Well, as I informed you in the last update, I had gained two pounds over the holiday season. I am pleased to inform you that I lost one of those pounds! Slow improvement, but improvement nonetheless.
I’ve got a long way to go, but I believe I will reach my goal. My husband tries to help me and encourage me, and I appreciate that so very much. Indeed, he tries to get me to take my vitamins everyday. I take them sometimes – definitely not consistently.
I remember the last time I set out to lose weight and get in shape. It was about 5 years ago. I decided to lose 20 pounds in about 10 weeks back in the summer of 2002 (2 years before I gave birth to my daughter). I remembered what worked:
- I eliminated orange juice from my diet
- I drank water first thing in the morning
- I walked 45 minutes about 5 times per week
- I cut down the amount of carbs I ate
- I eliminated fried fish (I was preparing alot of fried catfish at the time)
- I reduced the amount of sweet tea I consumed daily
I remember that this plan worked. I lost 20 pounds, and I felt and looked great! What happened?
Well, one year later (fall 2003), I got pregnant. I gained 37 pounds during my pregnancy and lost 25 of those pounds postpartum in about 8 weeks. But I really didn’t work on losing the remaining weight. It just so happened that I got to within 5 pounds of my goal weight of 155 right this past spring and remained there until this past fall.
At the moment, I’m struggling. I know I need to include more aerobic activity into my day. With so much crammed into a day, with a 2-1/2 year old, a 45-minute commute, and all the other responsibilities I have (and I know I’m not alone), it seems a daunting task to fit 45 minutes in somewhere. But I believe I found an answer…
Eat4Today is a beautiful blog with the tagline, “A place to discuss food and eating and the state of the world.” In the post 100 calories a day — The E4T Exercise Blog difference, katiebird said”
“If you can walk, you can walk for 5 minutes — you don’t even have to leave the house! You can walk around the living room or hallway during a commercial break. Or hop, or stretch (with some vigor.) Just get up and move for 5 minutes every hour. And at the end of the evening (after for exercise breaks) you’ll have burned just about 100 calories!”
“It’s hard to believe, but if you can walk a mile in 20 minutes you’ll burn just about that many calories with this evening’s Exercise Blog. Are you interested?”
I’m interested. It’s easy, and I will take you up on it!
Thank you katiebird…
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This kills me to say, but just eliminating sweet tea and replacing it with water will do wonders.
That’s a huge sacrifice though, sweet tea is liquid gold.
I love your reference to sweet tea as “liquid gold.” I’m going to use that, if you don’t mind. And yes, I agree that cutting out sweet tea and juices (I do drink a little apple juice sometimes) will help tremendously. When I did it a few years ago, I noticed the difference pretty quickly. I say this as I reflect back on last night, drinking a sweet tea as I was posting! How ridiculous!
Water is so good not just for weight loss but also for many health benefits. I just love drinking water. But you are right Josh – tea is excellent thing too. Its so hard to give it up.