Clean Eating Challenge

Ok, there seems to be a mysterious condition going around that is causing sabotage to our eating. I know I'm not alone here when I admit that my eating this past little while leaves a lot to be desired, causing slight weight gain after such hard work to lose it.

I also know, that I am the same person who was practically flawless in my eating for like almost 90 days straight, so I know I can get ahold of this - who's with me?? 

There is no deadline for sign-ups, anyone can join at any time!!

All you have to do is check in once a week (at least) & let us know how you're doing. If/when you "cheat", simply let us know & I will restart your start date.

A cheat is defined as whatever a cheat would mean to you personally, whether it be going over your calories, bingeing, not eating enough, too many treats, etc. We all know when we've cheated, so just be honest with yourself

Let's be honest with each other & keep each other eating clean k? The PRIZE to the winner? Well that's easy - weight loss!!!!!!!!! (or maintenance for those at that stage!) Let's do this!

Dee

********************************************* ***

Here's the list of all signed up & the new rules:
(let me know if I missed you)

If you lose your mind & cheat, just let me know. Then you can re-start from the next day. I'll simply unbold your name, along with updating your new start date.

After being clean for a week after a re-start, I'll re-bold your name. So you always have a chance to feel like you are succeeding. 

Also, if you just don't feel like you want to partake in the challenge anymore, can you let me know so I can remove your name from the list? Thanks!!

Anyone not checking in for one week (December 25 - December 31) will be removed from the challenge.

Good luck all! People's names in bold have been going the longest or have not restarted for at least a week - way to go!!!!!!!!

1. cerhiunnhn - hiatus Jan 30
2. chanb73 - Dec 10 - 3rd Place, Congrats!!!!! 
3. deejlb - Oct 27  - 1st Place, Congrats!!!!! 
4. emmylou - Dec 17
5. ewwxroflzz - Dec 9 - 2nd Place, Congrats!!!!!  
6. healthnut24 - Dec 15
7. jennlett - Dec 14 
8. madronam - Dec 15
9. nancy1967 - hiatus
10. s57chevy - Dec 17 
11. shadowmystika - Dec 20
12. skinnyogi - Dec 18

re define Clean Eating? I don't know I say Clean Eating is sort of controlling your lifestyle including diet and just giving your body what it deserves.

Ok do I like set a date for my clean eating or whatever? Well I'm starting today so.....

hananabanana- February 19th

I'm feeling ok today SO FAR. I've got some mantras I'm going to recite to myself when I feel like failing:

for diet:

loose weight, feel great!

better to restrain than remorse

nothing tastes as good as skinny feels

a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips

for exercise:

pain is only weakness leaving the body

it takes courage to start, patience to train, wisdom to rest, faith to finish

never give yourself cause to say "I will do better tomorrow"

 

Anyone have any mantras they try to live by when they're feeling down?

-hananabanana

 

Start me over *sigh*

I swear. I take my cold medicine and then get all munchy and careless. Darn you TRIX! 

start me over... I was an idiot to up the cal up to like 2,000 cal on mom's pastry desserts and my dad's nephew bringing cake. UGGH...

I'm in, starting yesterday. I too have been sabotaging the hell out of myself lately. My goal for the end of February was to be down 20 lbs (from the new year, when I got back on track with weight loss.) I'm at 15 lbs down, after being stuck for a while. I'm game! 

what are your plans of actions pjdrive?

right now, I have been calorie cycling, then low carbing it when I get to a plateau... I lost about 30 in the last year due to atkins and muscle building and cardio, but when school started last semester, I had trouble with roommates and friends constantly cooking stuff that was either too high in calories or non carb, so I didn't get anywhere further than that. This semester I'm trying to make sure I stick to it, diet wise at least, cause my schedule doesn't allow for a lot of time working out. :/
My ultimate goal is to be at least under the severely obese line by my 25th birthday (June of next year.)

uggh I hate the influence of others.. I mean if we lived by ourselves some of us at least would be eating great and loosing weight.

Someone gave me a brilliant idea.. why not create good habits that counter act bad habits... like what are some bad habits you have that make you gain weight, stress, eat alot, sit on your butt doing nothing...

