Finished being Fat blog – Page 6

Snack Smart: Dried Fruit

Need a yummy low cal snack on the go?
Try dried fruit. Its portable and much easier to stuff in a purse or backpack than squishing and bruising that real banana or apple.

A word to the wise though, watch the label. A lot of dehydrated fruits are candied. All that sugar adds up to big calories that you don’t need. The fruit is sweet enough on its own. Bananas and apricots are notorious for this. Look at the ingredient list, if they add sugar, pass it by.

My favorite is the Kirkland brand freeze dried fruit. Just apples in a bag. 35 calories. The perfect snack in between class. Great for lunchboxes for the kiddos too.

Fitness Tip: Breaking it up

Is your morning workout the only time you are active during the day? Do you feel like you are stuck in a rut? Trying breaking your workout in two. Do half in the morning and half in the evening. Give your body two chances to rev your metabolic engine. You’ll also get that nice flood of endorphins twice too. If nothing else, try adding a light walk in the evening. Great for stress relief and a great way to keep your body moving and burning.

walking dog by johnny_automatic - cartoon of a girl walking a dog from http://www.usda.gov/cnpp/KidsPyra/ National Agricultural Library, Agricultural Research Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture

Definition of Failure

Every makes mistakes. Every one eats too much some days. I had one of those a few days ago. I made the mistake of getting into a BBQ wing eating competition with my husband. The place we were lunching at had bottomless wings.

A side note to dieters. Heck, to all people. Stay well away from the words from hell. Bottomless, unlimited, all-you-can-eat, etc.

Anyway, I got wrapped up in this wing competition and forgot my husband has hollow legs or something that he can stuff with food. He soundly beat me. But not before I had 20 wings. At 100 calories a piece. Ouch.

I regretted it for the rest of the day and well into the next. But while the belly ache served as a reminder to watch my portions, I can’t beat myself up about it. Learn from the experience, don’t do it again and let it go. Yes it means that I probably won’t lose any weight this week. But it says nothing else about me. The occasional screw up does NOT make you a failure my diet friends. It makes you human.

We are not failures when we slip and fall. It is only failure if we refuse to get back up.

Snack Smart: Chips and salsa alternative

Ok, hear me out. I was skeptical too. But it’s actually good.

Salsa is pretty good for you. It’s the tortilla chips that’ll get ya every time. So try enjoying your snacky salsa with a different kind of crunch. Try celery or my personal favorite, baby carrots. Yummy and low calorie. Satisfy your craving without blowing your budget. Plus the ‘caliente’ in the salsa can help heat up your metabolism.

Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Fitness Tip: Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

You work out, you’re eating better. But the scale isn’t budging. A lot of times, it could be because you have a liar in your midst. The fitness equipment.

Often times the elliptical, treadmill, or cycle can overestimate the calories burned by 30-50%! Well, if you use that number to calculate you net calories, you might be blowing your budget without meaning too. Example: You are trying to budget for 1500 calories. If your elliptical says you burned 1000, then that means you have earned the additional 1000 calories. So you eat a total of 2500 calories for the day. And you are gaining weight. Because in reality you only burned 500 calories. And if this pattern keeps up everyday, the 500 calories over budget per day would make you gain one lb per week.

Fitness equipment is notorious for lying to make you feel good and get back to the gym. Here is a link that I like to use to calculate how many calories I’m REALLY burning.
http://www.webmd.com/diet/healthtool-fitness-calorie-counter

So if the scale is stuck, maybe you need to block out the info panel on the treadmill and recalculate your budget.

Fighting Fido

When you eat, do you have dog-like tendencies? Here’s what I mean

Is this you?

Or maybe this one over the last buffalo wing?

Maybe this one hits home.. staring longingly and begging for a taste of the food you can’t have.

Yeah, I’m right there with you. I had this epiphany yesterday when I found myself giving my three year old puppy dog eyes, hoping she’d share just a bite of her cookie. She didn’t.

I need to better control my food behavior. I am not an animal, licking the plate clean or fighting for the last scrap of food. I’m in control. I decide what I will eat and what I won’t. And if I’ve budgeted correctly, then there is no need to feel guilty. But swiping those last few fries off the kids plate… adds up real quick.

So stop fighting with Fido over the leftovers. Make your choices wisely and let the dog get the crumbs under the table.

Finish! It’ll change your life

Welcome to the official website of Betsy Schow, author of Finished being Fat: An accidental adventure in losing weight and learning to finish.

After many years of being fat and miserable, with a few years of being average and less miserable mixed in, I finally had a lightbulb moment. The reason I was unhappy was not just the extra 75 pounds around my middle. It was the weight of all the things unfinished that hung around my neck.

I was always having grand ideas. I’d get excited about this diet, or that workout routine. Or starting a new hobby or project. Even trying to write a book. Problem was, within a few weeks the excitement would fade and that little voice would kick in. You know the one I’m talking about. “You’re no good at this. You’ll never keep the weight off. Why are you even bothering.” That little voice had kept me from finishing… anything. And every time I quit, my wall of failures would get a little higher — making success that much harder to see.

My adventure started when I decided I was finished being fat, but it snowballed into year of changing my life and accomplishing seemingly impossible dreams. Join me while I discover that “Not everyone can win the race, but everyone can finish.”

And everything is worth finishing

before after