Once upon a time, Jared and I did a lot of walking. For most of our first year of marriage, we lived on the third floor of our apartment building and we never bothered driving to campus because BYU's parking situation is just stupid. We'd walk to and from campus for classes and I'd sometimes walk a little more and go to Sonic or Macey's during the day. (Macey's is one of the things I miss most about Utah. Those enormous ice cream cones are so great!)
These days, walking around Walmart is pretty much the most exercise we get. Sure, I could walk somewhere while Jared is at work, but going outside when it's hot, blindingly sunny, and windy enough to make tears shoot horizontally out of my eyes just doesn't have the same appeal as my Provo pedestrian peregrinations.
What do you get when you take a Lizzie who hates exercise and make her even more sedentary without adjusting her eating habits? Weight gain! Yaaaay.
I weighed about 120 pounds when we left BYU. Gradually, I gained back the weight I lost before my wedding, fluctuated for a while, and have been hovering around 140. That isn't terrible, but it's also not ideal for someone who's 5'3" with small bone structure. There's also the issue that my body seems to like putting its extra weight in basically the same place a baby bump shows up. If I wear the wrong outfit, I sort of look like I'm in the early stages of pregnancy, which I am not. I'd like that to stop for fairly obvious reasons.
After months of idly hoping that I'd shrink back down without trying, I finally started tracking my calorie intake on the My Fitness Pal app at the beginning of March. Jared agreed to start this process with me, and we've been doing pretty well so far!
Weight loss is generally rather simple, barring health conditions that make it more complicated. (Not easy, mind you. Simple.) If you consume more calories than you burn, your weight goes up. If you have a reasonable calorie deficit, you'll see your weight slowly drop. There are lots of ways to go about achieving that calorie deficit. Some people opt to exercise a lot, completely change their eating habits, cut out certain things entirely, and/or generally torture themselves. However, being miserable is not a requirement for weight loss, and Jared and I are proof of that.
What we've done is pay attention to the number of calories we eat in a day and keep it below a certain threshold, as determined by My Fitness Pal. (As a 5'3" woman who doesn't exercise, I get 1200 calories per day. Those 1200 calories can go pretty quickly if I'm not careful.) We keep track of everything we eat, measure portions, and log it on our phones. We looked online for low-calorie foods and snacks so that we'd have some better options in our kitchen and still be able to feel full.
The changes we've made:
- Our standard PB&J has been mostly replaced with meat-and-cheese sandwiches.
- Jared sometimes has oatmeal instead of cereal and I have almond milk with my cereal every morning. (Jared gets 1600 calories per day, which is enough to spare that he still uses normal milk when he has cereal. I'm quite jealous.)
- The only ice cream in our freezer is low-calorie ice cream sandwiches and fudgesicles.
- We quit buying Cheez-Its because I have absolutely no self-control when it comes to cheesy crackers and a serving of them is depressingly tiny. I could very easily and happily consume all of my daily calories in the form of Cheez-Its.
What we've learned so far:
- Drinking your calories is not worth it. I used to drink 2% milk all the dang time. Considering one cup of milk is a tenth of my daily calories, I can't usually justify it these days. Once I hit my target weight and start trying to maintain instead of lose weight, I'll have more wiggle room and milk can be part of my daily life again.
- It's a lot easier to do this with someone else. I send him encouraging texts when someone brings donuts to work, he steers me away from the things I stare longingly at in the grocery store, and we aren't causing temptations for each other by eating calorie bombs because we're in the same low-cal boat together.
- Fruit is my friend. I can eat a ton of strawberries and barely dent my daily calorie allotment! Also, fruit is delicious.
- We can still eat the unhealthy stuff that we love as long as we think it through. I made boxed macaroni and cheese with no butter and just a splash of milk, which tasted basically the same (to me, at least) and had way fewer calories. If we sleep in late on a Saturday, I can totally get away with eating half of a medium cheese pizza from Domino's because that will be one meal and then I have 360 calories remaining for a second meal that day. We ate lunch at Chik-fil-A while we were out of town a while ago and the only reason I went over my limit that day was because I couldn't resist an Oreo milkshake. Curse you, delicious milkshake...
- Almond milk is disgusting, but certain cereals can mask its ickiness. Oreo O's still taste pretty awesome with almond milk. Trix tastes tolerable. Rice Crispies don't have enough flavor to hide the yuck. No cereal I've found has made me want to drink the remaining "milk" once the cereal itself is gone.
- My biggest weaknesses are pizza, fries, milkshakes, Oreo-related things, Cheez-Its, and milk. :(
- It can be discouraging to have to keep this up for so long in order to see results. As nice as it would be to get rid of my 20ish extra pounds in a short amount of time, that's really unhealthy. It is nice to see the number on the scale going down bit by bit! Progress is being made!
So, that's the general idea of how things have been for the first month of this journey towards weighing less! Neither of us have noticed any significant differences in the way we look yet. That makes sense, though; we're losing a pound or two each week, as we planned, which means I'm only down by six pounds so far. Jared has actually lost seventeen, though ten of those pounds disappeared weirdly quickly, since that was apparently water weight. I promise neither of us are developing any eating disorders.
One month down, probably a few more to go. Woo! :)
Love,
Lizzie
Love,
Lizzie
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