This Last Weekend of September

This weekend I had many strengths, but I had many struggles.  I can tell this is going to be a theme for my blogging.  I think both are important for me to address so I know what I need to work on and I know what I need to keep doing.

But anyways. Strengths.  I cooked some freakin delicious fried "rice" from the fit2fat2fit meal plan.  Instead of using rice, I grated up cauliflower.  This recipe seemed doubtful and weird, but I was excited to try it and it ended up being delicious.  I made enough for 2 meals this weekend.

That was Friday.  Saturday I worked all day, and then I went to Cheney, drank beer, and ate cheesy bread.  It's such a struggle!!! It's so good.  I can't say no.


I worked most of the day Sunday, and cooked yummy yummy stir fry for dinner.

My Strengths

 I have many struggles, but I also have many strengths.  I'm a really positive person, which is why my strength list is so much longer than my struggle list (:

90% of my meals are of the healthy sort.  If I'm at home, they are healthy.  If I am not at home and I didn't pack a meal, they are borderline healthy.  A Jimmy John's Unwich sandwich is healthier than eating their normal sandwiches and still tastes amazing!

I am enjoying my healthy meals.

I am enjoying cooking.

I am cooking a bunch at once so I have leftovers for the rest of the week. GENIUS.

I am chopping up veggies as soon as I get home from the grocery store and storing them in Tupperware.  It makes cooking much easier and faster.

I am motivating other people to change their eating habits.

I am slowly but surely losing weight.

My pants feel looser.

Money. Although I spend a lot at the grocery store which is a struggle, I'm spending way less at the mall.  Spending $10 for a meal and a drink or two at the mall each shift? And at 5 shifts a week that's $50/week spent just at the mall.  And now I spend, like, $2.50 if that, on an Americano before my shift.

Energy. It is amazing how much more energy I have now since I started eating healthy so many fruits and veggies and less carbs.

I have to keep focusing on these strengths so I keep up my motivation!

My Struggles

Coffee. I'm very addicted. Not to black, but to yummy fattening coffee drinks. And honestly, I don't plan on 100% quitting.

Chocolate. Addicted. Gotta have it.  Not giving it up for good.

Snacks at work. My boss is nice and likes to bring rice krispie treats and other sugary snacks. Bad.

Working Out. I've always had decent motivation to work out, but lately, not so much.  Working 30 hours a week, taking classes at a community college, and having friends in the nearby college town, I haven't found the motivation to make working out a priority.

Cheesy Bread. It is orgasmic. And impossible to turn down. 

Alcohol. I've been 21 for just over a month.  Yeah, I wanna go out and be social and drink drinks.

Having a set eating schedule. I work at the mall, so my hours aren't set in stone and I take a lunch break when I am told.  It's tough eating 5 small meals a day when I work at the mall.  And also when I sleep till 10:30.

Money. My first two weeks of my diet, I spent over $100 each week at the grocery store.  Eating healthy is NOT cheap.  I've been eating a huge tub of spinach per week, and those are like $5. Bags of frozen meat are like $10. It adds up so darn quickly.  The third week I spent $50 and this past week I spent $40, so it's getting better now that I have staples in the pantry.

I've got the eating decently thing down pretty good, but the social eating and drinking and lack of exercise is where I'm wanting to cheat. I'm sure I have a zillion other struggles. 

I know if I give up chocolate and coffee for good, I'll crack, so sticking to a small coffee a day and a weenie bit of chocolate, its perfect.

Fooooooooood

Honestly, I have never really been much of a cook.  Or, I guess I never really had to be much of a cook. I could do turkey burgers on the stove, pastas, sandwiches, and eventually I learned how to bake chicken, but that was basically all I cooked in college.  Dinners at the mall ALWAYS consisted of Asian chicken and noodles.  It was delicious, but sooo bad.  I am extremely proud of the cook that I have become, and the fact that ever since I started dieting, I haven't had my favorite mall food at all.  I always bring my own food to work, so I'm saving money, and on days when I run out of time, I opt for a Subway chopped salad.

