Today marks the beginning of week 5! Do you want to know how well I did in week 4? I kind of want to hide. 🙂 I won’t though! Tell me why I decided to share this journey with you all again? Oh yeah…….because I knew I’d stick with it if I did. It’s been a challenge, but I still feel like it’s been successful so far!
Announcement: Next week we’re sharing healthy recipes! I will host a link up…and the other bloggers and I will link up…and you can come and link up, too! I hope that you’ll join us!
Here I am. Still looking about the same (to me). Does this remind you of a mug shot? No? Oh yeah…I’m smiling. Now…maybe if I were frowning. 🙂 I must admit, it feels a little weird to keep showing you these pictures of myself. I’m usually the one trying to hide from the camera so that it won’t pick up on how fat I am. One of these days, I won’t feel like I have to do that any more! I can’t wait!!
I do feel like I’m losing some belly fat. It’s still hard to see the results in this picture. I decided to put on workout clothes for the pictures from now on (assuming they’re clean),so that they’d be a bit more form fitting and hopefully easier to see any changes.
My Successes:
Weight Lost: 1/2 pound (whooopie, but I’ll take it…better than a gain!) making my total for the 4 week period 9.5 pounds.
Exercise: 4x. Getting closer to that 5x I’m aiming for. (T-tapp twice, walking twice)
Food: Still staying away from soda, overall making better food choices and having much fewer sweet snacks!
Healthy Benefits: I’m feeling more energetic! YAY!
My Challenges:
Weight Lost: I hate to see only 1/2 pound gone. It’s hard to get excited over that. I had really wanted to be to the 10 pound or more range…but I’m almost halfway to my goal of 20 pounds for the 12 weeks, so that’s a good thing!
Exercise: I do really well at the beginning of the week but as the weekend gets closer, I find it a great big huge challenge to get it in.
Food: I overate on at least 2 occasions this past week. I won’t be able to lose weight if I continue that habit! I had 2 sodas this past week. I really enjoyed them, but I’ve discovered that having them at night isn’t a good idea as my heart was feeling really jittery. I’m not used to having caffeine any more! Maybe by the end of this series, I’ll have learned my lesson that it’s not worth it to have soda!
Portion Control
So let’s talk about portion control. Obviously, I have a problem with this. What about you? Do you ever struggle with it? I do the worst with it when I’m out to eat and LOVE what I’m eating. We went to eat Mexican food with my in-laws over the weekend and I happen to LOVE Mexican food. Especially Chile Rellenos from this particular Mexican restaurant. Mmmm
7 Strategies to help with portion control…..
- Don’t leave food out where you can see it. Otherwise, you’ll be tempted to fill your plate up again!
- Use a smaller plate, that way your brain will think it’s getting more!
- Split your meal in half when eating out – Either share it with someone or take home the other half to enjoy later, but don’t gorge yourself (like I did!).
- Learn serving sizes. A standard serving of meat is 3 oz, about the size of a deck of cards. The standard serving size of grains and veggies would be about the size of your fist.
- Portion out food – From leftovers to snacks. If you know you’ll eat it later, divide it into a single portion so that you’re able to easily grab the right amount without overeating!
- Eat several smaller meals – When you eat smaller meals, you have more energy and you don’t get as hungry. You will not as likely binge because you’re feeling so starved. This is a big concept that they use in the book, Body For Life.
- Eat a salad first. This will make you not as hungry when it’s time for the rest of the meal!
What about you? What do you do to help you attain the right portions?
I hope you’re enjoying this series of 12 weeks of Getting Healthy & Fit! I hope you’ll check out some of the other bloggers who are sharing their journey with us as well! Click on the picture below to get a list of who they are and what they’re doing.
P.S. Over the weekend, I posted a survey that I’m hoping my blog readers (that means you!) will fill out in order to help me with the direction my blog is going and what topics I’ll begin covering in the near future. If you haven’t taken the survey yet, will you please ? It’s really short and shouldn’t take but a few minutes to complete! Thank you so much!
