Harder Than I Made it Look

My daughter kept telling me that it looked so simple for me to lose the weight that I lost, but let me assure you, it is not an easy undertaking, but well worth the effort.

I may have looked easy from the outside, but inside it was a continual decision to stay with the program and the new eating style.  I had to want this and want it very much, but it also had to be something that I knew I could live with.  I could not take away the things I really enjoyed, and for me that really is chocolate and meat.  Now, my intake of red meat has declined, but I have discovered that I do not really miss beef because I have a decided preference for chicken, turkey, pork (a definitely favorite), fish (but I check which ones are lower in calories), and occasionally ham (the spiral pre-cut ones that are easier to serve since they are pre-cut).

From my point of view, it has always been a matter of what I eat and do not eat, but it is now measured out in appropriate portions.  At first, it was a pain to weigh everything out, but over the past year, it has become a habit.  Last summer, when I was on vacation, I took my scale along, but seldom weighed out my portions because I did learn that over time you can determine some portion sizes by the look of them.  Over the three weeks I was on vacation, I lost 7 pounds, so I did okay with not weighing out everything.  Also, you will be surprised by what you find actually already recorded in the MyFitnessPal database.  There were things there that I had not expected to encounter but found them anyway.  It never hurts to do a search, you will be surprised at what you find.

The keys to any weight loss program are determination, perseverance, a true desire to change the way you eat, and making it a lifestyle change that you can live with.  Did I ever think I could live on a weight management program that required I had to count calories?  No, I never did because I tried it over thirty years ago and it was a pain to look everything up in a book, guess about things not in the book, and try to figure out how many calories in a portion of a favorite recipe.  This app has made all of the possible, and I truly love having it as part of my life, and it really is now an integral part of my life.

So, the following pictures were done by my daughter to give and side-by-side view of both of our journeys over the past year, but the before picutres do date back to more than a year ago.  It still shows what progress we have made.

The before picture is from the summer of 2009, and the after is August of 2015.