July & August 2010

July

On July 1st I weighed in at 127.2 pounds. That was only a .4 pound weight loss during June. Less than half a pound. Hmmmm... wonder what happened there. The only thing that had changed was that I had discovered lunch meats with no nitrate or nitrites and no chemicals or antibiotics added. It was in the organic section of the store so I thought I would try some. So I ate quite a few sandwiches in June. I made sure the whole grain bread did not have high fructose corn syrup in it too. You would be shocked to see how many whole grain breads have that crap in them. I am the only one in the house who eats the whole grain bread so I had to eat the whole loaf myself so that ended up being a lot of sandwiches. I am not sure if that slowed my weight loss down or not so I stopped eating them to find out.

At the end of July I was invited to Ocean City Maryland for the weekend (more like 24 hours). Have you ever tried to find healthy food at the shore? Well it was not easy. When I arrived Saturday morning I had some cantaloupe that was in the hotel room and one of my Kashi peanut peanut butter granola bars. I brought a box of those in case I needed a snack. I did find a salad place that made a really good Greek Salad so I had that for my lunch. For dinner I wandered around the boardwalk in search of something semi healthy (no doubt my cousin was ready to kill me- I am sure she was starved by the time I selected a place to eat) and I finally settled on some fish tacos. They were YUMMY! There were TONS of places to eat but they all had JUNK. I could not believe some of the things they fried down there. I mean really...do Oreos need to be fried? Seriously???

Remember the bikini pics from last year on my cruise (pic on left)? Well here I am (pic on right) in the same bikini 9 months later and about 15-18 pounds lighter (I do not know my exact weight when I went on the cruise). On July 30th I went shopping again for some more new clothes (and spent way more than I had planned).

I found another good book in July. It is Strength For Life by Shawn Phillips. There are workout routines in the back of this book that I started doing. I do the Monday night routine & the Thursday night routine on my Monday & Thursday nights in place of the Gilad workouts. These are weight lifting routines that use dumbbells and a weight bench and the ones I do focus on the arms. There are other routines but I still like doing the Gilad workouts too much to give them up so I do those the other days. Muscle burns more calories than fat so I want to make sure I have some muscles!

 August

My August 1st weigh in brought good news. I was 125.2 pounds. This meant that not eating all of those sandwiches paid off. I had lost 2 pounds in July! It may not seem like a lot but when you add up each monthly weight loss those pounds add up. I was officially down 20 pounds since December and that was wonderful news. When I changed my eating habits I thought I should lose a few pounds as a result but I never thought I would lose 20 pounds without counting calories. Had I known this I would have taken measurements when I started and I really regret that I have no "before" measurements. I had to measure my progress by my weight, photos, clothes size and just the visual difference in my size which is so obvious to me when I step out of the shower in front of that big mirror.

Two more books I should mention. The Eat Clean Diet by Tosca Reno and The Eat Clean Diet Cookbook by Tosca Reno. The Eat Clean Diet is not really a diet. It is a way of life. Kind of like what I did. You change the way you eat and your body changes. Unless of course you are already at your perfect weight, then it will just help you make better food choices so you can feel healthier. It does not require any counting of calories either. I found a lot of recipes in the cookbook that I need to try and I will  give reviews when I do.