Goodbye to the 70's!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So today was weigh in day for Week 2.  I didn't want to have a repeat of Week 1's small weight loss, so I pushed it hard this last week and......It went MUCH BETTER!  My weight loss for Week 2 was 4 pounds.  Woot woot!  So now my total weight loss is 5 pounds in 2 weeks.  AND!!!!!!!!  I am no longer in the 270s pound range.  My weight today is 269 pounds.  I will NEVER EVER see 270 pounds again for the rest of my life!  I am super stoked! 

WHAT DID I DO DIFFERENT THIS LAST WEEK?
 
Food wise, I tried to meet my Recommended Dietary Intake (RDI) or be under it everyday.  My RDI is 1800 calories for slow moderate weight loss.  My goal is to be between 1600-1800 calories for my of a range.  Most of the week I was under or about at 1600 calories.  But not only did I try to keep my calories to meet my RDI but I tried to make sure I was choosing healthier options. 
Another food mile stone that I conquered this week was that I learned to say "no thank you" to foods offered to me that I knew would inhibit my goals.  Before I would just say "okay" and then try to compensate later, which typically doesn't work and you typically go above your goal amount.  But with just saying "no" it was much easier to keep to my goals.  I avoided high calorie and fat treats at work, eating out (didn't get the delicious looking cookie at the Soup Kitchen), no desserts at church activities, had healthy snacks at my LOST finale party, etc, etc.  The other good part is that I noticed my friends and coworkers are just getting to the point that they don't offer those foods to me as much, which really helps.  So THANK YOU everyone for your help in this.  You all ROCK!

But don't worry!  I have also found some great alternatives to satisfy the sweet cravings and needs.  There are the good ol' rice cakes that have been greatly improved.  Angie introduced me to the mini caramel flavored rice cakes.  They are a great after dinner treat that are only 60 calories for 7 mini rice cakes.  Deanna introduced me to Skinny Cow.  I LOVE ice cream, so these are perfect.  So far I have tried the ice cream sandwiches (chocolate on chocolate and vanilla on chocolate) which have only 140 calories per ice cream sandwich.  I have also tried the Mint Truffle Ice Cream bar which only has 100 calories.  Both are delicious and a great after dinner or even post work out treat.  Thanks to Angie and Deanna for these great low calorie discoveries!

I also have been much better at tracking my calories on Fat Secret.com.  I've been trying to log my foods after every main meal so that I can be aware of my calories throughout the day.   It makes it much easier to decide what to eat and how much you can still eat when you know how many calories are left for the day.  This website is awesome!  I know I've talked about it before but you SERIOUSLY need to check it out, whether you need to lose weight or not.  Today when I put in my new weight I told me that I could meet my total weight loss goal of 120 pounds if I continue to lose weight at the same rate in 7 months!!!!!  It was a great motivator! 

Exercise has definitely changed this last week.  Before I used to only do 30 minutes of moderate to high intensity cardio.  Then I would follow my cardio up with 30 minutes of weight training using heavy weights.  Well this last week I increased my cardio to be 60 minutes and I have been trying to do more interval training to target more fat burning.  I am still trying to do 30 minutes of weights after too, but I have been using lighter weights and am doing the same amount of reps in hopes that I will tone instead of build muscle.  So hopefully this is what my body needs to lose weight efficiently and  will continue to work for awhile.   

Game plan for Week 3!!!!!!

So to keep up the 4 pound weight loss or more per week goal (cross your fingers for me!) I am going to try to be sure to increase my workouts to be everyday except for Sunday.  This last week I only worked out on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Monday.  I am hoping if I can at least do something physically active each day it might help keep the weight loss on track.  We'll see how this holiday weekend will affect that.  I am 99.9% sure I am going to Las Vegas on Saturday (so lots of driving!) but you always do walk a lot in Vegas, so hopefully I can count that.  But we are hoping to also do some hiking in Zions too. 

I am also going to continue with the goal to meet my RDI (1600-1800 calories) or be under my RDI on a daily basis.  With the road trip I am going to be sure to pack healthy snacks that won't kill my caloric intake too! 

So there you have it!  Week 2 was a complete success!  I am so excited and even more motivated than I was after having a terrible Week 1.  Thank you all for your words of encouragement and support.  I really appreciate it.  Good luck to all of those out there trying to lose weight and get healthy too.  I know you can do it!  I kind of gave up for it being possible for me but I have already lost 5 pounds in 2 weeks and I feel great about it.  Slow and steady wins the race!!!!!

One Down!!!!!!

The title has more meaning than just one week down.  So today was our weigh in.  I was very nervous because I checked my weight last Thursday and I was the same weight.  Then I had a busy weekend and didn't have a set work out on Saturday or Sunday, so I was scared that I would either still be the same or even had gained weight.

