Food Diary

Hey guys, I know I am a bad blogger. You can kind of see that from my track record. I think I may use this blog to post what I eat on the days I feel like posting, although I'll try to make this fairly consistent. When I get un-lazy I may even start taking pictures of my meals/snacks :)

Daily calorie goal: 1,430 (to lose 1 pound a week)

Breakfast: 270 Calories
2 dippy eggs
1/2 C of Hashbrowns (just natural potatoes, no grease)
2 pieces of turkey bacon

Lunch: ~400 (I didn't exactly measure everything, so 400 is on the high end. I didn't drink the whole smoothie either because it turned out to be huge and VERY filling.)
Green Monster made of...

• ~1 or 1.5 C baby spinach
• 1 C nonfat Greek yogurt (23 grams of protein per cup!!!)
• 1 T sunflower seed butter (OMG amazing)
• 1 frozen banana
• 1 C frozen peaches
• ~1 C almond milk (maybe less)

Dinner: TBA, but I have ~730 calories to play with for the rest of the day.

Seriously, if you haven't made a Green Monster yet- go do it now! You can't even taste the spinach! To find out more about it go visit the official website www.greenmonstermovement.com :)

Great Day to be Alive!

So guys, about 2 weeks ago I posted about my heartbreaking breakup. Well, I actually feel really good now! I've been leaning on my faith in God, and it really has done wonders for my morale. I just want to shout from the rooftops how great I feel! I know breaking up was the right thing to do, and we can move on and be friends.

I'm excited to start grad school next month and am so excited to see what this next chapter of my life holds.

It's so funny because I thought that when I was 22, I'd be planning a wedding or already be married. Obviously, life didn't turn out that way. And I am a-okay with that. I have never been more at peace with anything in my entire life.

Life is amazing and I am excited to see what is in store for me!

Trials and Tribulations

Sorry for the (once again) hiatus from posting here, guys. To be honest, there are multiple reasons. For one, I've been very busy. Two, I've just also been...lazy, for lack of a better word.

Lately, life has been anything but rainbows and butterflies. A few days ago, my boyfriend (of 3 and a half years) and I mutually decided it was best to end our relationship. Since this is a public domain and all, I don't feel the whole freakin world deserves to know why. Our breakup was one of the most mature conversations we've ever had and it remained amicable, albeit super hard. I would argue this is the HARDEST thing I have ever had to do, and the hardest thing I've ever had to endure. I am just thankful that we are going to remain friends and do not harbor any resentment or bitterness towards each other. We both knew it had to happen (for our own personal reasons), so there's no sense in hate, bitterness, or resentment.

I've had my fair share of tears, emotional tirades, and doubts over the course of 3 days. I can't even begin to describe how much pain I'm in (mostly emotionally, but some of that emotional pain has manifested physical symptoms, such as a literally heavy-feeling heart), and this is by far the most pain and hurt I've ever felt. I wouldn't wish this kind of pain on ANYBODY.

Today happens to be one of those days I just feel "ok" with things. I have a feeling that I'll have to take this whole thing day by day because I absolutely know that I will not feel "ok" every day. I mean for God's sake, we were together 3 and a half years! I haven't been single since I was 18. I'll be 22 in 5 days and this is the first time I've been single as an adult. It's going to take a long time for me to adjust to all this change.

To top it all off, I move to a new city in exactly 7 weeks from today. Granted, it's to start grad school (one of my major life goals/dreams), but I hate hate HATE uprooting my life. On the other hand, I think it will be good for my healing process to start fresh in a new town at a new college where nobody knows me as "Court's girlfriend" and nobody will ask "OMG Y'ALL BROKE UP! WHYYYYYY?". This will give me a chance to gain more friendships and to pour my heart and soul into other things.

I'm really taking this time to lean on God. There has never been a rough moment in my life that God hasn't carried me through, and I don't believe that will change. I think God realized that with my almost nonstop crying for 2 consecutive days I needed a break today. So far, today has been alright. I haven't cried at all, so that's a step in the right direction. I also believe God has the right man picked out for me and will introduce said man into my life when He deems fit to do so.

