I watched the Biggest Loser. I watched you change those contestants lives, teaching them about proper nutrition, how to exercise efficiently, and most importantly about willpower and determination.

So why in the world would you set yourself up to look like a cheesy weight loss rep by claiming that those who do the 30 Day Shred can “Lose Up To 20 Pounds in 30 Days!” You should know better than that.

I have heard of no clinical study that would back up these claims and make them valid, but I have read many times that a realistic and healthy weight loss goal is 1 to 2 lbs per week. I know it works on your show, in an unrealistic setting where contestants are forced to exercise 8+ hours/day and have their diet hand fed to them. This is not how it is in the real world, and when you make claims like this you disappoint so many who have come to believe in your brand. Why Jillian, why?

I had a really great response to my Food Diary post yesterday, and I’m definitely going to keep doing it. I think some of you thought I was going to post like that every single day. Are you crazy? I can’t even imagine how much work that would take. But one day a week is hopefully going to be good for both me and you. Good for you, because you might be able to glean some ideas to incorporate into your own life, and good for me, because I will be calorie counting at least one day a week! Using Fitday is really tough, it takes an incredible amount of dedication and right now I’m sitting at a mediocre weight. I look fine, I’d like to look better, but I’m having a hard time taking that next step to really commit to weight loss once again. Right now I’m stuck in the stage of weight maintenance.

The reason for this post is to answer some questions a few of you brought up. Really great questions that all calorie counters face over and over. Julie asked:

So what would you do about things you do not make yourself? Like say, a coworker has a birthday so another coworker brings in a homemade rhubarb pie to celebrate? And you have absolutely no idea whatsoever went into said pie?

and Stef K asked:

My problem is if I have one thing and can’t figure out the content - say, our monthly office luncheon, or a celebratory dinner out with friends for her bday, etc…- then I get really discouraged and bummed out and feel like I’ve failed. I mean, what’s the point of putting in the 1000 calories I did count if I went out and got something and have NO idea how many calories there are in it? Is it better to guess and include it and just log it in as best you can? Or don’t count at all that day? B/c 1000 calories only for that day is inaccurate (obviously), but guessing and keeping it at 3000 calories is better than not guessing at all, ignoring fitday, and consuming 10,000, right?

Essentially they are both asking “How do I estimate calories when I don’t know what is in the dish I am eating?

I employ three different strategies when I run into these situations.

1. A principle I like to call “Overestimation”.

• Fitday does have one fatal flaw, and it is that the program can’t handle decimals. So if the package says 1.5 grams of fat, I can’t put in the exact number. I have to round up, or round down. With things I should eat less of, like fat, sat fat, cholesterol, etc, I always round up. With things I should eat more of, like fiber or protein, I always round down. In my life, I tend to eat too much fat/cholesterol, and not enough protein/fiber and this ensures that when I sit down to figure out what my calories have been over time, that I’m always headed in the right direction.
• I use the same principle when I eat out, or have a treat baked by someone else, or any other situation where I don’t have control over or knowledge about what went into the food. My rule of thumb, is to overestimate everything. I assume real butter, real sour cream, extra oil, all of those things. It might throw my calories off, but at least it throws them off in a way that encourages me to eat less the next day. Keep in mind that the principle of overestimation is only good if you tend to overeat and overindulge in fatty/sugary foods. If you are one of those people that can’t eat enough (like my husband), this is probably not the best system for you.

2. I make use of websites like calorieking.com and allrecipes.com.

• Let’s pretend Julie’s situation was really happening to me. My coworker (Ohhhh, what job do you think I am working? It’s fun to pretend I have a job sometimes) brings in a rhubarb pie that smells divine, and I have a slice. If I’ve been really diligent at my tracking for the last few days it can be really frustrating to think that all the work I just did went down the drain. (I tend to get all crazy when I calorie count for extended periods of time because I find it thrilling to be really exact with my measurements. Don’t even think about eating off of my plate if I’ve measured out my portions! )

Instead of giving up on my counting for the day (or week, or month), I go home and look up a recipe for rhubarb pie on allrecipes.com. I look on the right side of the page and there are some nutrition facts!

Servings Per Recipe: 8

Amount Per Serving

Calories: 407

• Total Fat: 15g
• Cholesterol: 27mg
• Sodium: 290mg
• Total Carbs: 64.4g
• Dietary Fiber: 1.8g
• Protein: 4.4g

VIEW DETAILED NUTRITION

About: Nutrition Info

Powered by: ESHA Nutrient Database

I decide if I think I ate 1/8 of the pie, plug in the stats, and then I do something magical: I let it go. I tell myself that I’m not perfect, that I can’t have absolute control over every morsel that goes in my mouth if I want to live a social lifestyle, and I move on with my life. Allrecipes.com is great for homemade things, and calorieking.com is wonderful for commercial/restaurant items. Over time, you will get better at estimating things.

