Now, when I eat cheese I use regular shredded cheese. I use a small amount- the recommended serving size or less. I do not buy fat free. Now some people say to me "if youre counting calories why would you waste 80 calories on cheese when you could get the fat free and not only no fat, but half the calories?" This goes back to not eating things we cannot pronounce. For my 20th birthday someone got me the book "Skinny Bitch". Its written by two vegan models and has a ton of good information in it. If you don't want to have to second guess your decision to eat meat I would not read it though- it will make you second guess a lot of things. I read it and was so horrified I went vegan. Had I not gone broke living in LA I probably would've continued. Healthy eating is not expensive, eating vegan is. I reference the book from time to time but haven't read it in years because I know it's going to fuck with me and make me not want to eat anything all over again. The authors have great and valuable information- but very strong and convincing opinions. The reason I bring this up is because they taught me about FAT FREE food. Basically, when you see the words "FAT FREE" you can translate it to CHEMICAL SHIT STORM. When I buy my regular shredded cheese the ingredients are simple- 2% milk, salt, some other basic shit and a few preservatives. When I buy fat free cheese the ingredients are usually skim milk followed by 13 chemicals that I have no idea what they even are. I will take a small amount of fat over any amount of poison, any day. Just because it says FAT FREE it does NOT mean it's good for you.
I want to take a second to remind everyone I am not a health professional or doctor. My advice should be taken for what it is- advice from a friend. I've formed my opinions on how I am going to eat and make decisions on my foods and that does not mean everything I do it "right". this is how I eat though and if the world wants to know what I eat to lose weight, I'll tell em! and the answer is not fat free crap!
I buy as much fresh and frozen as I can. Frozen vegetables arent as nutrient rich as fresh ones, but they beat the hell out of canned veggies. I only have 2 cabinets for dry food in my kitchen and I barely open them. They used to be filled with chips and cookies and crackers and pasta and canned goods but its a little more sparse these days. If it can live outside of your fridge its prob either A) super fucking high in carbs or B) super fucking high in preservatives. Not to say stuff in your fridge cant have that too- but think about it- the most nutritious stuff you eat comes out of the fridge. If you can help it just skip the whole middle of the grocery store and go around the edges, most of the stuff you should eat to kick your fat cells ass will not be found in the cardboard section in the middle.
If you are not the HBIC(head bitch in charge) at your house I want to take a minute to explain how bad I feel for you. I think the trick to eating good is only having good food available to you. I live with my fish and my dog. They don't get to make decisions about grocery shopping so whatever I want is what I get, and I barely bring crap through the front door because I know myself too well. If you live with your parents or a roommate or even if you just have kids or a husband youre bound to have temptations everywhere. If you arent the one who grocery shops youre really screwed! But dont use this as an excuse. If the HBIC wont get your requests at the grocery store, get em yourself. If everyone eats them on you write your name. If that doesnt work get a mini fridge for your bedroom and keep your food in there. I am dead serious. If youre hungry and theres only crap available- youre gonna eat crap!
I cant have junk food in the house. I tried a few times with no success. Example- I bought a gallon of icecream. The plan was to practice portion control with it. I was going to eat a serving (1/2 cup) everytime I wanted some and had worked it into my daily calories. It worked, for 1 day. That night all I could think about was the iceream and by 3am I was sitting in bed eating it. I didn't finish it, but I ate about half, and put the rest back. The next day I totally regretted it, but please believe I ate the rest of the gallon that night. I was upset with myself all day, nevermind the bellyache from all the sugar and dairy, and i STILL ate the other half that night. This, ladies and gentleman, is called food addiction. Literally last week I made the mistake of buying a bag of marshmallows. One roasted marshmallow was great, but then I should've thrown the bag away, because within about 3 days I'd slowly picked at them and ate them all. I just CANNOT have it. My dream is to someday be able to have a normal kitchen with a few not so healthy items in it like normal people. But right now that's not me. I havent gained control of not eating all the sweets in the house, but I do have something to be proud of on the carb front. I always thought it was crazy when I'd go to a friends house and they'd have a bag of chips on the counter, and a few days later it wasnt even opened. Eventually someone opened it and then a half bag sits there for weeks! What the hell?! In my mother's house a bag of chips lasts a day, so naturally when I grew up it wasn't crazy to me that I'd eat an entire bag of tortillas in 2 days. I can go IN on tortillas with velveeta and rotel. And that right there is prob responsible for half the weight I gained when I moved to FL (almost 30lbs in 2 