Hi MelPerimeter!
Welcome back!
When I first began my journey I tried to think of things that I was doing that were making me FAT. I listed them in my journal and tried to work on a couple every week. At first I picked exercise and changing to drink water instead of soda. I decided that walking would be best for me.
Next I decided to eliminate fast foods and other fatty foods from my diet. I became a real label reader for the first time in my life and was SHOCKED at the amount of fat that I had been eating regularly!
Just these four things really got the ball rolling for me and helped me to drop 25 lbs. fairly quickly. By then I needed smaller clothes because everything was looking baggy. Soon after I got some new clothes (I was LONG OVERDUE on that!), people began to notice my weight loss. That was really great!
I then found out about triggers. I never had heard of them before. I identified my own personal triggers -foods that I abuse- as cheese, chocolate, chips, bread, and pasta. I eliminated them from my diet because I can't be trusted to eat a normal amount of them. At the same time I increased the amount of vegetables I was eating. I dropped another twenty-five pounds.
Next I upped my fiber and added more exercise. That took off more weight.
By doing a couple things for a week then adding a couple new good habits the next week, I found that I slowly was learning how to take care of my body the way I SHOULD HAVE been caring for it all along.
I had a long plateau there last year. I neede to change things to get my weight loss going again.
Over the weeks I have added things like additional exercise, tracking foods eaten on Fitday
www.Fitday.com which is FREE, and lowering my calorie allottment for each day. I WAS eating probably 3,000 calories before! I now eat between 1200 and 1500 calories a day. I am watching the serving sizes and portions that I eat because I know that I always ate WAAAY more than I should have eaten in the past.
I weigh myself every day so that I won't ever let 100 pounds of fat sneak up on me like I did before!
Hope this helps!
Cheryl