I had an awesome day today. As I mentioned before – or at least I think I did – I joined Weight Watchers. I joined the week before Thanksgiving. Yes, that’s right, it was right before the holidays. Some might say it was stupid. I say it was magnificent…brilliant, actually. It saved me from packing on another 10-15 pounds during the holiday eating or shall I say holiday bingeing time. I ate a few of my favorite treats, but I didn’t gorge myself on them like I usually do. 

So why was my day so great? I finally hit a total weight loss of 15 pounds. Well, actually, it was 15.2 pounds to be exact. Yahoo! To some, that may not sound like a big deal. To me, it meant the world. Now, I am just four pounds away from hitting my 10 percent goal. And, I am only 15 pounds away from my goal. I was and I still am ecstatic!

But, I also questioned the person I am becoming. I ate lunch today with a friend. She ordered her lunch and I ordered mine. I had a grilled pear salad that was supposed to have walnuts on it, along with some creamy, goopy poppyseed dressing and some goat cheese. As the waiter took our order, I said, "I will have the blah, blah, blah salad, but please no walnuts (it’s added fat that I didn’t need or want) and can I have the balsamic vinegar dressing instead (it’s less fatty than the creamy dressing)." I kept the cheese on the salad, but then scraped half of it off. Seriously, do you know how fattening cheese is? My friend ordered a salad, but let’s just say it wasn’t of the healthy variety. 

I felt kind of snotty. I’m not sure why, but I did. I thought to myself, "Oh no, am I becoming one of those people!" You know the kind. They snub their noses at "bad" food. They wouldn’t dare think about eating anything with the least bit of fat on or in it. They eat like birds. They exercise like crazy. They think they are fat, but they’re not.

But, then I remembered that I haven’t exercised for two weeks and tonight, I ate another piece of birthday cake. This time, it was marble with the real good, sugary sweet frosting. Nope, I’m not one of those people. I’m still real. I still eat bad food and don’t feel guilty or not as guilty about it. And the size of my jeans is a double digit number – and probably always will be.

The title of my blog is a question I myself have asked many times and one I hear on a regular basis. What I find very ironic about the question is that most often when it’s being asked, the person asking is either eating a big bag of Doritos or they just slathered on a thick layer of ranch dressing on their salad or they just got done consuming their third Mountain Dew or Coke for the morning.

Seriously, people. I have found over the years that if someone, like myself, wants to lose weight and keep it off, they need to change their eating habits. They, or I, can’t eat Twinkies everyday or a large bowl of ice cream everyday and expect to lose weight. It’s not gonna happen. I’ve tried it. It doesn’t work.

I’m not saying you and I have to give up all the good stuff, but eating Cheetos for breakfast everyday isn’t going to work anymore. Eating a salad is healthy. Eating a salad with a big gob of ranch dressing or any other creamy-style dressing, along with bacon bits, cheese and croutons is not healthy. Not by any means. It’s actually amazing the amount of calories and fat that’s packed into a healthy-looking salad. You’d be surprised.

Did you know that one tablespoon of ranch dressing has 73 calories and nearly 8 grams of fat. Most people put at least three or four tablespoons of dressing on their salad. A tablespoon of the fat-free kind has only 17 calories and about .5 grams of fat. Do the math. Which one would you choose?

I know what you are thinking, the fat-free kind doesn’t taste as good. Well, here’s a simple solution, especially if you like the Hidden Valley Ranch brand of dressing. Take a container of fat-free sour cream and mix it with a packet of the Hidden Valley Ranch dressing dry seasoning mix. This is good. Really good. And it is not nearly as fattening as the real stuff. There are also so many other healthier options out there, but you have to want to change. Otherwise, the "good" stuff is always going to taste bad. 

Yesterday, I was given a great quote by a friend…."Nothing tastes as good, as looking good feels!" That about sums it up right there.

Saturday night we celebrated some birthdays. Not a big deal, right. But what do families always have at birthday parties…CAKE!

Cake is probably by far my favorite sweet treat. When I was pregnant with my son, I would bake a cake almost every week and of course, eat it by myself. I love cake. Chocolate cake. Yellow cake. Marble cake. Strawberry cake. German cake. Angel food cake. It doesn’t matter, I love cake. Period. I also love cake batter. My mom always wondered why her cakes were a lot higher than mine when they baked until I finally told her it was because I would eat half of the batter before I put it in the pan. So you see, I have an addition to cake…and frosting. I can’t tell you how many times I bought and ate an entire can of frosting all to myself in one sitting. 

Cake isn’t necessarily part of the plan for healthier eating. But it’s also one food I will not give up. No way. No how. However, I realized I don’t have to eat an entire cake or even half a cake – a nice-sized piece will do just fine. It usually satisfies my sweet tooth cravings.