Well this morning I checked my weight and I was down one pound.  So my current weight is now 273#.  Now of course I was hoping for more.  Who wouldn't after the week I had?   Last week as you can see on the exercise log on the right hand of the page, I worked out at least an hour or more everyday except Saturday and Sunday.  I also tracked my calories.  My overall goal is to be between 1600-1800 calories each day.  I did pretty good for the most part.  Here is what last week's caloric intake was:

Mon 17th: 1972 kcals
fat: 69.67g  protein: 79.08g   carbs: 274.18g

Sun 16th: 1768 kcals
fat: 69.15g   protein: 72.87g   carbs: 230.28g

Sat 15th: 2359 kcals
fat: 106.65g   protein: 92.92g   carbs: 229.96g

Fri 14th: 1707 kcals
fat: 54.19g   protein: 117.81g   carbs: 203.29g

Thu 13th: 1580 kcals
fat: 67.76g   protein: 88.57g   carbs: 174.44g

Wed 12th: 1512 kcals
fat: 35.13g   protein: 59.84g   carbs: 247.25g

Tue 11th: 1614 kcals 
fat: 46.52g  protein: 107.19g  carbs: 184.24g

Saturday turned out to not be so great.  The downfall????  I ate out twice.  But when I was eating out I thought I was picking some better options.  But not quite the case.  Plus I didn't eat breakfast on Saturday so I think I overcompensated too much with lunch and dinner.  But overall my calories were within my goal range for 5 out of the 7 days.  Yet, I still only had a one pound weight loss.  Time for a new game plan for this week.
 
THE NEW GAME PLAN:
 
So this week I am planning on working out everyday, except for Sunday.  I was only doing 30 minutes of cardio and 30 minutes of weight training.  Now I plan to do 60 minutes of cardio.  I also am going to adjust my weight training.  I have been lifting heavier weight than what I think I should have.  So I am going to cut the amount of weight I typically lift in half and do 3 sets of 12 reps.  That way it will be more of toning than muscle building (let's be real, I definitely don't need to add more bulk). 
 
For the diet I am going to be better about tracking my caloric intake throughout the day instead of at the end of the day.  That way I can adjust my eating as needed.  Which actually worked really well today.  I knew I only had about 250 calories left for dinner, so I stuck to some Weight Control Banana Bread oatmeal (160 calories) and a fat free homemade muffin (about 130 calories).  I LOVE the Weight Control Banana Bread oatmeal.  It is SO yummy and totally fills you up.  The muffins are to be used for breakfast the rest of the week so I can eat on the run and jump start my metabolism first thing in the morning.  I didn't add any oil or eggs to the mix and they still turned out great.  Yay for blueberry poppyseed lemon muffins.  Yum yum! 
 
So, not quite the success that I wanted this week with the weight loss.  But at least it was a negative number, right?  I will let you know how next week goes.  And let you know more along the way.  Now get out there and do something to make you feel good (Yup!  Stole that from the BL theme song!).

UNLEASH THE SKINNY GIRLS!!!!!!!!

So my coworkers (who are also great friends) and I are doing a public weight loss competition now.  It's between Angie, Ashley, and I.  We are all obese dietitians, and we're all about the same body weight and BMI based on our heights and weight, which will make it an even competition.  We are all dietitians who are ready to practice what we preach and unleash the skinny girls. 

We have made posters that each of us have hung up in a public area of our offices.  The posters list each of our names and each Tuesday we are going to write down our pounds of weight lost and also our % body weight lost.  The idea is that all of our coworkers will see it and hopefully it will be motivating to have the numbers get bigger and bigger so we don't embarrass ourselves in front of everyone.  So far it has worked great for me (it has only  been two days!).  It's working because every morning I see it when I walk into work and it reminds me of my goals to eat healthy throughout the day.  As I leave to go home for lunch it is right there to remind me to eat healthy.  And as I leave to go home it's there again!  We are going to track our weight loss at least through the summer and hopefully for a year. 

Another thing we are doing is tracking our food intake and exercise on the online program, Fatsecret.com.  So far I really like the program.  It has a good food database to look up the foods that you eat to track calories.  It lists out a variety of brands and options to choose from, you then put in the serving size, and it lists your nutritional intake for each of the foods.  The program also lets you enter your exercise and it estimates, based on your weight/ height, how many calories you would have burned.  Another great part is it's a social network that allows friends (Angie and Ashley) to see my food intake and exercise.  We can send each other e-mails for encouragement and motivation.  If you want to join and be friends, let me know!  Let's help each other be healthier!

