First Workout

I woke at 7am and ate my oatmeal

then I promptly fell back to sleep till like 9:45 am

Then I decided to workout and do some weight training

the first weight train video I tried was a little too challenging, it had some jumping exercises and I am not ready for that

so i searched for “Beginner weight train” videos on Youtube

and I ended up completing this video this morning:

It wasn’t really challenging or anything. My knees were a little sore though with the lunges and squats. I didn’t realize my knees were in such bad shape.

I have to work later today so I will get in my 10,000 steps at work.

My top 5 weight loss tips

People ask me all the time how I am losing so much weight. This is an old post from May 2020, I’ve lost a lot more weight since then.

These are my tips for losing weight permanently if you are obese. I put them in order of importance. This is just to get you started, there are other tips I have as well.

1. Get a therapist. I know therapy is a privilege many can’t afford. I pay $6 a week for my therapist at the local university. She is a graduate student. You need to find out why you gained weight and how to resolve those feelings that led to your weight gain. Overeating is a mental health issue. If you eat certain foods to make you feel better, that is a mental health issue. I ate desserts to feel better. They were a coping mechanism for my depression and bipolar and anxiety. Therapy can be your new coping mechanism and accountability partner. There are therapist online thru
   http://www.betterhelp.com

   They charge about $50 per week.

2. Download a calorie tracker to your phone. Make sure its one that scans usp codes. I use MyFitnessPal. Use it every day and for EVERY thing you put in your mouth whether its 10 calorie water or a slice of pie and a pint of ice-cream. Never forget to input your calories. Do not wait till the end of the day to input your calories. Input them as the day goes on and immediately after eating. Do NOT FORGET!!. Looking at this eating track record will be very helpful for you. You can hook up other apps to it as well. Do this before you even start dieting to get into the habit. It will take a few months to make this a habit. It is imperative that you know how many calories you are currently eating daily. You cannot change to an appropriate amount if you dont have an accurate count of what you’re eating currently. Add me on MyFitnessPal , my name on there is : realvickinicole

    
    
3. Eat in a caloric deficit. After you’ve done some preliminary work by getting a therapist and tracking your calories. Lower your calories to below your BMR. MyFitnessPal calculates this for you as you update your current weight on it. You could also use a BMR calculator: https://www.calculator.net/bmr-calculator.html
    

   That BMR calculator says I burn 1,740 Calories at rest. So I have to eat less than that to lose weight at 240 pounds. MyFitnessPal says I need to eat 1460 calories a day to lose 1 pound per week. DO NOT lower your calories too low though as that will back fire, you will be hungry, your weight will plateau‎, and you will gain the weight back. If your body thinks it’s starving, it will fight you. Trust me. This happens to me all the time. Then I have to eat more to get back on my body’s good side. Just lower it by a few hundred calories. No more than 400 calories at a time.

    
4. Start moving your body. For the first year that I lost weight I did not exercise at all. The most I did was work at my job on my feet for 4-6 hours twice a week. I wanted to get accustomed to the eating less first and moving your body makes you hungry. I also didn’t want to get burnt out by doing too much all at once. You need to develop habits slowly and methodically. At the end of last year I bought myself a FitBit to track my steps. Then I decided to get a goal, which was to do 10,000 steps a day. When I worked I would make sure to walk a lot to get my steps in. Then I started occasionally walking to work or to the store. Then in March when Corona Virus started I decided to walk every day for 7,000 – 10,000 steps. I prefer to hit 10,000 cause I have my FitBit app hooked up to MyFitnessPal app and MyfitnessPal will give me additional calories when I’ve walked at least 10,000 steps. The amount of calories it gives you varies but this is very helpful for if I need to eat a little more on a certain day. I try not to make a habit of eating all my additional calories. But walking helps keep me in a caloric deficit every day.
    
