Hi Everyone,
I wanted to take a moment and share with everyone the importance of activity and your activity tracker. To lose over 140 pounds, I learned I needed to increase my activity so I could eat nutritiously. Sure, in my struggle to learn how to lose weight, I tried high protein diets, low carb diets and even very low calorie diets and what were my results? Failure for over 25 years!
Your weight loss strategy must include a healthy eating plan along with a weight loss exercise plan. I found this to be the most effective way to lose weight and feel good. With all we have to do in a day, don’t we need the most energy possible to get it all done? What I found on those fad diets was just a lot of quick water loss and then miserable side effects–low energy, hair loss, dry skin, etc.
Exercise plays a vital role in weight loss and weight management. In truth, as a registered nurse, I knew of the many benefits of exercise all along. My problem is that I rarely did the right exercises and when I did, I didn’t do them long enough.
How did I overcome this? I tracked my activity. I found an activity tracker to be vital to my plan. I purchased an inexpensive pedometer from a discount store, I input my weight, clipped it on my waist and forgot about it. At the end of the day, I had a better understanding of how many steps I took. I can tell you at 280 pounds, I did not meet the surgeon general’s recommendation for 10,000 steps. No, at 280 pounds, I thought more about exercise than I moved! Too bad you can’t burn a lot of calories for just thinking!
Here’s the weight loss tip, MOVE! And do it often. I still enjoy eating and as long as I use my activity tracker and I move more, I burn more calories. When I burn more calories, I can eat more! Remember if you have health problems you need to check with your doctor to make sure you can increase your activity. Don’t do what I used to do, go full blast when my diet motivation was high for one day and then stop for months because I had sore muscles or shortness of breath! Work up gradually. In fact, the current recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control are to do 10 minutes of activity at a time and accumulate these until we reach the recommended 30 minutes total. Not a bad deal! Park a little farther from the grocery store or at work, walk in place or on your treadmill during television viewing or take the stairs rather than the elevator. These are great ways to add 10 minutes of activity to your day. Remember to use your activity tracker so you know how many calories you’re burning.
Take care,
Georgene
