Last Thursday evening I had my fourth appointment with my nutritionist and trainer, Stacy. When I arrived at her business, Be Fit, I was as anxious as can be. On week one I dropped an amazing 11 pounds and 3 inches, and that was with no exercise and continuing with my 1400 calories per day and adding protein to my food intake. Week Two I did everything that I was supposed to do including exercise but the scale only reported one pound of weight loss. But the measuring tape showed 4-3/4" for a total of 12 pounds lost and 7-3/4 inches removed from my body.
This week I had really stepped up my game. I ate right every day, drank my two protein drinks per day. The biggest difference was that I exercised not once but twice every day! This was going to be my week, I just knew it! When we sat down at the table to discuss my week I could hardly wait to get to the good stuff. Stacy explained that she had taken my file with my weight loss and inches lost chart home and did not have it for our meeting. Well that did not sound too good to me. I should have known that this was a sign of things to come.
She took all of my measurements and wrote them down on a new chart and we walked over to the Ironman Scale. She again entered my age and height and I stepped up on the scale. On my journey to a new me I have learned that the scale can be my friend, but today was an exception to this rule. As the display changed from one thing to the next, I concentrated on the weight loss and could not believe what I was seeing. One Pound! Please tell me there must be a mistake! One Pound? Really? This is not the results that I had worked so hard to acheive. It felt a little bit like Bill Murphy in the movie, Ground Hog Day! In case you have never seen it the premise of the movie is that he keeps repeating Ground Hog Day, every day. It is like a broken record or something. This was a total unacceptable weight loss result. To say that I was a little upset with myself would be a huge understatement.
Stacy had me go back over to the table so that she could talk to me and I just felt myself shutting down. If what I had done last week was only good for one pound, then I wasn't sure what else that I could do. She began to look at my food journal for the week and scanned all the data in the nutritional section for every day. She went back three days and stopped and asked me "What is this?" "Why did you eat so much sugar this day?" I looked her in disbelief and told her that I wasn't eating any sugar, and I did not know what she was referring to? I also told her that in all the previous meetings she had only given me guidelines for protein, carbohydrates, fat and sodium. She never mentioned sugar! Plus, I knew that sugar was something that I really had been staying clear of since beginning my journey to a new me over 18 months ago! So I asked her to explain what it was that she was looking at? (I mean it wasn't like I was pulling a "Bill Cosby" and eating chocolate cake for breakfast every day! I was eating healthy and well-balanced meals and snacks!)
Here is the Breakfast that she was studying so closely. See if you can figure out what the "Red Flag" was on this food entry.
The first thing that I noticed was that my entire meal was under 300 calories. Not to mention that by including a protein shake I had acheived a 30 for total protein at this meal. She began to explain that the carbs were shown as 47 and when you add the sugar of 10 the total could be looked at as 57! Oh no, when you look at it this way I am WAY over my goal for my breakfast. Who said counting calories and allocating them into the correct catergories would be easy? Certainly not me. No wonder I only lost One Pound this week again.
The best way to look at the nutrition in food is to look at it the way your body breaks it down. All carbohydrates and sugars are broken down into the body as sugar. So even though I am not drinking sweet tea, or regular Coca Cola, the other healthy items that I am eating have sugar of some sort even if it is natural, and natural sugar counts too!
So instead of beating myself up over the one pound weight loss, I looked at the whole picture. When I added this pound to my previous 12 pounds I had reached a 13 pound weight loss in just three weeks, not to mention I am now down a total of 10 inches! This week I dropped another pound of fat. On this new path on my journey to a new me, I am building lean musle that will be able to burn more fat. I have learned that muscle always weighs more than fluffy fat. Think about it like this, one pound of lean muscle could be equivalent to a very small, tight cylinder vs. a one pound bag of fluffy marshmellows. Which one looks better on me? The lean muscle of course! So this week I have decided to continue on the course that my nutritionist has set me on and I am really paying close attention to the carbohydrates and sugar counts at each meal. Stacy had explained to me earlier that I need to stay at 40 carbs or lower per meal for a 120 carb count and then 10 carbs per snack, which will give me 140 total carbohydrates per day. I have also changed my next meeting from Thursday evening at 7:00 pm to Friday morning at 6:45 am. Who knows this may just be the week that I drop some serious weight. But I am also learning that those inches are just as important as the numbers on the scale. Stacy made a simple statement to me that has stuck, "Kathy, you look for a result on the scale, but others can see the results on the measuring tape. You are really trimming down and that is the number that I am most concerned with."
