My Weight Loss Journey.

Since starting this blog, I have been asked by a few people on how I've managed to lose 58 pounds since having my daughter in January. To be honest with you, i've done a combination of things.

Counting calories.
Counting calories+working out
South Beach Diet

I had a c-section in January so obviously, I couldn't work out for awhile (and at 215 pounds before delivery, I didn't really want to). I started counting my calories and tried to cut 500 daily. If you want to lose between 1-2 pounds a week healthily, it is suggested you cut 3500 calories a week (which amounts to a pound). You can do this by lowering your calorie intake or upping your workouts. I managed to do this by keeping a detailed food journal in my kitchen and writing down every.single.calorie that went into my mouth. Including that starburst. :) This kept me accountable and also helped me see what I was truly eating and where I could make changes. To make things easier I also started eating Weight Watcher frozen meals for lunch and dinner (which are beneficial even if you don't count points because they tell you how many calories are in each one!). I am not one to get tired of repeatedly eating the same foods so this worked great for me and didn't keep me guessing how many calories I had eaten.

When I started my plateau at around 170-180 pounds, I decided to start working out again. I started by walking on the treadmill for 30 minutes then upping it to 45 minutes and so on. After I was comfortable with that, I added free weights and an exercise ball to tone. I had a tonsillectomy in April and that threw my workout motivation out the window so i'm slowly building it back up again. I also use my Wii fit and Jillian Michaels DVD to change it up a bit.

I hit another plateau at around 164-167 pounds so I decided to do what my in laws where doing and try South Beach. I'm normally not all about "fad" diets, I prefer to do it the old fashioned way. But I love meat and chicken and I'm ok with cutting out processed foods such as bread and all the sugar and flour. I managed to break through my plateau but be warned, I didn't follow it to a T so I didn't drastically lose 15 pounds the first 2 weeks. I think I ended up at about 5-6 pounds lost but hey, loss is loss. While I didn't follow all the veggie recommendations and all, it did show me how to really cut back on sweets and gave me the ability to be able to occasionally eat just 1 cookie and not the entire package. To this day, I still don't eat bread (if I order a burger I just eat the pattie with cheese) and I think that is why I've managed to continually lose weight.

One last thing...WATER! I know we have all heard how important water is to our diets and at first, I didn't believe it because i'm a Diet Coke addict. But I started cutting back on my Diet Coke and replacing it with water and I noticed the more water I drank, the more I lost. So it obviously works! LOL. I also realized that they now make Vitamin Water Zero which has been a blessing! :)

This is just a snippet of what I have been doing for the past 6 months but let me tell you, I know for a fact that I am not a doctor or nutritionist. I do what I do because I research a lot online and read a lot of books so I come up with my own conclusion. Please don't take this as me giving advice, just telling you what worked for me. :) Make sure you always ok things with your own doctor before you start anything! :)