Reaching Goals

Nikki here.  Mark and I have been doing this challenge since January for our kettlebell bootcamp.  There a few steps that we need to follow each week and we get points for doing these steps.  Well, I have been following this plan to a T. I eat 5-6 meals a day, each meal includes a veggie and a protein and the majority of my meals have been pretty healthy.  I've never eaten so many veggies in my life!!  I work out in class 3 days a week and do other workouts on my own.  I also have been keeping a food diary- something that I have never stuck to before--and it's been 2 months!  

After about the first 2 weeks, I weighed in and was down 3 pounds. I was so excited!  Well, the excitement hasn't lasted because I've been up and down every since.  So this last week I tried to tweak a few things in my diet, so when I weigh in tomorrow we'll see how it goes.  One thing that I have to keep reminding myself so I don't get discouraged is to not worry so much about the numbers on the scale but think about more how I feel and look at myself.  Since we are doing kettlebell training I'm doing a lot more weight training type of exercises than I ever have been and I can definitely tell the difference in my body.  So the scale may not be moving very much, but my body is definitely toning up, so for me that is an accomplishment.  

I know a lot of people (especially women) get hung up by what the number says on the scale.  One way that I am measuring my weight loss success is shopping and trying on clothes! I haven't been shopping a lot since we started this contest, so I thought I'd give it a try.  I went to the mall yesterday and as long as I can remember I've been in between two sizes, erring on the higher size.  Well, I tried on a pair of jeans in my lower of the two sizes and they were way too big! I was really excited.  So I had to go down a size.  I haven't been that size since I was probably 14 years old.  So the numbers on the scale may not be dropping as much as I'd like, but I guess if my clothes are fitting better that I know I'm reaching my goals!  We have 6 weeks left of the contest, so I'm excited where we end up.  

Eat like it is your job, by Marie Spano, MS, RD, FISSN, CSCS

Terrific article by Marie Spano who is a registered dietician. Let me know what you think.

Quick Hint #3: Weekend Nutrition

This quick hint is by Nate Green who posted this online article on t-nation. Stupid Things Young Guys (and Some Older Guys) Do in the Kitchen.

You've been rocking the gym all week, getting all of your healthy meals in, and you're feeling like a freakin' champ. Now it's the weekend and you're faced with an interesting dilemma: eat chicken wings and drink beer at Hooters, or try to talk your friends into doing something else. What's your call?
"It really depends on your performance that week leading up to Friday night," says Roussell.
Let's say you eat six meals a day, seven days a week, which equals 42 total meals. If you were following Berardi's 90 percent rule (eating well 90 percent of the time), you'd have four or five "free" meals where you could drink some beer and have some nachos without feeling guilty.
But if your nutrition was less than great that week, you'd be better off skipping the bad stuff, and ogling the Hooters wait staff while eating a clean meal and nursing a single beer.
No one wants to live a life free from beer, chicken wings, and general weekend debauchery, so the trick is to stick to the plan when you can, indulge on your own terms, and know when you need to get tough with yourself and get back on track.
The bottom line: When faced with an indulge-or-not-indulge choice on a weekend, let your adherence to your program and goals in the previous week be the deciding factor. If you've eaten clean and aced your workouts, you've earned the right to loosen up a bit. (Not that you have to use the privilege; I'm just saying it's there if you want it.)
And if you haven't earned it? You know, there are worse things than not eating crap food and getting sloppy drunk on a Friday night. You can be the designated driver for your friends, earning you some karma points.

Eating better but staying full

• Eating better but staying full
  
  One of the big problems I have been faced with is being able to control my food portions throughout the day. If I do a bad job and don’t eat enough, then by the time I get home I am STARVING! What I end up doing next is overeating during my dinner meal and thus the reason I am having trouble getting to my ideal weight. This also brought up another problem people are faced with is staying full with the smaller portioned meals that they eat during the day and have the same starving feeling the time they get home for dinner.
  
  I just recently read a great article online by a gentleman named Chris Shugart. He gives a great solution to my problem. He states that the problem we face is that the foods we eat are high calorie and low volume foods. So we are putting calories in our system but they are not satisfying our hunger. He suggests “volumize your food” (eat more low-calorie and high volume foods in our diets). Then we will be full more and hungry less and also less likely to eat too much at the end of our day (he calls it “making us full but not fat”).
  
  Some ideas or substitutions he suggests when baking and preparing meals:
• Olive oil and almonds are high in calories and fats, BUT they provide very important omega-3s to your diet. Use them sparingly in your diet.
• Replace white flour with whole grain flour. Healthier and adds much needed fiber to our diet.
• Replace sugar with sucralose (splenda). Saves a ton of calories!
• Replace oil with unsweetened apple sauce. Another HUGE calorie saver can be used for brownies, pancakes, muffins and most baked goods.
• Eggs: Replace with some or all egg whites. (there are omega-3s in egg yolks as well, but this will help to reduce some of your calories in your recipes)
• For burgers, mix lean ground turkey and/or veggies with your ground beef
• For spaghetti, cut out half the pasta and replace with vegetables
• Instead of adding butter, bananas, syrup, peanut butter or other calorie-dense ingredients to recipes, use calorie free extracts or imitation flavorings.
  
  I will try to do my best over the next few months to begin providing recipes with this new “volumized” replacement method and show the difference made in calories and healthy additions made to the “modified recipes”.