25 pounds gone! MFP works!

I hope this inspires someone on their journey.

Started this MFP journey at 224 pounds. Bottom line, I had let myself go. But the journey to doing something about it was more than just wanting to fit into smaller pants. I had some issues with blood pressure which had caused a problem with one of my eyes. High blood pressure and retinal veins don't live together well. The retinal surgeon was clear... Either lose the weight and clean things up or get ready for a daily dose of pills along with more risk factors that made me very nervous. I'm way too young to be thinking about things that bleak. It was scary.

Like many, I found going to the internet to find answers frustrating. The internet is flooded with every guru, app, approach, philosophy one can think of and many of them make powerful cases. Many have the zeal of religion. But I was reading enough to ponder a simple idea. If I track faithfully and put myself in some kind of calorie deficit every day no matter how small or large it is, I'll probably win.

And that's exactly what I did.

Long intro I know... here's the game plan that finally worked.

1) I track EVERYTHING. No small bites that I left off the tracker, no "ish" measuring. I bought a $10 food scale off of Amazon so everything gets measured and tracked.

2) I eat whatever I want but I don't bust the daily total calories available. This kept me on the wagon. I didn't give up everything. Hardly. I regularly eat burgers, ice cream, and other goodies. I just gave up eating too much of it. BIG difference. To be fair though I got intentional about adding a lot of clean food to my mix. Food that is alive is a good thing along with the fun stuff. I'm not convinced it needs to be an either or discussion. Both works well.

3) I don't go to sleep unless I've hit 10K steps for the day. I bought a Garmin watch to track my steps. Best $100 I've spent on this journey. Along with it, I enter a daily step challenge with others every week. I started at 50K steps a week. Now I regularly do just under 100K steps a week. There is power in doing this stuff with other people even if it's virtually. I do one long walk in the morning. (60 minutes+) and one shorter walk in the afternoon. (20 minutes) I mix runs into those walks every other day.

A note about activity calories. I've read a lot of posts about if you should eat them back or if you should not. I also know that getting accurate activity measurements using devices like Garmin can be challenging. Also getting accurate data to sync with MFP... also an issue. So here's what I did that worked for me. I used MapMyWalk/MapMyRun. I manually enter the time and the calories based on what it gives me into MFP. Then I use that overall available number as my guide but again I always end the day in a deficit. Sometimes it's a bigger deficit, sometimes it's smaller. But it's always there. The key for me was making sure that MapMy apps had my most current weight and stats so the results were at least a little more accurate.

4) I have one blowout meal a week. For me, it's pizza on Friday night with the family. I eat like there's no tomorrow. But the truth is after a few months I scaled this back because a little went a long way. But loading up on a big meal knocked any crazy cravings down and it made my Saturday long walks/runs amazing because I had a pile of energy.

Throw in a ton of water and willingness to make small tweaks along the way and for the first time in nearly half a decade, the scale says I weigh <200 pounds. It feels freaking amazing and I wasn't completely miserable doing it. Was it easy? Not exactly, I love to eat lots of food. Simple? Yes. Of all the tools out there, amazingly, one you can use for FREE (MFP) can help you create great results. Simple works.

One final note, I would encourage everyone to track and move on every day. It can be easy to slide into tracking obsession and create an unhealthy relationship with food and the journey. I'm not an expert by any stretch but perfection isn't the goal, consistency is. Some days will be better than others but consistency beats everything else.
Give yourself ample amounts of grace along the way.

Thanks to everyone for the encouragement and the love along the way! 175 here we come!