What happens when you screw up?

Seriously?

You get over it, put on your big girl panties, and you don’t give up.

We ALL have bad days.  Some of us more so than others.  Today was one of those days.  On Monday, I finally reached my first weight goal. I was psyched.  I’d had good days and bad days but the secret is that after a bad day, I just picked myself up and moved on.  A perfect example would be TODAY. Teacher Appreciation Week.  OMG.  One day we get flowers, one day breakfast (I was good and chose fruit) and today, much to my dismay, all teachers received goody baskets, full of chocolate, cookies, you name it. Unfortunately, mine had dark chocolate with almonds and, at the bottom, a pile of York Peppermint Patties.  Not good.  Not good at all.  Then, a parent with the best of intentions, delivered 3 dozen doughnuts to my classroom door. Yes, I had to eat one, or two… They were in honor of me, right?  Of course, I shared  the rest with my class. 🙂

So, now, what do I do?

What I won’t do is beat myself up.  I won’t think about how I just erased the previous two days of hard work dieting and exercising.

Instead…

Tomorrow I will get up, I won’t look at the scales.  I will start over with zero points and zero calories and I will get back on my diet.  Then, tomorrow night, and the next and the next, I will work out like a mad woman.  That won’t make up for my sins of today, but it will be a step in the right direction.  I will wait a few days, maybe more, and then I will weigh again.  It will be okay!  I want to lose weight and I will.  One.Day.at.a.Time.

Just remember, we all trip and fall.  We all have bad days.  We just can’t allow it to pull us down. We wake up the next day with an I CAN DO attitude!  Don’t let one day here and there cause you to quit. NEVER!

How to Track Calories In and Out to Help You Lose Weight

It is totally amazing what one can learn once you force yourself to stop and take the time to do a little research!  I have always known that you have to burn more calories than you take in if you want to lose weight, duh, but I never knew the bottom line.  I really wanted to know so I decided to do a little reading to enlighten myself.  I am hoping that what I have learned can motivate others and awaken the desire to work harder to become a much healthier, happier person!

This may sound like overkill, but I am currently using My Fitness Pal and Weight Watchers Online to help me lose weight.  Normally, I just plug in the numbers and try my best to do what it says.   Now that I know a little more, it is clearer to me what I, personally, need to do and know in order to help lose weight.  Please remember though, that you didn’t gain weight in a few days so you won’t lose it in a few days.  You must be patient.  I read this quote once:  “A diet is like a marriage, if you cheat, it will never work!”

I like to list my points because I feel that most people would rather read concise bullet points instead trying to find the meat of the message in a long paragraph!

• Find out how many calories you should take in each day if you want to lose weight.  My best suggestions for this is to do it through My Fitness Pal (I am telling you, it is the bomb!)

• If you are not tech savvy enough to get into My Fitness Pal to fill in your basic information for them to process, then a good rule of thumb to follow is 1,200 calories per day.  This is NOT necessarily the best for everyone, but it is a good place to start if you have no clue!

• Once you find out how many calories you need to take in, you need to find a way to monitor the calories that you burn.  If you don’t want to join Weight Watchers or another weight management program, My Fitness Pal is free!  I love it.  I have been very successful using it in the past.  So have many others!

• A good rule of thumb for “how many calories to burn to lose weight” is that you should never burn more than 1,000 calories more than you take in (for instance, if you take in 1,200 calories a day, never burn more than 2,200 calories that day).  This is important because it can be counter-productive and can adversely affect your health.  I have read that for menopausal women, you must burn at least 450-500 calories more than you take in in order to lose weight.

• How do I know how many calories I am burning in a day?  Here are some suggestions:

Option 1:  Purchase a FitBit:

1. You can get them in many places, like Walmart or Target, but I found the best price on Amazon.com.  I have seen them from anywhere between $85.00 and $99.00.   There are several different models so you would have to decide which one works best for you.  I use the FitBit One, which I clip on the waistband of my pants.  If you have trouble losing things this small, you might want to try to FitBit Flex which is like a bracelet or a watch.
2. The FitBit works extremely well because it keeps track of all of the steps you take each day (very eye opening!), the calories you burn each day (including in your sleep!), and how many miles you “exercise” each day.  The One also keeps track of the number of stairs you climb each day.
3. If you log in to the FitBit site (on your computer) and set up an account, you can sync your FitBit to your computer daily (and on your smartphone..free from the App Store) and see all of your statistics online too.