years). I ate a bag of tortillas and half a block of velveeta every week for months. Holy shit. However, after about 6 months of healthy eating I REALLY wanted tortillas. I love salsa so i was going to eat them with that and avoid the processed cheese and canned tomatoes. I also got whole grain tortillas. I read the serving size, 12 chips. I counted out 12 and put the bag away- normally I'd just sit on the couch with the whole bag. That day I ate 12 chips and did not go back for more. That bag or tortillas was eaten so responsibly it was in my cabinet for 6 weeks. To the world this may be so fucking stupid, but to me this was a major victory. But who do you celebrate not eating an entire bag of chips with? Its embarassing to admit youre proud of doing what everyone else does without even thinking about it. Thats where your accountability buddy comes in. I was so proud of myself, but too ashamed to make it a facebook status- but Nikki was there to celebrate with me! She understood the magnitude of my victory and congratulated me rather than saying "youre really celebrating not eating a bag of chips?". This was a big deal. Although I haven't bought another bag yet I plan to, and it gives me hope eventually I can live in a house with temptations and not accept them. I'd like to get married and have kids someday, but I cannot deprive my husband and kids of normal foods because I cant handle it. However my children will not be fed sugar to shut them up, they will not eat sugar cereal for breakfast, and I will never get them in the habit of a snack before bed. Every doctor I've ever met has said you shouldn't eat close to bed time. As a kid, like a lot of kids, every single night after dinner and before bed my mom let us have a snack. When I grew up eating at night was normal and I did it all the time. When I ever found out this isnt good for you and there are tons of people in the world who don't eat a night snack I didn't know what to think! The only time I eat after dinner now is when I am literally hungry. Belly growling because I ate and early dinner and stayed up late. In this case I'll eat either a vegetable or small amount of protein.
I've always been fat. Even as a baby- my grandfathers nickname for me was Sumo(it eventually switched to Sue when I got older and he realized that prob wasnt the best name for my self image lol). As a kid I was the little sister that was bigger than the big sister. In school I was the fat girl with the pretty face. So you'd think we ate shit all the time in my house, and we actually didnt. My whole family was/is over weight. My mom cooked for us the way she was taught- with a lot of cans. My grandmother(her mom) LOVES cans. I think this sprouted from financial issues they both had as young moms- canned vegetables are much cheaper and don't go bad. But I also think it's a matter of just not knowing any better. My mother made a vegetable with dinner every single night, it may have been a can, but she knew we needed to eat veggies. So if she was concerned enough about our nutrition to make sure we ate vegetables every day I dont think she was aware of the sodium and lack of nutrients in a can or she wouldve gotten fresh ones. Now my mom's fridge is STOCKED with fresh vegetables. My stepdad's lost some weight, my mom's lost 50 lbs, and my little brother's lost 20! All just from eating fresh vegetables! Kidding, but I'm sure it helped.
Ok, back to being a fat kid. We ate a vegetable every day. Mom always had fruit in the house and didn't actually buy a ton of snacks. We had 2 cabinets where the shit food was stored. One was up high and strictly for my stepdad to take to work in his lunchbox. You could not eat it. I mean, he never yelled at us when we sneaked it, but we couldnt help it! Not only was it sweets it was off limits- so we wanted it even more. The other cabinet is low, and thats where we had individual bags of chips and stuff like that. We would go INNNN on whatever was down there and the junk would always be gone sooner than the rest of the groceries.
When I turned 18 and moved out I had to grocery shop and walking through the store I was seeing all the things I always wanted my mom to have in the house- oreos, smore's poptarts, icecream. I guess the rebel in me came out because my thought process was "this is MY house now, Im putting what I want in the cabinets, and IM eating it all". I know my parents had good intentions when they tried to keep the bad food away from the overweight kids, but I wasn't thinking about that when I was thinking about stocking my cabinets how I wanted to. We didn't eat fast food much as kids either. Of course we did have McDonald's and we did order pizza but this was an occasional thing. When I grew up I decided I wanted the fast food and pizza I'd been missing out on too and I started eating that crap wayyyyy too often. Probably daily at a point. You can't fix a problem you haven't accepted you have though, so it's a good thing I eventually recognized that although some of my bad habits were taught, a lot were habits I'd formed myself trying to "do what I wanted". This is a common topic with my shrink- I HATE when people tell me what to do, even if its something good it makes me want to do the opposite just because theyre trying to be the boss of me. I wanted to be the boss of me so bad apparently I had to prove to myself I could eat whatever the fuck I wanted and no one was going to stop me. Unfortunately theres no trophy for that and now I just have a ton of fat to burn!
