The weighing scale this morning showed me wonderful news: 161lbs!
I've lost 4lbs!
I've finally solved the 2-year riddle of my stagnant progress of weight loss. Although I'm religiously running 3-4x a week, my eating habits stayed the same. Sometimes, I've even made it as an excuse by eating more if I ran in the morning. So weight loss was never achieved. I just maintained at 165lbs which was STILL classified as overweight for my height and BMI.
MYFITNESSPAL
In the last week of December 2011, I was encouraged by an officemate (who's also in a weight situation) to try counting calories with myfitnesspal, an online app that you can install on almost any device (android, iTouch, iPhone) and can be accessed on your PC (www.myfitnesspal.com). I heard about my sister-in-law calorie-counting some years ago and it worked for her while another officemate lost a lot of weight by calorie-counting too.
So, with high expectations and a prayer, I installed the app on my android.
THE FIRST FEW DAYS
Like starting a would-be habit, it was a challenge for the first few days. Keying in the food, and I mean EVERY food that passed thru my mouth was a task on its own. I set my goal to lose 1-lb per week, which meant keeping a daily limit of 1,490 calories. This was noticeably difficult as I would often see 2500 to even as high as 3,300 calories on one day! The app even gives a preview 5 weeks from now after you complete a daily entry. So seeing a weight gain or no loss at all in that 5 week preview was a scare.
Slowly, I started to manage my food intake, taking care not to exceed 1,490 per day. In the days that I'm running, the calorie burn helped a lot in giving me buffer to eat more. But it's still a challenge (a "daily struggle" to quote my officemate) on those days that have no exercise. Do note that I still exceed 1,490 calories on non-running days but not as high as when I started this habit.
Well, the office has conducted a BiggestLoser II contest again with the final weigh-in on March 4. The prize is a cool P12,800.00 cash, so that's really motivating me now to get the weight loss going.
My original goal 3 years ago was to go down to 152lbs which is the upper limit of my normal BMI range. With calorie-counting and myfitnesspal, I think I'm closer to that goal now than I've ever been before.
I hope my next weight-loss blog reads: "152lbs....FINALLY!"