**This is a great way to make sure that you are burning at least 500-1000 more calories than you are taking in.

Option 2:  Use Runkeeper, it’s free!

See my ealier blog on this:  http://midlifefrenzy.com/2014/04/27/try-runkeeper-to-track-mileage-and-calories-burned/

Option 3:  Use a treadmill or other equipment that tells you the calories you have burned (and log them).

Option 4:  Just Exercise  (Even if you have no other way of tracking your calories burned throughout the day, at least make sure that you burn 400-500 calories through exercise.  You can easily find a calorie calculator online which allows you to input the exercise, time and intensity to give you the calories burned!).

A Few Helpful Numbers 

IMPORTANT NUMBER TO REMEMBER:  it takes 3,500 calories to burn a pound of FAT.  Think about this, to keep it realistic:  if you burn 500 calories per day more than you take in, it will take you approximately 7 days to lose one pound of fat.  If you want to lose it faster, then, as you can see, you will have to burn more than 500 calories more than you take in.  So, if you eat 1,200 calories, you must burn more than 1,700 calories.

TO GIVE YOU A BASIC IDEA:  I am a teacher so I walk a good bit.  In one day, at work only, I generally walk between 4,000-5,000 steps and I burn between 1,400 to 1,800 calories.  This, of course, is not enough for me to lose weight.  SO…I must go home and burn more calories!  However, I DO make an extra effort to walk as much as possible at work or to take the long route around!

On weekends, I may have an inactive Saturday and take only about 2,500 steps (this is a little high for being inactive because I go grocery shopping every Saturday) but I also can burn 1,500 calories if I am just getting up and moving around, cleaning house, or doing some activity throughout the day.  Actually, that’s not so bad.    Remember, it is just a snapshot but it should give you an idea of what you might burn in an average day.  However, walking fast or running, or engaging in other active exercise, depending on how fast you are exercising, will result in you burning more calories in fewer steps.  Keep that in mind.

• I measure my exercise calories through both my FitBit AND/OR Runkeeper.  Runkeeper measures calories burned through walking, running, cycling (stationary or a real bike), elliptical, weight training, skiing, hiking, skating, swimming, and the list goes on!   I find that Runkeeper helps me to be more successful in burning more calories.  The best part is that I can use my phone for this!  I turn on Runkeeper and take it on my walk, run or bike ride or whatever I am doing that day.  If I walk or run on the treadmill, I just use the treadmill numbers and plug them into Runkeeper after my workout.

• Want to know the coolest thing about using FitBit and/or Runkeeper along with My Fitness Pal?  You can set them up so that they SYNC with one another.  This means that whatever you log on FitBit or Runkeeper automatically posts to My Fitness Pal and logs in your exercise for you!  My Fitness Pal gives you an ongoing summary throughout the day of the difference between your calories in and your calories out!

I am sure that I forgot something super important but, if you have any questions, please ask in a comment and I will answer it the best that I can.

I hope this helps someone understand this whole concept better.  AND, I hope it motivates you to burn more calories!

Fighting the Beast – The War with Belly Fat, Part 1

It’s hard to know where to start but, after reading quite a few medically sound articles on menopause and belly fat, I realized one thing:  I need to keep it simple.  Fewer words, just facts.  Here goes…

Where did it come from?

Before, during and after menopause, your ability to produce estrogen begins to dramatically decrease, unless you are taking an estrogen supplement (which I did for ten years and had no problem with belly fat). The result is that your metabolism also gradually begins to slow down.  In fact, one source says that after the age of 30 (that’s early!) your metabolism rate can decrease by 1% each year.  Wow! That means mine has decreased by 22%! Ouch!  So, where does it all go? (The fat that we are having more trouble losing, that is).  You got it…your midsection.  And, the problem is not only that it is uncomfortable and your clothes don’t fit like they used to, but it is also very unhealthy!

The interesting thing that I have found is that often it takes us a while to figure it out.  Our clothes begin getting tighter and tighter and we don’t realize that it is no longer a matter of “I ate too much last week, so I will do more situps this week and it will go away” type of thing.  It is an unfortunate, sneaky, life changing beast.  Another problem is that it does not always come with a noticeable change in weight, the fat just “redistributes” and/or you just flat out gain a few pounds around the waist.  Then, one day, you wake up and OMG! you have this terribly uncomfortable and inconvenient doughnut around your waist.

