My health was starting to fail! Blood pressure near hypertension, pre-diabetic, and just having a tough time walking up stairs! I started losing weight this fall when I got my new phone that tracked how many steps I was taking. I heard somewhere that you need to reach 10K step to stay active. I also have an app to watch what you eat. I started to watch both and I improved on both categories, I started losing a lot of inches right away. I started working out every morning for 30 minutes. Some Core exercises and things like P90x, Tae Bo, and simply walking. (It does not matter what activities you do, just get active!)
The only major change to my diet was the first 2 meals (Breakfast and lunch) I would eat a vegetarian or a vegan meal, or protein and veggies. I would eat steel cut oatmeal and cereal with fruit for breakfast and Smoothies for lunch that I would make myself. Sometimes for lunch I would have Chicken or steak with salad, I was starting to get full after each meal. For dinner I would eat what I wanted, of course with moderation on that meal. Burgers are my favorite!
People were starting to ask if I was losing weight, and how much? I would tell them yes but I did not know and I was going to wait to see how much. I know that when you work-out, you gain muscle weight and I think that people get discouraged when they continue to watch the scale. Since I lost over 60 pounds in 6 months, I really feel like I need to do more! But I still feel like DIETS don’t work for long, this is a lifestyle change. This is how I will eat for the remainder of my days.
I hope that this will help people get started, As African-Americans we don’t do the best with our health! We need to teach and force ourselves to do better!