Diets: False Advertising

I'm always fascinated on the amount of bogus diets there are out there. Don't get me wrong a lot of them will help you lose maybe 20lbs but the problem is they really don't hit the source of the problem. What happens when the diet ends? You go back to your old eating habits and gain all of the weight back. This may be fine for a person looking to just lose the weight for fitting into a dress for some occasion or looking great for an important date, but for those of us that actually have a big weight problem this is definitely not a solution. In fact it almost is worse than not losing the weight at all, to be at your goal and then watch it slip back is not only depressing it's devastating.
So what do you do? Well my plan is to find a way to incorporate good eating habits into my life instead of having my life fit around my eating habits. Right now my life is about food, I know that is awful but it's true. I go to school, I go to work and I plan my day around my meals. What am I going to have for lunch? When I get home what am I going to cook for dinner? Now these may seem like honest questions that anybody would ask but it's the fact that it is constant. I think about food 24/7. My goal is to change that. I can't and won't live my life like that anymore. So from now on I plan to keep myself busy. Always have a planned activity. I WILL NOT sit on my bum in front of the television or computer with a bag of chips. I WILL pack my lunch for school and work so that I won't think about lunch until lunch time. I WILL go to the gym at least 3 times a week wither in the morning or evening depending on my schedule. I WILL allow myself a bad day for food once in a while so that I do not go on a binge. I WILL NOT allow myself to think in terms of pounds but in terms of health.
All in all I hope that my confidence doesn't waver and my motivation keeps strong. One has to wonder though if my personal life will stay as stable and if not how that will affect my plan. Time will only tell I suppose.

Healthy Living,
College Fat Girl

My Life

Hello my friends!

Welcome to the beginning of what I hope to be a journey to a healthier and happier lifestyle. Through this blog I hope to navigate through my own trials of weight loss and my quest to become a better person in the process. Now, I am not naive enough to believe that losing the weight is going to make my life suddenly amazing, but I do think that it will lessen the burden held not only by myself but by my family. 

Now, this is not my first rodeo. I have done diet after diet and in truth a couple have worked, I had lost almost 30 pounds at one point, but the fact is that none of the diets presented me with a long term solution. None of them configured to my busy schedule or took into account when stress and emotions come into play. So, last week I sat down and made a plan based on what I know about myself and about my body. I first made a list of what I knew I needed to change: 

• Fast Food
• Exercise
• Emotional Eating

 These are my biggest challenges and thus the first things that I need to address in my new life-plan. 

I am one for convenience so after a long day in class or at work I am one of the first in the drive-thru line at my favorite fast food place. Can we say heart attack in a bag? It is just a matter of time before the greasy hamburger becomes my gravestone. This, while difficult is not complicated to change. Fast food places are off the map from now on! This does not mean I cannot go out with friends or family to a restaurant, but on my own I am not to step one foot in front of a fast food place. Since this is the case, the money going to fund my greasy habit will now be invested in easy microwavable or skillet frozen meals so that after the long day I won't have to worry about cooking and therefore am less tempted to stop and pick something up.

My lifestyle, while busy is not an active one. I do not walk very much or exert any real effort in any physical way. This HAS to change. I have learned that while it sucks to work out, and I know it sucks once you do it you come out feeling on top of the world. Your muscles ache and you can't catch your breath but you feel accomplished and just really good about yourself later. The main problem is getting off my ass to actually go. I am going to solve this by enlisting one of my good (motivated) friends to be my workout buddy. This leaves me less likely to ditch since someone else is counting on me to show up. We sat down and figured out a schedule that worked for both of us and are going to make use of our University gym to work out at least three days a week. A lot I know but I think it will be both a tiring and rewarding experience. 

The last of my challenges is by far the hardest and most complicated to fix. Emotions are a tricky thing and whether it be stress, depression or PMS my comfort is always food. This has been the case for as long as I can remember. It is almost like an addiction, I need my fix to feel better. The only way to change this is by identifying what makes me turn to food and find out ways to at least curve it so that I don't go on a binge marathon. I am a strict believer in letting yourself have a bad day but there is a difference between a bad day and eating everything in the refrigerator that is bad for you plus buying a package of Oreo's to make you numb. Once I know my triggers I can start distracting myself with something else before I get to that bad of a place. 

All in all I think I am off to a good start in my healthy life goal. A diet that is made for me and doesn't cost anything but time :) I can only hope that I can work through all of this and get myself to a better place emotionally and physically. 

Holding Hope,

College Fat Girl