The first thing I noticed is that I'm drinking more alcohol than I need to. That stopped over the weekend. I even considered packing up all of my liquor for the move (in 4 weeks), but I decided that I wanted to test myself.
For those of you who don't know, I'm a Behavior Specialist. Granted, I work mostly with autistic and ADHD kids, but I should be able to analyze myself, right? Half right. I needed some help from my better half. She told me that she doesn't think it's a problem drinking issue as much as an impulse control issue. Perfect. I have my finger on it now.
I had to take a look at myself in different aspects of life. Impulsive? Me? Heck yeah. I'm totally impulsive, especially when it comes to consumables. One of the biggest issues for me with consumables, is that if I see something I can put in my mouth, I want to eat it. Or drink it. If you've ever been to my apartment, you know that our pantry (a book shelf, really) is wide open. If I walk from the living room to the kitchen for a glass of water, I have tons of food staring at me. It's easy to grab a handful of anything... dry cereal, pretzels, chips, a bag of popcorn to pop, candy, nuts....
Now, that's not all horrible for me to eat. But it is when I do it 3-4 times a day when I shouldn't be. I'm not adding up the calories because it scares the hell outta me to see how much I eat and don't really think of as a snack. Especially because I usually plan a snack or two during the day and eat that in addition to all of the extra food I've eaten.
I've got to control myself better. How will I do that? Here's the plan...
I'm going to start using FitDay again. This is a website that you can use to track calories in food. It's got loads of stuff in it already, but you can also add your own custom foods. I've used this in the past to track calories so I could lose weight and it worked. The best part is that it shows you a nutritional breakdown between carbs, protein, and fat. It also shows you a vitamin breakdown.
I used a website to calculate how many calories I should eat in a day. Freedieting.com has a calculator that shows you based on height, weight, gender, and amount of workouts you do per week how many calories you should consume in order to maintain, lose fat, or "extreme fat loss".
There are a few different formulas for this calorie calculation. I've used the Harris-Benedict formula in the past. This calculation shows me that I can eat 3500 calories to maintain my weight. 2800 is fat loss and 2100 is extreme fat loss. A new formula that I haven't seen before is called the Mifflin-St Jeor. This formula shows me 3187 for maintenance, 2550 for fat loss, and 2016 for extreme fat loss.
In the past, I have gone below the extreme fat loss numbers in order to lose weight quickly. It works, but only for so long. Crash diets suck hard core and cause relapse. I'm trying to change habits here, so we're not going for the super extreme fat loss tricks... I need it to stay off. I'm going to aim for somewhere between 2000 and 2500 calories per day. This can be a struggle sometimes, but I'm determined to get some more weight off before the move. I'd love 10 pounds, but I'm going to hold my breath. I'd be ok with sitting comfortably in the 240's.
Also, I have only lost 7 pounds so far in this 90 day challenge, but I'm going to post side by sides to see if there's a difference... I don't see much, but a little bit in the back and maybe in the stomach.
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