A Weight Off My Shoulders {part one}

I have been a little leery of posting any news about my little (well, big) battle with trying to loose weight... I feel like when I start talking about how I am gonna do this or that, or when I talk about what a good job I feel like I am doing, my brain is immediately like, "Ok time to eat pizza".  I just haven't wanted to jinx myself.

Well... today, I will have you know, I literally stood in my kitchen and had a 15 minute argument with myself about ordering a pizza.  And I got over it, and ate a sandwich instead.  Ok... it was 2 sandwiches, and a protein shake.  But it was all very carefully measured and planned out.

See, I have been really trying to stick with using My Fitness Pal and being very mindful about trying to stay within a certain calorie range and also increasing my protein.  What is that calorie range, one might wonder? 1100 calories a day.  Seriously.  And I have been sticking to it, while also managing at least 30 minutes of exercise every day.

1100 calories seems really low, and frankly it completely and utterly sucks to be at that limit.  It is barely any food (well comparatively), but when I got my metabolism checked as part of my trip to the dietitian, in a normal day, my body burns about 1650 calories.  That really is not that many, and I remember having it looked at about 4 years ago, and my body burned 1800 calories a day... so clearly me and my metabolism need to have a chat.

Or else it is because I hit the dreaded 30, and my body is already acting like I am over the hill.  Either way... until my weight lifting pays off, the only way for me to loose the "safe" 2 lbs a week, is to have a calorie deficit of 500 calories per day, and then also burn 500 calories in exercise.

Truthfully, I am not hungry if I eat the right foods.  And my plan, as it stands right now... is that nothing is off limits, as long as I can figure out the calories... and as long as it won't put me too much over my 1100 calorie limit.

Case in point, today's list:
Breakfast:
Protein Shake
Starbucks Americano with cream and Splenda

Lunch:
Pocket thin with tomato sauce and 1 mini Babybel light  (warmed... a 150 calorie Pizza pocket")

Dinner:
PB&J sandwich
PB& olive sandwich (yes, I got this idea from Stephanie Plum, and I am not ashamed)
Protein Shake

Mid-Day Snack:
Popcorn at the movie theater (about 1-2 cups worth)


So why is this working?  I think it is because I don't feel like binging in order to "get all the food in" that I MUST cut out completely and NEVER eat again if I am going to loose weight.  I even ate a wonderful 700 calorie piece of Costco Pizza the other day in their food court... I just adjusted my dinner appropriately, stayed in my range, and didn't feel even a moment of guilt about it!

Progress I tell you... this is progress!