Getting Healthy!

Hey Party People!

First things first, thank you all for your support, kind words, love, and congratulations!  It's been overwhelming and heart-warming to see such a response!  Thank you so much!

OK, on to other business...  How did we do it?!??!  70 lbs between two people in one year!  That's a lot of work!  And it was!  I wish I could say it was something easy as taking a pill or buying a "system", but I'm too cheap for that.  We did it with plain, old-fashioned, real food.  It probably would have gone faster and easier if we'd added exercise to the program, but we're lazy and exhausted from dealing with work and babies.  #RealLifeParents  So here are the steps I took...

I started by doing research and a lot of reading.  I subscribe to the MyFitnessPal newsletter, which bombards my email with articles about health and fitness.  One of the articles I was reading talked about the ideal percentage of calories that come from fat, carbs, and protein.  It said you need 50% of your calories from carbs, 30% from fat, and 20% from protein.  If you'd like to check out the article (or any other great article from MyFitnessPal) you can check it out here!

In order to determine the number of calories Michael and I needed each day I checked three different websites, entered our heights, weights, and physical activity levels, and averaged my results.  Obviously, I did that all a long time ago, but if you're interested in doing it too you can check out the following sites:
Weight Loss Calculator
Authority Nutrition
Calorie Calculator
These are not the only sites, they were just the top three when I googled calorie calculators.  Once again, I looked at 3 sites and averaged the results.  It's important to know what calorie levels are healthy.  Some websites might suggest unrealistic numbers to lose weight at a certain pace.  Under no circumstances (unless advised by a doctor) should a woman ever consume under 1,000 calories or a man under 1,500 calories.  Please do your research and stay healthy.  Weight loss will not happen overnight and starving yourself with have far more negative effects than quick weight loss.  Not to mention, things like skipping meals will cause "starvation mode" and you could actually gain weight.  *rant over*

So, after much research, I was ready to build a meal plan.  Again, I didn't use some "program", I just looked for recipes that I thought we might like.  I used Pinterest and searched for healthy breakfast, lunch, and dinner recipes.  The searches often took me to websites like:
MyFitnessPal
Skinny Mom
Chocolate Covered Katie
Cooking Light
PopSugar
There are a lot of other great sites with terrific recipes out there.  I encourage you to do some research and find some other favorite sites.  When I came across a recipe I liked, I printed it out.  We started on June 1st, 2015.  I printed approximately 30 different breakfasts, 30 different lunches, and 30 different dinner recipes.  It was A LOT of time, energy, and dishes.

Once I had about 90 recipes (actually a few less if a recipe served more than 4 servings), I did the math.  I started with breakfast and plugged in different recipes for each day of the week for 4 weeks.  Another MyFitnessPal article suggested making sure you spend 25-30% of your daily calories on breakfast, so I started there.  I tried to make every day a little different.  Monday-Pancakes, Tuesday-Eggs, Wednesday-Oatmeal...  When I had all the breakfast meals plugged in for the month, it was time to start some math.  I checked how many calories I had so far each day from carbs, protein, and fat.  Then, I balanced those numbers to our needs filling in with Lunch and Dinner recipes.  It was probably a little more complicated than it needed to be, but I was excited and I like math.  ;)

Michael and I agreed to try recipes that might be a little outside of our comfort zones.  We also agreed to rate each recipe with 0, 1, or 2 stars (for a total of 0-4 stars).  The rating system helped us only to keep our favorite recipes.  If either of us gave a recipe 0 stars, it went in the trash (after we ate the meal, no wasting food).  If either of us gave a recipe 2 stars, we kept it.  We never had one person give 2 stars and one person give 0.  If we both gave it an "ok" 1 star, we trashed the recipe.  Eating healthy is hard enough, we wanted the food to taste good too.

So for a whole month we ate new recipes.  We liked some and hated others.  We bought and ate things we'd never tried before.  I made sure not to change any of the recipes the first time we ate them.  I figured we'd never know if we liked a recipe or not if we took out the stuff we were scared of.  Over the course of the next month and year we discovered several foods we liked that we didn't know we liked.  We discovered avocado, cauliflower, Brussel Sprouts, mushrooms, grilled fish, almond milk, blueberries, pomegranate, and Greek yogurt (for cooking purposes).  We also discovered a few things that weren't for us, but at least we tried.  I continued to make 3 new meals every day for two or three months.  It was exhausting.  But it worked!  We had a bunch of weight come off in those first few months. 

Over the next several months I used the recipes we loved and we kept losing weight.  There were ups and downs along the way.  I tended to eat bad food when we went out to eat.  I craved the greasy, fatty stuff.  I usually regretted eating it not long after.  But overall, the weight kept coming off.  The holidays were more difficult.  We pretty much maintained our weight from December to February.  Then, in March, we got back on the bandwagon and focused, buckled down, and made the push for the last bit of weight loss to achieve each of our goals.  Again, ups and downs, new recipes here and there, but mostly sticking to the ones from the first several months.  I got better at eating out and making good, healthy choices too.  :)  That's pretty much it!  Our weight loss journey in a (lengthy) nutshell.

A few things to add...  In the first few months we cut all alcohol and caffeine from our diets.  It was rough at first with the caffeine headaches, but with the right amounts of water, we survived.  Slowly, those things got added back in.  However, when I hit a plateau, I'd cut them out again and focus on lots of water.  I know you've humored me through several article suggestions, so here's one more!  It suggests half to all your weight in pounds as the number of ounces of water to drink.  When I read this article I was close to 160 lbs.  I divided that in half to get 80.  I tried to drink 80 ounces (5- 16 oz glasses) each day.  When I achieved that, my weight typically went down and I got out of the plateau.  It always baffled me, but it always worked.  I suggest you try it if you want to change just one thing to begin with and don't want to commit to the whole meal plan.

Ok, for real this time, that's it.  We didn't exercise, we just watched our calories.  We watched closely at first and then relaxed more later on.  If you have any questions, I'd love to answer them.  This may not be the method for everyone, but it worked for us.  Emphasis on the word US!  If Michael hadn't been doing this with me, I'd never have succeeded.  It's too hard to eat well when the person sitting next to you is eating the junk you wish you could.  I wish you all luck with your health goals.  I'll write a couple more blogs on the next few days focused on veggies, getting the kids to eat healthy, and some of our favorite recipes.  I hope you'll check back in soon!

Thanks again for all the love and support!