Tag: weight loss tips

Justified Calories: Eat what you love and don’t apologize.

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My parents have a regulation size bocce ball court in their backyard. I know, so Italian. For the past 4 years they have hosted a huge party that’s also a bocce tournament. {Shout out, my husband won this year.}  This past weekend was their event. Like most Italian family functions, it’s a small wedding of over 100 people. So, I walked into my parents house Saturday afternoon and of course, to feed over 100 people, there was an array of high fattening and amazing foods. I was immediately overwhelmed with excitement and fear.

Here’s my issue with daytime events, whether it be a BBQ, bridal or baby showers, ect. They are right smack in the middle of the day. So in anticipation of a high fat eating day, I barely eat breakfast, since I’m eating so soon.  I get to the event, eat the largest amount of food ever in one sitting and then go home. I get home and am  in this weird place of do I eat dinner? I ration that I shouldn’t because I ate so much at the event, but I should because I technically only ate one meal that day. The struggle is real.

On this day, I actually ate a nice breakfast so I wouldn’t feel overwhelmed when I walked into the house. So I was already playing a little food defense. But I was still thinking about what I was going to dive into first. There were trays of those big chocolate chip cookies from Costco which I love. There was appetizer Sicilian pizza which I also love.  Trays of sausage and peppers. Just to name a few. As I was about to jump in, I noticed 4 loaves on Zucchini bread on the counter. Almost hidden. I literally hadn’t had that in 10 years and it used to be one of my favorite things ever. Don’t let the name fool you, it’s packed with sugar. My mom used to make it all the time. I got so excited. My heart filled up. I started there for the day and honestly didn’t deviate. I had a piece as my appetizer, a piece as my dessert and a piece to end the night. Because I loved that so much it was as if nothing else was even worth the calories that day. Store bought cookies and cakes didn’t compare to my Zucchini bread so I avoided them.

I made such a big deal of this bread, talked about it so much, that the next morning my little nephew referred to it as “Coco’s bread” I’m Coco, btw. And he’s my perfect little human who makes every word and phrase even more adorable than possible.

I didn’t even realize I was avoiding the other foods at the part until  the next day when all the leftovers were out to snack on during the Sunday football games. I naturally would have picked on the extra cookies and candy and chocolate  all over the house but knowing I had my leftover slice of zucchini bread, I didn’t want to ruin it with any calories not as special. I probably ate  a whole loaf of the 4 loaves by myself. In the past I would have been angry, mad and regretful. But I literally had zero regrets. I not only enjoyed it, I knew how special it was. AND it saved me from pointless calories.  I actually ate less because I ate more. Mind blowing.

We often justify eating certain timely delicacies. Candy Corn around the holidays. Girl Scout Cookies  when our co-workers come around with the sign up sheets once a year. Peeps at Easter. Pie at Thanksgiving. Cake at birthdays. Certain calories are justifiable. But certain aren’t. I think if we really take the time to internally analyze just how special certain calories are, we’ll eat a more mindfully, unapologetic and without regret. Now that’s living my friends!!

IMG_9828Penelope ready for her first Bocce Tournament.

LOSING 200 POUNDS AND COUNTING.

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I’m in awe of any and all weight loss success stories. Anytime someone shows me a before and after photo of dramatic weight loss, I’m amazed. We see these stories online all the time. The pop up on the right side of our Facebook feed. They’re attached to every major diet promotional materials. We read about them in magazines like ‘People’ where they show people who’ve lost almost half their body weight. These photos solidify success.

I praise the dedication it took for these people to lose so much weight. And then after thinking about them, the selfish nature of humanity takes over and these stories make me think about myself.  This person can lose 200 pounds I think but I’ve had trouble dealing with the same 20 pounds my whole life. Insert the feeling of defeat.

Many of us have that number of pounds that we fluctuate with; 5, 10, 15, 20, 40, 60. We know the times in our life when those pounds have been off and the times in our lives when those pounds are on. Every time those pounds are hanging around, maybe even right now as you’re reading this, you’re feeling like you still haven’t lost the weight. You don’t feel like an amazing success stories like the amazing people you see.

But then I thought, I estimate I’ve lost 200 pounds in my life. The same 10 pounds, 20 times, in 20 years. Some of you maybe have lost 400 pounds in your life. The same 20 pounds, 20 times in 20 years. You’ve maybe lost even more!

If you’re reading this right now and feeling like you aren’t a success story, be your own success story. Don’t let what you look like right now be the judgement you bestow on yourself. Only we know ourselves, we know how we eat, we know what we do, how hard we try. The outside is a representation of the inside but it’s not the whole story. Many of us hide in the shadows of our success because on the outside we feel like we look like failures.