So again, I got these recipes from the fit2fat2fit website in the meal plans.  They are all easy and really yummy. I'll share them, and if anyone ever reads this, I'd be happy to tell you how I cooked each one.

Spinach Shake. So surprisingly tasty.

Baked chicken & steamed green beans

Leftover chicken on a spinach salad with peppers

Fajita meat with peppers on a bed of spinach

My own creation - Shrimp Stir Fry

Baked Chicken & Spinach Salad

This meal was my most proud. Sauteed mushrooms & onions over grilled chicken and pepper jack cheese. 

I'm sure I'll be bragging about other recipes I try, just because I honestly am proud of myself for cooking all this yummy healthy food.  And I'm weirdly excited to keep learning to cook!

Caution! Naked Fat Girl

Just joking. Kinda. These are the photos I have taken thus far. 

216.8 LBs

211

209.4

I need to stay motivated to keep taking pictures.  Hopefully I will start seeing a difference, which will keep motivating me!

My Story

Hi. I'm Lexi. I've always been a little bigger than my friends.  I know i'm "big boned" and that my dad's side of the family is all bigger, but all throughout high school I was pretty fit.  I was a cheerleader, volleyball player, took college classes, and excelled at life.  I always weighed between 160-170.

Around comes real college at a real university, and I'm no longer in sports.  I'm eating whatever I want, living on my own, and being lazy.  I tried to make the gym a priority, but eating on campus food basically made staying healthy impossible.  And being used to 10+ hours of training for competitive cheer leading I wasn't doing nearly enough to keep up with what I was eating.
I knew I was gaining weight since I quit cheer, but I was happy, and didn't really care.

Second year of college rolls around and I'm gaining more weight.  I lived off campus, worked at the mall, ate a lot of mall food, ordered lots of pizza, and went to the gym less.  I told myself I would never let the scale say 200, and one day, it did.  So I started eating healthy.  I did super well for about 3 months.  I was working out atleast once a day, if not more, and I was making better choices and eating less pasta and more chicken breasts.  I logged my work outs and my caloric intake, and I was almost always under my goal. I tried hard.  In those 3 months, I think I lost 6 pounds.  That was extremely discouraging, and I gave up. 
Summer rolled around.  I didn't work out at all, I was working a lot, still living in the college town.  I had less motivation to cook because I was living by myself, and I still ate a lot of my meals at the mall.  I turned 21 at the end of August, and I needed to get a new ID.  I got my picture taken, saw how big my face had gotten compared to my first license picture at age 16, and I started a diet the next day.

I bought a scale, and I hadn't weighed myself in months.  I was a whopping 216.  I had gained 16 pounds that summer. That was sickening. 
And I am now on week 4 of this diet.  I'm doing the fit2fat2fit diet, which tells you what to eat.  It is already difficult for me to lose weight, and not really knowing how to cook, let alone cook healthy, made it extremely hard for me to lose weight the first time I tried.  I've been cooking a lot more, and the meals are EXTREMELY easy, which I am grateful for, and they are tasty.  I look at what I eat and I am baffled at the fact that I am eating and enjoying this veggie stir fry. I haven't really gone hungry, and it seems to be working. 
I lost 5 pounds my first week.  And I had lost 6 pounds in 3 months last time I tried. 
But, being 21 and still having most of my friends in college, I havent stuck to it 100%.  The dude that wrote the meal plans lost 75 pounds in 6 months, and I am by no means trying to do that, so I have been lenient with myself, because I know if i'm not, I will crack.  But having my boyfriend and all my friends living in cheney, the college town, and me living with a roommate half an hour away, I am finding myself constantly at my friends places, drinking beer, ordering pizza, and just not being good on this diet.  This week has been especially bad.  And that is why I have decided to start blogging about it, in hopes that it will help me motivate myself to stay eating healthy and losing weight. I've tried taking pictures of myself throughout the beginning of this journey, and I will continue to do that and post them, even though they are embarrassing.
Hopefully this blog keeps me motivated! When I reach my goal, to lose atleast 30 pounds, maybe even 40, maybe I will share this blog with the world.  Thanks!