If you have been reading my
blog over the past week you already know that I have begun a new adventure on
my journey to a new me. On Thursday
August 9th I met with a nutritionist, Stacy who is the owner of Be
Fit in Hoshton, GA for the first time.
She gave me so much information during our first meeting that it is just
now starting to “sink in” all that she shared with me.
Tonight was my third meeting
with her and my second weigh-in. Just in
case you did not read my blog post from 8/21/2011 “The Power of Protein – A New Day Has Dawned” let me cut to the chase. It was
during my first “weigh-in” last week that I became a believer in the power of
protein. Without doing any exercise,
elliptical trainer or treadmill, I successfully lost 11 Pounds! Not to mention I went down 5% in body fat and
shed 3 inches from my body. Now that was
the power boost that I had been looking for.
This week I began exercising
every day, eating the protein that she had prescribed (105 g. per day) and did
my best to hit my daily goals for carbs, fat and sodium. But to be honest I struggled the most with
that sodium. I don’t know what it is
about sodium but EVERYTHING you eat has sodium in it!
All day today I was excited
to meet with Stacy to see the “Fruit of my labor” and all day I logged
everything that went into my mouth. All
food, water and exercise was recorded.
I knew that she would be analyzing everything in my favorite online
tool, www.myfitnesspal.com (Just a word
to the wise, be careful who you give your
log on and password to, they might be able to see more than you wanted
them to.)
I arrived for the
appointment and told her that I had a great week. We chatted briefly and I quickly asked her
could we get on with the good stuff. I
just knew that the results would be amazing, after all I had put in all the hard work and
effort. And didn’t my parents raise me
to believe that with hard work comes great
rewards? So I was ready to collect on
some of those rewards.
Just as before, she became a
fast little “squirrel” as she whipped out her trusty measuring tape and began the process of
measuring me from head to toe, not leaving any area unmeasured. She just as quickly jotted down the results
on the log sheet. When she was done she
was grinning from ear to ear. During the
past week I had lost another 4-3/4 inches from my body! She then asked me to step over to “Mr. Iron
Man Scale”. Now this was the part that
I had been waiting to do all day.
I slid my sandals off and
waited what seemed forever for her to program in my age and height. Then the computerized scale began its calculations. The other two times that I weighed I did not look
down to watch the progression of numbers as they displayed across the black
screen, but today I wanted to know.
When the scale stopped on my
current weight I felt my heart drop from my chest. Actually my whole countenance just fell. Who would have guessed that all that hard
work and effort would have resulted in just one lonely pound? I was
not so unrealistic as to think that I was going to have a second week with a 10
or 11 pound weight loss, but honestly I was hoping for more than One Pound! Come on, this just did not seem fair to
me. This had to be a trick or something,
but as I stepped off the scale and made my way back to the table I could not
hide my disappointment. Stacy was still
smiling like crazy and my disposition was that of a defeated person.
I immediately started expressing
to her that this wasn’t fair. What did I
do wrong? Why did I have such success
last week when all I did was add protein to my diet and this week I did all of
that plus added back my daily exercise?
Not to mention we ate at home almost every night and I had been taking my lunch to work to keep
from having to eat out so much and take in too much sodium.
This was when the
nutritionist did what she can do best.
She taught me a very valuable lesson.
All the information that I had been reading was actually happening in my
own body and I needed to give it a chance to work! She said that she was not disappointed in me
at all. On the contrary, she was very
pleased with all of my progress. She said
“Don’t just look at the One Pound, you need to look at the TWELVE POUNDS that
you have lost in just two weeks! And don’t
forget about that 5% body fat! But do
you know what she said was the absolute most important result to her?
The part of the equation
that everyone can see, and that is the 7-3/4
inches that I had lost from my body during the past two weeks. I wasn’t sure about that statement. I was still trying to absorb the fact that
all my effort had only resulted in one pound and what did I need to do
differently to accomplish a better result (and in my mind, more pounds) the
next week.
The reason I called her my “Coach”
is because she sat this player down on the bench and told me what it was really
all about. She said “Kathy it is not
about weight. It is about “Balance”. We are in the beginning stages of training
your body. When you put more protein in
your body then you are helping the muscles develop more. As the muscles develop into greater muscle mass
you need to know that muscle always weighs more than fat! (At this point I was about to turn off the
volume because this is NOT what I wanted to hear. Hadn’t I told my husband before I met the
nutritionist that by her identifying my plateau in weight loss as a nutritional
problem that she was going to change my diet to a protein based one, and
therefore I was going to gain weight) But she continued, “Once you build the larger
muscle mass and you continue to feed that internal furnace with protein – which
is what it craves, you will begin to burn off all that fat! Remember your Muscle is your metabolic furnace!”
She said that she would
rather me re-train my brain to love the inches coming off and don’t worry about
the weight. She said that the inches
coming off are what others are going to notice.
The number on the scale is what I would notice, and wouldn’t I rather be
losing something that everyone else can see?
So after that pep talk, she revamped my allocations again. I still have the same daily nutritional
goals, but after reviewing all of my daily food logs for calories, protein,
carbs, fats and sodium she gave me the following guidelines. Breakfast and lunch try to eat no more than
40 carbs, both mid-morning shake & mid-afternoon shake will give me another
4 carbs each, and try to stay at 30-40 carbs for dinner. She said that unless I am going to work-out
in the evening that those carbs at dinner would not be burned off and my body
would “store” those as fat. And I don’t
know about you, but I don’t need my body storing any more fat than it already
has!
So in the Pounds vs. Inches
Competition here are the current standings:
Pounds 12
Inches 7-3/4”
Watch for my next blog post
as I give more nutritional information regarding not only protein but the
importance of healthy carbs. Everyone
needs the right balance to lose weight and get healthy!
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