My Weight Loss Plan

A couple people have asked so I thought I would lay out my plans for losing weight. To start, I think dieting is stupid. You have to change your lifestyle if you want to permanently lose weight. Dieting will only get you short term weight loss and you will just gain the weight back the second you stop 'dieting'. When you want to lose weight you have to re-vamp your life. Open your fridge and cabinets and take out anything fattening with a lot of calories. Go shopping and buy healthy fresh foods. It's about changing the way you eat. This doesn't mean never having foods you love but it's all about moderation.

For me, counting calories is the easiest way to keep track of what I'm eating. Now someone commented on my WWI post saying that I'm not eating enough calories because I'm Breastfeeding. Let me explain... There's something called your calorie intake and something else called your Net Calories. Your calorie intake is the amount of calories you consume. Net calories are the amount of calories you have after exercising and in my case breastfeeding. So when I say I'm limited to 1200 calories a day...I'm talking about my Net Calories. Because I am burning an extra 500 calories a day from breastfeeding I include that in my exercise so therefor that adds on extra calories I can consume. For a breastfeeding woman trying to lose weight it's best to consume between 1500-1800 calories(information via kellysmom.com). This way you continue to keep your milk supply but are still able to lose weight. For me I'm consuming anywhere between 1500-1700 calories depending on the day. To keep track of my calories I'm using a neat little app on my iPhone called My Fitness Pal.

My Fitness Pal is an awesome free app! Once you download it you enter in your weight, height, goals as well as other info about yourself. You then can create a user name and once your account is created you're ready to go! What I love about this app is that any food, vitamin, or beverage you can possibly think of this app has the nutrition facts for. Everything you consume you put into your diary. Every time you exercise you put in your diary. It is so simple and is excellent at keeping track of it. The app gives you all of the tools you need to begin to lose weight.

Something else super cool about this app is it shows the totals for the day(and week!). To the left is my totals for the day. It has my totals, goals, and how much I have left...seriously cool! It really helps to have it all broken down for me so I'm able to look at more than just calories but also at fat and sugars as well as calcium.

This is the main page for the app. It's a summary of my day today. Another super cool thing about this app if you can add 'friends' and keep each other accountable. you can see my news feed at the bottom which would be visible to anybody I add. So if you download this app add my as a friend. As you can see my user name is hewearscombatboots .

So along with counting calories something important to remember is just because something is under a calorie amount doesn't mean it's healthy. You also need to check the fat grams, sugars, etc. When I lost weight last summer I kept under 1200 calories consumed and less than 15g of fat per meal. Each meal I had was around 300-400 calories. Exercise is a key ingredient in weight loss though! You can't expect to lose weight without getting off the couch and getting moving.

The most important thing in my weight loss is support. Having a support system helps you to be able to stay focused and motivated.

Alright, I realize this post was super long winded so good for you if you made it this far!
So here is my plan of action to lose weight-

-Stay under 1200 Net Calories per day
-Go for a 25 minute jog 4 times a week
-Walk 3 mornings a week
-EAT HEALTHY!
- Continue drinking at least 67.6oz of water a day
-NO SODA(I'm 7 weeks without!)
-Resist my sweet tooth and eat fruit instead of sweets
-Stay positive
-NO Fast Food

Hope this helps some of you who maybe don't know where to start or just need a little help. I will be posting more tips on losing weight as time progresses. Good luck to all of you and I look forward to our weigh in on Monday!