I decided the first thing to do about my eating was find out how much calories I was actually consuming on a daily basis. I am a techie , so I downloaded a random app on my Android phone that was a food diary with a built in calorie counter. What I found out floored me!!!!!!
On a daily basis, tracking just what I ate and not eating differently, I realized most of the time I was eating about 6,000 calories daily!!!! Sheesh , no wonder I was fat! I actually started to take some responsibility for it. This was hard, because I literally had no self-control. I ate what I wanted when I wanted it and when I was home all the time I grazed hourly. This was serious and not funny at all. I wanted to cry. I also found from some of the books I checked out at the library that I was emotionally eating a lot of the time. Times were tough, I ate, times were good, I ate. Basically I ate for any and no reason. If I was eating, I was comforted, but now at nearly 300lbs I was too close for comfort. Actually that is why I sweated so much, I was always hot, whether cold or hot weather. Doing any activity raised my body heat like an oven.
I would have to look at food differently, as nutrition and not as a comfort or REWARD.
Self-control would be something I would have to painstakingly learn daily. When everyone else feasted, I would need to eat just enough , no excess. I really did not know if I would be able to do this successfully, but I really was going to try my best to.
So without any doctor telling me a calorie amount to limit myself I used my app and typed in my weight and age and picked the number 2,850 calories to start at. Later after about a month or two I realized that was a doable number. I did have to eat more carefully, I ate smaller portions, on smaller plates, ate less desserts and empty calories, and cut out soft drinks almost completely, staying with water, sparkling water and tea and coffee with Splenda or Stevia and Non-fat milk.
Also, my doctor scheduled me for a visit with a dietician. I had a first visit and they gave me a lot of pamphlets in Spanish for some reason and didn't seem enthused at me being able to lose any weight and eat healthy probably looking at my past medical history and labs. They said the calorie limit I set was ok and just follow up in a month or so. So I began my journey....
On a daily basis, tracking just what I ate and not eating differently, I realized most of the time I was eating about 6,000 calories daily!!!! Sheesh , no wonder I was fat! I actually started to take some responsibility for it. This was hard, because I literally had no self-control. I ate what I wanted when I wanted it and when I was home all the time I grazed hourly. This was serious and not funny at all. I wanted to cry. I also found from some of the books I checked out at the library that I was emotionally eating a lot of the time. Times were tough, I ate, times were good, I ate. Basically I ate for any and no reason. If I was eating, I was comforted, but now at nearly 300lbs I was too close for comfort. Actually that is why I sweated so much, I was always hot, whether cold or hot weather. Doing any activity raised my body heat like an oven.
I would have to look at food differently, as nutrition and not as a comfort or REWARD.
Self-control would be something I would have to painstakingly learn daily. When everyone else feasted, I would need to eat just enough , no excess. I really did not know if I would be able to do this successfully, but I really was going to try my best to.
So without any doctor telling me a calorie amount to limit myself I used my app and typed in my weight and age and picked the number 2,850 calories to start at. Later after about a month or two I realized that was a doable number. I did have to eat more carefully, I ate smaller portions, on smaller plates, ate less desserts and empty calories, and cut out soft drinks almost completely, staying with water, sparkling water and tea and coffee with Splenda or Stevia and Non-fat milk.
Also, my doctor scheduled me for a visit with a dietician. I had a first visit and they gave me a lot of pamphlets in Spanish for some reason and didn't seem enthused at me being able to lose any weight and eat healthy probably looking at my past medical history and labs. They said the calorie limit I set was ok and just follow up in a month or so. So I began my journey....
No comments:
Post a Comment