SparkPeople Update

I thought that I’d update you guys on how I’ve been doing since I started using SparkPeople on Monday.

Let me tell you… the first three days were absolute hell. My body needed to get used to eating less – in both serving sizes and calories in general. Comparing my average day of 2000 calories now to what I’d been eating before was a real wake-up call. I didn’t think that I’d been eating so much, but it’s clear to me now that I was going a little overboard.

For the first couple days, I’d look at my food and there’d be a lot of this…

But now that it’s been five days, I’m starting to get used to it. My belly is less hungry all the time and I feel good about eating healthy. I’m starting to get sad when I look at pictures of delicious food on other people’s blogs… but I just have to get used to splurging a lot less (like once a week – not once a day!).

Something that’s important to me is that, even though I am calorie-counting, I refuse to count calories in most veggies/fruits. I don’t want to feel like, if it’s an emergency, there’s nothing that I can eat. If I’m hungry, I want to be able to eat carrot sticks without feeling scared about my daily calories creeping up. That’s when eating disorders like orthorexia start to happen, and obviously I’d like to stay away from that. That being said, I always count calories in potatoes, corn, avocados, and anything that goes into a smoothie. I want to be smart about it!

Counting calories definitely isn’t for everybody. In fact, I never thought I’d like it. But I needed a change and a kickstart to being healthy again. Also, keeping track of what I’m eating is really important since I’m forced to be so sedentary. I can still go to the gym (I went three times this week so far!), I just don’t burn extra calories throughout the day by walking around like normal people do, and I have to modify my workouts (in type and time) for what I can safely handle.

So far, I’ve done really well. Like I said, I’ve worked out three times this week for a total of 87 fitness minutes! I’ve also stayed in my calorie budget 4 out of the 5 days so far (the one day I was only 98 calories over, though). I’d call that a success! Thanks so much for all your support, you guys