Cry-Baby Me.

I cried myself to sleep last night.

The fact that I cried myself to sleep isn't anything astounding, but it happened. It happens more often than I'm comfortable with, and usually I don't have a distinct or monumental reason to be crying. I'm just emotional ... apparently. The bizarre part is that for the longest time, as a teen and young adult, I didn't cry -- ever. Now, living in Las Vegas and having a life apart from everything I want to be around, I cry all the time.

The person that bears the brunt of these minor emotional breakdowns isn't me, but instead it's my husband. Last night I was lying on my side facing away from Mike trying to fall asleep. I didn't think there was a single thought in my mind, but one teardrop slipped from the corner of my eye and rolled down my cheek to my pillow. I didn't make a noise, and I don't think I even changed my breathing. Like a waterfall, several more tears streamed from my eyes and silently rolled down my face. At that moment, Mike snuggled closer to me and asked if I was okay. I know I was silent, so how did he know?! Truthfully, I think he can just tell when I'm having a rough moment, without seeing my face or having me say a word. Man, I love him.

The crying didn't last very long. For maybe 5-10 minutes i cried silently, but never pin-pointed a reason. Sometimes if I start crying I'll think about something sad like my pets getting lost or never moving back to the Midwest, and that fuels my tearful fire. I didn't do that last night though. I fell asleep shortly thereafter, and it became just another night where I cried myself to sleep without reason. How pathetic am I? One thing I have noticed is that I've done it more often since I've been on a weight-loss journey. As I've had distinct ups and downs I've simply been more emotional. Can't wait to see how I am if I ever get pregnant! LOL

Anyway, I'm really glad to be back in the mode of losing weight, eating right, exercising and blogging. It's been much better for me and I feel like I'm actually regaining my self-esteem and confidence in the way I look -- and that's only a few days in! We'll just have to wait and see what the future brings!

Are those hunger pangs?

I've been in this exact situation before. Although I don't remember the exact date or time, I do remember reaching this crossroad ... let me explain.

Last night I was having trouble sleeping so I was reading on my iPad while lying in bed (I highly recommend the book Waiter Rant if you haven't read it yet.). We had dinner around 6:30 p.m. and by the time I was reading my night away, I was hungry! Most of you are probably reading this wondering why being hungry is such a phenomenon, but for me it's an amazing feeling. When this happened before, I realized that I hadn't actually experienced feeling hungry, like legitimate "I-need-food-now" hungry for a very long time. I don't know when recognizing that feeling went away, but sometime over the past few months I was eating so regularly that I never actually felt hunger. Last night, the pangs returned ... and I was happy to feel them!

On that same note, I've probably said to myself or someone around me that "I'm super hungry," or "I'm starving" hundreds of times in the past three months alone, but I think that those feelings of hunger are more superficial and based on time, situation and my need to eat in order to suppress emotions/stress than anything else. At work yesterday, I started feeling those pangs of hunger too and even took my break a few minutes early. Whoever thought I'd say that it feels good to feel hungry? My bowl of Special K with Red Berries and light soy milk never tasted so good as it did this morning. I absolutely devoured the whole bowl, and now I feel satisfied. I'm already looking forward to lunch!

Anyway, it's my "weekend!" That's right, two days off of work with absolutely no plans. I'm hoping to get to the gym, or if the wind/weather cooperates, maybe go for a hike at Red Rock. No matter what I do, I'm feeling so good about the path I'm on that I'll definitely be eating right!

UPDATE: We went to the grocery store last night, and I bought some of those Lean Cuisine and Healthy Choice "steamers" products. I'll definitely do a comparison sometime this week!

More Helpful iPhone Applications

When I first started Losing Weight for a Dummy, I offered readers some of the iPhone applications and tools I was using to help keep me on track. To this day, more than two months after starting my program, I use Lose It!, Restaurants, Nutrition and Good Food on a weekly, if not daily basis. I literally do not go a day without entering in my weight and calorie count on Lose It! It really helps keep me on track.

There are quite a few calorie counters out there, and Lose it! is just one of the bunch. I've also taken a look at Livestrong, DailyBurn and Tap & Track - Calorie, Weight & Exercise Tracker, but none of those offer me anything more or different than the application I started with.

So, as I have continued checking for application updates and newly created products, I thought I would share a few of the ones I have come across with you.