3. Willpower.

• The last, and most difficult strategy is willpower. It’s packing a lunch every day, resisting the free doughnut you are offered by your friend, eating out less, making yourself breakfast in the morning instead of grabbing something from the corner bakery. There are always birthdays to celebrate, baby showers to attend, wedding cake to eat, and holidays full of sweets and fat around every corner. These things will always be happening for the rest of your life. You can either choose to shut yourself up from the world and not attend any of those events, make excuses for why this birthday cake must be eaten or why the free doughnut couldn’t be resisted, or you can exercise willpower and decide if you really want something.

There is no harm in a slice of rhubarb pie, or in going out with your girlfriends to celebrate a promotion, or eating a slice of cake at the wedding. I just had to decide if I would rather pass on the free doughnut and celebrate my lost weight later, or indulge just one more time. I kept saying “But it’s my birthday!” or “But I love things with chocolate!” or “But it’s free!”, and then somehow I was really fat. I had to find a way to balance my desire to splurge, and my desire to save. Oh yes, remember, calorie counting is really nothing more than calorie budgeting.

Oh, and one last thing, don’t be afraid to be the nerdy person who asks for the recipe all the time. Most people won’t have any idea you are calorie counting, and will just assume you like to cake/cook all the time. You might find people are being nicer to you because they think you are secretly baking all the time and they will begin to hope you will bring in your goodies to share with the office. Little do they know

I posted on how I got fat, and the book I read, my crazy philosophies, and the things I did to be not fat anymore, and part of me naively thought that it could really make huge changes for people. It’s something that I feel crazy passionate about (don’t get me started talking about calorie counting, it’s always hard for me to stop), and there have been many nights where That Husband has turned to me and said “I’m really tired, can we talk about this another time?”

I just want to convert all of you to the marvelousness that is a life filled with the knowledge that comes with calorie counting and an absence of self-imposed dietary restrictions. I have now wised up, and I realize that it ain’t gonna happen (for all of you, I know some of you are trying and to that I say “Go! Go! Go!”), and so I came up with a plan that allows me to both continue my preaching in a fairly unobtrusive way and motivate myself to start counting on a regular basis once again.

Here is how this is going to work:

1. I will take pictures of everything I eat on a random day each week (Yes, everything, no matter how small or inconsequential)
2. I will log everything into Fitday
3. I will write a post and include those pictures and a chart of my nutrition stats and intake
4. You will read it, and hopefully those who don’t use it start to see how fitday works, and where the calories they eat might be coming from.

Here is what I ate on Wednesday, February 4, 2009:

Click to Enlarge

I combined all of these together to make a breakfast burrito. It’s my favorite breakfast. I like to use one yolk for the flavor, but I pair it with several egg whites to get the protein without the fat. The cheese is fat free (it’s gross, but lots of protein, and I can’t really taste it in the dish), and the tortillas are definitely an indulgence I am willing to splurge on (I wish I would change to something with more fiber, but these tortillas are SOOO good).

I love eating tuna and crackers, mostly because I can cram so much protein into such a little serving. I miss my regular mayo, but I switched to light and it’s made a huge difference in my fat intake over time. Mayonnaise/peanut butter and other pasty products are hard to measure because they don’t come off of the spoon easily. I usually weigh mine using my scale (I put it on the grams setting) so my measurements are really exact.

This is the same dish (I didn’t have tuna twice), I just wanted to show you the crackers. Have you tried these Kashi Stoneground 7 Grain crackers? They are oh so delicious, and my personal favorite, also nutritious.

I finished off the night with a bowl of butternut squash soup.

It’s important to remember that you can end up drinking a lot of your calories through liquids. I only drink milk (fat free) or water, always, because I either want zero calories, or lots of protein. I added 226 calories to my day by having 20 oz of milk, but I also got 22 grams of protein out of it, which I think is a fair trade.

This is 10 oz.

And this is 10 oz.

I know my choices were a little bit influenced by the fact that I knew I was eating that day and then going to write a post about it, but skewed results don’t bother me too much because in the end it worked out better for me. There aren’t many days where I meet all of my goals (less than 44 g fat, less than 15 g sat fat, more than 80 g protein)

What do you all think of this series? Would you like to see it continue, or is it just a waste of my time?

I discovered a program called Fitday, and started logging my calories. I had experimented with the online version before, but I paid the $20 and downloaded the PC version and it was probably the choice that kept me on the “Fitday Train”, because the PC version is so much more versatile than the online one.

