The Mommy On The Bus Says...: breastfeeding

I almost lied. I almost wrote "Part 5" of my journey but planned to tell you all it was my "Part 2". But since I said I would be honest, I'll give you the REAL "Part 2" and the real Part 5 will come later, just like it did in real life...even thought I wish it had come sooner!

So I told you how I gained the weight in Part 1, but now, how did I lose 30 lbs? Well, this is how I lost the first 20lbs...

I was excited in the beginning, but wanted to be realistic about my goals and my willpower. I kept fearing the day when I would want to quit and eat everything in sight. I feared not seeing quick results and losing hope. So in order to avoid giving up, I put alot of things in place to keep myself encouraged and accountable, because I wanted to make sure I tried and persevered, regardless if my fears coming true.

Goals

First, I wrote down every goal and every part of my plan to reach that goal. I included all the things that follow...

A Partner:

I think losing weight would have been really hard to do without my Hubby doing it right along side me. He didn't need to lose as much as me, but he decided to join in with my plan 100%. This helped so much because when you have to prepare two separate meals (1 healthy for you, 1 normal for others) or when the other spouse is eating a late night bowl of ice cream every night, it's just really easy to throw in the towel. We did it together and we both did it 100%.

Accountability:

I decide to involve a lot of people in my journey. I told my parents, my sisters and a couple of my very best friends about my goal. It was humbling to share with so many, but I knew I needed *all* their support (more on that in Part 3).

First Place 4 Health Bible Study:

One of my friends was kind enough to join me in a Bible Study on weight loss. It's a series called "First Place 4 Health" and we did the first book in the series, but looking back, I wish I would have done the one specifically on Self-Control (but it hadn't been released yet anyways). Each Bible Study is a 12 week study on losing weight and getting your heart right with God in the process. It was really good. In the back of the study is 12 weeks of meal plans and menus as well as an exercise log...very helpful!

www.FoodDiary.com:

My husband and I joined http://www.myfooddiary.com/ for $9 a month. It was MY FAVORITE resource in weight loss journey! A lot of food (and restaurants) are already in their data base, but the ones that aren't you can enter manually. So if the bread in your house isn't in their system you enter the info on the nutrition label and can save it to use again at any time! You can also save entire recipes in your database!

It starts with a series of questions which helps you determine how many calories you should be getting a day and how many calories you should aim to burn. And for me, as a nursing mom, it "required" me to take in no less than a certain amount of calories for Liberty's sake. I really liked that feature!

There were SO many beneficial things to using MyFoodDiary. First, at any point in your day, you can check to see where you're at on calories allowed and all nutrients. Also, it teaches you about why you need certain nutrients, like iron and vitamin A. It gives you a smiley face for every good choice. When you go over your sodium or saturated fats, it gives you a little frown face and tells you the risks involved with overdoing it on those items.

At the end of the day, once all your foods are entered, each nutrient will either be red (danger zone), light green (pretty good) or green (perfect) so that you can aim to eat a healthy, well-balanced diet!

All this was again, helpful to have a partner for because Ryan and I would compete for who had the most smiley faces at the end of the day and who had more green bars than red.

The food diary also tracks your water, since I tried to drink 3 quarts of water a day, I could enter in every time I had a glass of water and that added to my goal!

One last thing I love about the food diary (there are more reasons than I'm writing about!) is that it tracked your exercise! You could enter in that you walked for 20 minutes or played basketball for 10 minutes...and even grocery shopping, vacuuming and cooking has a calorie burn amount based on the time you spent doing it!!!

(Sidenote: Alternative to MyFoodDiary)

If your budget is tight and you can't afford MyFoodDiary, another good option is http://www.myfitnesspal.com/ which is a FREE food and exercise diary service. I used MyFoodDiary for two months, then switched to MyFitnessPal. I thought that My Fitness Pal had more food items in their database, but that is really the only thing I liked better about it. Overall, MyFoodDiary is better laid out and easier to read and follow. The other reason why I went with MyFoodDiary first, is because I was nursing and needed a certain number of calories...MyFitnessPal did not give me the "nursing mom" option, so it suggested I eat fewer calories than I really needed.

Probiotic:

I had heard that a really good pro-biotic helps you to loose weight, so I gave it a try! For me it was double bonus because my babies also have issues with thrush, so it was beneficial to Liberty too! I picked up a supplement at Wal-Mart and took 3 pills twice a day. Wal-Mart isn't the best choice of where to purchase your pro-biotic, but in a small town, my choices are limited! I've often heard people say a good pro-biotic will require refrigeration (and mine didn't) so you may want to keep that in mind while shopping around. My Wal-Mart pills worked well for me, but there may be better choices out there!

My food and exercise info is SO important that I wanted to include it all in this post. But since I can tell this already getting to be long, I'm going to make those separate posts! So please stay tuned!