Hi tuna,
Like the others, I'm not following a particular plan but rather the credo of eat less, exercise more.
With the food, I basically just considered what I was eating and figured out what I could eliminate, reduce, increase, substitute, etc. I had to find what could work for me because I knew I wasn't going to just go cold turkey and eliminate things. For instance, I like sandwiches. I wasn't going to stop eating sandwiches but now I'm using lo-cal bread, cutting down on cheese and using lo-cal turkey and roast beef slices, lettuce, lo-cal mayo, etc. I'm a salty snack fiend so I replaced my Pringles with lower-calorie pretzels and the 100-calorie Snack Packs. I like the portion control of the snack packs because I will eat 1 baggie, maybe 2 a day, tops. I've also been eating a lot of the lo-cal frozen dinners...Lean Cuisine, Smart Ones, Healthy Choice as well as upping my fruits and veggies. I do eat more frequently than the 3 times a day but my meals are not large to begin with so I just kept the frequency but lowered or altered the foods.
With the exercise, I've been pretty sedentary for a long time so I've eased into it and done several 10 minute or so bursts a day. And being that it's been so cold outside, most of the exercise has been in my house...using my Total Body Trainer, doing walking and jogging through my house, laying on the floor doing the bicycle, putting on the music and dancing. Actually, I use music all the time during exercise. It makes it more fun for me and I time myself to the music rather than counting, lol. And I got myself a pedometer to measure how much I'm walking and encourage myself to walk more. I like wearing the thing, lol. I look at the numbers and think, ooh, I wanna get some more steps in, lemme walk or jog around the house some more.
It becomes like a little goal or contest every day, lol.
I agree that it involves not only changing your eating but your thinking. I no longer think of walking as just going from Point A to Point B. My walk to and from work every day is exercise now in my mind, even if it only takes 3 or 4 minutes, and I alter my pace to try to get more of a benefit from it. When the weather gets warmer, I'm going to try to take a little longer way so I get in another block or two. The food control wouldn't work for me if I made drastic changes so I made a bunch of small ones I knew I could live with. For me, having my mind, my body and my emotions all be in agreement with one another about how to do this, rather than having any of them feeling deprived or frustrated, has been key to keeping me on track. If you're feeling overwhelmed, don't overwhelm yourself further with the idea of having to make huge changes overnight. Take everything in steps. You're not going to reach your goal weight in one fell swoop but in steps. Think about the food changes you can make now and the exercise you can do now. Don't think about having to lose 50 pounds or 100 pounds or whatever the ultimate goal is. Think about the first 5 or 10. When you do those, think about the next 10 after that, and so forth. It may seem slow and frustrating at times but it's also habit-forming.
hola
