Tuesday, February 14, 2012

The Plan: Part A

So, how am I going to lose 40 pounds in 6 months?

I sat down and broke my goal into smaller, trackable mini-goals. It breaks down to about 7 pounds per month, which is between 1 and 2 pounds per week. That's pretty manageable, right? Then I took a look at what I eat, and my lifestyle, and identified some changeable things. First, what I eat:

I have a bowl of cereal in the morning. My favorites are Cinnamon Life and frosted Mini Wheats. Sugar, sugar, sugar. For lunch I eat a bowl of soup and a salad from the cafeteria at school. Sometimes I get some extras like french fries. My lunch time is 10:30. I get home at 5:30. As you can imagine, I'm starving when I get here, and I tend to snarf down way too much dinner. So, I am making some changes:

For breakfast, 2 hard boiled eggs, a slice of wheat toast with peanut butter, and a glass of chocolate milk. For lunch, I'll continue with the soup and salad thing, but I bought some fat free dressing today to take the place of the ranch that they give me. I'll also cut out the little extras that I like to buy when I'm hungry. Now, I don't like to deprive myself of yummy food, and so I didn't want to say "I won't eat any of ______." I decided for dinner, I'll eat whatever we have, but keep it to one reasonable portion and no more. And, in spite of what I just said about not depriving myself, I'm cutting out desserts.

So there's half of the puzzle. The other half is exercise, but I'll write about that tomorrow.

Thanks to those who have commented already! I appreciate your support!

1 comment:

  1. I'm sure you've heard Lue and Molly and I mentioning Lose it.com? It is incredibly useful in that it helps you decide how many calories you can eat each day and still meet your weight loos goal. You add in what you eat and how much exercise you do and it recalculates for you how many calories you have left. It was what helped me lost that first 9 pounds. I'm pretty sure that part of the reason I' not losing right now is because I'm not using it.

    The drawback - you have to actually enter what you eat and if you are eating homemade, you have to spend some time developing the calorie count for your menu. If I had a small handheld device, I think I would be still using Lose it, but my biggest challenge is (obviously) getting away from the computer for more hours a day. Sitting down to enter my exercise and meals every time I turn around actually translates to many more minutes at the screen that aren't as productive as I need them to be because I get sucked into Facebook and Pinterest because - you know - I'll just pop in and see what's happening while I'm on here . . . .

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