Maintaining My Weight

A couple of years ago, my weight was the biggest I had ever been.  I was 203 pounds and I was not excited about it.  I decided that I had to do something about my weight.  For some reason, exercising is not exactly fun for me.  I haven't really found a sport that I love doing.  Therefore, I decided that if the excessive food doesn't go in my mouth, I don't have to struggle to work it off.

Now, I am not a health/fitness expert.  However, I have found something that works for me.  I started counting calories.  By counting calories I have lost around 40 pounds and two dress sizes.  To make it easier to count the calories, I used the app from Lose It.

 

I like Lose It because it has a list of restaurants and foods I purchase from the store so there is no excuse to not attempting to log what I ate for the day.  All I have to do, is tell it my gender, height, current weight, and my goal weight and tell it whether I want to lose 1-2 pounds a week.  It will give me a budget of how much I can eat.  As I lose weight, my daily budget of calories I can consume decreases.  You have to be strict with logging everything you eat.  I even log how much ketchup I pour on my food.  As this pattern continues, I continue to lose weight.  Also, when you exercise you can log that info as well.  The more you exercise, the more calories are added back into your daily budget.  (I would recommend not eating those calories back if you want to see results though.)   I know soon if I want to continue to lose weight I should start an exercise routine because I do not want to eat below 1,200 calories a day.  However, I can't afford to keep purchasing a whole closet full of clothes due to weight lost so I just want to maintain where I am for the time being. 

Lose It has helped me eat reasonable portions of food again.  I wasn't always plus sized.  When I was a teenager I used to weigh around 135.  Then I went off to college and learned poor eating habits.  Lose It helped me go from consuming 3,000+ calories a day to 1,200.  I did not stop eating the type of foods I like.  I just reduced the portion size.  Therefore, I don't think of this as a diet but a lifestyle change.  I am especially mindful when I go to sit down restaurants.  One meal can be over 1,200.  I have learned that I cannot eat a whole restaurant meal in one sitting (depending on what I order--some restaurants are trying to serve more dishes with less calories).

One thing I don't like about Lose It is that it does not have the best database of foods and restaurants.  For that, I turn to another calorie counting app, My Fitness Pal.

My Fitness Pal has an extensive database of food and restaurants.  They even have the food that I get at the concession stand at the movies.  The only thing about My Fitness Pal is that I get confused on how to enter how much of the food I ate in comparison to Lose It.  I use both apps due to their strong points.  However, I wish either one would get it together so I'd only need one app on my phone. 

Another thing that really help me lose weight is to watch the beverages I drink.  I drink more water now because it doesn't have any calories.  I used to drink stuff like Sprite all day every day.  Now it's mostly water, coffee (that I mostly prepare at home to prevent excessive calories from being added, although sometimes I will go to the coffee shop and treat myself), tea, and small amounts of juice.  Just being mindful of what goes in my tummy made a difference in how much I weigh.

Did you lose a significant amount of weight? How did you do it? Share in the comments section below. Or, add your link below to your blog before April 10, 2014.

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