Nada. Zip. Zilch. Nothing!
The goal, when I began this project (and isn't losing weight always a project?), was, in October, to walk three miles a day and to walk a total of 100 miles for the month. For this month, the goal is to walk four miles a day and to increase the monthly total to 125 miles.
I'm eating moderate portions of healthful, made-from-scratch food. Lots of vegetables. Grass-fed beef.
I track my calories a couple days a week, but not every day. I would estimate my daily caloric intake at 1200 to 1400.
Some of you would say that's too many, while others would say that's not enough. Like Goldilocks, I'd like to think it's just right: I'm hungry at mealtime, satisfied when I've eaten my single-serving meals and I'm not thinking about food All. The. Time.
According to this website (there are many others out there, I picked this one randomly from Google's list of suggested sites), I need to eat 2250 calories per day to maintain my current weight. To maintain my goal weight, I need to drop it to 1950. Since I'm eating far fewer calories than that generous number, clearly I should be losing more than two-tenths of a pound a week.
Which brings me back to the goals. Walking all those miles, just for the sake of walking, is a worthy goal, but the secondary goal – of course! – is to lose weight. I chose walking (and I've added some running) for a number of reasons.
- I like being outdoors.
- It's not expensive.
- It's not difficult, just time-consuming.
- I have more time than money.
- My husband lost 40 pounds in about six months taking a walk every day.
- Walking is good for my post-menopausal bones.
- Ditto my heart.
- I want to run a marathon next year, and I have to be in much better shape than I am now in order to complete it.
- It's the one exercise I enjoy doing.
- Blah, blah, blah.
Decision time. Keep it up? Add something? Replace it with something else? What would the deity of your choice do?
Usually I don't ask for advice, and as you can tell I'm very reluctant to change anything. I keep thinking, 'This will work. Someday.' I'm just not sure how much longer to wait for Someday. If you do offer advice in the comments, please realize I've been on some kind of a diet since I was 11 years old. I know what to do, and I feel I'm doing a pretty good job of it with this plan.
The last resort would be to just accept that I'm going to be fit and fat the rest of my life.
2 comments:
Hm. I don't think I can offer advice. I mean, that would be sort of ludicrous.
I can tell you what my thinking would be, though. First, I'm going to say, if this was going to help you lose weight, it would have worked by now. A harsh truth. Second, if you enjoy the walking and/or think it's a worthwhile activity, then screw the weight loss aspect! (Also, I don't want to hear about your husband losing 40 pounds, because when it comes to WL I sort of hate men.)
I know it's not that simple, of course. If you DO want to lose weight, then probably the best course is to try something different. Will you have time for the something different AND walking? If yes, then your life is perfect. If not, then you have a hard choice to make, and no one can really advise you on that.
Because it's so much easier to tell other people what to do than to do it myself, here's what I recommend: try an experiment. Do six weeks of something else--try something that is totally not what you would normally do. Just live in backwards-world for a month and a half and see what happens.
I was most successful at weight loss when I worked with a trainer back in 2003 - lost 50 lbs in 12 months working with the trainer and "sort of" doing Weight Watchers - so pretty much the 1200 calories you are talking about.
By the end of that year, the trainer moved out of town and in the following years I worked with a succession of other trainers, some better than others, but none seemed to work as well for me as the first one.
As it turns out, he's now offering an online/phone/email personal training program. I think I'm going to try to start back up with him in January.
My point in telling you this is that he was super good a adapting programs to individuals and getting results. If you have the financial resources to invest in it, I would recommend contemplating giving it a try.
If you're interested you can check out his web site at Team-20 dot net. He's also starting a new site call My2011Project dot com.
He's a great guy and really knows what he's doing. Might be worth even a short commitment just to shake things up and maybe kickstart your weight loss.
Just a thought...
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