I am really excited for this competition.  Even though it is a competition, I want us all to be successful in our weight loss attempts.  I think we all deserve it and that this is going to be a great opportunity for each of us.  I am grateful that Ashley and Angie are willing to do this with me.  I am grateful for my family's support in my weight loss efforts too (plus I have to be able to run the 5K for our family reunion this year!  YIKES!).  I am also grateful to my close friends for their support in helping me keep on track on a day to day basis.  Lastly I am grateful for the opportunity to try out for the Biggest Loser.  Even though I didn't get on the show, the opportunity has provided me great motivation to do it on my own.  I'm not going to be skinny enough to try out for the show again.  It's my time!

I WILL BE the Biggest Loser.......

just not on the national television show! Sad, but true!


So FIRST, I should update all of you that have no idea what has been going on the past month or so. At the end of March, the Biggest Loser had an open casting call here in Salt Lake City. My good friend and coworker wanted to try out and offered me to try out with her as a team. We thought it would be perfect. Two overweight dietitians on the Biggest Loser. What could be better? We have the knowledge of what we should do and need to do to lose weight, yet we both are substantially overweight. So, after making fantastic bright pink shirts with sparkly lettering saying "I Don't Practice What I Preach" we went down to the KSL studio to try out. We stood in line and met a bunch of awesome people who all should have been given the chance to be on the show. After standing in line for 6+ hours we went in for the casting. They had two large tables that each of the casting directors were at. Ten people were at the table and we had 7 minutes to pretty much say who we were. The first question was just to say your name, age, current weight, where you are from, and what you did for a living. The next question was about what your food vice was. Everyone around the table talked about loving specific foods but I told them about how my life is centered around food! I talk about it at work all day and then it's present at every activity I do. (That's right, I am a SOCIAL EATER! It needs to stop!) So then after 7 minutes the casting director told us all good job and said to be sure to answer a phone call from an out of state number in case they called for a 2nd interview later that day or the next.


After about 2 hours, I got the second phone call. I was SO STOKED! I just kept saying, "Holy Crap!" They said that they were really interested in doing a second interview with me and set up an appointment. I then went to Park City the next morning. I was talking with the casting director, DJ, as we were walking up to the suite. He told me that I should feel proud about even getting the 2nd call back. I was one of twenty who were selected from 1600+ people in Salt Lake to have a 2nd call back. He told me that he called me 2 1/2 hours before they even got done interviewing because he knew that he wanted to hear my story. He also said that one of his main reasons for picking me was that I was pretty as an overweight girl and that they like to have pretty people on TV, especially since he knew I would be smoking hot once they helped me lose the weight and America would want to be like me. Yes, my ego was definitely boosted at that point. We then had a one on one interview in their hotel suite. It was both of the main casting directors (DJ and Barb), me, and a large TV camera. (Kind of intimidating, I'm not going to lie!) We talked about EVERYTHING! We talked about growing up, high school, dance team, college, getting overweight while being in the dietetics program, gaining 100+ pounds while I was married (it's true!) for 18 months, being an obese divorcee back in the dating scene, being an overweight dietitian, and on and on and on. It was INTENSE!!! We laughed, we got serious, and we cried. It was a great experience. They told me that I did an awesome job. It was exactly what they were looking for and that my story was totally different from a lot of the other contestants. But they also encouraged me to not count on it. Just maintain the weight until I heard something and then if I didn't hear anything to move on and do it on my own.


One interesting part of the interview was that the casting directors we very interested in my opinion of how Jillian and Bob (the trainers on Biggest Loser, for those of you who don't watch the show) would react, how the other contestants on the show would react, and how America would react to me being a dietitan on the show. I honestly would want EVERYONE to react about it. I would have wanted them to be pissed off at me. I would want them to be disappointed in me. Because I agree that it is ridiculous that I am an overweight dietitian! I KNOW better! But just because you have all the knowledge doesn't translate to doing it. I was hoping that the show would help me realize my different insecurities about myself, mental and emotional barriers to losing weight. Because it's not about a lack of knowledge that is keeping me from doing it. It's lack of motivation, more than anything.


BUT ALAS! I checked the main casting directors Facebook page tonight and she posted that the casting is completed. I have not been selected to be on the Biggest Loser. BUT this is not the end! I don't need national humiliation to motivate me to lose the weight. All I need is myself. But a little public humiliation may be helpful too. SO, I am going public. I am going to create a blog about my weight loss goals and progress. I will post my video that I had to make for my audition that shows my weight really well. I will post my weight loss. I will post pictures. You will see how I am doing. And I WANT you all to be brutally honest. It was really hard to have everyone around me telling me I am not fat enough to be a contestant on the show. I had friends and coworkers tell me that. But sadly I am very qualified to be on the show as far as weight is concerned. I am Jillian Taylor. I am 26 (almost 27!) years old. I currently weigh 275 pounds and I would LOVE to lose at least 100-120 pounds. I am FAT ENOUGH, but not for long! So, here we go friends and family. It's time to see the Jillian Taylor Biggest Loser Show. It's time to make you all proud, and mostly I want to make myself proud!