Here are mine:

Eat when bored or stressed

Sit on the computer during weekends and researching

Do nothing but go to school, run, homework, eat, sleep

On weekends I eat too much in the morning then when it comes to dinner I don't have enough calorie allowance for what my mom made.... She mostly cooks in the mid afternoon/ night. Like she would make lentil soup and rice and veggie stir fry (from the package) at like 2-3 then at like 5/6/7 she would make a dessert or something.

On school days I barely eat during the day and once I get home I stuff my face on the food my mom makes...

Let cravings tell me what to eat and then afterwards I feel guilty so I eat something healthy like an apple and then I'm satisfied but the junk food is right there so I eat that and then back to healthy then water but then water has no taste so the cycle goes on again.

Try to cook my own food but always teak the recipe so it's healthier but then it turns out gross. I wasted like 10 cups of oats trying to make really healthy tasty granola bars.

I mostly stay inside and use the excuse "I have homework" to stay away from outside.

Sometimes procrastinate so I have too much homework to handle at once.

Am a perfectionist and once I screw up I let that carry for the rest of the day; "All or nothing"

___

I think if we find our bad habits and review our day we can find something good to do to counter act it. Man I am so glad danceswithforks told me this idea!

-hananabanana 

 

oh good lord.

I think probably I should start listing the bad habits I have, so I can be more aware of them and don't let them be all stealthy sneaky on me.

copying from yours a bit, hanana :D

eat when bored or stressedSit on the computer during weekends and researching

Do nothing but go to school, run, homework, eat, sleep

On weekends I eat too much in the morning then when it comes to dinner I don't have enough calorie allowance for what my roommates want

Try to cook my own food but always teak the recipe so it's healthier but then it turns out gross. (My roommates have had to recook, plenty of times, but I'm not such a hot chef in the first place lol )

Sometimes procrastinate so I have too much homework to handle at once.

Am a perfectionist and once I screw up I let that carry for the rest of the day; "All or nothing"

not setting aside a time to actually work out,

as soon as I get to a point where I can break through and have a new low weight wise, I sabotage myself for some dumb reason or another, or I feel like I have been depriving myself and I celebrate a little too early and too much.


Gah. That last one really hits the nail on the head. Like yesterday for instance. I was at a new low (been stuck at 285 for like, a week or two) and yesterday I had gotten down to 282, so I drank last night, (Low carb low cal Rolling Rock Green Light) and ended up binging on some oreos. Gar. Not a lot though, but enough to make the fact that I looked for low carb low cal beer ridiculous. I wouldn't call it a complete cheat or loss though, cause I ate really well for the other part of the day, and I don't think 7 or 8 oreos can really cause that much damage.


Anyways! Will be eating well today.


 Thanks for the idea Hanana!

The weekends are really killing me.  It was doughnut city this weekend. -sigh-

Restart on Feb. 23!!

 

 

 

 

Here are some tips I got from a friend...

after school shower, dress in pjs, drink some hot tea

load your cereal with tons of BERRIES

Take a chill pill (for me personally)

Fix the bad and all the good will follow (weight loss should be like a by product or something)

Anyway... I'm trying to figure out all the good habits there are out there that could help a person to loose some weight but not really have to focus on that. I feel like the light has shed on me and the truth is coming alive. I was on calorie count for like a year before I actually started participating in the forums and that stuff. Now I'm just so happy I've been doing that! =D.

Have a great weekend you guys!

-H.B 

Oh and also did you guys read the weight loss forum "How I lost 167 pounds". It's so inspiring!

Haha bringing me into the mix?

Clean! Where has dee been to update the chart? It's been rough being clean lately, but I've NO doubt I'm back on track.

Hanana ~ Your friends tips are awesome. I'm a true believer that a lot of binge eating is due to stress. If you take a bath and have some time for yourself after a stressful day, it washes the binging away. ;)

still clean. Glad to see some of us are still making use of this forum as I think It would be a shame to let something and as informative go to waste!

Hanana said : Fix the bad and all the good will follow (weight loss should be like a by product or something)

This is sooooooooooo true. I didn't really start getting on the right path until I got strong enough to get out of a horrible relationship. It's the same reason I'm holding off for a relationship right now, even though I have several possibilities, cause I know myself too well, and that as soon as I start dating someone, all my diet rules and what not go right out the window!
Stress and emotional eating are big things for me too, so the rule still applies. :D

Thank you for the tips hanana!