5. Weigh Yourself every week. Weight yourself naked, first thing in the morning after you wake up. I weigh myself every day but I do not really recommend that. Being obsessed with numbers sucks. For me it’s helpful cause it tells me how to eat that day. If I’ve gone up a pound, I will eat a little less or a little more strict. If I’ve gone down a pound I know I’m on track. I would keep a record of my weekly weigh ins. I keep mine posted here on this website. It really makes a difference to see how you’re making progress. I’ve been recording my weight for 2 years now. It’s very motivational and it teaches you a lot. Like I can look at my weight chart and see that for about 6 months last year I made no progress in my weight loss. I needed that time though to get adjusted to different eating patterns and different foods and figure out what works and doesn’t work. So it’s fine. But I took everything I learned last year and used it to refine my eating habits and other things this year. And this year I can look at my weight loss chart and see how I am really progressing beyond my expectations.

Check out this link for a bonus tip: https://fattofiguregirl.wordpress.com/2020/10/01/lifestyle/

Thanks for the help

Several people really helped me out with food over the last few days, including my mom, and I am so appreciative and grateful.

This morning I went to Kroger, to get some low calorie burritos. They have 200 calories in them. I bought all that they had left. I also found some other low calorie vegan and vegetarian meals there, that I had never tried. So I bought those.

The red and black beans and rice ended up being way too many calories so I returned most of it to Target today. They were like 150 calories for .25 cup and I think I would need a .75 cup of beans and .50 cup of rice. , so that would have been like 750 calories for 1 meal. I was able to find some red and black beans that were lower calorie, so they were 80 calories per .25 cup, so that will be 540 calories which is still ALOT of calories for one meal. I never realized beans and rice had so many calories in it. So I will have that for lunch and then for dinner I will have that 200 calorie burrito so I can keep my calories for the day lower. I plan to start making the beans and rice in about 2 weeks.

I got some food from H.E.B. too, I bought 8 bottles of low calorie honey dijon salad dressing. I know that sounds like a lot but keep in mind, one bottle only lasts me for two salads. So that dressing will last me 16 days.

My calories for the next 22 days are kind of high, which sucks cause I am not losing weight really. But someone ordered me groceries from Walmart but Walmart was out of stock in a lot of the things I can eat (because I am vegetarian) so I ordered stuff that had a lot more calories than I am accustomed to eating because that was all Walmart had available. I have enough food in the house now to last me thru March 21 and it has all been entered on MyFitnessPal already.

To counteract the really high calories I am walking more than 15,000 steps per day. Today I have already walked almost 18,000 steps. MyFitnessPal shows that I have a he deficit even though I ate 1650 calories today. MyFitnessPal says I have 449 remaining calories available today.

All of the food below is either vegan or vegetarian.

Painstakingly slow

I have finally lost another pound.

This weight loss is going super slow lately which is aggravating.

But I am grateful for any loss of course. 

I’ve been walking and weight training every day, getting in more than 15,000 steps a day.

#weightloss #weightlossjourney

Why Weight Gain?

I don’t know what’s happening with my body but I gained two pounds, I am back up to 180.3 pounds

I have no idea why

I am supposed to come on my period in 2 days, so I dunno if that has to do with it

I’ve been walking a ton the past 3 days, I ended up walking 19,339 steps yesterday

it almost seems like the exercise is making me GAIN weight

I am not eating more, and MyFitnessPal shows that I have a HUGE caloric deficit because of my walking. I did eat a lil more yesterday, I had 1502 calories, but I walked so much that MyFitnessPal says I had 610 extra calories available. That is a huge deficit.

So why am I gaining weight?

Danger on my walk

I am deathly afraid of dogs.

a pittbull came after me on my walk today

I was screaming which agitated it more

i ran into the street and almost got hit by a car and stopped a blocks worth of traffic

this young girl didn’t have her dogs on a leash

and she didn’t have control of them and couldn’t get control of them

I was screaming so much my throat hurts

this man pulled over and offered to help

by that time she couldn’t catch the pit bull but it ran away

it didn’t bite me because i kept throwing my bag in it’s face

I walked away my anxiety

I’ve been feeling a little depressed over the past 2 weeks. I have a lot of anxiety about my finances. I’ve been having panic attacks

Walking has been helping with my endorphins.

I walked 17,000 steps today.

I also weight trained after I had class today. I don’t want to miss any days or make excuses not to do it.

My male friend, who I call, mrdeee has offered to send me money, so that’s nice. At least he offered.

