I'll start off by saying I'm not a health nut. I love fat, greasy foods, and I don't know much about nutrition or really anything about exercise either.
I purchased my Fitbit in the middle of February as a gift to myself to lose a little weight. I've never been visibly overweight, and I know that I have a little bit of muscle mass (which my wife is terrified I'm going to lose, so that's another challenge all together). That being said, at only 5' 3" or so, I've always felt like I've had a bit to lose.
From when I was 20 until I was about 25 I used to work in retail, running around all day - moving heavy boxes, on my feet non stop for 12 hour days... I would also eat, and snack, and drink sodas just about all day. I guess those two things balanced themselves out, as weight was never an issue or anything I ever really considered. I think the most I'd ever weighed during that job was 130.
A couple of years back I started working a desk job for the first time in my life. My diet did not change. My body did. It wasn't until the pants I was wearing to work felt WAY too tight (and I had to wonder what sort of changes in detergent could cause such a shrinking of clothes) that I finally stepped on the scale to see I was fastly approaching 160 lbs.
I didn't notice anything different, and my wife, god bless her, never said a thing to make me think I was gaining too much weight - but it was apparent.
I stopped eating whole pizzas and XL bags of candy during the work day and got myself down to about 148-150 pretty easily without much effort. I used to run and go to the gym but around that time I also started having new babies in the house and things got a little harder to get motivated to work out.
I'm settling in now.
I had noticed that my "normal" activity levels on a regular week day of work were something around 3-4K because I found myself so mentally exhausted once I got home, that I kind of just crashed with the kids. The first few weeks of the fitbit I was just focusing on getting to 10K steps a day, despite whatever else I have going on. That got me down to 145, which felt good to see some positive change.
It wasn't until last week that I started really tracking calories in vs calories out - and seing what sort of nutrition I was or wasn't consuming. This has been a drastic change, so far. In the roughly two weeks that I've really focused on that, I've dropped down to 141 while never going hungry.
I have started doing a bagel w/ butter and coffe for breakfast. I also do a protein shake lunch (380 calories, 32G protein, lots of other good stuff from what it seems) and since I can chug those at my desk, I then devote my entire hour break to walking around the neighborhood getting in around 6,500 steps and a couple of miles. That's been a huge difference. My average calorie burn is around 2,500 which has left me with up to 1,200 calories for dinner (I know they say to balance so it's only 30% of your day, but I LOVE my dinners haha). With only drinking unsweeetened teas and black/lightly sweetened cofee and no sodas at all - I've typically been in the 700-900 range for dinners.
Anyone have any additional tips, tricks, ideas or recommendations please feel free. My goal is to continue to lose the weight without losing any of the muscle I've got. I've been going to the gym once a week, and that will continue more and more (training for a half marathon in Oct) but I typically only jog, and have no idea how to lift weights to produce any sort of muscle.
Either way, howdy everyone!
