jjgreen
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- Jan 31, 2015
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I’ve been reading the boards for a couple weeks now and have seen that a lot of you are just like me when it comes to struggling with weight. I thought that since I had found some success in this area that I would write down what I did and that maybe one or two of you might find it helpful. Here's goes nothing.
After my second son was born I almost immediately started exercising to try to lose weight. Once I felt well enough I started the couch to 5k exercise program. I highly recommend it if you’re out of shape and want to get started with some light exercise.
It’s a 9 week long program that slowly increases the intensity at every workout to getting you running 5 kilometers (3.1miles). You only have to do it three times a week. The phone app costs a couple dollars but it’s money well spent. But the program itself is outlined for free right here: https://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml
That was a great start for me but I wasn’t losing weight fast enough for my liking because my diet was all out of whack. I was eating way too much sugar and too many empty calories. I was hoping to compensate for it with the running but it turns out that what you eat is just as important if not more important to weight loss than exercise.
The first thing I did was cut back on the alcohol and candy. I was excited to have my wine back after I wasn’t pregnant anymore and I may have over done it a bit. I don’t think I was being honest with myself about how much I was drinking either. The scale started moving quite a bit faster after I did that but it still wasn’t fast enough.
The next thing I did was to cut wheat out of my diet. I wasn’t interested in going paleo or atkins or anything like that, but I knew that after big starchy meals I constantly got tired and sometimes completely fell asleep. It was even worse when I ate heavy wheat based dishes like pizza, pasta, and breads.
As an experiment I cut out wheat for one week just to see how I would feel. I was honestly blown away by how great I started to feel by doing that after about five days.
I experienced some sort of head clearing that lasted a day and a half or so. It was a really strange experience that was almost nerve wracking because I was suddenly very self aware. My sense of smell increased and I was very energetic. It was almost like nervous energy but I kept busy and used the energy to my advantage.
I don’t think that ever went away so much that I became accustomed to it. I still have much more energy to this day. But the best part about it is that I started to drop weight rather quickly after the first week of that.
It took me a month to lose the first five pounds with exercise only and another month to lose another five pounds by giving up alcohol and candy. But in the third month I dropped ten pounds by giving up wheat.
I don’t think that any one of these things that I did would have been as effective as they were without the others. The combination of starting a consistent exercise routine, dropping alcohol, eliminating sugar (most of it anyway), and then finally dropping wheat were way more powerful than doing any of those things on their own.
I hope that at least one of you finds this helpful. I’m more than happy to answer any questions.
edit: I completely forgot to explain why I said twice in the title.
After losing the weight once I gained it all back. I started cheating here and there and it spiraled out of control. I stopped running and went back to my old ways. I ended up gaining 30 of the initial 40 pounds I lost back before taking back control.
Once I did that I lost 40 pounds again for a total loss of 50 pounds so far. So don't be like me and give back your gains (or losses depending on how you look at things). Stick with what's working for you and makes you feel great. It's too easy to put the weight back on.
After my second son was born I almost immediately started exercising to try to lose weight. Once I felt well enough I started the couch to 5k exercise program. I highly recommend it if you’re out of shape and want to get started with some light exercise.
It’s a 9 week long program that slowly increases the intensity at every workout to getting you running 5 kilometers (3.1miles). You only have to do it three times a week. The phone app costs a couple dollars but it’s money well spent. But the program itself is outlined for free right here: https://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml
That was a great start for me but I wasn’t losing weight fast enough for my liking because my diet was all out of whack. I was eating way too much sugar and too many empty calories. I was hoping to compensate for it with the running but it turns out that what you eat is just as important if not more important to weight loss than exercise.
The first thing I did was cut back on the alcohol and candy. I was excited to have my wine back after I wasn’t pregnant anymore and I may have over done it a bit. I don’t think I was being honest with myself about how much I was drinking either. The scale started moving quite a bit faster after I did that but it still wasn’t fast enough.
The next thing I did was to cut wheat out of my diet. I wasn’t interested in going paleo or atkins or anything like that, but I knew that after big starchy meals I constantly got tired and sometimes completely fell asleep. It was even worse when I ate heavy wheat based dishes like pizza, pasta, and breads.
As an experiment I cut out wheat for one week just to see how I would feel. I was honestly blown away by how great I started to feel by doing that after about five days.
I experienced some sort of head clearing that lasted a day and a half or so. It was a really strange experience that was almost nerve wracking because I was suddenly very self aware. My sense of smell increased and I was very energetic. It was almost like nervous energy but I kept busy and used the energy to my advantage.
I don’t think that ever went away so much that I became accustomed to it. I still have much more energy to this day. But the best part about it is that I started to drop weight rather quickly after the first week of that.
It took me a month to lose the first five pounds with exercise only and another month to lose another five pounds by giving up alcohol and candy. But in the third month I dropped ten pounds by giving up wheat.
I don’t think that any one of these things that I did would have been as effective as they were without the others. The combination of starting a consistent exercise routine, dropping alcohol, eliminating sugar (most of it anyway), and then finally dropping wheat were way more powerful than doing any of those things on their own.
I hope that at least one of you finds this helpful. I’m more than happy to answer any questions.
edit: I completely forgot to explain why I said twice in the title.
After losing the weight once I gained it all back. I started cheating here and there and it spiraled out of control. I stopped running and went back to my old ways. I ended up gaining 30 of the initial 40 pounds I lost back before taking back control.
Once I did that I lost 40 pounds again for a total loss of 50 pounds so far. So don't be like me and give back your gains (or losses depending on how you look at things). Stick with what's working for you and makes you feel great. It's too easy to put the weight back on.
