Stressed out!

Stress is a major trigger for me.  Instead of wanting to drive to the gym when I'm feeling stressed I want to go to the drive-thru or the store to pick up a bunch of junk food.  Yeah, I'll feel better for a few minutes as I withdraw into a food coma bliss.  But then reality comes back and I'll hate myself for what I just did.  I probably would try to throw it all back up but I had throwing up and that is just gonna cause more issues. 

For years I worried about everyone else, I was there to listen and help for everyone else and never took care of me.  Well it's mine time people.  I have to take care of number 1, numero uno!  I have my own issues and problems I'm trying to navigate thru, I don't need yours stacked on top of mine.  It doesn't mean I don't love you or I don't care about you it just means I need care about me for a while.  I have a few friends that have been great and understanding to me and I will always be there for them.  I'm just trying to keep my stress levels as low as I can so I can get thru this shit called life.

Treat yourself!

You know, sometimes you just have to treat yourself!

You ever have those days that starts off bad and just goes downhill from there?  Things seem to multiply like a snowball on a steep slope?  This is usually followed by a brief period or run of good luck and life is going ok for a bit and then BLAMO!  You get smacked down with one big thing and that starts the snowball a rolling!  

You know that feeling?  Yeah me too. 

 I had one of those days and I decided to do something for myself that would cheer me up instead of continuing on a downward spiral of depression.  I decided I'm not going to continue down the depression spiral and I halted it by doing something nice for me.  In my case, it was hot out and I just finished working out at the gym so I granted myself the pleasure of a snowball.  Just a simple treat.  Something to pick me up and turn around my day.  And it worked.  I enjoyed my small treat (always use the moderation rule when treating yourself) and I got back to working out.  I didn't let the events earlier in the day make me curl up in a ball in my bed or stuff my face with junk food.  

Now a word of caution.  Yes it is ok to treat yourself, but sometimes you can try to be too good and actually wreck your treat.  Don't get the sugar free snowballs.  Get a small regular one and you will be much happier!  

Can I get an "accurate" calorie counter please!?!

Trying to reduce your body mass by at least half is no small process.  In fact, its a very big, long and hard process fraught with many obstacles to overcome.  For me, counting calories has been a big key dropping the pounds.  Several years ago I used the latest and greatest technology to help me which was the body bug.  The contestants on The Biggest Loser used them so if they were good enough for them, good enough for me.  It was helpful as I started on my journey, a bit of a pain to wear a tight strap around my upper arm 24/7 often leaving an imprint on my arm.  But it gave a pretty good indication of how active I was and how many calories I was burning.

Fast forward to the present.  I no long have the body bug to bug me and I'm using other technology to track my calorie intake and burn.  The latest app seems to be the myfitnesspal.com  It's a very good app for free.  It has a large database of foods and exercises you can put in and track your calories.  But here is what was frustrating me today.

So I'm riding on my stationary bike and I'm once again wondering what am I actually burning and how many calories am I actually losing.  The display on my bike will only allow you to put in a max weight of 350 lbs as a way to track how many calories you are burning.  But I far exceed that number.  So no matter what that display says at the end of my ride, it's just not right.  Using the myfitnesspal to enter my exercise for the day they were many options for stationary bike.  There is very light effort, light effort, moderate effort, vigorous effort and very vigorous effort.  Well how the hell do I know which I just did?  There isn't anything that lets you know what the difference is! Also when I put in my strength training it doesn't even count that as burning calories.  Very frustrating.

In my search of the inter webs for some information on how to calculate it I came across several sites that would give you your starting information such as how many calories you need per day to just move and keep going.  I tried several sites and entered the same age, weight, height and sex information to each.  My daily caloric intake ranged from 3600 to over 6500 calories per day on various sites!

In the end I am left with what I have been using.  It seems about 4000 calories a day for me is a good average.  And of course 3500 calories equals a pound.  So I'm left with a whopping 500 calories per day to eat.  If your not careful, you can blow more than half of that on breakfast alone.  So that means I'm basically exercising so I can eat the rest of the day.  :-)    So you can see why I want to get a good idea of how many calories I'm burning when I go for my bike rides.

Just some thoughts from today's journey.  The struggle continues!

Take care, until next time!

Super long time no post (restarting my blog)

So my last post was almost three years ago.  A lot has happened since then.  I want to bring you up to date on what has been going on with me and I'm going to start blogging again.

Ok so three years ago the last post said I had lost 90 pounds.  I actually ended up losing a total of 105 pounds and was doing well with my work outs and cooking for myself.  Then there was a sudden derailment.  I'm not going into long details of what happened but just to say a love one got sick and I lost my focus and so began my back slide.  Over the course of the next two years I slowly went back to bad habits and old depressions resulting in me gaining most if not all of my weight back.

Fast forward to November 2014.  Thanks again to my parents who recognized I needed help.  They packed me up and moved me back down to South Carolina.  I have been happy being with my family although I really miss my friends from back home.

I'm happy to report that I am down over 70 pounds from my all time high in just four months.  I'm going to the gym three times a week, riding my stationary bike every day and I have even started walking around the community.  I really want to get to a point where I can walk around the local amusement park with my 4 year old niece this summer.

I have a long way to go to get to Superman...but I'm feeling less like The Blob each and every day!

Stay tuned for more updates!