Exercise!

The number one piece of advice I learned concerning exercise: lose weight first!  When I decided to give weight loss one more attempt I jumped in all the way. I started jogging. I hated it. I then tried jump roping. When I was 35 pounds overweight I felt horrible about 25 jumps into the workout. I stopped. I didn’t stress about stopping and I didn’t worry about stopping. I just focused more on my new way of eating. I was losing weight through my diet so that is where I focused. 

Eventually the idea struck me that I didn’t have to transform into a marathon runner to become healthy. I started to take walks. Nice and easy with no pain, but I was still having gains (losses). I lost 25 pounds through diet and nice walks with my dog. The interesting thing that happened is that when I ended up losing my 25th pound a month ago the jump rope didn’t look so horrible. I tried it again. It wasn’t nearly as bad to jump with 25 pounds no longer on my body!  I am now able to do 400 jumps in a row and a total of 2000 jumps per workout. 

The key, for me, was lose weight and the lighter body will actually start to feel like moving. I was amazed by this discovery, and yet now it makes perfect sense. So eat right, be patient, and the exercise will follow. 

More Diet Tips

I have heard a recommendation to not look at a scale when dieting. The theory is that if you.are eating healthy you don’t need to monitor weight loss. I do not lose weight this way. I am able to rationalize an Oreo cookie or two by thinking, “They aren’t that many calories.”  If I don’t step on a scale my weight creeps up with extra calories here and there. However, if I step on that scale every morning I can see the effect of those calories. It keeps me motivated and working to try to get the scale to go down. 

Be aware that the scale does fluctuate a little daily. I try to find a more long term pattern. A week should see a pound loss. I don’t panic if the scale is higher one day than the previous day. I am concerned and need to focus more if the scale has gone up after a week. I pick a day (Friday) that I remember as my weekly weight, but I do check everyday to keep myself honest. 

The Diet

The diet plan that I finally found success with was the Paleo Plan. I am not going to go in depth about what the Paleo Plan is because there is already a lot of information on the internet. In an attempt to make things easy for myself, I thought of the Paleo Plan as eating meats, fruits, and vegetables and that is all. The encouraging news is that I wasn’t perfect, especially at first. However, I did try to stick to the meat, fruits, and vegetables only goal, but at least once a day I would mess up. Nothing horrible, but I would mess up. The encouraging thing is that I still lost weight. I lost weight at about a pound a week. A good steady progress. As I kept eating in this new way I got better and better at it. After three or four months I got tired of messing up and I created a contest with myself to see how long I could go without cheating. I made it 21 days!  However it took me months to get to the point. Many blogs want you to do that first. Yikes!  It took time for me to get to a point where sugars were not too over powering of a temptation. However, when I did that, the weight really started to fall off. Almost two pounds a week!  The key for me was to just try and not demand perfection. My body adjusted and got better at eating in a way that I now will spend the rest of my life eating. I was able to lose my first 25 pounds just by changing my eating habits. I recommend a transition into a sugar less diet of meats, fruits, and vegetables. Oh and on the meats don’t worry about grain fed vs. corn fed and stuff like that. Too much complication. Simplify!

I Did It!

That’s correct! After many years of attempting to get to my ideal weight I have finally made it!  I am creating this blog as a celebration. I am also creating this blog just in case someone stumbles upon it on accident. I am now 41 and the reason I have never lost weight before is I lacked a plan. I bumped around from idea to theory to trend to fad to exercise to diet, but now I finally know what it takes. And I want to share it. I don’t care if nobody reads this except me. I just want to document that I did it and how I did it!  If someone stumbles upon it fantastic! The diet plan that has now become the way I eat will be my post tomorrow.