I began my renewed weight loss mission a little after I began this blog. On May 7th I posted “It’s Not Easy Getting Skinny” and it’s been a long, hard road to get to say that I’ve lost 9lbs and can comfortably fit in a size down from where I began. 🙂
If you’ve followed my journey, you’ve seen me go through variations of My “Skinny” Mantra – and trust me, the variations continue. It’s about trying everything and adjusting until you start seeing results. Trust me, the first month was about losing and gaining the same 5 lbs over and over again. But after lots of hard work, it’s all starting to come together and pay off. 🙂 Let me tell you what I’ve been doing lately.
Everyday I log in my meals on my Lose It app. You may have another favorite app or prefer to write everything in a food diary. Whatever your preferred method is, do it! You’ll be amazed at how often food you thought was lean and healthy, is, only when you eat 1/2 to 2/3’s of it. While I have gotten used to logging in my food, I have stopped logging in any exercising. Why you ask? Because most apps over estimate the amount of calories burned through exercise, which fooled me into thinking I could eat more, which resulted in me not loosing weight. (Get a heart rate monitor instead to log your actual calorie burn and factor that into your calorie intake for the day.) Once I stopped factoring in my exercising, but kept to my calorie goal for the day, the weight started to come off!
I have also become very in tune with Intuitive Eating. I now, for the most part, tend to eat when I’m truly hungry and not because I’m trying to mask some other emotion. I have to say a lot of it is due to brining the awareness into my eating patterns, but I also have to credit Oprah’s Life Class for helping me get more in tune with my emotions and how they relate to me and the world around me. 😉
The other thing I know most of you will not like hearing is that I work out 5 days a week for 1.5-2 hrs each day. My days of rest are Fridays and Sundays. I’m single and a member at Gold’s Gym, which can explain why I have the luxury of working out so much. Lately, it’s been the highlight of my day because work has been particularly stressful and working out helps me destress. 🙂 I do everything from Zumba, to BodyCombat, BodyPump, CXWorks and BodyAttack. Yes it’s exhausting, but I haven’t felt this strong in a while and the added bonus is that I’ve dropped a dress size. 🙂
Needless to say, although I don’t have the magic pill to get you to your “skinny” self, I do have the proof that if you work long and hard at it, eventually it does pay off. Now to keep it off as I head for the 2nd half of my weight loss journey! 😉
What lifestyle changes are you willing to make to get healthy and drop a dress size? What suggestions to you have to keep the weight off?
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Awesome job! I love that you figured out that logging exercise was actually detrimental for you. That’s a great tip to share. Thanks!
Thanks! I think I knew it when I started to see the calories burned numbers, but at the time I was excited to “think” I was burning all those calories and happy about being able to “reward my hard work with extra food.” All things that go against Intuitive Eating. Once I made the connection, letting go of needing to track calories burned for the food reward was easy. 🙂