Fat Friday – Week 2: Eat Less…

Shoot for the moon.. no pun intended!

Our FIRST Fat Friday weigh in of 2011!!!

How EXCITING!!!

Last week, we started at ZERO.

Now let’s post those numbers!

And remember… honest is the best policy. However, if you’ve had an off week, feel free to note a “pass” for the week and still join in the discussion. I understand. I have those weeks too… usually about once per month, but that’s TMI so we won’t go there:-) (It’s all water weight, and that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!)

Krista’s Numbers: 

This week:                  – 3 pounds
Total Fat Friday loss: – 3 pounds
Total Weight loss:      -17 pounds

Scott (my handsome, becoming skinny hubby)’s numbers: 

This week:                  – 2 pounds
Total Fat Friday loss: – 2 pounds
Total Weight loss:      – 31 pounds

So YEAH for progress!!!

Everyone has different “methods” for losing weight. Mine this time around is simple:

There you have it folks! The secret to weightloss, simple as that!

Today, I’m focusing on how to “Eat Less.”

Just like not having a flexible schedule kills me, not having flexible eating habits will equal weight-loss failure for me. Everyone is different though. Some need a strict regimine they can follow, and voila, the weight comes off.

My husband and I decided to “count calories” to try to accomplish this. At first I was nervous. Do I REALLY have time to count calories? REALLY REALLY?

But after the first couple of days, it became kinda fun. We gave ourselves a 1500 calorie per day limit. Within that limit, we pretty much eat what we want. But I know when I eat something “bad” it wastes a lot of my calories which means I get to eat less. So I am always on a quest to find the “cheapest” calorie food, so I can get the most bang for my count!

We started off using a notebook to keep track of the days calories. But then we realized…

There’s an APP for that!

That’s right, the calorie tracking app!

The one I use is myfitnesspal, but there are a bunch of other free ones out there. My hubby uses a different one that he likes that is just called “Calorie Tracker.”

On MyFitnessPal, you can track your “do more” too, although I haven’t progressed to that level of fancy yet.

I like it because it adds the calories for me. If you have a smart-phone with a camera, you can scan barcodes and it automatically pops in the calorie and nutrition content of the food you are about to partake of. You can note how many servings you want too! You can also search for food by name, or enter your own in manually. It’s GREAT if you’re going out to eat, that’s what would always kill us when we tried to calorie count. Before, I was doing a lot of Googling for calorie counts!

You can also track your weight in it too. It gives you a fun graph so you can see your progress (makes for easy Fat Friday reporting!)

You can ALSO “friend” people… yeah, like we need another place for that! But… it’s a way to encourage each other and share your progress (and get a kick in the pants when you blow it!) I’ve yet to friend anyone, so don’t know how that part works really, but I’m kristaphillips if you decide to try it!

OH! And if you don’t have a handy dandy app phone… you can also use their online version at myfitnesspal.com as well.

Are you sitting there telling me about how LITTLE time you have and how much work this sounds? I gotta tell you, it takes me maybe 10 minutes at the most out of the day, and usually it’s less than 5. Really truly. Somedays it is more (and if you have complicated recipes, it might be… I cook simple!) but you can also “save” recipes in there so if you have a famous lasagna you make, you can enter it in there and calc the calories and save it for next time, so you only do the work once.

And no, they aren’t paying me to say this, it’s just really helped me when I switched from “on paper” tracking by saving a BUNCH of time. But if paper is your thing, go for it!

Calorie counting isn’t for everyone, I know. What works for one might totally be a failure to another. Regardless of how you do it, to lose weight, you have to eat less calories. Bottom line!


Discussion: How are YOU doing the “eat less” part of Fat Friday? Is there a diet you’re trying? A method you’re using? Share what is working (or not working!) for you!