I can go on and on about the wonder that is Fitday. I got my best friend Megan hooked on it as well. But instead of talking about how wonderful it is, I’m going to try to show you. As you scroll down the following photos you can look at the charts and graphs I created using Fitday that show the results I was achieving, and what I was doing to get them.

October/November 2006

Feel free to click on this calendar to visit the full size version on Flickr.

Below you can see my daily summaries for the month of November. I think I should have put my Thanksgiving estimates a bit higher, but other than that I know it is accurate because I hand made and measured everything myself. I worked hard to exercise (either playing DDR or running/walking on the treadmill) several times/week. Some of my daily totals were high (112 grams of fat on November 6!), but this is where the idea of “calories over time” becomes important. I started to get a handle on things by the end of November, and my totals for that week look much better.

I love the PC version of Fitday because I can generate all kinds of grafts and charts. This graph was particularly helpful for me in the beginning because I was able to export the infomration into a recognizable format. Eeep! 21 grams of sat fat. That can definitely be improved on.

I weighed myself as often as I wanted, sometimes daily. Get over it. I know what they say about weighing yourself so frequently, but this was science! It was fascinating to me the amount of fluctation I could have from day to day, even when weighing myself in the same conditions at the same time. On 11/4 I weighted 190. On11/5 I weighed 185.5. “Whoohoo, I lost 4.5 lbs in a day”, I thought. But then, on 11/13 I weighed 187.5 lbs and on 11/14 lbs I weighted 191. That’s a gain of 3.5 lbs in a day! Now, I only celebrate weight loss in 5 lb increments. On the right you can see my graph of my weight loss ( I wish it wasn’t so small, but I can’t make it look any different).

In the middle of December I went under the knife and had my breasts slashed up, so calorie counting stopped for awhile. But I ended up reaching my goal of 10 lbs weight loss before the surgery! Photo below taken about a week after my surgery, December 2006.

January 2007 came, and I hit it harder than I ever have. I was dropping weight faster than I thought possible, but I was still following the rule of whenever I felt hungry. I’ve never seen anything like it. I can say that I contribute some of the weight loss to having huge chunks of fat sawed off my chest. I’ve heard that really large breasts can weight up to 6 lbs each. Here I am at the end of January, about a month after surgery. I think you can tell I was feeling just fine. If the camera time stamp is right I would have been about 167 lbs here.

Click on the calendar to visit the larger version on my flickr site.

I lowered my fat intake, saturated fat, in particular. My daily caloric intake for this time period was about 130 calories lower in average. Isn’t it amazing what shaving off a few calories can do? (Also having surgery, I can’t deny the surgeries contribution to the weight loss).

I do NOT thinking losing 7 lbs in 7 days is healthy or normal. But, again, I was eating when I was hungry, and I continued to eat when I was hungry throughout the rest of the month. Stepping on the scale each day actually became something I looked forward to.

I lost weight like crazy. Until I started spending time with That Husband, and then the weight started to creep back on. I was spending time with this cute guy, and we were going out for late night runs to Burger King and staying up all night studying, and so I started to slip into my old habits.This photo was taken at the end of Winter Semester 2007. It’s actually the same night I told That Husband I either wanted to start dating or stop hanging out. He obviously chose date (although he waited 3 weeks to give me an answer).

So sad that such a memorable photo has me looking so creepy (and don’t be all “oh you look gorgeous” in the comments. I’m a good judge of what looks good on me and what doesn’t, I’ve had the body for 23 years now).

That Husband and I laugh and laugh whenever we see this graph. We started spending time together at the end of January and we started dating long distance at the beginning of July. Basically I gained weight the entire time, and then started to lose it once we split up. Some might say this was because I was “happy”. I say it’s because nutrition is something you have to actively commit to. If you let it slide to the bottom of your list of priorities you will gain. That happy stuff is a load of bull. I’m happier now than I ever was while we are dating, and I’m (ever so slowly) losing, not gaining.

July-November proved that I could stop tracking and hold steady. Yahoo! For me, this meant that I was finally making correct choices in what I was eating. I wasn’t losing, but I wasn’t gaining either. I held steady through this period at about 173 lbs. Photo below taken in August of 2007.

From that point on it was a slow and steady weight loss. I logged my calories sporadically, to keep myself in check. October 2007 (dressed as the season Summer). Somewhere around 170 lbs.

I started feeling more confidentabout my figure. I started recognizing my face again. Hello cheekbones, remember me? I was able to hold a steady pace of weight loss even through Christmas and finals.

Christmas party 2007. Approximately 168 lbs.

By April of 2008, I was feeling quite curvalicious again. Let’s do a side by side comparison, shall we? The photo on the left is in April 2006, the photo on the right is April 2008. Somewhere around 162 lbs.

