Planning is the key

The one thing that I am learning quickly is that it takes a good amount of planning and preparation to be successful at this dieting gig.  Now I am not being crabby about this fact, just more making a statement.  I guess I didn't realize that it would take more time for me to pack a lunch or make dinner happen.  Take for example my lunch today... A salad, plenty of fruit (banana, apple and grapes), yogurt, sugar free pudding cup, cheese stick, 2oz of chicken for my salad, and a snack for in the afternoon.  Now most of that is prepacked and easy to throw together, but the time consuming part came in the preparation of the salad (although not horrible, still time consuming) and the balancing of my daily calorie intake.  For me, the calorie intake is the most time consuming and difficult to do.  

For the plan that I am on through Lose It, I attempting to lose 2 pounds a week and would need to intake 1822 calories a day.  At first I thought that amount of calories wasn't much, but I couldn't be more wrong.  With the healthier choices I am making, it is very difficult to reach that amount of calories.  I guess with more time and practice that I will get better at it.  Oh and I forgot to mention that each day I exercise I have to eat more calories... so for today I burned up 530 calories from my elliptical workout, so tack on another 530 calories that I need to eat.  Yesterday I was almost 1200 calories shy for the day and I wasn't hungry at all!  I guess I just don't want to make an early bad choice and therefore screw up my whole day.  Again, this is the planning and preparation aspect of everything... and it will come with time.  

Oh and just so no one thinks that magically less calories equals more weight loss, that couldn't be further from the truth.  At some point (and I am not a medical doctor so I don't know exactly when it occurs), your body thinks that it is starving and will do whatever it can to prevent that from occurring.  So just because I was 1200 calories short yesterday, I didn't lose an ounce!  (and yes, insane me is still weighing myself every day - but that's a whole other blog entry).  So I guess my point here is that I need to be a better planner, or maybe not be so strict with my calories.  I guess I also have to learn that it is OK to eat the things that I may truly want at that moment and use up those calories.  These, my friends, are difficult lessons to learn from someone who is "morbidly obese" and is setting out on this weight loss journey.  Lessons that will become part of life as I struggle through this journey.