Losing The Baby Weight Part 2

Well it is official, 2011 has begun and it's time that I start getting serious about losing this baby weight. You might remember my first post about the weight gain I had during pregnancy, I gained a total of 50 pounds. Since that blog it's been almost 20 days and I have managed only to lose 1/2 pound. In my defense though, the last few weeks are some of the biggest eating holidays of the year!

The new year is all about starting new and this year's resolution is to lose this baby weight! Luckily, I won't be fighting this battle alone. My husband has gained 20 pounds since we moved from Texas, which was two years ago, and he too wants to lose his extra weight. So hand in hand, we decided to make it our 2011 goal to lose this weight together. It makes it so much easier when you have both partners working together.

Our strategy: calorie counting and exercise. Many people are not huge fans of calorie counting, but it has worked for me in the past and I am sure it will work again...I mean it's just plain science.

We first start out by determining our calorie intake. I use the Mayo Clinic website, I figure that the Mayo clinic provides the most accurate and healthy number of calories. This number is very important because it determines how many calories you can consume without gaining weight (in theory). If you want to lose weight one pound equals 3,500 calories. To lose one pound you must burn 3,500 more calories than you are consuming or reduce your calorie intake by 3,500 calories. So to aim for weight loss of one pound per week, you would reduce calories by 500 per day. This is going to sound like a repeat because I have blogged about this before.

With the awesome new technology, there are several apps/websites out there that can help you track your calories. We really like myfitnesspal.com, which has a handy little app for the Droids.

We can either record our calorie intake on the website or the app, so it works great for us. MyFitnessPal is free to use and interface is very user-friendly. They have a ton of food listed in their database and you have the option for adding your own recipe to calculate it's calories. And if you want bragging rights, it has all the normal things built in...facebook feeds, message boards, buttons, and even your own blog. (You can read mine here, but I just started it.)

Here's my button:

The key to calorie counting is to plan your meals. I have found in the past, that planning meals is vital for eating healthy. If not, you end up coming home and throwing together some high calorie, pasta dish or worse yet fast food! There are several websites out there that allow you to search for recipes by calories. That is usually the easiest way to narrow down the massive amount of recipes online. I will be posting recipes on this blog as well that are low calorie and delicious.

All of my healthy items will have this lovely little image on them to denote they are healthy.

The other part of the weight loss will be to exercise. This has been the hardest for me since having a baby. Sometimes I just don't have the energy and I have to force myself to workout. I just have to keep reminding myself that it takes a couple weeks of exercising regularly to adjust to it and all of a sudden you will have a ton of energy. It's true! To keep the workout from becoming mundane, I read lots of fitness magazines- self, shape, and fitness. Studies have shown that reading these magazines help keep you more motivated to work out.

Well, that is my strategy or losing the baby weight. I would love any other suggestions readers might have on how they lost the weight, also any motivation would be much welcomed. Wish me luck with the 26 pounds I have to lose in 2011!

~Beth