Since starting this blog less than a week ago I've gotten quite a few emails and messages from people telling me theyre so inspired, but the ones that really moved me are the people who told me my blog brought them to tears. I know why, because youre reading about me and realizing its YOU. I dont want to make anyone cry, but when I hear someone cried over reading this it makes me SO happy. I know that person had a breakthrough. Something I said hit home so hard they had their AHA moment and it makes my heart so warm to think I could possibly contribute to someone adding years to their life and experiencing the kind of happiness they deserve. No one will tell you I was a miserable fat person, because I wasn't. Although I've always battled with severe issues internally(we'll save that for my book :-P) to the rest of the world I was happy and fat. Plus, none of my internal struggles were weight issues so I can't blame my fat on that. But like I said, you couldve asked me or any of my friends and no one would describe me as fat and miserable. However, if you were to ask me now I would say I was miserable! At the time I thought I was happy, but that's because I didnt know what happy was. Now, I'm feeling something I've NEVER felt before, and this is true happiness. If I compare how I feel now with how I felt then, then yes, i was miserable. Losing weight doesnt instantly make you happy though. I think the happiness comes from conquering obstacle after obstacle and reaching goal after goal and having something to be proud of myself for every single day. People recognizing your hard work and constantly telling you they admire your drive- no one ever told me they admired me eating pizza and watching Teen Mom! It comes from getting dressed in the morning and thinking " I LOOK GOOD" instead of trying to find another pair of spanx to hide a roll. It comes from looking in the mirror and seeing the face I havent seen in years. I used to know I was beautiful- not to be conceited but I knew it. At my heaviest my face was so swollen, I looked inflated. People would still tell me my face was pretty, but I knew it wasnt the face I used to have. That last 30lbs gain went straight to my belly and face and there were times I didn't think I looked pretty. Now I can't stop looking in mirrors and taking my damn picture because what I am seeing is what I felt! I knew there was a beauty in me that was temporarily being covered up, now the world gets to look at what's always been there. If you think I'm being conceited, I feel sorry for you. KNOWING you are beautiful, inside and out is empowering. And whether I post it on the internet or not I still feel it, so I might as well mention how damn good it feels so someone else can look forward to when it happens to them too!
Damn I'm so good at getting side tracked lol. OK, so my emotional readers were probably emotional because they see themselves in me and that is why I am going to continue to be honest and admit my secrets and flaws- I want them to know THAT WAS ME! and IM DOING IT! SO CAN YOU! I was a hot MESS as far as eating habits are concerned so i need to let it out. Not only to get it off my chest for my own therapy, but so people dont think theyre too far in. I was FAR in. I dont want to sugar coat how i maintained my shape(round) and have you thinking "oh she wasn't that bad before, i have worse habits so I prob can't do it"
Lets talk about the drive through. Getting a car was the best thing that ever happened to me. However it was also a curse. Like I said, my family didnt eat fast food often so I was very intrigued to try out the drive throughs. We never ate taco bell, so thats what I wanted to try, and it was love. Id eat it all the time! But this contributed to the feeling of shame because I didn't want anyone to know I had eaten it. So you leave the trash in the car or whatever and don't mention it.And then when you get home and find out mom saved dinner for you, you eat that too. I used to feel SO embarrassed about eating fast food. I would crave it and eat it like every day at one point and I knew this was a disgusting habit and hated admitting it to the world so I didn't. But I knew I was ashamed because even if it was actually a meal time and not just a random snack stop i would still eat it in the car and not tell anyone. I was too embarrassed to be the fat girl who showed up to my destination with a bag of fried food to eat, so I ate in the car. Or what about when you want a whole bunch of different shit on the menu so you order it, and then get two drinks because youre embarrassed for the drive thru attendant to know all the food is for you. Now it's amazing that when I eat fast food I don't feel embarrassed. I never eat it in the car. I always walk into my apartment holding the bag for all my neighbors to see. YES, I eat french fries. And that's ok, because I do it in moderation and it is nothing to be ashamed of.
I guess I lied in my first post when I said they prob wouldn't all be that long lol. like i said, i LOVE to write and i have a lot on my mind! So were better to share it than here, with people who want to know about it.
And now, some motivation!