Well, at this little birthday gathering we were having, there were several choices for cake. There was the typical marble cake with white icing. YUM! And then, there were four other different types of cake cut into quarter sections (from a round layer cake) arranged nicely on a platter. There was red velvet (okay), carrot (better), German chocolate (even better) and then a chocolately on top of chocolatey ooey gooey goodness one. Guess which one I picked? Yep, I ate the chocolately goodness one…the best of the bunch. Not the entire quarter, but a slice and a half. And darn, if it wasn’t the best tasting chocolate cake ever.

I was going to stop after one slice, but my husband wanted to taste some (he chose the red velvet one instead) and mine was already gone. So I sliced a little chunk off another piece for him, although I ate most of it!

Fortunately, my other food choices for the rest of the day were part of my plan for healthier eating. So, I didn’t feel the least bit guilty for indulging in the ooey gooey goodness of that slice of cake. It was so worth it.

So why is it that I work twice as hard at exercising as my husband and eat much less and he can lose twice as much weight in a shorter amount of time?

It sucks!

Although I am truly happy for him that he’s lost a few pounds, deep down it kind of makes me angry and sad…and a little disappointed. I work my little (okay, it’s not that little) tushy off and he hardly moves a muscle. It’s so not fair. But, I may have found out why.

I was searching on the WW (Weight Watchers) Web site awhile back and found an article titled, "Why men lose faster than women." So, it is true!

The article stated that men have two weight loss advantages over women – their body composition and the fact that men tend to be more active. What? Are you kidding me? More active? I completely disagree on that. In a month’s time, I exercised twice as many days as my husband and for twice as long. He usually exercises for 30 minutes at a time and I usually do about an hour. We have a Wii Fit and that keeps track of how many days you exercise and how many hours you exercise. I totally smoked him! Yes, there is a little bit of competitiveness between us. Well, on my end anyway!

Because men are able to burn more calories at a faster rate while they are resting and they burn more calories while they are active, this apparently translates into faster weight loss for guys. Whatever! It’s so not fair. Men have it so easy.

I also read, however, that women have a little bit of an edge when it comes to diet and exercise – we tend to more attentive to what’s going on with our weight…as in we can tell when our clothes are too tight and we maybe shouldn’t have eaten that whole container of ice cream. The article also said that women are better able to make the connection between food and emotions. Oh, I get it. Emotions and food. When I am happy, I eat. When I am sad, I eat. When I am moody, I eat. When I am frustrated, I eat. When I am bored, I eat. Yep, I get it….no matter what emotion I am feeling, I connect by eating. I guess that makes sense.

So after reading the entire article, I wasn’t feeling the best. A few days later, my husband comes to me with a newspaper article, "Is is easier for men to avoid tempting food?" Are you serious? I give up! I didn’t even read it….yet.

Why do we have days that no matter what we eat, we can’t get full?

Today was one of those days. Not sure if it’s because it is the start of "that time" or what, but no matter what I ate today, I couldn’t get full. I ate breakfast, which I do every morning as soon as I wake up. Not sure if that’s out of habit or because of hunger. I ate my usual of my all-time favorite yogurt – Yoplait Thick and Creamy Light French Vanilla – and a granola bar. Today’s bar was Fiber One’s Apple and Oatmeal or something like that. I usually eat a Kashi granola bar, but we were out of them.

Then the rest of the day went like this….banana at about 10 a.m, then lunch at around noonish that consisted of healthy portions of stir fry, white rice, fruit and salad (I had a noon meeting and this was on the menu for lunch!) and then as the afternoon rolled around, I ate two oranges, then a cookie, then another cookie. Still hungry. Then it was on to supper, which consisted of grilled steak, potatoes and carrots. And now, as I type this, my stomach is growling and I just finished eating my supper not more than an hour ago. When I finish with this, I will eat a couple pieces of toast with some peanut butter. 

During this healthy lifestyle change that I am going through, I am trying to pay more attention to the foods I eat and choose ones that WW has deemed as "filling foods." Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

I try to drink a lot of water between meals and even right before my meal to help fill me up. This usually works, but today it didn’t. All it did today was make me a little water logged.

Maybe tomorrow will be better and maybe tomorrow…..I will exercise. I haven’t done a lick of exercise for about a week now. I know I have too and I know I need to. I just haven’t.

Yesterday, my 15-year-old son hit the nail on the head, "How come when I am just sitting here, I want to eat. I’m not hungry, but I feel like eating a bowl of Fruit Loops." Bingo! I explained that when people are bored, they want to eat because it gives them something to do. He didn’t eat the bowl of Fruit Loops. He didn’t eat anything. We talked instead.