We need to look at another one of those birthday photos, because what I’m about to show you next is just mind blowing to me. The change I made in two months time is unbelievable.

So here I am in April 2008, April 15th to be exact, 162 lbs:

And here I am only 73 days later, June 28th 2008, around 153 lbs:

“You look hot!” my husband drooled when I showed him this shot. That Husband was so stunned by the difference that he made me show him other photos from that same night to prove that it wasn’t just a good photograph. Here is the other one I found from that night:

I can’t stop scrolling between the two months. Makes me want to jump back on the fitday train right this instant!

Here is what I was doing to see such a big change (click on the calendars to enlarge):

The missing weeks in May are due to my trip to Europe (during which I lost another 5!). In these months you can see I did my best to keep my weekly caloric summary at less than 1500 calories. I believe what truly made the difference was taking my average daily fat gram intake down to somewhere around 32. I don’t advocate a low-fat diet, necessarily, but I do advocate a low sat-fat diet (and a no trans-fat diet). Fitday tells me I kept my sat fat intake to an unheard of 8 grams daily from April 27 to June 27!

This is by far the best average daily nutrition facts chart I have. I was right at my caloric goal of 1300 calories, I was was under my fat and sat fat goals, and eating a good amount of healthy fats. I tried to eliminate cholestrol as completely as possible without going vegan. I worked really hard to keep my fiber and protein intakes high, which kept me feeling full. I’m very proud of myself for what I accomplished during these two months.

I hope these charts of mine will help you to not get discouraged with your minor ups and downs. When you put my entire weight loss graph together there are many ups, but lots more downs, to be found. I choose to focus on the down ones. And now, when I gain 3 lbs, I think “This can be fixed”, and it can. That is actually why I weigh myself so frequently, because I might gain 3 lbs one day, and lose 3 the next, and then I’m right back where I started from!

And then, although the story doesn’t end there, my wedding day arrived. I felt beautiful, and happy, and alive. And I also think I was somewhere around 145 lbs or less (I believe I graduated high school at this weight), although scales weren’t important enough to be part of my routine around that time.

Now I’m hovering somewhere around 150 lbs, actively looking to lose, but taking my time doing it. I’ve reached a nice stage of comfort combined with discontent. I need to discontent to keep losing, but I need to comfort to be happy.

Why do I share this with you, and why do I believe in it? Because I’ve seen it work, and throughout the process I wasn’t denied anything. I didn’t spend long nights talking with my closest friends about how I ate a brownie and hated my life. I actually lived life throughout the entire process.

And now, I have the skills I need to maintain the weight. Except that one time when I was spending so much time with That Husband, I’ve stopped tracking in Fitday multiple times in the past 2 1/2 years and been successful at maintaing. Out of about 750 days I have only spent 250 days logging what I eat. That means I was able to eat without tracking, without gaining weight, twice as often as I tracked. Do you realize how wonderful that is? I’ve been on so many diets that had me wondering “If I stop, avoiding _____, will I gain it all back?”

I’ve learned something more than how to count points, or to focus on fish, or any of those other things ridiculous diets do. I can tell you how many fat grams I’m aiming for each day, where I want my sat fat to be, and I’m getting pretty darn good at estimating how many calories are in the dishes I eat without weighing and measuring them.

Best of all, I only have one rule. Stay as close to 1400 calories as possible, however I want to make it happen. So some days I eat breakfast, and I’m not hungry again until dinner, and I eat a big bowl of popcorn. Then the next day I have tuna for lunch to make up for the protein I was lacking. And then I have apple and peanut butter as a snack after dinner. I eat for nutrition, not for the scale.

I remember this one day, where I calculated that I could reach my daily nutrition goal exactly if I ate 11 almonds, and so I did. And that feeling? It was amazing. My body felt healthy, and strong, and nourished. And I have the knowledge to make that feeling happen again and again.

Today I walked outside with no makeup, wet hair from the shower, wearing sweats, and some guy whistled at me twice (to make sure I got the message, I think). I got the message, and it was a good one. It was something like “Good for you.”

After I read the book, I went several months without actively trying to lose weight. I actually had to go back and read through my journal to figure out what the catalyst for change was. This is why you should keep a journal, or have a blog. Either one, you choose.

Sometime during the Fall of 2006 I won the lottery. The breast reduction lottery. I remember Nordstrom measuring me as an H cup. H! After sending off pictures of my naked watermelon shaped breasts my insurance agreed to cover 80% of the costs if I went under the knife. That Christmas my sister got a laptop, and I got a pretty new chest. If you are ever given the choice, choose the chest.

