It is my goal in this blog to teach a healthy everyday lifestyle. All this information I bring to you is not to make you feel overwhelmed or suppressed in your eating, rather give you the freedom to take control of your life through your health today. The best way to get into the water is to slowly get your feet wet and ease into it. And that is what I recommend with any major overhaul of your life. I want these changes to become habits and the best way to do that is to not feel overwhelmed so that you fall off the wagon. I recommend that you make small goals for yourself. When I first started off becoming in control of my health I weighed in at 190 after having my 3rd child and felt tired and sluggish. I started first with watching what I ate through the wonderful program weight watchers. About a month later I introduced exercise into my "habits". I personally started off with mostly cardio, however after learning what I have this is not the best choice as I have discussed this in my previous posts with the different types of burn states we can get into. To refresh your memory you can find it here. And now I am here lifting weights, eating healthy and taking walks and bike rides in the evenings, with occasional all out splurge days. I have now been steady for the last 3 years at 140 lbs and between 18-20% body fat. I tell you all this because I want you to understand that this is a process and in order for it to stay off and be healthy, it is a slow one. So here is where the goal setting comes into play. The next major even on the calender is the 4th of July. And I urge you to set your goal. My recommendation would be at no more than 5-6 lbs. So take your starting weight subtract off those pounds and get to work. This is a manageable goal, not only does it make it realistic but it gives us an opportunity to celebrate. Often when I reached my little goals I would go buy myself one pair of nice fitting jeans or shirt whatever the case may be, but it made me excited to see my clothing fit differently and made me work that much harder to reach that goal. But don't stop there, set the next goal as well. And DO NOT look at the finish line. The facts are....if you are making small changes, than your body WILL react and become healthier! And while lots of us want to fit into the "skinny" jeans we once did or wear a swimming suit and feel comfortable, I really think the real success is in the future. Are you preventing diabetes, or high blood pressure? Are you preventing aches and pains? Becoming active and eating healthy are life changing goals and should be seen as the ultimate prize.
Now off of my inspirational speech for the day :) and onto something very helpful and best of all FREE!!! Every Day Health is a website that is free with a simple registration that has a calorie and activity tracker! You enter the foods you eat and it finds the calories and subtracts them from your daily allotment. It even does the math of how many calories you need daily to loose weight. It has tons of food ready and available to enter in as well as the options to create your own foods! You can enter your exercise for the day as well and it will add those calories to your daily limit. Remember we want to eat those calories because we are already reducing our caloric intake as it is, the extra burn will take away nutrients from our muscles and we do not want that! But how nifty is that, Jake has been using it for a while and I just decided to start. I wish I would have started sooner, it is so convenient. Yes I know some people don't like messing with the computer, but it gives you all the information that you need. I even figure out what I am going to eat for the day and enter it in in the morning so I can see what else I get to eat :) For instance if I know I'm going to have a protein bar for a snack in the afternoon and a protein shake in the morning I enter them in right away so I know that they are already accounted for. Well that is my tidbit for the day, happy calorie counting!