I don’t how many times a day I walk to the refrigerator, open it up, stare blankly inside, waiting for something to jump out and say, "Eat me!" Every time I look inside, it’s always the same food. Nothing changes. Nothing jumps out at me. But sometimes I eat something anyway and sometimes I don’t…I find something to do instead.

This has become a habit. If I am bored, I want to eat. I scrounge around the kitchen opening not just the refrigerator, but the cupboards, as well. I don’t think I even notice exactly what’s in the cupboards or refrigerator, I literally just stare right through them. If there were Twinkies, however, or something else sinfully good for me, that’s easy to open and pop in my mouth without much effort, I can guarantee I would eat it. Or chocolate or candy or ice cream or cake or cookies or anything else that would immediately find its way to my hips, I would devour it without much thought. 

That is why for right now, while I am on the path to a more healthy lifestyle, I am choosing not to have that stuff in our house.

I don’t know how many times the three of us (my son, husband and myself) would sit down on the couch, turn on the TV and eat almost an entire half-gallon of ice cream. I know there were a couple of times, my husband and I would eat the entire container by ourselves. We would sit down with our spoons and a container of something oh-so-chocolately, ooey-gooey and nutty and polish it off without giving it a second thought. Most often, I would have a container of Cool Whip sitting right next to me, eating that at the same time. Oh, those were the good ol’ days.

We haven’t done that now for about six months. Thank God!

But nothing says I won’t ever do it again.

Choosing what we eat each day can sometimes be a huge struggle. Over the course of the last couple of months, I have made some modifications – changes, revisions, improvements – to the foods I eat. Because I am on a mission of making a lifestyle change instead of just “dieting” this time, I am trying to train myself to pay attention to the things that go in my mouth.

I know I said in earlier posts that this time – this attempt at losing weight and keeping it off – was different because of my attitude and my determination, but I forgot to mention one other thing. I only told the half-truth. This time, I AM trying something new, but it’s NOT a quick-fix scheme or a pill or a magic drink or saw-it-on-the-tv gadget. It’s a lifelong program that offers support, tools and education to teach me how to eat healthier, move more and live better – it’s Weight Watchers.

Whew, I feel better for getting that off my chest. Anyway, I promise I will write more about WW, as I like to call it, at a later date.

Right now, I want to focus on how food modifications can really make a difference. One such food is cheese – seriously, one of my all-time favorites. I have had a cheese fetish since I was a little girl and over the years, it’s only gotten worse. I don’t care if it’s cheddar, mozzarella, swiss, feta, colby, parmesan, asiago, muenster, ricotta or even cottage, I just love cheese. But, wow, cheese is sooooooooo unhealthy – if eaten in the quantities I like to eat it.

I always thought that since I don’t get my daily allowance of calcium through drinking milk (I don’t really drink the stuff because it makes my stomach a wee bit nauseous), I could just eat my allowance of calcium through cheese. NOT! So, I have made some modifications. Instead of one whole cup of shredded cheddar on my salad, I use one “stick” of low-fat (okay, it is the WW brand, but gosh is it good) string cheese. Kind of weird, I know, but I just cut it up into little round bits and it works just fine. Honestly, I don’t really notice a difference.

I also love, love, love grilled cheese sandwiches, which if made with regular bread, butter and regular cheese, is not a very healthy lunch. But, I modified my sandwich by using butter-flavored cooking spray, whole-wheat, low-fat bread and low-fat or maybe it’s even fat-free cheese. Wonderful, simple, quick and easy lunch – especially when dunked in ketchup!

I am also in love with fajitas, which are relatively good for you – oh so one would think.
But, once again, with a few modifications, my husband and I have turned them into a great, healthy supper. First off, either chicken or steak can be used as long as the chicken is white meat only with no skin and the steak is a lean cut with all the fat trimmed off. Instead of tossing the peppers and onions in oil and making them goopy, fry them in a pan with cooking spray. Also, use a dry fajita seasoning mix instead of a bottled marinade-type sauce. For the tortillas, try the FlatOut brand. These are AWESOME!!!! Because they are kind of oblong shape, I cut them in half and make two fajitas from one tortilla. It makes me feel like I am eating more than I really am. I also use fat-free sour cream. Some people don’t like it because of the texture, but I actually love it and switched to fat-free sour cream about five years ago.
If you use cheese on your fajita, try a low-fat or no fat kind and use it sparingly.

One other huge change I have made when it comes to modifying my food is to actually measure and weigh it out. Sounds a little ridiculous, right? But it definitely makes you more aware of your portion sizes. Making food modifications can be fun if you let it be and want it to be…in just the same way exercising can be fun, too.

Yeah, right!