The way we look on the outside often doesn’t show the healthy sacrifices we make for our health everyday. Maybe you’re 20 pounds overweight right now but you’ve been walking everyday. Maybe you’re 40 pounds overweight right now but you always choose Whole Foods over packages or processed. Maybe you’re 5 pounds overweight but you’re fridge is filled with fruits and veggies. Every little sacrifice or decision we make when it comes to eating and our health matters and is something we can celebrate.

Since writing Monday Dieter I’ve had so many people stop me and tell me about their own journey.  They always lead with their flaws. “I’m 20 pounds overweight” for example. OR “I can’t stop eating dessert every night” or “I hate the way I look right now” They never lead with their successes. We fail to focus on the GOOD things we do.

I want us all to change the way we walk around. Change the height we hold our heads up when it comes to our health. We are all success stories, in our own special ways. And who cares if you don’t see a change in your before and after, you know everyday you become better than before 🙂

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who cares if your before and after picture looks the same year after year:) you’re a success story in your own!

Just buy the bigger size

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This past week I spent the week down on the Jersey Shore at my familys’ beach house. Our beach house is on Long Beach Island. It’s an island with very little chain stores or restaurants and when you get on the island you usually stay on the island. Midweek I was coming to the conclusion that I was running low on wipes. Sure I could have run to our island grocery store to get whatever brand they stocked but the particular wipes I like were at Target, about 25 minutes away, off the island. The biggest incentive to take this trek, there is a Starbucks in this Target. So maybe I was just looking for an excuse to get my Starbucks BUT lucky for me my aunt, who also spends much of her summer on Long Beach Island, offered to take a ride with me.

We headed to Target, got our Starbucks, picked up the wipes and then continued up and down the rest of the aisles, running up our bills in the way every great Target trip goes. At one point, we found ourselves in the clothing section because my aunt remembered she needed to pick up an article of clothing for an upcoming trip. She was in between sizes and decided to just buy the bigger size. That moment was the inspiration for this post today. We both acknowledged in the car ride home that that decision to buy the bigger size wasn’t a moment of defeat but a moment of triumph. I was proud of her for making the hard decision to go bigger. Yes, we all know, its one of the hardest decisions to go bigger. It should be a no brainer, but sadly, it’s not.

It’s because sizes are a lot like the scale. We let them define us. We’ve come up with a certain size in our heads that we believe we should be and when we aren’t that size, we beat ourselves up. We spend way too much time and energy trying to get into that certain size. We think people know what size we wear. We think our lives will be better if we are the smaller size. We think everyone we pass on the streets knows what the tag on the inside of our clothes reads. We give the size too much power. In fact, how many times have we been in a dressing room and we’ve been in between two sizes? We get the smaller size JUST because it’s the smaller size. We squeeze into the smaller size, wear it even though we’re uber uncomfortable simply because it’s the size we want to be. Or we buy the smaller size thinking it will be a vehicle to motivate us. From my personal experience, any clothes I buy that are too small, never motivate me. They actually do the opposite. They haunt me in my closet,  collect dust and make me eat more.

I know how hard it is to make the decision to buy the bigger size. It feels like a defeat, a failure. And it’s a reminder of the progress we haven’t yet made. But in NO way whatsoever does the size of clothes you wear define you.

Being 4 months post baby, I’ve acquired a pair of jeans that are two sizes bigger than my pre-pregnancy jeans. These jeans are beyond comfortable, they fit, they look great and I basically wear them everyday. However, every time I slip them on, I do have that moment where I think of the jeans tucked away in my closet from before the baby that I haven’t made any progress to get into yet.

So I decided I need to own my bigger jeans. So I decided to “build the case for the bigger size!” I tried on my pre-pregnancy jeans and took pics. And then took the same pics in my comfy, 2 sizes bigger jeans. Unless I need a new glasses prescription, I think we have our answer and a case built for the bigger size. We look better, we feel better and we lift a huge weight of pressure off our shoulders. And it’s moments like this, when I rock my bigger jeans that are more effective than any fruit or veggie.

It’s time we all stop saying “I look fat in that picture”

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We live in an era of pictures. We LOVE them. They capture our memories and give our friends and family a glimpse into our lives.

We live in an age of instant gratification. A picture is taken, we all want to immediately see it and know if it’s a good picture. But here’s a simple reality, when we look at a photo, we each only look at ourselves. It’s a good picture if we look good. It’s a bad picture if we look bad. It’s a picture that needs to be burned or deleted if we look fat. A good picture can put us right up on cloud 9 and a bad picture can send us down a deep dark rabbit hole.

Have you ever seen a photo of yourself and it put you in a bad mood for the rest of the day? It used to happen to me all the time. I, like so many people, would judge myself so harshly in photos. I’d analyze flaws. It was like the scale and photos were the two things that determined my mood and self worth daily.

