Today is significant on many different occasions. First and foremost it is my birthday. No, this is no April Fools joke. I was born on April first. I am at the age that I thank God everyday for another day and I try not take anything for granted. The calls, emails and texts have been coming in from friends and family. I is good to know people care about you. This is really all I need to be happy. I just need to know that i am loved and people care. I guess I am what they call an easy date.
There is another reason why today is even more significant to me. In November I decided to change my life and eat healthy to lose weight. For the past 5 months I have been focused on learning how to eat healthy to lose weight and maintain a healthy lifestyle. As I studied and searched the Internet for more and more information I have grown tremendously in my knowledge and understanding of what it truly takes to lose weight and keep it off. I know though there is a big gap between head knowledge and action.
From the “head” I know I must eat healthy and exercise regularly as the main ingredients to lose weight and keep it off. I am doing very well on eating healthy. For the last 6 weeks my wife has joined me and that makes a big difference, because I have a true “Weight Loss Buddy”. Since I do most of the cooking it was easier for her to commit because her meals are made for her and I make her a healthy salad for work everyday. As I work from home it is important that I transform the kitchen to a place of healthy only food. My nephew still lives with us, but he is 18 and is rarely home. Yes we still buy food for him because he usually does not eat what I cook. I can handle hot dogs, hamburgers and frozen pizza being in the home. It is the cookies, cakes and other sweets that was my problem. All in all we have done very well eating healthy.
But then I came to a plateau. I did very well in losing weight. I lost about 20 pounds in 45 days. No real exercise, no diet supplements, no fad diets. I lost 20 pounds just by changing my eating habits. From November 15th through January 1st. I went from 207 pounds to about 185 pounds. That was especially hard because it was the holiday season and my father passed December 7th. This meant there were always people at my house and lots of unhealthy foods, especially sweets. It was also very hard because my sister lived with us for 2 months and she is the queen baker and the princess of junk food. She brought back the memories of home made biscuits from scratch, pound cakes, peach cobbler, etc. I had a little of everything. Yes I watched my portions and I said no many times. I even had to hurt my sisters feelings and demand that she stops cooking so much. But by limiting meat, fish and poultry and eating about 80% to 90% of my diet was fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grains, nuts and beans. I virtually eliminated table sugar and drank a lot of natural tea, especially: Oolong, Pu-er and Green Tea. I also drank a lot of water cutting out soda and commercial drinks. So my diet was pretty good and I lost over 20 pounds in 45 days without exercise.
Then, I hit the wall for the next 30 days I may have lost 2 or 3 pounds and I did not understand why. It was really simple. It is a sedentary lifestyle. From November through January I was constantly on the go. Dealing with my father and having my sister around kept me very active. I even took on a seasonal job at UPS for 30 days working 4-5 hours a night. What I did not consider was for that 30 days I was constantly walking, patrolling my area of the conveyor belt and I was constantly lifting boxes. I was doing more exercise than I would if I designed a workout program of that was for 1 to 2 hours a day. Once the seasonal job ceased, I was no longer getting the physical exercise. Though I lost another couple of pounds I realized that it was also the exercise and not just the diet.
So I have started out slowly now. I have purchased an elliptical exercise machine and “the perfect push up” and I am now working out about 45 minutes a day. For the last 2 weeks my weight began to move again. First a slight drop, then a slight gain and now back to dropping again. Being a former high school athlete i know that muscle is heavier than fat. So as I shed pounds there may be days that I gain weight, but overall I am on a downward trend.
The original thought was today, April 1, 2009 was a special and significant day. The reason is it was the date I set to meet my target goal to weigh 175 pounds. I am happy to report that I missed my goal. I only Got down to 177 pounds. But, In the processed I learned so much. The most important think I learned was the more I learned and spent time sharing what I learned and encouraging people, the more I was encouraged. I believe that is what one of our main jobs in life is to share and encourage one another.
November 15, 2008 Start Weight: 207 Target Weight: 175 April 1st, 2009 Current Weight: 177
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• The health risks — GM foods have been in stores only since the 1990s, so the long-term health risks are unknown
