Weight Loss Weigh-In Week Two: The Food Issues

Weight: 131 Weight Loss this week: 1 lb. Total Weight Loss: 2lbs.

I first want to say thanks to everyone for their support and great advice last week.  Your words were both kind and helpful. I also want to apologize if I gave anyone the wrong impression. I really am not so down on myself. I do have a great self-image which is why I never really bothered to lose the weight before. I knew that I had been gaining a lot of weight and that my dress size had gone up and up, but I never really thought I looked bad. Only now having lost half of what I gained over the years can I look back at pictures and think, “yikes, I was way too big!” And it’s not all about how I look. My family has had weight-related health issues and I want to avoid all of that by losing the weight now while I’m still young.

Having said all that I agree with Amy and Lauren that the goal should be a healthy lifestyle rather than a specific weight. My problem is that I do have a very healthy lifestyle overall and could probably maintain my weight easily, but am not losing any weight. I do have a problem with not exercising enough but we’ll talk about that next week.

As far as food is concerned, I eat very healthy. Breakfast is a whole grain flakes cereal with low fat milk. Lunch is usually leftovers from dinner or a tostada salad (no shell) or buritto with black beans, corn, lettuce, a little cheese and a little low-fat sour cream. Dinner is usually a veggie or two with some pasta or brown rice. Everything I cook uses the least amount of oil or butter possible. I only drink water at home, we’ve stopped buying soda or juice. I don’t really snack, but maybe I should. Thanks for the suggestion Jenny. I think that my dinner portions are too big sometimes because I haven’t eaten enough during the day. Maybe a couple snacks will help. I’ll start working on that this coming week.

As far as sweets go, I allow myself to have dessert two nights a week, sometimes three if there is a special occasion. I pretty much always eat a couple scoops of low fat ice cream on Friday and Sunday nights, and that’s it.

Here’s my real problem: the weekends. I eat really well all week and then come the weekends, and I think Josh must be a bad influence. We rarely eat out, but we might eat out one lunch on a weekend. And we do have soda when we eat out, and I don’t always pick the healthiest possible food option, but never something terrible. And then there are the weekends that we go to a friend or family member’s house for some sort of get-together, which are often. I love getting together with friends and family and eating and drinking. But I have such a hard time saying no to a soda or especially a glass of wine. And then there are the appetizers, I love appetizers and especially some of the less than healthy appetizers. I want to eat them all.

So I guess that is really what I need to work on on the food front. I need to try to cut out all sodas on the weekend and try to pick the healthier options when we eat out or at a get-together.

Let me know if anyone has any suggestions, some snack ideas would be great! And I’d love to hear what other people’s food challenges are. What’s your weakness?