Locavore -- This application is good for those of you who like to cook. It allows you to search for items that fresh and in season according to your location. It also offers local fare which is good especially if you're in a seafood place! This app costs $2.99 and was listed as one of the top 10 apps for cooks by Apple.

• Distance Meter (Pro) -- This application is offered for free and also as a "Pro" edition for $2.99. As with other applications that offer different price points, you get more for your money. Distance Meter (Pro) acts as a really good pedometer/distance calculator and caters to walkers and hikers. It helps people track how long a trail is as well as the path's difficulty. Lastly, it translates the route walked in length and difficulty into calories burned. The app can be found in the app store under Healthcare and Fitness.


• FoodScanner -- The FoodScanner application is great if you want to keep track of the calories you're eating, but don't always have time to enter in a lot of information and data into a program. Utilizing the camera on your iPhone, the application allows the user to take a photo of the barcode on a food item and uses the stored information from the barcode to keep track of calories and nutrients. This is great if you consume lots of packaged goods throughout the day like Lean Cuisine meals, 100 calories snack packs or even a serving of frozen vegetables! FoodScanner costs $2.99 and can also be found under Healthcare and Fitness in the app store.
  
  
• Weight Watchers Mobile -- From what I hear, the Weight Watchers Mobile application is fantastic, but the one down side is that you have to be a Weight Watchers member with a login ID to use it. I'm not a WW members so I don't get to use it, but it's really helpful for tracking calories and nutrition information, calculating WW Points and offering great information to stay on your WW program. It is free under the top 10 free apps in Healthcare and Fitness.


• iTreadmill -- iTreadmill is a really helpful exercise app, and for me it's really convenient because I can turn it on and use my phone to listen to music so it's not like carrying and extra piece of equipment around the gym with me! The application is basically the ultimate pedometer for treadmill users. It tracks step count and steps per minute, along with your target speed, current speed, speed average, calories burned, distance, time and it lists a history so you can calculate your progress. The application also has a built in timer. It's only $0.99 at the app store, but an update is on the horizon so it may become $1.99 or $2.99 in the near future.



• Your Ideal Weight -- I've talked a lot about body mass index and individual ideal weight in my blog, and this is an application that caters to that. Entering age, current weight, height, activity level, etc., the application calculates not only the doctor recommended weight for you, but also what the average weight people want and also the weight recommended by your body mass index. It's a free application offered under the Healthcare and Nutrition category. The downside to this app is that once you use it, why keep it?


• Virtual Trainer -- Virtual Trainer is another free application that can be found in the Healthcare and Fitness category (see a trend?). This application offers the user more than 250 exercises (with 3D video animation) and 120 work out programs in order to vary their exercise routines. You can choose from cardio or specific to a body region, etc., and the lengths ranger from 6 to 60 minutes. There's also a built-in timer and a stats section so you can gauge your improvement.
  

I'm not going to lie, I don't use each of these applications everyday. A lot of the applications that are offered for cooks or weight-conscious individuals have overlapping features that you have to figure out for yourself. Find the apps that work best for you, and for those people who have Blackberries, take a look at your app store and see if there are equivalent programs.

If anyone reading this has a great application for nutrition or exercise or that's simply interesting, please post a comment here so everyone can take a look!

The Programs that Didn't Work

Last week's poll question had to do with the many diet programs that are out there. I asked, "What diet program(s) have you tried?" I received a lot of responses. Twenty-three people voted on the poll and they were allowed to select more than one answer. I ended up with more than 40 answers. Here's how it turned out:

Jenny Craig - 8%
Weight Watchers - 69%
Nutrisystem - 13%
Other (such as Atkins, etc.) - 34%
My Own Program - 52%

The reason I chose each of the answers is because I have had some sort of an experience with each. I thought I'd blog about why I chose to use or to stop using each of the programs and how they worked for me.

Most recently I tried Nutrisystem. For anyone that doesn't know, it's exactly like Jenny Craig in that they send you food monthly for a fee and you have access to coaches and online resources in order to stay motivated. However, you also need to supplement the food sent to you so it ends up being quite a bit more costly than it originally looked. I was on the program for a few months and dropped it fairly quickly. It became just too darn expensive, and it offered basically little to no leeway for eating out. I had to make sure a stove, oven or microwave was accessible to me at all times and that became impossible. More so, my doctor told me to stop using it because it was having seriously negative effects on my body (internally).

