If you’re like me, you are generally fit. In the past, I’ve run half marathons and
marathons, and I still run 5K and 10K races regularly, but I don’t train nearly
as hard as I used to. I work out 6 days
per week, 60 minutes of light cardio per day.
If I’m really good, I will fit in 1-2 strength workouts per week ( I
know, that’s not enough) but usually I just stick to the cardio.
I also have a pretty restrictive diet. I don’t tolerate dairy or gluten too well
(they don’t make me deathly ill, just give me cystic acne, red, watery
irritated eyes and GI distress—I’ll save that for another post). I also don’t eat meat. My dad is a colon cancer survivor, and
because of that and the results from my own colonoscopy I had to have early due
to this family risk, I don’t eat any animal products except fish and eggs.
So given all of that, you would think I don’t struggle with
my weight, right?
You’d be wrong.
I was complaining to my sister the other day about how my
stomach pooch is making my clothes tight and I hate how bloated I have been
feeling. I blamed it on water retention,
my clothes shrinking in the wash, peri-menopause…maybe loss of muscle mass due
to laziness with my strength workouts.
She had one question for me.
“What have you been eating?”
I started thinking about it, really thinking about it. Then I got defensive. I don’t even eat cheese, butter and ice cream! Or any processed snacks! I hardly ever eat desserts like cake, pie and
cookies. And my diet is mostly
vegetarian. How could it be what I’m
eating?!?
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| My Fitness Pal for iPad |
For those of you who haven’t yet seen this app, it’s a very
easy to use way to thoroughly record what you eat, your workouts and your water
intake every day. It starts you out at
your present weight, asks for your goal weight and your activity level during
your average day, then gives you a calorie goal for you to reach your chosen
goal weight loss per week.
So let’s say you have your 20th high school
reunion in eight weeks, so you want to lose 10 pounds by then. My Fitness Pal will set up your calorie
intake vs. your calorie consumption so that you would expect to lose 1.25
pounds per week. What’s more, you can up
your total allowed calories by working out and logging it in the app. If I burn 300 calories in an hour of brisk walking, I get to decide whether to eat those calories during
that day. I work out almost every day
anyway, but it is such a motivator to see those calories in my allotted
amount.
The “aha” moment for me came when I started entering all of
the foods I ate into the app. Almost
every day, I eat a three egg white omelet with leftover veggies and
Daiya vegan cheeze. I also eat 1-2
slices of Rudi’s gluten-free millet chia bread with some dairy free
margarine. That sounds like a pretty
healthy breakfast. But what I discovered
was that I often used two servings of Daiya instead of one, when it didn’t
really add to the flavor. I was just
dumping it on there without taking the time to consider how much the serving
size was. And the coconut milk I was
using in my coffee had 9 grams of sugar per serving. It totally wasn’t necessary for the flavor.
Wait, you might say.
That saved you, what—maybe 80 calories?
Big deal. But then I also
realized that I was mindlessly snacking throughout the day. I work out of a home office, so the pantry is calling me
all day long. I might wander in and grab
a handful of dark chocolate, some dry cereal or chips. (Gluten-free people! Anyone else totally hooked on chips?) When my stomach started growling, instead of
waiting for the next meal coming in an hour, I would eat a bunch of crackers
with peanut butter and jelly, then eat anyway at dinner because I’ve cooked and
my family’s there, and well—it’s time to eat.
Even worse, somehow, I’d gotten into the bad habit of
thinking I needed something sweet after every meal too. Luna bars, chocolate, hard candy—even coconut
milk ice cream. I caught myself wanting
sugar even right after breakfast. And if
the evening dragged out, I probably would make popcorn or break out a bowl of
cereal. Hey! I eat healthy, and I work out almost every
day, so why can’t I have cereal?
I was clearly eating way too many calories for what my body
needs to run each day. And my workouts
were burning maybe the equivalent of a one big snack per day. I also had to admit that sugar was rearing
its ugly head throughout my “healthy” eating habits.
My Fitness Pal made me accountable—to myself. All I have to do is enter the foods I eat,
and usually they are already in the library.
All I have to do is search, adjust the serving size or number of
servings to reflect what I ate, and add.
I absolutely love the bar code feature too—just train your iPad’s camera
on the bar code of the food you want to enter, and add. It’s simple and easy. And here is the absolute key to my success: I am not willing to plug in that crap I was eating before and see it on the My Fitness Pal screen. I like to compete with myself and win every time. So I am more willing to tolerate some hunger pangs to see that I have plenty of calories left over at the end of each day.
So far it's going great! After only four days, I am losing that uncomfortable, snug fit on some of my clothing. I plan to update after four weeks, so I will be back to let you know how it turned out!
You might say, “That’s so annoying! I don’t want to enter everything I eat it
some app.” To that, I would answer that
it’s much easier than buying special foods or making meal plans for a
diet. And it gets you closer right away
to changing your lifestyle, which is what we all need to be healthier and maintain weight loss.
Another objection is that you don’t want to share all of
that information. The simple solution is
that My Fitness Pal lets you make the choice whether to link up with others
through their app or through social media, or be stealthy and
surprise your friends with your great results later. If you are that person who likes to
commiserate with others and it helps you stay on track, then by all means
reach out. I didn’t choose to share through
Twitter or Facebook, but I did recruit one other lucky soul to join me.
As we hopped on the treadmills at the Y yesterday, my sister
started complaining about swimsuit season.
I just had one question for her.
“What have you been eating?”
