What a difference a decade makes.

A decade ago I was living what people would deem a “normal” life, working, networking and eating out a lot. I spent most of my day working behind a computer or driving a car to appointments or meetings. This was the “daily grind.” There was some time to relax and little time to exercise. The challenge was this life style was unhealthy. In retrospect it was killing me slowly, with chronic obesity. Of course, I take responsibility for this, I am not saying someone made me do it, I choose to put these things in my mouth and make excuses as to why I couldn’t exercise much. Here’s the challenge, I fooled myself into thinking it was acceptable because it was what everyone else around me was doing. I didn’t think my lifestyle was that bad!

Since getting my Fitbit, NutriBullet and changing my eating habits the blinders have come off, so to speak. What I didn’t realize was how little you have to eat to balance a basically sedentary lifestyle. This is why the weight came on and stayed on. Each of us has a base line amount of calories we can eat each day to maintain our weight. You can get an evaluation done to find this out. My Mother recently had this done and her baseline is in the 1500’s. I have not had the evaluation, but after 14 months of eating better and coming to know myself better, I suspect mine is around 1600-1700. Now this is just your baseline, if you are active then you must add more calories to account for those calories burned during exercise. BTW, I love this!! You can actually re-frame exercise as a way to eat more of the things you like! Rightly or wrongly, in the beginning, I walked the extra mile so I could have the carrot at the end of the stick. OK, ok, you got me….it was a cookie. But you get the idea. I had to start to retrain myself and accommodate old habits into new ways of thinking. I have found the more I engage in eat raw, healthy fruits and vegetables the less I eat the sugary treats. I still love them and eat them, but I find myself thinking twice before buying or ordering them.

So, now getting to the point….I recently came across a note book and in it was the evidence of another failed attempt to lose weight. However, it gave me numbers, really evidence of the lifestyle I was living then, a decade ago. I had reached my highest weight, 293.8 lbs! It also gave the measurements of my body…see below.

So, almost a decade later I find myself finally losing weight, feeling better and healthier that before. Since I got my Fitbit I have lost over 80lbs since January 2016. But as of March 1 2017, I can say I am 100lbs lighter and over 45 inches smaller than a decade ago. It has been no easy feat. Yet, the evidence is there.

This also shows that you must never give up, keep trying…..I found many ways not to diet, what doesn’t work to lose weight, now I have found the way that works for me. If you keep at it, making changes and better choices everyday, you’ll find the way and the evidence too. I hope it doesn’t take you a decade…it doesn’t matter if it does, what matters is you keep making healthier changes each day….remember this is a marathon…