I Keep Losing Weight and It Keeps Finding Me!

I, like the rest of the country, am obsessed with losing those 8 pounds that stuck themselves to my gut and thighs over the holidays. I'm back to counting calories and scouring web sites to see just how many of them I need to eat and burn in a day. Layne is right here with me, which is nice because the only way either one of us has ever succeeded at losing weight is when we do it together.

On the flip side of that, it is kind of discouraging because Layne is a man and he is much bigger than me, which means he can eat like 1000 calories more than me and still lose weight.

I've found a few things over the last little while, though, that are awesome snacks / exercise / weight loss tools. Thought I'd share.

1. Special K Crackers. You can eat 17 of them for only 90 calories and they taste pretty good. A close runner up are the All Bran crackers-- they have more fiber, but a few more calories.

2. Banana Bread Weight Control Quaker Oatmeal. 160 calories, grams of fiber, 7 grams of protein, a little bigger than a regular oatmeal packet, so it actually fills you up and keeps you full. When you're used to eating a 300 calorie bowl of cereal, this is an easy way to cut your calories nearly in half.

3. $2.50 resistance bands at Target. They're over in the dollar section. They take up almost no space, you can use them while you're sitting watching t.v. anyway, they don't hurt if they drop them on your toes, and using them to do bicep curls, tricep work and shoulder work made me stiff the next day-- and I do the same exercises 2-3 times a week with 12 lb. weights!

4. McDonald's Ice Cream Cone. For those moments when you've GOT to have something sweet and creamy. According to them, it only has 150 calories and 4 grams of protein. Hits the spot!

5. Sorry, no pic. But, here's a really cool link: http://www.healthstatus.com/cgi-bin/calc/reload.pl This is a calculator where you can put in how many minutes you spent doing everything from different types of exercise, to mopping the floor, driving, cooking, showering, and even the "s" word. (If I type it, your filter will ban me from your computer.) It just told me that I burned 669 calories cycling, 414 doing housework, 67 driving, and 8 brushing my teeth.

If you're back on the wagon like me, Good Luck to you. Losing weight is the hardest thing I've done. I've spent so much of my life trying to do it that you think I'd be good at it by now!