God’s Word, Healthy Diet, Fitness and Weight Loss

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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Healthy Weight Loss Program.

When we choose to lose weight and we seriously begin to journey on an healthy weight loss program our success lies in our investment to achieve our health, diet, fitness and weight loss goals. All are part of our complete program. Not only are we to set goals for our health, diet and fitness we need to commit to them and then invest in them. Only when we are committed and invested will we be successful.

Commit to Our Weight Loss Goals.

Commitment is a mindset based on intentionally setting goals and giving ourselves to achieve those goals. Your level of achievement is based on your commitment. Our commitment to our goals are evidenced by the priority we put on these goals. I said evidence. This denotes the action we take versus the talk we talk. We can talk about losing weight and being committed to our goals but our actions will be the evidence of our commitment. By itself commitment does guarantee success, but lack of commitment will guarantee failure. So as we set our goals and establish the priority they have in our life be truthful with ourselves and act accordingly. We know that success is also a mindset. Success is based on faith that we can and we will achieve our goals. Faith in our success will also help our commitment. So know that with commitment and professional guidance we will succeed if we invest in our success.

Invest in Our Weight Loss Goals.

Generally when someone mentions investment our first thought is a financial investment. Though financial investment is definitely required to meet our goals it is just one of many investments that we must commit to for our success.

First we must be invested in mind. That means achieving our goals is a priority in our mind and we are focused to make them happen. We believe in our plan, we have set out the necessary action steps (or soon will) and we will be committed to make them happen.

Next we must be invested in our time. Once our mind is made up we must invest the necessary time for success. The time investment quite often is the hardest part, but if we are really committed and our goals are a priority then the evidence will bare out our time investment. Like anything else, we get out what we put in. If we do not invest much time we will reap a relative return.

Invest in knowledge. Commit to learning as much as we can about our health, diet, fitness and losing weight. This knowledge will make it easier to succeed. If we know better and are committed we can and will do better.

Finally, invest your money. Invest our money to buy healthy food, (it really is less expensive than eating unhealthy). Invest our money in our fitness. Whether we join a health club,  build a home gym, invest in a personal trainer or weight loss coach, as well as apparel (you know we need to look good) we must invest in our fitness. Invest in nutritional vitamin supplements necessary to supplement our healthy diet, our fitness and losing weight. Sit down and Seriously commit a budget to achieving our goals.

Get Invested in Our Weight Loss Goals!

Without an investment of our mind, our time and our money we will not succeed. No matter what we do. If we are not committed in mind, time and money; we are not committed. This does not mean that we can not work in and around time constraints. Nor does it mean that if we have a limited budget we will not be successful. It does mean that if we have a small budget we must commit more time or if we have little time commit more to the budget. But there is always a minimum investment necessary. So until we take the time to access our commitment and establish what we can and will invest do not start a healthy weight loss program. When we are serious about our weight management goals, then and only then should we GET INVESTED.

Be Blessed. Be a Blessing.

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