Met my first weight goal on my birthday, today, of losing 38 lbs.

I had been up and down but with no real lasting success until after April of this year. I joined a gym plus walked almost everyday outside of gym. I set a calorie goal for myself and only rarely went over it. If I was getting close to going over it I would exercise more.

My issue and challenge is that I travel for my job often and find it very difficult to eat out and eat correctly. One big change for me has been taking the time to input in Myfitnesspal the restaurants foods before ordering and asking for them to change and allow substitutions. Most of the time the waiter or waitress will have to go and ask either the manager or chief and get approval. It usually can happen, one just has to ask in advance of ordering your meals. Most of the time the restaurants want their customer to be happy so that they will return to buy more meals from them. I have refused to order when they would not accommodate me and walked out to go to a more obliging establishment.

Sometimes looking up an item before ordering it and calculating how much of a workout I will have to do to overcome eating that food item is enough for me to say no to ordering it. I have also been working with a dietitian to make sure I am getting a correctly balance of my meals.

The easy way to tell is to divide you plate into halves. Then divide one half into another two halves. So ¼, ¼, and ½ equal one whole plate. The two ¼ portions should be your meat and a starchy vegetable. The other ½ should be non-starchy vegetables. Each portion of a ¼ should be only about the size of a deck of playing cards at most. That is about 4 to 6 oz. portion of meat and a half a cup of starchy vegetable. The other half of the plate should be two vegetables non-starchy and both about the size of a deck of playing cards. One can sometimes eat slightly more of the non-starchy vegetables if they are really low in their calories. Search online to find out which vegetables are or are not starchy ones. Enjoy eating healthy and exercise to lose the weight. Your persistence will pay off.

Roger