But, WOW. Life is NOT what I thought it would be at this age. I always figured by age 22 I would either be married or at least planning a wedding and living out my "happily ever after". Needless to say, life didn't turn out the way I expect. That's definitely one lesson I learned from all this.

Everything will be alright. I just have to take it one day at a time until the day comes that I am TRULY at peace with this breakup. I look forward to the day where I can say I feel no pain and can move forward with my life. For now, I'm going to pour myself into strengthening my relationship with God, working out, eating better (both to lose weight), kicking BUTT in school, work (a graduate assistantship I got with the school I'm going to) and getting plugged into a few organizations.

Trigger foods

So as any of you who have struggled nearly all their lives with weight, you know that there is always a list (large or small) of trigger foods. I define trigger foods as the following:

Trigger foods- certain types of food that once they are around, you can't say no to eating them; once you start eating them, you can't stop at just "a little"- foods that trigger you to binge (on that certain food or foods)

I think a lot of you know what I'm talking about. For instance, if I order pizza, I can eat nearly the whole thing in one sitting most of the time. Tonight I ate the whole thing in one sitting (the only redeeming qualities were the thin whole-wheat crust and that it was covered in veggies and less cheese than usual). Another occasion is either when I make cookies or someone else makes cookies. I can't just eat one or two and feel satisfied. I have to eat like 4 or 5- you know, when I feel like I'm about to lapse into a sugar coma.

I don't binge-eat on EVERYTHING I eat- just a select number of foods.

Tonight after eating a whole pizza (even though it was as healthy as a pizza can be made), I have decided to stop eating trigger foods altogether, at least until I can get control of my eating habits. To start small, I'm going to make myself go at least a week without any trigger foods. My list of trigger foods is as follows:

Stephanie's List of Trigger Foods

• Pizza
• Mac & Cheese
• Pasta (of any kind)
• Cookies (especially peanut butter, sugar, or chocolate chip)
• Bread (the white, processed "crap" kind- whole wheat doesn't trigger me to overeat)
• Chips
• Rice (only white rice- brown rice doesn't taste good enough for me to binge on)

Here's to kicking my trigger food habit once and for all. Maybe one day I can be one of those people with a healthy perspective on eating the things they like to eat, just in small quantities.

Here are 3 questions I have for those of you who can relate.

1. What are YOUR trigger foods?
2. How do you cope with the urge to binge when they are around?
3. Have you ever overcame the problem of binging on "trigger" foods? If so, how did you do it?

One step at a time

So, after weeks and weeks of beating myself up about the fact that I let myself gain back the 25 pounds I lost (plus one or two more pounds) and weeks of wishing I would just eat a perfect diet 100% of the time, I decided to let that go today.

I got in all my veggie/fruit servings today and all my veggies even happened to be green! I have had tons of protein, all lean sources from chicken and eggs. Hey, they say green veggies have the most nutrients, right? After work, I leashed my dog up and went for a walk in the beautiful sunlight.

At dinner, I had 2 pieces of white bread- you know, the processed, bad-for-you kind. And you know what? I didn't beat myself up for it. For the past couple months, I'll set out at the beginning of the day to eat perfectly healthy all day. When I slip up, I beat myself up (mentally) and just gorge on more unhealthy food. Counterproductive, right? I wish I could be as logical with my food choices and my relationship with food as I am in other aspects of life.

I believe a big part of being healthy physically is being mentally healthy, too. It's something I'm trying to work on. With all the crap that's been going on with me lately in my personal life (not gonna get into it all on here, aside from what I said a few posts ago), it's been really, REALLY, REALLY hard to get my head back in the weight loss game.

I'm going to try to take it one step at a time- one meal at a time, one snack at a time, one day at a time.

If I knew then what I know now...

Stress and (lack of) weight-loss

This is going to be a short post because I just have one question to ask.

How do you get your head in the game to lose weight when you're going through all these stressful life changing events? All I want to do is stress eat.

Any answers appreciated, the more honest (and helpful) the better!