By Staff Sgt. Natalie Hedrick 3rd HBCT Public Affairs Office
CONTINGENCY OPERATING SITE KALSU, Iraq – I’ve done it! I have found a way to lose weight and not loathe doing it.
Losing weight has been an uphill battle for me, and with all that extra weight, hills weren’t really my thing. At my heaviest, I was 175 pounds. I tried everything under the sun, over the counter, on the TV to lose that weight. I was miserable while trying the “fad” diets, and even more miserable when I would put the weight back on after giving up.
I would lose sleep the day before a physical fitness test because I knew it would be a toss-up if I pass the height and weight evaluation.
Not this time. With discipline and patience, I was ready and I’ll tell you what I did to get here.
I did research…a lot of research. And I want nothing more than to share my findings with you. It’s not a diet, it’s a new way to eat, and it worked for me.
Calories are what make and break weight loss. Everybody’s body burns calories regardless of what you are doing. Even when you’re sitting on the couch eating sticky bun and peanut butter sandwiches, your body is burning calories. The trick is to burn more calories than you eat.
There are many “calorie calculators” on the internet I used to find out how much my body burns daily. The calculator found this out based on my age, height, weight, sex, and daily activity. The calculator told me how many calories I need to keep at the weight I am right now. Some websites I found broke my “maintenance caloric intake” down even further by how many of those calories should come from carbohydrates, fat, and protein.
Once the calculator figured out my maintenance caloric intake, I subtracted 500 calories from that total. Since one pound of fat equals 3500 calories, and there are seven days in a week, I should lose about 1-2 pounds a week.
You are thinking that’s not a lot aren’t you? That’s where patience comes in. I had to be patient and understand I wasn’t going to be able to fit into my skinny jeans on day two. That kind of thinking is what makes people give up so easily. And don’t try to cut out 1000 calories a day just to speed up the process either. That’s just unhealthy.
If you starve yourself, your body gets scared. Let’s say you skip breakfast and only eat a pack of crackers for lunch. Your metabolism slows down. When you finally put food in your body, your body says, “Ahh food. I don’t know when I’m gonna eat again so I better save this,” and it saves the food.
It’s recommended you eat five small meals a day. What I try to do is eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner and snacks in between. My snack is usually a piece of fruit or a few crackers with peanut butter.
I write down the nutritional value of everything I eat. Sounds tedious but it works for me. First, it makes me more conscious of what I eat. Second, it makes it easy to track how many calories I take in. Third, it is tedious; therefore I don’t want to snack as much because I don’t want to go through the trouble of looking up the food on the internet.
What this did was train my body. I now feel satisfied faster because my body isn’t expecting so much food.
What you put in your body is important too. Just because you can eat a certain amount of calories, doesn’t mean they can come from just anywhere. I try to choose healthy alternatives to what my body tells me I’m craving. For example, if I’m craving something salty, I pick pickles over popcorn. If I want something sweet, I try to eat fruit.
What I have noticed is my body craves things for the taste, not to fill me up. If I want ice cream, I eat it. But just a little bit so my taste buds are happy. If the dining facility is serving my absolute favorite food, tortellini, I eat it, but only about four or five pieces, and, of course, I write everything down.
I also work out five days a week. I do some kind of cardio everyday along with sit-ups and strength training every other day. That’s the discipline part.
One of the most important things is I don’t kid myself and you shouldn’t either. Kidding yourself gets you nowhere. Sure, you go to the gym; you sit on the bike for 20 minutes; you peddle; you sit on a bench with some weights; you lift them a few times; you stop to chat with your buddy for 10 minutes; you watch highlights from last night’s game; you sweat a little because it’s hot in there; you lift the weights again a few more times. Workout complete.
NO! That’s not a work out. Don’t kid yourself into thinking it is. The same goes for eating right. No! A supreme pizza is not healthy just because it has veggies on it. Just because all you’ve had to eat was a Pop Tart for breakfast does NOT make it okay to eat three burgers for dinner. Be true to yourself and you WILL see results.
I hope this helps. It worked for me. If you have any questions about what I did to lose weight please email me or stop by the office. My email address is [email protected].
Good luck!
This article represents the steps I took to lose the weight I did. Some of the information I got for the article came from various websites including: www.theloseweightdiet.com; www.thecaloriecounter.com; and www.wiki.answers.com;
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