My parents agreed to pay for it on one condition: I had to set a goal and lose a certain amount of weight before the surgery. I believe the goal was 10 lbs.

Don’t worry friends, we are finally to the point where I tell you about my methods. If we were living in a dream world, this would be the point where I tell you about my ridiculously easy method for losing weight. All you have to do is take a pill infused with the root of an organic onion and stand on your head for 10 minutes every morning. The weight will melt off your body like a fudgescicle on a hot summer day. Because life is easy like that.

WRONG

Silly readers, you should know by now that diets don’t work. So whatever I did, it wasn’t a diet. It wasn’t a “nutrition plan made up by some know it all doctor who just discovered a break through system that somehow no one else had ever heard of or tried”. I decided that whatever I did, it had to follow the guidelines I had set for myself after reading the book (listen to stomach hunger, not mouth hunger, no limitations on what foods I can eat, etc) Want to know what it was?
It was science baby!

(That Husband must be so proud, I’m using science and math together in the same post)

Let me tell you how the conversation goes when I see someone who last saw me at 200 lbs:

Old friend: Wow Jenna, you look fantastic!

Jenna: Thanks. I’ve lost about 40 lbs.

Old friend: I have to ask, how did you do it?

Jenna: Well, I counted my calories.

Old friend: Oh.. okay bye now.

I’ve come to realize that the term calorie counting is a terrible phrase to use on people. They want the conversation to go like this:

Old friend: Wow Jenna, you look so great!

Jenna: Thank you very much. Yep, I’m down almost 40 lbs now.

Old friend: I just have to know how you lost so much weight.

Jenna: Did you see that episode Oprah did on the “Totally Fake Diet”? I followed every step, eating 17 green grapes at exactly 3.47 every afternoon, and now I look like this!

Old friend: I’d heard about that and my friend did it and her mom and the results have just been so amazing. I mean, it’s so easy it shouldn’t even work right, but it does! I heard Oprah lost 13 lbs in a week doing it.

Calorie Counting? It’s so boring! There is nothing flashy, or new and improved, and it’s never been proven to help you drop 20 lbs in 10 days. It’s the kind of practical thing your family doctor or your nutritionist would suggest. Want to know why? Because it works.

That Wife’s Philosophy of Calorie Counting as Calorie Budgeting

I’m going to give you $1400/day for clothes. You have to buy a new outfit (bra, underwear, pants, shoes, socks, shirt, dress, umbrella, purse, earrings, all of it) with that money every single day (dream world, right?). You get to keep the money left over, but never the clothes. How will you spend the money? Will you spend all $1400 every single day? Will you shave off a hundred dollars for a few days to build up your supply so you can splurge on that Vera Wang dress? Will you spend more than your allotment and only get $900 the next day? Staying out of debt isn’t always about what you do in one day, it’s what you do with your money over a period of time.

Now turn that money into calories. 1400 calories/day. With those calories you are going to “dress your mouth”. The challenge is finding a way to keep feel full without overspending. You can spend 350 for breakfast, and 500 for lunch, but that only leaves you with 550 for the rest of the day. What if you want to splurge on the weekends, where will you shave off the extra calories? Save up 100 calories Monday-Friday and you have 500 calories to blow over the weekend. It’s about your caloric balance over time, not your balance day to day.

I realized throught his process that I can’t budget my money worth anything, but budgeting my calories and watching those numbers rise and fall was thrilling for me. That Husband does not find this ironic or funny I don’t think.

Things That Wifes believe fervently about calorie counting, and will argue passionately about with you if you attempt to refute them

1. Unless you are weighing, measuring, and tracking your calories, I would bet my life savings that the majority of you are understimating the amount of calories you eat. It was not until I really sat down and counted and measured every single thing that went into my mouth that I began to see results. Which leads me to believe that my “guestimates” are much more off target than I realize. I do not think I am alone in this. I believe this is why the majority of people who try to lose weight, can’t. Actually I believe it’s why 100% of the people can’t. I believe this principle is based on science, calories in versus calories out. Your body can only work with what you give it.

2. Your body knows how much food it needs. Your mouth will try to confuse you (asking for sugar and cakes and cookies), but your body will tell you when you are truly hungry. Learn to listen to it. Learn that whole grains and vegetables make you feel good, and that lots of fatty and sugary sweets make you feel bad.

3. It is not your daily caloric intake that matters. Only what you eat OVER TIME. I cannot stress this enough. You will be seeing charts below which solidified this belief of mine.

4. If you are hungry, eat. Always. If you are truly hungry, you can eat carrots, or dry popcorn, or drink fat free milk to satiate your hunger. Never, ever, ever go without food because you “spent” all of your calories. Tomorrow is a new day, and over time, your body will start to regulate in its desires.

