Losing weight: How I did it

I don't know about you, but I have always thought of losing weight as a very hard thing to do. That's probably because I had never done it before, and I pictured hours and hours at the gym. I worked 80 hours a week, after all, I had no time to lose weight, or so I thought. I didn't think I had any time to take any weight off, but finally my doctor told me that I needed to lose weight or I was in serious health trouble. I didn't really believe him at the time, but all the same I decided it was time for me to lose weight.


What did I do next? That's a great question. The first thing I did was figure out how many calories I could eat in a day. I did that with my doctor. Then, I went home and threw out all the junk food I hate in my apartment. That must have been about $200 worth of food! I only kept foods with ingredients I could easily pronounce. I had read earlier that if my grandmother wouldn't recognize the ingredients, that I shouldn't be eating that food.


Then I figured out how I was going to eat at work. Because I worked so much, I ate a lot of fast food and restaurant food. I didn't think I had time to cook so much, so what I started doing at first was making myself sandwiches to take to work with me. A ham and cheese sandwich had about half the calories of the burgers I used to get, so that helped a lot. I love bananas and almonds, so I started bringing bananas and almonds to snack on.


Next, I figured I would have to start doing some exercise, which I generally dislike. I knew I would have to do it, so I took it upon myself to  find exercises I really liked. There are hundreds of different programs out there, after all! I ended up getting involved in Zumba.


For me to do that, I had to make sure I wasn't working on those days. That was a hard decision for me to make, but I knew that I had to do it for my health. In fact, as time went on I started to feel better and better, which made me work more efficiently, and I now only work about 40-50 hours a week doing the same work.


I also made sure that I got as much sleep as I could. When you're working upwards of 14, 15 hours as day, that can be tough, but I made sure I didn't waste time in front of the television and went to bed as soon as I could. That seemed to help, and I heard that research was showing that people who don't get a lot of sleep are more likely to be obese. I made sure that stopped happening to me.

I ended up losing about 100 pounds in a year, and I'm thrilled.