Good day but I feel hungry. I hope 1200 calories is enough each day. I would hate to start relying on white knuckle willpower!! lol. I have gone so long not listening to the true signs of hunger. I don't know how to tell if it is thirst, hunger, an emotional trigger, etc. But I will try satisfying all of them before I resort to food. The lectures at Fitness Ridge helped me to realize that thirst mimics the sensation of hunger. I will drink a gallon of water before I eat, in hopes that it was just thirst I was feeling. Ha ha!! Those lectures also helped me think things through before diving into a bag of chips, swimming in a pool of soda, tearing through the bakery and candy isle like locusts. I will try listening to my body more and see if I can decipher what it wants. I no longer want to treat my body like a garbage dump. I want to respect it, nurture it and protect it, because it can do some pretty amazing things. I also have BIG plans for it when it can start running again. A mantra my brother Darrin told me....."Thank you mind, you're welcome body."
Good job keeping it out there!
ReplyDeleteI will share my journey with you. I've also been working on my weight loss for nearly one year. I started after Thanksgiving last year when the kids (Alex & Brianna and Erin & Josh) got into your uncle Chuck and me about our weight and lack of fitness. I started using MyFitness Pal and have tracked every day since then. At first I set no goals, just tracked everything that I ate or drank. It was eye-opening to see how many calories I consumed! I was eating the same portions as Chuck and I discovered there are a lot of calories in alcohol & snacks (duh!) So, I set my initial goal to lose 1/2 lb a week, so at my "lightly active" activity level, I could eat 1610 calories per day.
I'm 5'3" and started off at 186 lb with a goal of 140 lb. Losing 46 lb seemed so intimidating to me, so I can imagine how hard it must be to be facing a ~200 lb goal!! In the spring I got a Fitbit and started tracking my activity, which MyFitness Pal adds to the daily calorie goal. Now I could eat or drink more calories when I exercised (yay!) Since I share my MyFitnessPal diary with my friends, Alex pointed out that if I eat all the extra calories I burn, I'm not going to lose weight as quickly - exercising to eat wasn't a very good strategy! Since you have to burn 3500 calories a week (500 per day) to lose a pound, I realized eating those extra calories wasn't helping me to achieve my goal!
I don't record my weight weekly, but it was slowing my progress and I didn't want it to take me 2 years to lose the weight. So In Jul, I changed the goal on MyFitnessPal to lose 1.5 lb per week, which was 1200 cals per day. That lasted about 2 weeks before I changed it again because I blew past it every day, this time to 1 lb per week, which means I can eat 1360 cals a day. This seems to be what I can most easily stick with. When I had it lower, I would always eat my extra activity calories, now I try to stay at 1360 at least 5 days a week. My progress has been a somewhat disappointing loss of 1/4 lb per week, but at least the trend is down. I think my biggest obstacle is being an older (soon-to-be 59) rather sedentary person - I work at a desk and at the end of my long days I don't feel much like exercising. I did get a stand-up work station at the office, so at ,east I'm not sitting nearly as much. Next I may get an under-the-desk treadmill :)
About 6 months ago we started working with a personal trainer 2-3 times per week. When we started he took our starting weights, measurements, BMI and strength. We are due to have these again which and hopefully there will be evidence of progress I'm not seeing on the scale (oh how I hate the scale!!) when we started he said it would take us at least a year to reach our goals, so I hope we are there in 6 months! I do see my body getting more lean - especially in the legs & arms, but my belly is still fat.
I just want you to know there are others in your family & friend list who you don't see so often, but we also are in the battle with you to get fit. Damned our society with all the fast foods, super-size, and high sodium/sugar/fat convenience foods making us fat and all the screens that temp us to sit on our lazy butts!!
Think about using MyFitnessPal to track and share with friends, too! Keep up the blogging - food is also very tied to emotions, so when you blog, try to share your feelings about your slips, successes and overall emotional state. Use "I feel..." when writing and look for patterns of emotional triggers.
Keep up the good work...you can do this one day, and one step at a time! ��
Awesome Debbie!!! I do have a Fitbit, but have joined my fitness pal. I will definitely look into it. Thank you! WE CAN DO IT!!
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