5. Remember that all food is legal. So buying the Vera Wang dress on sale with no return policy would be like getting the cheeseburger, fries, and milkshake. You can’t return the dress, and you can’t return the food. You can eat whatever you want, but you have to work off your choices somehow over time. If you go too deep into calorie debt, you get fat. It’s that simple.

6. The goal is to feel healthy and strong. Eventually, you should reach the point where you find your body enjoys eating vegetables and whole grains as much as it tells you it wants cookies. At least mine did. In fact, I started to enjoy my avocado, lettuce, tomato, and chicken sandwiches on whole wheat with a wedge of laughing cow cheese even MORE than a cookie. Oh those were good.

7. For me, there were days when I ate 600 calories, and days when I ate 2600 calories. In the end, all that matters is that it evens out to your goal intake in the end.

8. I have one freebie, and that is sodium. I don’t count it, I don’t worry about it. I can’t be perfect, and so I give myself some wiggle room. Pick your own “wiggle” area, and let it go. If you keep up with regular physicals and you notice a problem, change, otherwise, enjoy yourself a little bit.

9. Focus on getting the most fiber, the most protein, and the least amount of saturated fat possible and you will lose weight.

• If you are focusing on getting as much fiber as possible, you will naturally be eating whole grains, because that is the best way to get fiber. Eating more fiber will also keep you full, helping you eat less.
• I shoot for around 70 grams of fiber/day. This is a lot, but if you fill up your diet with protein, you don’t have the calories left in your budget to fill it up with fat. So your fat intake naturally stays low.
• You can never keep your sat fat intake too low. Ever.

I’m not a Nutritionist, or a Dr., or anything else even close. Heck, I don’t even have a college degree. But I have experience, and I think experience means a lot.

————————————

I am really not trying to drag this out into a ridiculous wait for you all, because I know this last post on how I actually lost the weight is what you are really interested in. But it was too long to put the two together. The finale will go up later this afternoon.

My lovely sister Shaylene just reminded me of my other favorite book! In fact, I read When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies first, and then Intuitive Eating, and I think I liked it better.

Intuitive Eating! Yay!

So you should read that one (or both). Actually, if you have to choose, read this one. Now that I look at the cover I remember that I definitely like it best.

Please forgive my absentminededness. Remember I don’t have my “library” here with me in Dallas. All of my books are up in WA so I am trying to write these posts about events that happened three years ago and it means I forget things sometimes.

Where were we? Oh yes, somewhere around here.

In high school I did all the diets. Funny, right? That I would worry about something like dieting when I was the most active, the thinnest that I will likely ever be. But I came from a dieting household. I did Atkins with my mom, looked into Weight Watchers, went on a “sugar fast” with my 14 year old sister and my mom the during my first semester of college. But I grew tired of dieting so I gave up. I gave up so completely that I gained around 50 lbs in 2 years.

Then I was given this book.

I remember staying up most of the night reading it. I remember nodding my head and saying “Yes! Yes!” out loud (good thing I didn’t have someone living in the same room with me at the time, she would have thought I was crazy). I remember going to the store the very next day and buying my own copy because I wanted my own; I just knew that this was a book I would want to keep.

I had actually been prepped for this book in the Beginning Nutrition class I took a few years previous. In the section on childhood nutrition we read an excerpt from a book that little children’s bodies don’t crave milkshakes and french fries. They ask for them and eat them because they know they taste good, and because they know they will feel comforted for the moment. But a little child’s mind can’t seem to grasp the idea that they will eat this sugary thing now, and feel sick because of it afterwards. Never before had I thought about nutrition in this way.

You will find many reviews online about how this book “encourages victimhood” and is full of psychobabble about loving yourself, but that is exactly what I needed. I had only heard one other train of thought “You can only like yourself if you change yourself”, but whatever I did, the change wasn’t happening. I was told by Atkins “Only eat meat”, I was told by Weight Watchers “Eat within the points”, and I was telling myself “Just ignore everything everyone else is saying, but don’t think to hard about what you actually feel.”

It’s been approximately 3 years since I read the book, but in many ways that is probably a good thing. Instead of spouting off ideas and principles from a quick read of the book, I can tell you the things I retained over time. These are the things that matter most.

The book is broken up into three sections.

Section 1: Reclaiming your body

Section 2: Reclaiming your appetite

Section 3: Reclaiming yourself

and there are three principles which I still live by to this day.

Principle one:

Stop with the “bad body thoughts”. Stop looking in the mirror and saying how much you hate the way you look. Stop worrying about how everyone else looks. Stop looking at your best friend and thinking “If I had her calves, I would feel better.” Think about when you started voicing these bad body thoughts and resolve to stop.

