go because it will help you maintain your healthier lifestyle and it will help keep you going strong no matter what!!!

Benchmarking Our Lives

So in case you didn't know I am six months away from turning 30, wow it's very crazy if you think about it. I'm not at a place in my life where i thought I would be when I was like 20. If you asked me at 20 where i would be at 30 I would've said I'd be, successful, employed, fabulous, living in a big city anywhere but in Texas, married, probably a couple of kids and a house. All of this is not where I am, I'm still in school, I'm single with no long-term relationship on the horizon, no children (besides my doggy children), still living in small town Texas, I do have jobs but not career type jobs and I'm still living with my parents. We tend to gauge our lives by where we are "supposed" to be and by where our friends are. I am at the age where my friends are getting married and having kids and at times I feel kinda left behind.

I don't want this to sound all woe is me, because that's not me. I love my life, I love who I am, I love what I've accomplished but I can't help but feel left out at times. I've decided to put my school kind off again this semester (I'm only going to go part time) because I really need to finish getting my final 80 lbs off before my 30th birthday in six months. I kind of feel like I'm prolonging my real life by doing this, but I also know it would be a wasted semester anyway.

Being on this journey I have learned about so much more than just how to lose weight and keep it off. This journey has taught me so much about life, love, relationships, people and how I fit into this world. I've reached a point in my life where a LOT of my close friends are finding their soul mates and getting married and are having babies, and I am happy for them but a part of me is like hey what about me! We tend to benchmark our lives, a lot like I mark my weight loss, however life does not work on a schedule. Even if I had finished school at 21 or 22 I still wouldn't be were my friends are in their personal lives because how can you share your life with someone if you don't know who you are? That was me my entire 20's, living day to day slowly sabotaging myself because I didn't know who I was.

" Life doesn't deal the hand you want, it deals the hand you need. Whether you believe it, accept it, want it or not, it is what it is. Be content with your own hand. STOP trying to rush life, just let it happen. Learn to live out the life dealt. What will be, will be!"-Antonio Talbert

I think that quote is perfect, one of my best friend's in the world who is marrying her Prince Charming in May constantly talks about wanting to send a thank you card to all her Ex-Boyfriends thanking them for not wasting her time and teaching her what not to look for. I think this is kind of great. I don't regret anything in my life, because I learned from it. I learned I was really unhappy at 430 pounds and that i wasn't living I was existing. No more existing for me, I'm going to live. I'm going to have that amazing full filling career, plan and had have that ridiculously expensive wedding to my Prince Charming when he does decide to appear and sweep me off my feet and I will have a couple of great kids. I just probably won't have them by 30 and that's okay. It's my life and I make the rules.

Life is hard, no one promises you happiness you have to find it. Do I know exactly what I want? Not completely, but I know I know myself a little bit better now at 245lbs than I did at 430lbs, so things change and I'm single at 29 years old and that's okay. I'm almost done with school, am I gonna go to medical school like was my mom's dream? Nope and I'm totally okay with that I'm gonna work on making me happy and when I am happy that's when I know this journey will be over. So here is to the next six months, because by July 12th, the day I turn 30 I will be 180 pounds (or darn close to it) and I will know more about me and I will be one day closer to the rest of my life. So here's to never settling, never giving up (or figuring out) our dreams and going strong no matter what.

Surviving the Holidays!

Oh my goodness I haven't blogged in a very long time! I have missed y'all and this page. Life has been super hectic but in a good way. The holidays have kinda taken over my life since before Thanksgiving, but I have been really good at keeping up with my exercise and diet routine. I actually lost weight during Thanksgiving week which was a really great thing I was kinda proud of myself. According to the National Institute of Health the average American gains about one pound over the holiday season. This is WAY less than than the 7-10 pounds we all think we might gain. So I don't think eating those extra cookies at the office Christmas party are what is dangerous for those of us trying to maintain a healthy weight or trying to get some weight off, but what is dangerous is falling out of our exercise routine.

Every one's New Year's resolution is to lose weight, be healthy, and I think for some of us it's because we have fallen off the work out wagon so to speak. So how about this, how about we enjoy the holiday cookies, not stress about our food input this Christmas and focus solely on our exercise output. Don't not go to the gym just because you are busy, can't do a complete workout because you have to go Christmas shopping no worries as long as you still do something just don't get out of your routine. If you keep your exercise routine it won't be a big deal to go back to things after the holiday season has settled down. I think this will also include eating better after the cookie temptations have gone away. If I've said it once I've said it a thousand times, the exercise portion of your diet and exercise plan is more important than your diet. So if you're going out of town for Christmas do some research, figure out how to do some exercise in your hotel, or maybe your gym also has a gym in the city you are visiting or just go for a walk or a run, it doesn't really matter what you do as long as you keep your body in the mood for exercise.

Do not stress about your weight during the holidays, have fun, enjoy the season with people that love you, eat some fudge but remember stay active and go strong no matter what!

Getting Through the Hard Times

Hey guys this has been a very rough week for me. Typically I try and make my blog witty and informative, but I think today it's just gonna be me doing a bit of soul barring to you guys. I think sometimes I am almost two people, because save for one or two people I bet if you asked most of the people in my life if I was having a bad week they would say "nah not Laura I saw her Friday night and she looked really happy." Well that's just not the case, and as a matter of fact I was so low this week I didn't feel like going to the gym two days, shocking I know but it's true I took Thursday and Friday off from the gym for a little personal healing time. Did it work? I'm not sure, but I went back to the gym on Saturday so I didn't let my blues completely ruin my routine, but I just needed some time.