Mine began to appear two years ago when I went off of the estrogen supplement, Premarin, after being on it for ten years following a total hysterectomy at age 40.  Suddenly, everything began to change! Unfortunately, by the time that I realized that it was not just a little weight gain but a major life change, it was too late and I am now in so deep that I MUST take action.

Possible Health Risk Factors:  an increased risk of

• heart disease
• diabetes
• some cancers (colorectal is a major one)
• even, early death

The Bottom Line:

We have to work harder and longer to prevent this spare tire or, for most of us, to make it go away.  You just have to ask yourself, “Am I worth it?”  Of course you are.  It is now time to invest in yourself!

Motivation:

• self worth
• feeling good
• being able to climb the stairs without thinking you are going to pass out
• seeing your children finish college, get married, and give you grandchildren
• enjoying your empty nest and retirement years with your spouse

These are the things that I think about.  I want them ALL.  Just yesterday, I was baffled at the fact that I can jog/walk a 5K fairly comfortably but it almost killed me to bring the groceries up the stairs.  Just little things like that.  When I sit, I feel so much discomfort in my midsection.  I hate it.  I really do.

The First Test:

Exactly how “round” is your midsection?  The easiest test is to measure your “doughnut”.  If it measures more than 35 inches (and 40 for a man), then Houston, you have a problem.  How do I make sure that I am measuring the right place?  Take a measuring tape (or a string, if you do not have a measuring tape*, see the tip at the bottom), and wrap it around your abdomen so that it is level with your belly button.  Do not tighten the measuring tape so that it even slightly cuts into your skin.

I exercise fairly regularly, but when I did this “test” last night, I was horrified.  I am a few inches over the 35 inch mark.  I can’t say that I am surprised, but I was jolted into reality.

THE PLAN:

Every day or every other day, I will post the next part of this series.  In the meantime, until we get further along in this series and I can give you more facts, here are some simple suggestions to get you started:

• Do SOMETHING for exercise at least 5 times a week.  Some of the best to begin with are: walking, swimming, bicycling, sit-ups, and jogging.  Try to exercise for at least 45 minutes each time. If you are just beginning, work your way up to it. You will be surprised how quickly you can comfortably increase your time.
• Become more conscious of what you eat.  Watch your portions.  For controlling portion sizes in general and as a quick start, I recommend Smart Ones meals, Lean Cuisines, etc. OR, if you are one of those wonderful women who cook, cut your portion sizes on your own.  Also, cut back on sugar, breads, and fats.  Try using Extra Virgin Olive Oil instead of butter or other oils in your cooking.
• Try not to eat after 5:00 or 6:00 pm.
• Do not sink into your favorite chair every evening and let the fat have a party!  Keep moving.  If you must sit, get up and move around from time to time.  Take a few trips up the stairs, walk to the mailbox and back, get up and dance (and hope no one is watching. lol).
• DRINK LOTS OF WATER.  You will understand, even more than the obvious, why this is important in my later posts.
• Eat more fruits and vegetables.
• Stay vertical!  Don’t sit around all day.  Get up and move.  Dance.  Walk in place while you are on the phone or watching TV.  Do sit-ups while you are watching TV.  BE CREATIVE but keep moving!
• Sign up for http://www.myfitnesspal.com online, on your phone, on your tablet, or on all three.  It is free and I have found that, once you learn to use it, it is one of the best  weight loss tools out there!!  I swear by it! It rquires a little exploration but is well worth it.  Also, see my earlier post,  http://midlifefrenzy.com/2014/04/24/how-to-maximize-the-use-of-myfitnesspal/.
• Check out my Pinterest Pages on Fitness:  http://midlifefrenzy.com/my-fitness-pins/

COMING SOON:

• Special workouts (including videos)
• Eating healthy
• How to know the right amount of calories to take in and how many to burn in order to lose weight.
• MOTIVATION
• websites

*if you used a string to measure your waste, use a ruler or yard stick to find the length of the string.  If you don’t have a ruler, you are in luck!  Did you know that a dollar bill (or a 10 or a 20) is right at 6 inches long?  Use the dollar to measure the string in 6 inch increments.