I am so glad you have decided to take this first step in your new Healthy Lifestyle journey. As the weeks go by you will see how different this plan is compared to others out there. The most important thing to realize is that losing is weight is not easy. We all know that. No matter what the other gimmicks say. I, like you, discovered this the hard way. I developed this plan because I have struggled with my weight my entire adult life. My journey to find the right plan was difficult. But I strongly feel like I have found something that helped me lose the weight I needed to lose in order to live a healthy lifestyle. More importantly I now have a plan I can realistically follow the rest of my life.
At the age of 42 I had my second child. I found myself with a beautiful baby girl and almost 40 lbs. to lose. I didn’t have to lose this because of my vanity, or because my husband wanted me to, or even because of societal pressures. I wanted to be healthy and have the energy to keep up with my two kids. I looked into the future knowing I would be an ‘older” mom and wanted to be healthy for as long as I could. I set a personal goal to lose 30 lbs.
When weighing my options (no pun intended) I thought about what diet I would choose. I had to look back at all of the diets I have tried in my life. I honestly think I’ve tried them all. I tried:
- Weight Watchers
- Keto
- Jenny Craig
- Low-carb
- No-carb
If I am being completely honest with you, I was able to lose weight with each of them. I lost 30 lbs. with Weight Watchers, 15 lbs. with Jenny Craig, and 25 lbs. with no-carb just to name a few. We each of these I did lose weight, but I kept asking myself the same question. Why did I have to try so many diets? Because between each diet I gained the weight back.
Sometimes I was tired of eating those tiny portions of pre-packaged meals, other times I really (REALLY!) wanted something sweet or even a glass of wine. Once my body was trained to run without these restricted items, the second I decided to indulge (even in moderation) I would start to put the weight back on. It just wasn’t very realistic. Sure I lost weight relatively fast and I felt good for the time being, but it didn’t feel good falling off the wagon just a little bit and losing what I worked so hard for.
I had to really dig deep and analyze each of these plans and think about what they had in common. I also had to look back at my medical training and really think about what makes us tick. While all of these diets have some sort of gimmick to make you lose weight fast, what they are really doing is applying the one basic concept of nutrition that everyone knows. You have to cut the calories if you are going to lose weight. It doesn’t matter what they tell you. IF you are eating 3000 calories a day, it doesn’t matter if it is all protein and no carbs, if your body is only burning 1200 calories per day, you are going to gain weight. PERIOD.
It's Simple
Consume less calories than you burn and you will lose weight.
n order to lose weight, you have to burn more calories than you consume. If you want to maintain, you have to burn as many as you consume. When it comes to burning calories all these plans tout the value of their diet and their plan and they love to show you all of these success stories. What they don’t tell you is that these success stories are possible because the people are burning more calories that consume. Most likely they are doing this by exercising regularly or at least increasing their activity level over what it was before and consuming LESS calories overall.
Lastly, I had to think about my training and realize that our bodies are like machines. They were built a certain way and they were meant to run a certain way. To be healthy and run efficiently, our bodies need protein, carbohydrates (YES, I said CARBS) and fat (YEP…that too). I could trick my body into running without the fat and the carbs, but that is not the healthiest or the most sustainable approach. Our bodies also crave certain foods. Some believe that you crave what your body needs and eliminating an entire food groups is a recipe for failure. If you starve your body of carbs completely, as time goes on, that bowl of rice is going to be harder and harder to resist.
Thinking about the importance of calorie intake, exercise and long-term success, I set about to put together a plan that I could make work. Something that I could make work with my busy lifestyle and that I knew I could live with the rest of my life.
That’s why I created the Healthy Lifestyle Plan. I knew I needed to better understand my bodies needs and to find a plan that would allow me to eat what I want, in moderation of course Whether its indulging in that glass of wine or enjoying a frozen yogurt, I needed to able to allow myself to eat freely.
With the Healthy Lifestyle Plan, we want to teach you to understand the caloric costs of the foods you consume and their nutritional value. How to plan your day so you are not stuck eating high caloric, nutrient poor choices. I chose to finally get off the diet merry go round. Let’s do this together.
This was my journey. I would love to hear about yours. Please tell us about your journey in the comments section. We love to hear what has worked and what hasn’t.
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