Just saying hello

Can you share?

Sure, happy to share my tale.

I'm getting married next April and I want to look good in my wedding photos. Suit fittings are in October (hence the original goal date of October). I guess what really set the ball rolling to do something about the podge though was seeing a picture I had taken at a book signing with one of my favourite authors where I look noticably chubby. The gloves were off, me against the belly balcony!

I started off by not counting calories at all. I just made small changes to my lifestyle one at a time bit by bit. For example:

I stopped eating chocolate, cakes etc (all the foods I KNOW are bad). That's an easy first one.
I started increasing my water intake - I get 5 litres daily now (I lost 5 pounds in a week when I first started thrashing water down. Water retention = gone!)
I cut down my coffee to 2 or 3 cups a day - to make more room for the water!
I sacrificed sugar in my coffee for 1 cal sweetener
I started weighing foods to get the reccommended portion rather than guessing.
I steadily reduced the amount of food I took to work for lunch (from 2 buns, a couple of biscuits and a bag of crisps, reduced in stages to 1 bun or a tin of weight watcher soup).
I swapped out Orange Juice in the morning for Apple Juice.

With all of these little sacrifices and a load more I can't think of right now, which took a few weeks to make a little at a time, the weight started to drop off.

I realised I hadn't actually been hungry in a long time! I begun to appreciate how much more pleasurable eating my evening meal is if I'm properly hungry by dinner time. I learned to look forward to getting that gnawing hunger just for the anticipation of putting something tasty and nutritious in my belly!

For an experiment, I decided I was going to try and leave a morsel of food left on my plate at the end of every meal. I usually find I'm equally full as I would have been if I'd finished the last bite but over a week, those little bites probably make about half a meal!

I started counting calories on the odd day or 2 just to check and with no real idea of how many I should be aiming for. With all my little sacrifices I was averaging between 1200 and 1500 per day. I figured this was as good a number as any to aim for so I started counting.

Counting by reading the back of packets and scribbling down calculations on scraps of paper is really difficult! Particularly when preparing meals from scratch using fresh ingredients. So I found the MFP Iphone app and then found the site from there.

I still keep 1200 per day as my target amount but I'm not religious about it and I certainly don't beat myself up if I eat 1500 or 1600 per day.

I set myself motivators by making my progress accountable:

Each week's weight goes on a chart by the bed - it's a great feeling to look at the numbers which are lower than last week's!
I have a camera set up on a tripod to take photo's (front, side, back) of my body daily. I'm putting them into a time lapse of my progress
I have a treat day every Saturday (subject to doing well on the scales) to spike my metabolism and also simply for something to look forward to. Treat days I go well over my calorie allowance completely guilt free

I'm not sure how my methods compare to other folk? Be interested to find out though...

Forgot to say. If anyone would like to add me as a friend on here, please feel free