Things I've learned and the 180's.

This morning my boyfriend came home from graveyard shift. Right after we chanted I decided to take a 2 hour nap,wake up, and then go to the gym. Well 2 hours turned into 4 and now It's too late to go to the gym because my whole routine takes almost 3 hours. I still have to make dinner and be at my SGI Buddhist group meeting by 6pm. I guess I will go straight to the gym after my meeting but the gym closes at 9pm. I'll have to hoof it! Good thing my group meeting is only a 10 minute jog away from my gym. Gym I will get to you one way or another!

I have been thinking about what people have been saying to me since I began calorie counting. “So are you going to calorie count for the rest of your life?” I honestly don’t think that I'm going to calorie count for the rest of my life but it does it help me keep track of what I eat everyday. I don’t want to go back to what I used to do. I used to eat and eat and pretend those extra snacks or meals didn’t count. I've learned It all counts! I think if calorie-counting reminds me of that it's a good thing. Plus it seriously only takes like 15 minutes out of my day. Especially with the calorie-count website I use or a phone app.

Things I've learned since calorie-counting...

• How not to over eat.
• What a single portion of food should look like.
• What a BMI is and what a healthy weight range for me is. Of course it doesn't take into account muscle mass so to be really accurate you'd have to do a dunk test or a caliper test.
• That It’s OK to give yourself some days where you don’t calorie count as long as you are determined and can get right back to it.
• The bigger you are the more calories you can eat to lose the same amount each week. When I was 258 I could eat 2,000 calories and lose 2 pounds a week. Now that I'm down to 188 I have to eat 1600 to lose the same amount with the same amount of exercise. Every time you lose a good chunk of weight you should re-check your calories.
• It inspired me to create a better diet plan for myself with healthier meals.
• There are reasons for so called “plateaus”. They happen if you aren’t sticking to your calories or your work out plan.
• That I had to start exercising and strength training to reach my healthy goals.

I'm sure there is more that I've learned that I can't think of right now. When I get to the weight I want to be then I will worry about when I want to ween myself off of calorie-counting. I might even wait til I’ve maintained for a good while. Please read Krista Bergs blog if you want a more thorough explanation of calorie counting. She does it so well!

On another note this morning I weighed in and I'm in the 180's!! I feel like I had been in the 190's forever! I lost 3.4 pounds this week which brings me to 188.2 lbs.