I don't think I'm the only person in the world who gets low this time of the year, I think a lot of us do and learning how to cope with it is a struggle. I'm not a holidays type person, they don't make me happy, I hate the pressure and I loath the music. This year I think is worse because I am so food and health conscious. Last year I pigged out and this year I refuse, so we are scaling back Thanksgiving. I don't come from a big family and honestly my father will probably work through the day so no huge feasts for us, some turkey breast, some dressing and lots of veggies. Honestly I'm looking forward to the dressing it's something I avoid most of the time but it is a holiday so I am gonna treat myself a bit.

This stress I've been putting on myself this week also hasn't been good for my weight-loss (stress is a sure way for me not to lose weight) and this week I only lost a pound. I need to figure out a way out of this funk I'm in, I'm tired and sad and a bunch of other non-fun, stress inducing adjectives. I know I'll get through and hell it's probably just hormones, but this has been a really crappy couple of days. So I'm just gonna go back to the routine of things, gym, friends, family. Get through the holidays with no weight gain (my goal), survive shopping on black Friday (never gone before but I kinda need a new laptop), and try and remember my own motto, go strong no matter what.

Life's Little Pleasures.

Hola my friends! How are you doing today? I've had a not so hot week, including getting the flu and a sick car... So gym time was abbreviated this week, one thing I am grateful for is my car being in the shop the same days I felt like a corpse and needed to sleep 18 hours a day. Today I am feeling mucho better, my car is well again and well back to the gym I go after work. This week while i was laying in bed with a box of tissues and snuggling some NyQuil I was thinking about all the things that are easier now that I don't have an extra person worth of fat attached to my body. I think it's the little things that really make this process worth while.

At my biggest I drove a tiny little truck (a Nissan frontier king cab) not a lot of room right, and even with the seat all the way back the steering wheel would still rub the bottom of my stomach, so much so that I would get thin spots in my jeans from where the steering wheel rubbed. I don't know how I ever was okay with this, how I ever thought oh I'm not that big. This week i had to get in said truck ( i now drive a Ford Fusion, but I kept the truck cause it's always good to have a truck ya know) to jump off my car and talk about room to spare! It was insane, driving is so much easier now, and turning around to yell at my dogs in the back seat when we are on a trip is no problem. Even after I got my much more roomier car, I still couldn't like bend over if my cell phone fell on the floor board at my feet. Now I can no problem. I don't have to pull over anymore to retrieve it (even if I should). Adjusting my seat? At 430 pounds? There was no wedging my fat arm in between the seat and the door I would have to open the door to adjust my seat, now since my arm isn't the size of gigantic sausage i can move my seat back and forth with the door closed. When I first made this realization I called my mom in tears I was so happy, because I had never been able to do that all before. When I realized I could do that I felt like I had truly accomplished something in my life.

Movie theatre seats, I hated going to the movies at 430 pounds. I would go, and wedge myself in the seats and have bruises, huge ugly bruises on my hips and the sides of my stomach. Of course I never told anyone this, it was just a sad fact at my size. Booths in restaurants, I would fit in them (or most) but my boobs would cover my plate making it hard to eat. Now i have a lot less stomach and sadly a lot less boobs (the one part of my body that I am actually remorseful to see shrinking). I think the most embarrassing seating issue i had at 430 pounds was at my university. There were usually two types of desk-chairs, the regular sized one that I did not fit in at all (again more bruising on my stomach when I had to wedge myself in one) and the bigger ones that I did fit in. Sadly there was usually only two or three bigger ones per class and were always in high demand. So I would have to get to class early to get a seat I fit in. Now i don't have to worry about any of these problems. Movie seats I fit in comfortably, booths, typically if I'm out with a friend or a loved one who knew me big I'm usually like "oohhh look at all this room i have between the the table and my belly, my belly is getting smaller" and they laugh, but it's a major accomplishment for me. As for the bruises I am happy to say I haven't had any of those in awhile and I'm loving it.

Sex, 'lets talk about sex baby', sex is much much easier 150 pounds lighter. I am the kind of girl that really enjoys sex, and I had boyfriends at 430 pounds, and trust me I never let my weight bother me in the bedroom. I totally lived under the philosophy of well if he wants to have sex with me he must want to see me naked, so I was never shy once he got me in the bedroom, but logistically there were somethings I could not do, or were uncomfortable. For example, sex standing up, even braced up against something at my biggest was not possible. A few months back, like August, I had sex standing up. I was in the middle of having my heart broken, but utterly ecstatic that I had sex standing up! I remember I was shopping at Dillard's and my friend called to ask how I was doing with said imposing break up and I told her "well I'm devastated that he's gonna break my heart, but upside when I saw him last night we totally did it standing up, I was always to fat for that!" So even through a really sad time, I could take joy in the fact that all my hard work at the gym was paying off!

Whether your 200 pounds over weight or 50 pounds, there is stuff that that extra weight holds us back from doing, whether it's playing with our kids for extended periods of time, feeling more comfortable out in public at the movies or at school or being able to fit on roller coasters (again something I couldn't do at 430 pounds) or being super sexy in the bedroom. We shouldn't let a little (or a lot) of weight hold us back from living our lives. I know I am more alive now, because I am more fit and I can do more and really enjoy my life and I can't wait to see what life has in store for me at 180 pounds compared to 260 pounds. So just remember that it's your life and you're the one responsible for it and always go strong no matter what!