Lost Resolutions: Weight Loss in the New Year

Having recently joined the millions of Americans who started a diet and exercise regime after a new year's resolution I was unsure of where I should start or how. Not to fear I have a computer and it has a search engine. I found the national body challenge, FitTV, and hundreds of support groups all on line. I decided I wasn't going to follow any specific diet plan. I wasn't going to pay someone to tell me to eat less and move more. I was going to find my own rhyme and reason and know it was something I could sustain for a life change instead of a short-term commitment.

I signed up on the Discover Channel's National Body Challenge 2007 page (http://health.discovery.com/BodyChallenge/index.jsp) to get a start. It has a weight tracker and a menu planner. You can get exercise programs and tips and even find out how many calories you burned doing a specific exercise. I turned on FitTV and watched several programs until we got to one I thought I could actually survive. I found several over the course of a week. I had previously used Richard Simmons and was fairly successful so I kept that as part of my program and now I check FitTV before I put the tape in to see if there is something I would rather do or want to try. I use the tape as a fall back when the program is too tough for me or if I am in a hurry and can't work around the television schedule.

I didn't cut out the carbs or the fats. I didn't decide to eat only rice cakes, or raw food. I wanted to do something I could stand. I couldn't stand to leave the chocolate and cookies behind. I would never survive without another piece of KFC original recipe chicken. I adore my Long John doughnuts. I am a real person with a real family and we really eat. The body challenge page gave me a basic caloric intake for a day and I went from there.

The biggest thing I found was portion control. An actual portion of something is a lot less than most people think. If you have meat potatoes and vegetable on a nine-inch plate you can actually still see plate! Amazing! It is now mid February and I have lost 16 pounds. I am more than half way to my realistic goal of losing 25 pounds by the fourth of July and I feel fantastic. Below are some sites that I have found helpful in keeping me on track. I hope they will be helpful to you as well.

A great site nutritional information: http://www.shapefit.com/kfc-calories.html. There is more information on this site than I can read in one night. They will help you with your exercise regime and your meal planning. Complete with recipes, success stories and lots of other helpful information this site may be your starting point. I used it to get nutrition information on one of my favorite fast foods, KFC. Want to know how many calories that walk around the mall burned? How about the ten minutes you survived on the elliptical machine. This site gives you the breakdown of how many calories you burn based on your weight group. Did you know 20 pounds one way or the other can be the difference of 20 to 100 calories? I didn't

For all of your dining delights: http://chowbaby.com/. This site breaks down fast food restaurants and gives you the blow by blow of each menu item. It also provides a restaurant guide by area. If you are going out of town and want to check out places to eat and what to eat before you get there so you can stay on track this site allows you to pick your city and then shows you a list of restaurants in that city along with their contact information and reviews.

http://www.calorie-count.com/ This useful site has multiple category breakdowns for easy access to find the calorie counter you need. It also breaks products down by brand name as well as restaurant and grocery store. This site also gives you the breakdown of how many calories every activity you can imagine will burn. From light aerobics to sex even sitting on the toilet. Granted there seems to be a recurring theme in that anything that requires you sit still burns a standard of 68 calories an hour. Imagine eating for an hour...not only are you consuming calories but you are burning them at a rate of 102 per hour. This site is so in-depth it tells you how much of a snickers bar you can eat that will equate to the number of calories you burned doing said activity.

http://www.weightlossforgood.co.uk/nutrition/nutrition.htm Again complete nutrition information is at your fingertips. Everything from how much water is in what you are eating to how much pantothenic acid it has, what ever that is. If your interested in some exercise equipment or a measuring device of some kind this is the site for you.

Good luck! If you're curious about how things are going with me you can check in with me at: http://blog.myspace.com/42915897