I decided to start blogging about my new healthier lifestyle/weight loss. I'm not like "The Biggest Loser" or anything, but I just thought it would help me if I journaled about my progress. I plan to lose about 32 lbs over all. I guess I'm a little over half way there. In July 2009, I went to my doctor to review test results for cholesterol. My cholesterol was too high and he suggested that I start exercising and eating better and lose weight. Of course I've heard this all before. In fact, I already knew my cholesterol was high, but now it was even higher than before and I decided maybe I should start doing something about it before I get older and it gets harder to control. I'd never been what I would call successful with weight loss or exercising plans. I would usually only keep up with it for a couple months at most and then fall right back into my same old habits. I knew I'd been slowly gaining weight over the last 8 years or so, but because the weight was going on so slowly, I didn't realize that it was a problem. But, according to my BMI and weight, I'd been in the unhealthy range for the last few years. I'd tried South Beach, "just trying to eat healthy", and Weight Watchers, none of which worked long term. My doctor suggested I simply exercise and count calories, burning more than I take in. It sounds so simple and, for me, it has been. This is the first time I've been able to stick with healthy eating and exercising for a significant amount of time without getting get bored or unmotivated to exercise or feeling too deprived with what I was eating. Guess what, I pretty much eat whatever I want! I just keep track of calories, trying not to go over on my daily "allowance." But sometimes I even ballpark it, and I've been very careful not to be too strict on myself. Some days I'm fairly strict with myself and some days I may be too lenient, but overall, I've stayed on track and I think the secret is just keeping focused and not letting myself feel like giving myself a break is falling off the wagon, or that being too strict is keeping me from eating the way I want. Generally, I have changed my diet, I might just get one scoop of ice cream instead of two, or only eat certain things every once in a great while, so in other words I have definitely changed the amount that I'm eating. So, I still get to each what I want, just not as much of it. This seems to be satisfying enough for me. Exercise has been fun. I usually go to the gym 2-3 times per week, warming up with walking on the treadmill and then doing the ellipitcal trainer using interval mode. I walk outside at home or at work. I play Wii fit. I started out riding my bike, but haven't done that since the weather has gotten too cold/wintery. I try to do some sort of activity more days out of the week than not. I don't always meet my goal, but then I just get back to it as soon as I can. My next plan is to start running. I just bought myself running shoes and have started that. I think my biggest accomplishment is that I kept up with this during the semester. Usually when the semester starts, everything else goes by the wayside, specifically eating healthy and exercising. I was probably lucky this last Fall semester in that my classes weren't too difficult or time consuming. That may be why I was able to keep up with my healthy lifestyle. But I think it also helped me change my lifestyle more permanently and made me realize that if I just make exercising and eating right a priority, I will keep it up. For calorie counting, I've been using a website, http://caloriecount.about.com. It makes it easy because I can log my calories online and I can do it at home, at work, anywhere where I can get online and it's a free website. I can also log my exercise and it will keep track of how many calories I've burned, including how many I burn just sitting and breathing. On days when I'm eating something that I don't know how many calories are in it, or can't log my calories, I just try to stay mindful of what I'm eating, keep my portions low, and after this amount of time, I've started to learn what portion sizes are and/or how many calories might be in a food item or meal. This helps me stay on track when I don't have anything helping me out. So far, I've lost 19 lbs. This is the most weight I've ever lost. I know it doesn't seem like that much to some people, but to me it's an accomplishment since I've never lost that much weight before and was never successful trying to lose weight before. I want to get down to having lost 32 lbs, which will put me about in the middle range of a healthy BMI. Then I plan to move into maintaining, which will continue to take work, including counting calories or using "mindful" or "intuitive" eating and exercising. I will continue to blog/journal about my progress.
