And discuss my weight and when it got out of hand, sadly it started when I was in the 5th grade.
I was no longer in the double digits in terms of weight, and was 100lbs. Granted I was only 5'4 at the time, but man was that a lot of weight for a kid. Amazingly I was not one to get winded and had great stamina...but I was considered "chubby".
Thinking back to my eating habits, I didn't feel like I ate a lot as a kid, but I guess my portion sizes were pretty huge back then. My father would always make me the same meal every day (Tuna fish and rice with either cabbage or string beans) I probably had two cups of rice cooked in coconut milk, tuna seasoned with ketchup and adobo, and stringbeans seasoned with butter and adobo. Maybe once a month, my mother took me to Mcdonalds for a kids meal, and yeah..that was it.
This weight issue followed me into highschool up until my first year of college. By now I was 5'7¾ and weighed 185lbs....
As shallow as it is to say this, sadly I found out the hard way that looks were everything and the only way to get a boyfriend was to shed this weight. So how did I do it? Doing it the most unhealthiest way ever! Lowering my calories DRASTICALLY! Being from NYC it was easy to get my cardio workout in my day to day life exercise since you had to walk alot. I would usually walk 2-3hours a day. Eating wise, I still ate junk food..but I'd eat maybe a toasted bagel with butter for breakfast, a toasted bagle with butter with egg/sausage/and bacon inside, or a sausage mcgriddle if I had the chance. I wouldn't eat again for 4-5 hours and have some halal food from the cart, or chinese buffet food...and that was usually it for the rest of my day. If I had to think about how many calories I consumed, 1500 calories the most...and in the span of two years I went from 185-152lbs.
Oh yeah, when I was 20years old, my body was on point! I still wanted to loose more, but I felt more confidant in myself at 152lbs. And the boys did start to come around too, so I know I did good. However, food technically still did rule my life and I found myself alil bit sad that I had to seriously think of the two single meals I could eat in a day.
I also did my best to make sure I didn't eat after 6pm, or if I did, I knew I had to walk like crazy the next day to burn it off.
This worked for 2 more years until I moved to Texas with my family and gained 7lbs!! Sadly, Texas did not allow me to walk like crazy for 2 hours, so since I had to rely on a car to get around, my cardio exercise seriously decreased. Even though I tried to make up for it by doing dancing cardio, my weight was stagnant upon 162lbs. Sometimes I was able to get to 158lbs on an amazing day, but alas..160lbs was the norm for me.
Then I moved to Japan for a year, and didn't set foot on a scale for over 12months. I adapted my NYC methods again, walk like crazy, eat only 2 big meals a day. Well I tried to, but my rice intake was very....VERY much more abundant sort of similar to my old elementary days. Plus, I could no longer not eat before 7pm due to my work schedule, so I was eating usually at around 10:30pm at night. So when I finally came back home to America, I saw that I weighed 174lbs.....and of course I was shocked!! None the less, I started to look up a way to loose weight in a sure way method that would work, and that's when I discovered calorie counting. using myfitnesspal, I used their calculator predictions which had me reaching a calorie goal of 1300 calories a day to loose weight. In the first week, I lost 2lbs, and my weight flew off so much! I went from 174 to 164 in 3 weeks. Then I plateaued for a lil bit, but at around July, I was 158lbs again!
I was reunited with my husband that same month, and picking up on his eating habits again, by the winter I saw I was 172lbs again. I decided not to get to this weight ever again, and went back to calorie counting but this time, I would also work out to increase my metabolism. I was able to get back down to 162lbs, but once again I plateaued and could never go any lower than that, except for the week of my wedding when I hardly had time to eat and was always on the go getting my wedding underway.
Then I decided it was time to get a trainer, for both my husband and myself, and my husband's trainer as well as mine told me something I never heard before. "You are not eating enough!"
I thought eating too much could make you gain weight, and that is very true...but just the same, if you don't eat enough...you won't loose weight, as well as possibly gain weight. When I googled eating more to loose weight, I was directed to a BMR calculator to figure out how much I generally had to eat to loose weight which showed my BMR was around 1576. from my undersatanding, if I ate below this, it would be bad, but if I ate around this or alilbit higher than this, it was okay. Not to mention my trainer told me not to eat above 1500, so I stuck with 1400 calories per day.
However, something didn't feel right at just limiting my calories to 1400 per day. My husband was told to eat 2500, granted he was doing way more training than me, but I felt even though I did half of what he did, I should be eating more. After googling some more info, I found the group eatmore2weighless.com, and looked into more factors for determining one's Total Daily Energy Expenditure and Basal Metabolic Rate.
So this led me to determine my TDEE was around 2127 calories perday, and that given my diet history, I needed to do a metabolic reset.
Since I started my reset 3 weeks ago, I have gained 2-3lbs, and as of this week my BMI and Bodyfat has gone up(it fluctates sometimes but I'll just suck it up and admit it went up). I have 5 weeks left until I will begin my cut, which I can't wait, but at the same time, eating at my TDEE has been a challenge (trying to eat healthy and get enough calories in a day is hard work) but good just the same. I know I should do this for possibly 4months, but I am under a time constraint here...and need to loose weight before the new year.
So this blog will show how I do with this program and hopefully be an inspiration for everyone who wants to try this method.
