My Weightloss Journey So Far

Everyone has been asking me what I have been doing to lose weight so I decided to just write a post and tell you all at once.

October 2011

For a little background for those of you who missed it, back at the end of March I was admitted into the hospital for just over a week for three pulmonary embolisms (blood clots in my lungs). They had been in my left calf and moved to my lung before I got to Doctor because I waited around too long before I went, which was not a smart thing to do.

Anyway, after being told over and over again by different Doctors that I was lucky to be alive and having plenty of time to think about all that in the hospital and realizing that it was time to get my health in line I decided I was going to do something about it.


After getting out of the hospital and catching a little crap from my regular Doctor about my eating habits and my overall health plus being put on Coumadin (blood thinners) and having to watch what I eat because of that I started right out by eating a small salad everyday so that my Coumadin levels would be adjusted right off the bat with me having the salad. See leafy greens have vitamin K in them and vitamin K is an antedote to Coumadin so you have to be careful and not eat to many foods with vitamin K in it. So starting off eating a small salad everyday at the beginning and continuing it everyday throughout my coumadin treatment will keep my levels steady.

After starting to eat the small salad everyday, I decided that I better cut down the size of the portions that I eat because I really needed to lose some weight. I was at my highest weight ever, weighing in at 271 pounds and only 5 foot 7 inches tall and I was feeling miserable.

After another visit to my Doctor she introduced me to a video called Forks Over Knives and she gave me a copy to take home to watch. She also told me that my cholesterol was a little high but she was not going to give me anything at that time for it because she wanted me to lower it by changing my eating habits because I was already taking enough medication for other things. So after the DVD laying around for a couple weeks and having nothing else on TV to watch I decided to put it in and I do have to say that Hubby and I were really impressed with the video and we both learned a lot from watching it. As a matter of fact, in the middle of watching in Hubby had to leave and go somewhere and he wanted to make sure that I did not take the DVD back to my Doctor until he got to finish watching it.

I would have to say that one of the hardest things that has been for me to change is too stop planning meals around the meat. I guess that I have always been taught by.....I guess by society, that every meal should be based around the main dish, which is the meat. I have been trying really hard to change that and even though our meals do include meat, meat is not the main dish or the largest dish of the meal.

I understand that protein is very important and I try to make sure that I get enough protein to I eat a spoonful of peanut butter quite often to make sure that I am getting enough of it. One tablespoon of peanut butter and a banana is a great fulfilling snack.

Anyway, eating smaller portions of everything, basically making meat a side dish, eating more vegetables and fruits looking for healthier options of things I already eat is a basically what I am doing. For example Campbells Cream of Mushroom Soup, some of you may think that the 98% Fat Free is a better option for you but let me tell you something, go with the Healthy Request, it is better for you and tastes much better.

98% Fat Free Cream of Mushroom Soup

Nutrition Facts*

Amount Per Serving (serving size) = 1/2 cup (120 mL) condensed soup

Calories  60
Fat Calories  25
Total Fat  2.5g
Sat. Fat  0.5g
Trans Fat  0g
Polyunsat. Fat  1.5g
Monounsat. Fat  0.5g
Cholesterol  0mg
Sodium  750mg
Total Carb.  9g
Dietary Fiber  1g
Sugars  0g
Protein  1g
Potassium  60mg

% Daily Values**
Vitamin A  0%
Vitamin C  0%
Calcium  2%
Iron  0%

* The nutrition information contained in this list of Nutrition Facts is based on our current data. However, because the data may change from time to time, this information may not always be identical to the nutritional label information of products on shelf.

** % Daily Values (DV) are based on a 2,000 calorie diet.

Healthy Request® Cream of Mushroom Soup

Nutrition Facts*

Amount Per Serving (serving size) = 1/2 cup (120 mL) condensed soup

Calories  60
Fat Calories  20
Total Fat  2g
Sat. Fat  0.5g
Trans Fat  0g
Polyunsat. Fat  1g
Monounsat. Fat  0.5g
Cholesterol   5mg
Sodium  410mg
Total Carb.  10g
Dietary Fiber  1g
Sugars  2g
Protein  1g
Potassium  550mg

% Daily Values**
Vitamin A  0%
Vitamin C  0%
Calcium  10%
Iron  0%

* The nutrition information contained in this list of Nutrition Facts is based on our current data. However, because the data may change from time to time, this information may not always be identical to the nutritional label information of products on shelf.

** % Daily Values (DV) are based on a 2,000 calorie diet.

September 2012

So, with that all said here are a couple cheats that I have that I love. I have two apps that I use on my phone and I have to say that I love them. The first one is called MyFitnessPal. You can use it online or as an app on your smart phone. With this app, you can scan the barcode of all the foods that you eat so that you can keep track of all your calories you eat every day. This app then keeps track of these for the week and helps you keep on track for where you need to be. You enter your weight into the program and how much weight you want to lose per week and it will give you the correct amount of calories you should be eating. If you don't have the barcode, you can type in the name of the foods on your phone, which is what you would do online. You can friend people so that you have a support system and you can also set it up so that other people can see your food diary and that helps others to get ideas of things to eat. 

If you have a recipe that you need to know the calories for, that is easy peasy also. You just go to the create recipe section and add the ingredients and it will tell you how many calories per serving depending on how many servings you tell it that your recipe will serve. I love this app and use it everyday.

The other app that I love is called Fooducate, and again you can either use it online or on your smart phone. So basically here is what Fooducate is: Each product is automatically graded (A-, B+, C, etc...) by a scientific algorithm based on its nutrition facts and ingredient list. Fooducate recommends minimally processed, real foods, that are naturally rich in nutrients and antioxidants. 

Now, I use Fooducate when I am at the grocery store quite often. I am learning what products are better than others. Sometimes I have been surprised that simply one brand is better than another such as green beans. Who would have thought? Not me. I would have figured that canned green beans are canned green beans.

Another thing that I am doing is swimming. Me and a couple friends swim a few times per week for an hour. We swim laps and do some exercises in the pool including squats, leg scissors, hip circles, crunches, side crunches and a few other things. We just went on YouTube and searched water exercises and made our own routine up.

Weather permitting we also spent some time walking and I am looking forward to Spring time so that we will be able to start doing that again. I enjoy getting outside doing that also.

So far I am down to 209.4 pounds and I am down 61.6 pounds. I am over halfway there. I guess you can say I am on the down slide. I am very proud of myself. I have tried to lose weight before and I have given up on myself before I have really even given it my all. I am sure that there are haters out there but that is okay because I could care less about that. I am doing this for myself because I need to be a healthier person. I am 43 years old and if I want to live to grow old with my husband and see my daughter grow older then I need to become a healthier person.

I was in no way compensated for mentioning the above companies.

Information obtained from Campbells, MyFitnessPal, Fooducate and Forks Over Knives.