This week I had really stepped up my game. I ate right every day, drank my two protein drinks per day. The biggest difference was that I exercised not once but twice every day! This was going to be my week, I just knew it! When we sat down at the table to discuss my week I could hardly wait to get to the good stuff. Stacy explained that she had taken my file with my weight loss and inches lost chart home and did not have it for our meeting. Well that did not sound too good to me. I should have known that this was a sign of things to come.
She took all of my measurements and wrote them down on a new chart and we walked over to the Ironman Scale. She again entered my age and height and I stepped up on the scale. On my journey to a new me I have learned that the scale can be my friend, but today was an exception to this rule. As the display changed from one thing to the next, I concentrated on the weight loss and could not believe what I was seeing. One Pound! Please tell me there must be a mistake! One Pound? Really? This is not the results that I had worked so hard to acheive. It felt a little bit like Bill Murphy in the movie, Ground Hog Day! In case you have never seen it the premise of the movie is that he keeps repeating Ground Hog Day, every day. It is like a broken record or something. This was a total unacceptable weight loss result. To say that I was a little upset with myself would be a huge understatement.
Stacy had me go back over to the table so that she could talk to me and I just felt myself shutting down. If what I had done last week was only good for one pound, then I wasn't sure what else that I could do. She began to look at my food journal for the week and scanned all the data in the nutritional section for every day. She went back three days and stopped and asked me "What is this?" "Why did you eat so much sugar this day?" I looked her in disbelief and told her that I wasn't eating any sugar, and I did not know what she was referring to? I also told her that in all the previous meetings she had only given me guidelines for protein, carbohydrates, fat and sodium. She never mentioned sugar! Plus, I knew that sugar was something that I really had been staying clear of since beginning my journey to a new me over 18 months ago! So I asked her to explain what it was that she was looking at? (I mean it wasn't like I was pulling a "Bill Cosby" and eating chocolate cake for breakfast every day! I was eating healthy and well-balanced meals and snacks!)
Here is the Breakfast that she was studying so closely. See if you can figure out what the "Red Flag" was on this food entry.
| Breakfast | Calories | Carbs | Fat | Protein | Sugar | Sodium | |
| Champion Nutrition - Pure Whey Protein Stack-Chocolate, 1 scoop (32g) | 130 | 4 | 2 | 23 | 2 | 160 |  |
| Nature's Own - Double Fiber Wheat Bread With Omega-3, 2 slices | 100 | 26 | 1 | 6 | 1 | 270 | |
| Strawberries - Raw, 1 cup, halves | 49 | 12 | 0 | 1 | 7 | 2 | |
| Smuckers - Blackberry Jam Sugar Free Seedless , 1 Tbsp | 15 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
Totals For Breakfast
| 294 | 47 | 3 | 30 | 10 | 432 |
The first thing that I noticed was that my entire meal was under 300 calories. Not to mention that by including a protein shake I had acheived a 30 for total protein at this meal. She began to explain that the carbs were shown as 47 and when you add the sugar of 10 the total could be looked at as 57! Oh no, when you look at it this way I am WAY over my goal for my breakfast. Who said counting calories and allocating them into the correct catergories would be easy? Certainly not me. No wonder I only lost One Pound this week again.
The best way to look at the nutrition in food is to look at it the way your body breaks it down. All carbohydrates and sugars are broken down into the body as sugar. So even though I am not drinking sweet tea, or regular Coca Cola, the other healthy items that I am eating have sugar of some sort even if it is natural, and natural sugar counts too!
So instead of beating myself up over the one pound weight loss, I looked at the whole picture. When I added this pound to my previous 12 pounds I had reached a 13 pound weight loss in just three weeks, not to mention I am now down a total of 10 inches! This week I dropped another pound of fat. On this new path on my journey to a new me, I am building lean musle that will be able to burn more fat. I have learned that muscle always weighs more than fluffy fat. Think about it like this, one pound of lean muscle could be equivalent to a very small, tight cylinder vs. a one pound bag of fluffy marshmellows. Which one looks better on me? The lean muscle of course! So this week I have decided to continue on the course that my nutritionist has set me on and I am really paying close attention to the carbohydrates and sugar counts at each meal. Stacy had explained to me earlier that I need to stay at 40 carbs or lower per meal for a 120 carb count and then 10 carbs per snack, which will give me 140 total carbohydrates per day. I have also changed my next meeting from Thursday evening at 7:00 pm to Friday morning at 6:45 am. Who knows this may just be the week that I drop some serious weight. But I am also learning that those inches are just as important as the numbers on the scale. Stacy made a simple statement to me that has stuck, "Kathy, you look for a result on the scale, but others can see the results on the measuring tape. You are really trimming down and that is the number that I am most concerned with."