My alarm goes off at 5:30 a.m. so that I have enough time to exercise, eat breakfast, mess on my computer for awhile and then take a shower before leaving for work shortly before 8 a.m. I like to take my time in the morning as not to feel rushed. Most days, I complete the following….breakfast, computer, shower. Why? Because I typically slip back into bed or throw myself on the couch so that I can catch some more zzzzz’s. Most of the time, as I lay there, my mind races with things I need to do…like exercise…instead of actually sleeping like I really, really, really want to do – and sometimes NEED to do.

I do want to exercise in the morning – it usually makes me feel energized for the rest of the day. Once I get going, I actually really, really like it. I feel good. I feel great. I feel like I am making progress toward my goal of becoming healthy. But, as for how many times I do exercise is about half. There are just some days I can’t do it. My eyes won’t stay open, my body doesn’t move the way I want it to or some other stupid excuse I come up with. 

If I don’t exercise in the morning, I typically tell myself, "That’s okay, I’ll do it tonight when I get home from work." And about half the time I follow through. I don’t mind exercising in the evening, but then I stay up too late because I am energized. I’m not sure what it is about the exercising. Like I said earlier, I do love – okay maybe strongly like – it when I get started and when I am done. But it’s the getting started part that sucks. It’s getting off my butt and moving. 

So, I am curious. For those of you reading this, what gets you up and moving? What is your motivator? What kicks you in the behind and off the couch or out of bed? Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

So why is it so easy to fall off the healthy wagon?

In my "dieting" days, I could go weeks (okay maybe it was really days, but it sure felt like weeks) without munching my way through a bag of chips or slurping through a big bowl of ice cream. But then all of a sudden, that craving – that gnawing – would grab hold of me and my taste buds and I could (and would) sit down and polish off a bag of ripple chips and a container of French onion dip…and not the small one of either…in one sitting. Seriously. I literally felt like a pig who had been kept away from her trough, then set free to snarf my way to heaven.

I remember a time I had a craving for these delightful, sinful, sugary, soft, frosted cookies – Lofthouse…OMG, they are delicious. Anyway, I went to the grocery store and bought some and then proceeded to my car, where I immediately ripped the package open and shoved a couple in my mouth as fast as I could. I ended up eating four or five of them. Then, nearly threw up because I felt so sick.

That wasn’t the one and only time I have done that.

But see, that is the thing with DIETS…you’re told over and over again that you CAN’T have the little pleasures you enjoy so much that all of sudden you fall off the wagon and nearly purge yourself silly. It’s stupid, but that is the mindset people get into when they DIET. "Oh, I CAN’T have that. It’s BAD for me." 

Well, guess what people? This time, I am not telling myself I CAN’T eat certain foods. This time, I am allowing myself those guilty pleasures. Those ooey gooey delectable delights. Maybe it won’t be every day, but once in awhile, to reward myself, to treat myself. As they say with so many things – alcohol and food, especially – moderation is the key.

This time around, I am not on a DIET, but I am on a healthy journey and moderation is part of my motto.

Why do skinny people have it so easy? Or do they…really?

I once worked with a girl who ate like a bird and exercised like mad. I hated her. Not literally, but I hated that she made it look so easy to pass up the cake, the cookies and anything else loaded with ooey-gooey calories. And she talked about exercise like I talked about shopping. She loved it. But, was she really happy being stick thin and living a life obsessed with her health? I honestly don’t know. Did she secretly long for a whopping bowl of ice cream drenched in chocolatey goodness and heavenly whip cream? I know I did. Especially when she rubbed her thinness in my face…or at least that’s how I took it. I think that people who wish they were thinner, not necessarily skinny, but happy about their weight, obsess over those who make being a size 6 and smaller look so easy. But, I don’t think heavier people – myself include – know what it’s really like to be them. And vice versus. I don’t think thinner people know what it is truly like for those who have an obsession with food.

Once, this good friend of mine – who is like half my size – was complaining about her weight. She wasn’t happy with the weight she put on. And although I thought she looked divine and would kill to have a body like hers, she didn’t like the way she looked. Deep inside, my size 14 body wanted to strangle the crap out of her. But then, she said something that made me want to give her the biggest bear hug in the world. She told me she was jealous of me. YES, that is right. Me and my curves. She is stick thin, but she doesn’t necessarily have a shape. And, I definitely do. She actually thought I had a nice body. Miss Skinny Pants, who can fit into any clothes she wants, was jealous of me and my hourglass, curvaceous, wiggly, jiggly body. Whoa!

But, she made me realize that skinny people are not always happy. Just because they weigh next to nothing, doesn’t mean that they don’t struggle – just like I – and so many others – do. It made me stop and think, once again, of that old saying, "You can’t judge a book by its cover."

How true.