This is actually the principle I struggle with least, all thanks to a friend I had growing up who constantly complained about how fat she thought she was. This was when we were 13 years old! After being around that for a few years, I told myself I wouldn’t ever do that to anyone around me, and to my knowledge I haven’t. You know that scene in Mean Girls, where Cady goes to Regina’s house for the first time, and all three of the Plastics go stand in front of the mirror and point out the things they hate most about themselves?

I don’t do it now, and I’m not sure I ever have. If you stop, I guarantee it will make it easier for your friends to spend time with you. Isn’t it annoying when you are with someone and you constantly have to be saying “Oh no honey, your lips/hair/skin/things/butt/back/breasts/stomach/love handles/ankles/knees/neck/ears/nose/cheeks/cheekbones/fingernails/big toe, look fantastic!”

What I had to work on, was looking into my past a little bit. Pinpointing the experiences that made me feel so negatively about myself (because I realized that I didn’t feel wonderful about myself when I was skinny either, or else why would I have been dieting as a teenager, so the problem wasn’t completely rooted in the fact that I was fat. Therefore, a diet wasn’t the solution. Because if I lost the weight, those issues would likely still be there.)

Stop dieting. Diets don’t work. The majority of overweight people say “I’ve tried all the diets.” If diets worked then all the fat people would be thin. If their was a diet that worked, we would all know about it RIGHT? Because it would work for everyone and the person who wrote the book on it would have billions of dollars because all the people would read it.

Principle two:

This is where most of you will turn away from the book. You will stop reading because swimsuit season is coming up, or your brother’s wedding, or because you can’t bear to gain a single pound.

Stop putting restrictions on food. Legalize everything. Stop labeling things as “good” or “bad”. The book takes things so far as to encourage eating whatever you want all the time. Seriously, just eat cakes and cookies and lemon bars all day long. In fact, they encourage you to bring those treats in your purse with you, so whenever you want it, you can have it without delay.

The idea behind this principle is to take things off of the “forbidden” list. Don’t you sometimes find yourself eating a whole box of Oreos because you eat two and feel guilty and say “Well, I guess I might as well keep going.” But what if you didn’t feel guilty for eating those two? Would you keep eating?

You can bet that I really enjoyed doing this. It was so freeing to just eat all the junk I ever wanted without stressing about it! My mom did not like this stage, and it why she won’t read the book to this day. Eventually, I realized that I didn’t want the junk. I wanted to feel healthy and feel fit (tomorrow post will explain how I finally did that).

The other idea, and you won’t like this one either, is to go through your closet and throw out your “When I lose weight” clothes. I know you have them, we all do. Throw them out and say “I’ll work to accept who I am today.” We sometimes tell ourselves that we are hanging on to those things as a positive incentive to change, but doesn’t our frustration in our inability to fit into them often exacerbate the problem?

Principle three:

Here is where the information I learned in my nutrition class clicked together with the book. The last section is devoted to this concept of “mouth hunger”.In short, mouth hunger is different from the physical hunger signals our body sends to tell us it needs more fuel. Mouth hunger is about psychology.

Mouth hunger! What wonderful thing to learn. When I want an Oreo, it’s not because my body says “I want the nourishment of that creamy filling.” No, my body knows for past experience that eating too many Oreos can make me feel sick and gross. It’s my taste buds, my mouth, the pleasure receptors in my brain that want the Oreo.

And so now that I have legalized all food, I’m allowed to think about food. Before, food was in “good” and “bad” boxes. I wasn’t allowed to even think about eating the Oreo because it was a terrible thing and obviously I should not have it. But now, Oreos were on the green list, all food is on the green list. I realized if I can have anything in the world right now, why would I want to have an Oreo, are they really that good?

I hold the Oreo in my hand and I say “Why do I want to eat this cookie?” Do I want something sweet? Something crunchy? Something salty? Will one Oreo be enough? If not, how many do I want? Is what I am experiencing right now an example of “mouth hunger”. Then, if I want to eat the Oreo, I eat it. And I can because there are no good or bad foods. And I don’t feel guilty. So when I reach for the second cookie it’s because I actually want it, not because I say to myself “Oh, I’m not eating sugar for the rest of my life tomorrow, so I’ll just go ahead and indulge today.”

In fact, since I’ve read that book, I’ve never had any kind of a “Last Supper” ever again. You know the Last Supper? The day where you say you are going on the diet tomorrow so you better eat whatever you want today to fill the void that will be created. And how many times have you done that throughout your life (I did it lots of times before the book). If you are never going on a diet ever again, there is no need for a Last Supper. Just forget about that principles completely because it is a stupid thing to do.