In fact, poses like “skinny arm” were invented strictly so we could love ourselves more in photos. We can also “filter” any flaw. We essentially cater more to how we will look in pictures than how we look in real life.

Recently, I obviously put on a lot of weight. They say pregnancy does that to you:) Although Penelope helped me lose 7 pounds, 8 ounces, I still have a ways to go. And I’m currently still the heaviest I’ve ever been not pregnant. In fact, if I was this weight 10 years ago I’d be in the worst place mentally. I would have HATED myself and spoken to myself horribly. Because 10 years ago, weight trumped everything. A picture where I looked thin meant more to me than anything. It’s sad to say but it’s the truth. And many of us, work so hard at our degrees, our careers, our families and our relationships. We may be successful in them all. But when we fail at weight, we feel like we’ve failed at life.

This past weekend I was at the beach with my family. I decided to take my 3 month old daughter, Penelope down to the water for the first time. I announced to everyone that I was doing that. Naturally, everyone who was with me on the beach wanted to witness this. My sister-in-law, Jen, grabbed her camera to document the moment. Later that night she asked if I wanted to look at the photos she had taken. I of course did. My first reaction, I’m not going to lie, was panic. Wow, I look big I thought. Eek, my rolls are prominent, I said to myself.  I had to take a moment to gather my fear of fat and bring myself back to reality. The reality was that my daughter had felt the ocean water on her toes for the first time. My body had given birth to the daughter that was in that picture. A moment of pain turned into a moment of immense pride. Those we’re body imperfections, those were beauty marks.

I was a little frustrated that I fixated on me instead of Penelope. Like me, you too have spent too much time and energy trying to look perfect in pictures that you’ve forgotten the meaning of a photo. A photo is there to capture a memory not become a vehicle that determines self worth. If the moment is perfect so is your body at that moment.

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How to overcome emotional eating

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I long to be the type of person who can just eat one Oreo, but for me, it’s the whole sleeve.

The urge to snack sneaks up on us with absolutely no warning.  It’s hard to describe that urge.  But the minute the flood gates open, during a single episode of Modern Family, I can easily put back an extra 500 calories.

I have always envied the type of person who can eat one cookie and move on. Grab a Twizzler and get on with their day. Have one or two chips with a bowl of chili. And week after week at the grocery store I would convince myself that I could be that person; this would be the week I learned self control. So I would buy one or two of my favorite things hoping that each night just one bite would do the trick. It never did.

As each snack session came to a close & the whole sleeve or half bag was gone, I felt weak.  Worse, I was disappointed in myself for upholding my reputation of being the girl who always seemed to exceed the serving size.

One night after half a bag of Tostitos (Hint Of Lime flavor) I was feeling particularly angry at myself when it hit me… I will never be her. I will never be a single-serving kinda girl.

Yet, still in denial after the Tostito incident of 2013, I did what any rational 30-year-old woman does; placed blame on someone else. For me, it was my husband. After all, he brought home the irresistible, cantina-style, white grain tortilla with just the right amount of artificial lime flavoring.  Must be nice to be him, must be nice to never know what it’s like to feel fat, or bloated or out of control in the face of carbohydrates.

Resentment is a place none of us should visit frequently. More importantly, we shouldn’t drag our loved ones there because of our hang-ups.

When I sobered up and realized how irrational I was being, blaming my poor husband for what I had eaten, I did something that made me feel completely vulnerable. I asked my husband to hide the chips from me. If he wanted chips, cookies or candy in the house I didn’t want to know where they were. I felt embarrassed by this. My husband didn’t make me feel embarrassed in the slightest; he actually didn’t think twice about slipping the chips into a cabinet I couldn’t reach. But, I felt ashamed.  How pathetic am I that I am asking my husband to hide food from me? How weak am I? How helpless am I? Basically what kind of a freak am I? I still feel a pang of embarrassment even writing this.

But, that was the best thing I ever did.

The weeks following, when I had food hidden from me, I had time to think and reflect.  Although I thought not having the food in the house was the reason I felt more in control, it wasn’t. I felt more in control because I had admitted, out loud, to a person I love that I was powerless.  I accepted my weakness instead of trying to fight it alone.  Little did I know that insecurity of mine, the insecurity of labeling myself the entire sleeve of Oreo’s girl was seriously shaming me.  And that day, I shed the shame.

Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t sworn off Tostitos.  I haven’t sworn off Oreos.  Because remember, we don’t do the all or nothing thing here. And although I do admit it’s rare we have these types of foods in our house, it’s more than that. It’s understanding who you are and that sometimes you have to get out of your head.  When you take advantage of a support system, you might be surprised how your struggles dissolve and how much stronger you are then a sleeve of cookies.