So, about my diet and weight loss...

When somebody I haven't seen in a while sees me, they tend to ask me how I lost the weight.  I usually just say I joined a gym and I'm watching what I eat, but really there is more to it than that.  Now keep in mind, I'm not a doctor (and I don't play one on TV) so this worked for me but I don't think it's a universal fit.

Yes, I joined CrossFit Latrobe, and I absolutely love it. However, while I needed the structure of CrossFit, I'm sure you don't need to join a CrossFit Gym to lose weight (blasphemy to my trainer, I know).  What I needed to do is get active.  Keep in mind my activity level before CrossFit was that of my slug baby son, meaning non-existent.

Recently, I was talking with a friend that said she goes thru phases of being skinny and being chubby.  I suggested CrossFit and she said it was too high impact, a perfectly good reason to try something else.  She did say she was walking and swimming, a perfectly good way to stay active, in my opinion.  You just have to find the right fit, like I did and she has.

I started my work out regimen  in May of 2012 and I haven't quit yet.  That's the key to my activity part of losing weight, just keep going, which sounds a lot like just keep moving.  I started out going twice a week, then I upped it to three times a week and now I go almost everyday, however I do rest on the weekends, because the body needs rest to recover and grow.  I go when I know the work out will be tough and I go when I know the work out will be easier (nothing is easy when losing weight).

I really only thought about quitting one time, after my last introduction class when I almost got sick (I blame it on not eating before working out now that I look back at it), but I kept going, and I am extremely glad I did.

If you remember from a previous post, I had a jump on the eating part of losing my weight from the anxiety and lack of appetite from the Divorce Diet (patent pending of course).  When I finally wanted to eat again, I made sure that I only ate during my meal times.  It was tough at first, I really wanted to snack (mainly on cookies because I'm a cookie freak), and in the times that I couldn't make it to the next meal I had a banana or apple or pear or even a cup of tea.  Now keep in mind I didn't change what I ate for my meals at first, just that I didn't eat in between them.  If I wanted to make homemade alfredo sauce or lemon cream sauce, I made it and I ate it.  I lost a good amount of weight during this time, but eventually I plateaued.

I knew I had to make more changes, so I started changing what I was having for my meals.  I went away from the high carb meals (don't kid yourself, I still have pizza and spaghetti on occasion, but it is rare and I stick to the portions on the box).  Since the weather was nice around this time I started to grill a lot, like constantly.  I grilled everything, chicken, steak, burgers, and even veggies.

I also started using a calorie tracker, personally I use MyFitnessPal, but Lose it! is also a good one, and best of all they are both free on the Google Play store.  It really showed where I was in the day and more importantly where my calories were coming from and the nutritional value the food I was eating had.  I did my research and one thing I kept coming across was make sure you hit caloric goal for the day.  Again I lost a good amount of weight, but I wasn't quite where I wanted to be.

I started to look into where I could cut useless calories, and from what I read or heard it was in the sugar department (boo!).  I'm a tea junkie, I've never been into coffee, so I stopped putting sugar in my tea.  I was surprised that it didn't take me long to enjoy the actual taste of my tea without the sugar.  Now I've got a little English in me, so I put milk in my tea.  I was extremely surprised to learn how much sugar is in milk, like a boatload. In one cup of ultra skim milk there are 22 grams of sugar, that's the same as a Snickers Bar!  So I switched to Almond milk, which I like better because it's creamier than the ultra skim milk anyway.

I was finally at a weight I was happy with, but my body isn't quite where I want it to be (stupid belly).  Right now, I'm adding protein to my diet and I'm having fun looking up high protein recipes and some paleo recipes (I'm not an advocate of going strictly for one diet at all, but that's just me).

The only real universal suggestions I would make about losing weight that I hope you would stick to would be to do research, ask questions (I recently reached out to a friend of mine that is a nutritionist), and find something that will work for you.

M