How Facebook Helped Me Lose 9 Pounds in 5 Weeks

Being the motivated individual I am (hear snickering here) I went for a walk tonight. It's been a nightly thing; this exercising bit, at least since the fourth of July when our annual cookout incited several of us "well rounded" merry woman to band together and support each other in "eating less and moving more". It's an effort to not only lose weight but become healthier individuals.

I thought the camaraderie of a group would help all of us so I offered to set one up on Facebook. I invited all of the women who were in on the conversation. They all joined and we were off to the races. The site is the place to post our daily food and exercise logs. We can then offer each other praise or helpful tips on what has worked for us. We can discuss issues that come up, ask questions and share web sites we find useful. To date I have only missed one day and it was because I was ill and had nothing to post. We have all had similar weight loss results.

You are forced to face your food. Admitting you are overweight is the initial consciousness moment; the second is when you decide to do something about it, the third strike if you will, is to see on paper/computer screen what you have eaten in a day; complete with a calorie count. Telling it to ten other people who have free reign to comment takes it up another few notches of conscious, once you're aware it's difficult to be very bad.

For counting calories I use the Calorie Count web page. You make a profile and then you have access to thousands of already entered food items with all of their nutritional information. It grades your day and shows you graphs for everything you can imagine. The most helpful is a 12 line bar graph that tracks your levels of things like sodium, fat, and carbohydrates. It's a real eye opener when you see how far one way or the other you go with regard to your recommended daily intake. As long as you have the nutrition information you can enter any item you've ingested and it will add it in to your daily totals.

You can also track your activities which are then added into your daily analysis. You enter what you did during the day and for how long and up pops the number of calories you've burned! This has been enlightening to say the least. You see people walking all the time and think wow that's good exercise, well it is but it's not a real calorie burner unless you do extreme walking. Swimming though, even with minimal effort, will get you some high calorie burning numbers in a relatively short amount of time.

So maybe nine pounds isn't a block buster but quite honestly after watching a program on TLC where people had lost in excess of 100 pounds each through various methods I'm in no hurry to become a size four. In fact I'm not in a hurry to become any size in particular. The surgery to remove the residual skin is horrifying. I want to feel good and I do, physically and mentally.