At this point you are very confused. How could I have lost weight by eating whatever I want? If I ate whatever I wanted, I would get fatter. You are right, I didn’t lose weight because of some magical plan this book laid out. For the first few months, I think I gained weight because of this book, because I was eating what I wanted. But if you are reading this post because you are hoping to lose weight, haven’t you been dieting and still feeling like you are gaining/or staying the same? At least after reading this book I felt happy again, and I wasn’t on one of those miserable diets.

The picture at the top of this post was taken in the beginning of 2006. The picture below was taken in April of that year.

22nd birthday. I had to cut slits in the front and back of those boots to get them on. One month later I stepped on a scale for the first time in many months and saw I was the number 198 staring back at me. I was shocked to realize how close I was to tipping the 200 lb mark!

In Cabo with my favorite ladies, July 2006. I was trying to exercise more, focusing on what I was eating, but I hadn’t yet developed the system that would leave me 50 lbs lighter.

It was on October 20th 2006 that I finally made the change that would lead me to lose the weight for good. I was down 8 lbs since May. Hooray!

So what changed? How did I go from the photo above with my Andersen sisters, to the photo below (again with the Andersen sisters), in 2 years?

Well, you will have to wait one more day for that.

Fat. F-A-T. I used to be it. Now I’m not. There are many people who find this term offensive, and might want to tell me I just said something vulgar. In my case, it’s just the truth. I wasn’t almost 200 lbs because I was so muscular, I weighed that much because my body was covered in fat. So I was fat.

Want to see how I got to there?

Here I am at 16 years old. Wasn’t I precious?

Looking back on these pictures of my weight change I realize why I always had a boyfriend in high school and never had them in college.

This was the time when my sister and I looked more alike than we ever have. I wonder if we went to this church dance attempting to look like twins?

High School Me: “That Wife Jenna, take that picture down right now! How awful to be seen in our swimsuit.”

That Wife Me: “High School Jenna, we have never looked so good!”

Now you understand where I started from. Somehwere around 140 lbs, thin (for me) and muscular from years of sports and dancing. I started college and it didn’t take long for me to lose control. In April of 2004 I still looked good but you can see I started to get a little bit of a belly.

One thing that you usually don’t think about in relation to gaining weight is that you don’t take pictures as often. If you aren’t happy with your body you aren’t going to be jumping in front of the camera every chance you get. So I find that there are huge gaps in the pictures I have of myself, and the changes in my body end up looking incredibly drastic. I look at the pictures now and wonder how I could have missed preventing such a huge change in my body.

The picture above was taken in April 2004, the picture below in December. Only 8 months to get to this point.

This is my 20th birthday party, April 2005. I can’t stop scrolling between the picture of me in April 2004 where I look healthy and happy wearing white and yellow (two colors that disappeared from my wardrobe for several years), and this one where I look almost unrecognizable.

3 months after my 80’s themed 20th birthday party I moved into an apartment in the same complex as That Husband. We weren’t just neighbors, we were next door neighbors. If you walked out of my door, took a left, and knocked on the next door you would have met my cute and slightly nerdy future husband.

People often ask what took us so long to meet. Why didn’t we start spending all of our time together in July of 2005 instead of January of 2007? Truthfully, it’s because I looked like this. One of the things I love most about my relationship with That Husband is our ability to be honest about touchy subjects. We both acknowledge that I was so heavy at this point that he never would have been interested in me. If our roles were reversed and he were 50 lbs heavier than he is now I probably wouldn’t have been interested in him either. It sounds harsh, but it’s simply the rules of attraction. If I hadn’t lost all this weight, we could have become friends, but we would never be married.

In October of 2005 I dressed as Little Red Riding Hood for Halloween. I wandered around at the big Halloween party at the house next door for a little bit, but then I just came back up and watched a movie. I wasn’t happy with who I was and it showed.

While I was upstairs sulking my roommates were wandering around dresses like cute little fairies. On the right you can see my roommate Megan, and on the left is my future husband! Why didn’t I dress up like a fairy with them and take a picture with that hot guy dressed as Zorro!??!

By this time I was medically considered obese, falling behind in school, and unhappy. I was leading a really social life and participating in loads of activities, but I was also spending lots of time talking using the free counseling program that BYU provides. I started taking Prozac and I started scheduling regular appointments with my bishop (church leader). One day he recommended a psychiatrist to me, unlike my couseling through BYU I would have to pay for her, but said she had been very successful with cases like mine in the past.

I went, and I told her what was on my mind. She paused, and then handed me a book that changed my life…

Oh, did you not realize this was a multi-part story? I’m leaving you in suspense over the weekend concerning what the book was. Any guesses?