I’m feeling some kind of way

I’m feeling some kind of way about my family.

I told them I was dealing with Food Insecurity and only one of my sisters checked on me to see if I was ok. I have 9 brothers and sisters and we are all on a group chat. None of them responded when I posted the link to my Food Insecurity blog. It’s like they just don’t care.

Even if you can’t offer financial help, the least you can do is call and see how I’m feeling about possibly starving.

I’ve felt unloved by my family in several instances in the past.

This shit hurts.

My back hurts

My back has been hurting. I think it could be caused either by sitting on my mattress for long periods of time or it’s because my boobs are too big for my frame now that I’ve lost weight. It could be a combination of both.

I’ve been trying different pain killers, none are super effective. I took ibuprofen today, yesterday I took acetaminophen, the day before that I took Naproxen.

I did my weight training this morning and yesterday I walked my 10,000 steps at work.

I work 3 hours today, I will try to get in 10,000 steps during that time.

Why I’m trying to grow on Youtube

Here’s why I’m trying to grow on Youtube.

I am trying to reach 1000 subscribers by the end of 2021. Right now I have less than 500.

At 1000 subscribers I can monetize my channel and get paid for ads that are shown on my channel, which would make a big difference for me because I am a Graduate student working part time in retail at the mall.

I make minimum wage. My next check will be about $50 because our hours were cut at work this month.

It would make a big difference to me if I can earn a second income from Youtube.

It is free to sign up for Youtube.

If you don’t want to subscribe or sign up, you can still help by giving me a thumbs up on my videos. The thumbs up helps YouTube know that people like my video content and then Youtube will promote my videos more, which will help me get more subscribers.

This year I decided to be more consistent on my channelI so now I post every Monday at 9 am.

If you subscribe to my channel and hit the bell notification, you can recieve a notification every time my video uploads.

My content is focused around Weight Loss and Fashion and a few Lifestyle videos as well.
I lost 80 pounds last year, and 40 pounds the year before that, and 12 pounds so far this year. I have 38 more pounds to lose to reach my goal and I am documenting my entire journey on YouTube.

Can you please check out my Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/vickinicole/videos

If you read this long message, thank YOU.

Working on my Food Budget

Lately I have been trying to lower my Food budget. I was able to shave $50 off by switching my salads from pre-made to home preparing them.

Well today I decided to save more money by preparing 2 meals a week. Specifically beans and rice. I asked my boss and coworker how to make beans and rice, cause I have no idea how to cook anything. So they told me to put in diced tomatoes and seasonings.

So I went to the Target app and ordered some pots, cause I literally have no cookware dishes because I don’t cook. I also ordered a bag of jasmine rice, a couple cans of diced tomatoes, a bag of black beans and a bag of red beans, some creole seasoning, onion powder and garlic powder.

I forgot to add Tupperware so after work today, I went to Target and bought Tupperware, then also picked up 2 more cans of diced tomatoes, brown rice, quinoa, and another bag of black beans. Black beans have less calories than red beans.

I’m a little confused on how the calories work with uncooked food. Like .25 cup of uncooked black beans have like 80 calories, but how many cups is that in COOKED beans?

I’m hoping to keep my calories at about 450 calories for the entire meal of beans and rice.

This should also lower my daily sodium intake which REALLY high lately.

I’m wondering how long one bag of beans and one 2 pound bag of rice can last. I was thinking 2 weeks or 4 meals. I am hoping? Anyone know the answer to this?

Anyway, this will cut about $30 more dollars off my grocery budget, bringing my monthly grocery budget to $470. It will be nice to be under $500 a month for groceries.

I’m going to start eating the beans and rice twice a week, in 2 weeks. Right now I have 2 weeks of groceries in my freezer and fridge because my friends wife ordered me a full stock of groceries from Wal-Mart online, all I had to do was pick them up today before work. That was so nice and generous and really such a relief. I have so much food now.

What I eat in a day

Please check out my latest video where I show What I Eat in a Day. Please Like, Subscribe and comment as that helps my channel grow. I am trying to get to 1,000 subscribers this year, as of now I only have not even half of that. 1,000 subscribers is the point where I can monetize my channel and then maybe I can have a second income from my Youtube channel.