The Secret to Weight Loss!

Back in 2008, I lost a lot of weight. About 27 pounds to be exact. It was awesome.

As you may know, I have bad knees. In the middle of 2009, my knees started acting up. With that, plus falling on my knees and injuring them in January, I was pretty much done with my Tae Bo workouts.

When I lost the weight, I got off the horrid diet, but still worked out, maintaining the weight loss. It was great. I could eat what I wanted and not gain, because I was working out. With the inactivity, I should have watched my eating too. Nope. I still ate the same way. Back came those pounds in about a year.

Luckily for me, a friend was selling a treadmill. We purchased it from her, and I've been walking on it steadily for months. The problem is, the treadmill was stopping me from gaining any more weight, thank goodness, but I was not losing any. Why? Because I was still eating the way I always do; I was maintaining.

I needed to lose the weight I had gained back from not working out for months and months.

The secret to weight loss is NOT a secret! You've been hearing it all along.

Successful weight loss is not any of these:

Starve yourself until you are unhappy.

Deny yourself things you like

Eat ONLY meat/cheese/this power drink/*insert fad diet here*

Weight loss is pretty much this:

Burn more calories than you consume. The end.

Find out how many calories you need, for your sex, age and weight. You can Google many different calculators that will tell you what you need to eat to maintain as well as lose weight.

My company joined forces with a health management company. They have an interactive website to help you manage your weight, your stress, your smoking, your blood pressure, etc. etc. There are videos to watch, trackers to maintain, coaches who call you once a week, menus to create, etc.

I created a nutritional program. Based on my height, age and weight, it told me how many calories to consume a day to maintain. Then it created a meal plan for slow weight loss based on a lower amount of calories; for me it's 1800 a day.

I know what you're thinking: Calorie-counting, are you kidding me?? Who has time for that?

Breathe, breathe. It's not that scary. My problem tends to be lack of originality with my menu-planning. Fortunately, the website planned a month's worth of meals: Breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack. That's really a lot of eating. It also lists the calories of each meal planned, which is great! I followed the menus, sometimes substituting some things I don't like, but always keeping track of my daily caloric intake. After a while, you get to know what things you can and can't eat based on the calories, etc.

I usually did not follow their dinner menus; the two I tried were bland. I have been making my regular dinners and checking out the calories. I keep a calorie notebook at my desk at work where I quickly jot down the calories I am eating, and I bring the notebook home with me too. I pack my snacks and lunch now for work (Hello, money savings!), and know how many calories are in the things I eat (if I don't know, I Google calorie counters and bingo! I can find it.)

Special reminder: SERVING SIZE MATTERS! Read that label. You can't eat six of those thingies when the serving size is two!

Add to the lower caloric intake my 4-times-a-week treadmill workouts and I am on my way! Last week, I wore pants I have not worn since December of last year.

At the end of month # 1 (Tuesday morning to be precise,) I have lost over 11 pounds.

I'll update at the end of month 2.