@hanana : Can you link that 160lbs forum link?

thank danceswithforks... she's been e-mailing me and helping me. Guys I was a bad girl today and it was so STRESSFUL I swear I screwed myself up. But when I drank the hot tea I'll tell you that curved my appetite DRAMATICALLY. Btw... cashew nuts make me full easily.. have you guys noticed how filling nuts can be?

link: http://caloriecount.about.com/forums/post/360 18.html

I need to figure out more good habits to learn... anyone have any ideas other than the shower/ tea idea?

Anyway here's how my day went.. it was the worst...-.- (this is going to be long):

I come home from school at around 5:45pm and I vaguely knew that today (Monday) we're going to the restaruant with my cousin and that stuff. So today I did something I think I should stop doing... I starved myself for the day so then when I get to the restaurant I would be able to go stuff my face off.

I get home and I notice my mom made chili. The family is all like "Why have you come so late?" and I tell them I took the bus. Little did I know they CALLED the school so that I could end my track practice early just to go to dinner. What the hell? 

Anyway I did hear my name on the speaker but I sort of ignored it and went to track anyway. Horrible day. I was so slow and my hips/ shins were hurting it just wasn't going good. I went to the trainer and got my lifting in and realized I have weak hips so yeah now I have to work out my hips and all. I didn't get my sit ups in which I will have to work on.

I'm home and everyone is getting ready. They tell me I don't have to change much because we have to go soon so I go to the kitchen and eat: 1 small apple, some spoon fulls of chili, sip of Special K protein water (my dad bought... it's actually tasty and per bottle it's like 5g protein... not a lot but good), and like some cashews which I would estimate I had about 1/8 cup. 

So we're ready and I go and pack a bag of more cashews. I estimated that in total I ate about 1/2 cup of cashews. They were VERY filling I'll tell you that and I read online or somewhere that when going to a restaurant you don't want to be too hungry so you don't over eat so I decided to go on nuts since they are filling.

We're going and I kept telling my dad it's really snowy out and that we should post pone for Sunday. He attempts to keep driving and we hit my cousins house (not too far from us) and tell him we've changed plans. He invites him to our house for pizza.

I should have mentioned that on my birthday a former teacher gave me a $20 gift card to Pizza Hut. Go figure. EVERY FRIDAY we get pizza from Dominiks... you know the grocery store that's like Jewel. I wonder if they have it in Ohio.

I start arguing like "Mom already made chili and we always get pizza every Friday. This is wasting my gift card here" I gave them my gift card only 'cause I didn't know what I could have used it on. Now I realize I could have kept it and just go out with friends with it or something. I tried to invite people but no one goes to Pizza Hut now so I mean... yeah it was a total waste.

My mom makes my dad take her, me, and my two little sisters home because I kept arguing my case. I was right about not going to the restaurant today because a) a school day b) it's a friggin blizzard out there who would go out in this weather just for dinner? Whatever they didn't listen and I go home mad but starving a little (I wasn't starving too much and this is where my error came.) and Eat 2 cups of chili, bread, cold cereal, banana (sliced in cereal bowl and put some in my tea.... ) 1 tbs honey for tea, tea cookies. 

Then my dad comes home with pizza hut. I don't eat the pizza but there's tempting cinnamon sticks. I eat 3 with some of the icing sauce. Then I go into the kitchen and get a half cup worth moose tracks ice cream (about one scoop) and I put some soy milk in it to make like a bit of a milk shake. My sister then offers me some of her pizza and I eat some of it. Then I take a few more bites out of another. I estimate that to be about 1 slice of medium size cheese pizza.

Personally Pizza Hut isn't that great. They have like a sweet tomato sauce they use which makes it a little weird. I think Pizza Hut was meant to satisfy the taste buds of pregnant women. You know how when they get all like binging and emotional and weird with food... yeah that's what Pizza Hut reminds me of. But the cinnamon sticks were good.

That brought me up to 2,108 cal....

that's my total for today.... *sigh*

anyone have a story like that and learn anything from it? 

 

Clean since Feb 18.

I am eating well, and losing a lot.  Check my journal for my progress.  Two majorly huge pictures...

I've been pretty darn clean since February 23.

Yay for me~ lots of fruits and veggies and nuts since then.  I've cut down on more processed foods.

I am starting new today!

Still clean! Its starting to get nice(r) here so I've started running too!