Before trying Nutrisystem I tried Weight Watchers. I think the process Weight Watchers encourages is fantastic and works. The points system, keeping track, etc. is exactly what works for me, but I absolutely hated the meetings. I really felt uncomfortable with them, and I felt like I wasn't gaining anything at all for what I was paying for. Once I had the "equipment" to keep track, I had no idea what the weekly fees were going toward. That sense of confusion eventually got to me and I stopped going to meetings. However, even though I then had the tools, I lost all motivation since I wasn't going to the motivating meetings, and I fell off the program. So -- maybe it does work after all, I just wasn't willing to give it the right kind of try.

I haven't actually used Jenny Craig, but I have signed up with them and started the process, only to stop when I realized it was exactly like Nutrisystem and wouldn't be my cup of tea. I've also tried various things over the years including eating as little as possible, cleansing diets, talking with an herbal nutritionist and my own versions of Atkins and South Beach. None of those worked for me because they weren't catered to me. After all, in this equation, the absolute most important factor is myself.

So, when the idea of catering a diet to me was brought to my attention, I knew it was definitely a step in the right direction. I'm not doing anything outrageous, ingenious or new, but I'm doing what works best for me and my lifestyle. When my coworkers go out to eat, I go with them and then make my decisions on food. When Mike and I want to have a dinner out instead of cooking at home, that's in the cards too! I feel like I'm still able to be me and live my life while taking part in this journey, and I think that's key. If I could offer advice to anyone, I'd simply say that you need to find something that works best for you. If you don't like public meetings then find something similar online. If you never eat out, but hate cooking, try something like Nutrisystem or Jenny Craig. There's something for everyone, you just have to find it.

A Dummy Who Needs to Lose Weight

I truly believe that in order to go from fat to trim a person needs to reach their breaking point. Much like an addict, there is a rock bottom that must be hit before realizing that drastic changes need to be made in order to not only change the way you look, but to change your lifestyle.

I hit that rock bottom awhile ago when I couldn't bare to look in the mirror unclothed and when I refrained from doing a lot of things that I enjoy. My problem wasn't that I didn't WANT to change, but that I didn't know the best way and I didn't see any proof that any of the methods worked. I've been on Nutrisystem, WeightWatchers, cleansing plans, diet drinks, etc. and nothing showed real results and all of them cost way too much money. So now, I'm trying something new.

I have a poker blog called Poker for a Dummy and that's where I realized that the word dummy can stand for a lot of things. For that blog, it simply means a human-like figure that sits in the place of someone real. Since I'm not a poker pro by any means, I'm a dummy, that pretends to be one of the greats. For Losing Weight for a Dummy I think the term is much more literal. I am a dummy when it comes to dropping the fat because after countless attempts, I simply haven't done it yet!

So this is my new blog, something that I'm sure caters to more individuals than poker because approximately 300,000 adult deaths in America each year are attributable to unhealthy dietary habits and physical inactivity. This is all due to the fact that nearly two-thirds of all American adults are overweight and have a body mass index of more than 25. One-third of adults have a BMI over 30 (Centers for Disease Control). A healthy BMI, depending on age and height and some other factors is between 17 and 24. BMIs over 30 are considered not just overweight, but obese.

I am obese. That may be the HARDEST short sentence I have ever written, but I am obese. When I started this new regime (which I'll get into more later), I weighed 228 lbs which is a ton for my 5'6" frame. After three days (Friday-Sunday) I now way 221 lbs and my BMI has dropped from 36.8 to 35.7. I have a very very very long way to go, but those changes in only three days are proof to me that not only can I do it, but it's as easy as eating better (not necessarily eating "right" according to books and experts) and adding movement (not necessarily hours and hours of exercise at the gym) into your life make all the difference.

I am a dummy and I need to lose weight. Up until last week I had no idea how and I thought that losing weight was something only people with a lot of money who could afford trainers and programs, etc. could do. I owe a lot to my friend who was in town visiting me this weekend and who recently lost more than 50 lbs herself. She taught me that watching calories and the types of food I eat, and adding walking, or even high steps when going up the stairs can make that little bit of difference that helps me lose a pound or two a week.

I'm going to keep track of my weight-loss journey and share what I'm learning, both what works and what doesn't. Anyone who has something to share, please post comments as well. I hope this journey works for me and that if I'm successful I can inspire someone else because my friend certainly inspired me.