Eating Right

The first step to success

     Now that I have given you a little bit of a background on me, I'm now going to tell you what it was that I did to lose the weight I have and continue to drop the pounds.  I have tried many different diets, none of them worked long term.  Many of them would work for a week or two, but it would fail, or I would lose weight for two weeks but quickly gain them back.  I gave up on trying to find the next "big" diet.  I instead decided to do it the right way, learning how to eat right, exercising, and watching my numbers.

     The first thing I did was join Sparkpeople.  This would allow me to not only join a community that helps encourage you, but also allow you to track your numbers from the amount of calories you ate, to fat, to carbs, to just about anything else you can think of.  How is it the most successful people in business make it?  They don't just go into something without a plan.  They set an objective and they take that objective and create goals.  What is your objective?

     My objective has been to become 180 pounds.  After that I will re-evaluate what I have done and see what is left to be done.  But at 287 pounds, that 180 just seemed like a number that was unreachable.  It is hard to have such a far fetched objective when you don't have the goals (milestones) to reach that objective.  It would be like saying I want to be a millionaire.  Okay, great, you want to be a millionaire, now what?  To reach that objective of becoming a millionaire you need to set goals to get there.  Your own personal road map, get education, find a job, save, invest, ect...  

     My first goal was to start tracking my food.  Track what I ate and set the goals I needed to be able to lose weight.  I set up my account with sparkpeople, and then I did some research to find out what it was I needed to do to start losing weight.  I found caloriecount's calculator to be the best to not only set my goal weight, but set when I wanted to reach that weight.

     Now I knew how many calories I should be eating.  I took that number and subtracted 300 calories from it to create a daily calorie range.  For example; at 287 lbs, I needed to eat 2382 to lose 1.5 pounds a week.  So I would take that number and on sparkpeople create a calorie allowance between 2082-2382.  Now I knew what I should be eating each day.  I also had to realize the importance of consuming enough calories and healthy calories. 

     It is a difficult process.  I needed to stop letting excuses get in my way.  Instead of allowing the crap to beat me, I decided it was time for me to win.   I started to exercise.  I started to count the nutritional value of the food I was eating.  It can be hard, but if you want to lose weight (without using a fad diet, pills, or the magical drink), this is where it starts.  It is up to you to sit down and pick out your objective.  From there I set my goals.  First one was to track the food I ate, then exercise.  One step at a time, one goal completion at a time, that is all it takes.  I am so happy and feel so good now that I started this journey.  

Count the calories

Keep track of what you are eating

Set Objectives and goals, without a map, you'll be lost.