More success on the weight loss front!

 As some of my friends know, I stopped losing weight in 2021, and in fact put on more than I care to say ATM. I then got diagnosed as NCGS (non-celiac gluten sensitive) at the beginning of the year. By the time I was officially diagnosed, I had already been eating gluten free for a couple months. I was starting to get a happier digestive system, so the official diagnosis was just confirming what I already knew. 

Come the middle of March 2022, I accepted the fact that I was going to have to make permanent changes to my diet, and my lifestyle, and adopt a GF diet. I knew that was going to require many changes, permanent changes. In the back of my mind, I knew I had another set of changes that were long overdue: changing my eating habits with regard to my weight loss. This was the time to do a diet overhaul and adapt my daily diet to be both GF and effective for weight loss. 

On March 23rd 2022, I started the journey. I continued to eat GF, but I was also tracking my calories. I was using the My Fitness Pal app and entering all of my food. It allowed me to learn how many calories my favorite foods (and portions) cost me. It is a great tool to allow you to track your food and plan your food choices so you can meet your calorie goals for the day. 

I think you are now asking, "How did you determine how many calories you should be eating?" I learned about this great concept called "Total Daily Energy Expenditure" or TDEE. It was highly recommended by people who were successful with their weight loss. They recommended the calculator at tdeecalculator.net. 

The concept is that TDEE will tell you what your body needs to remain your current weight, based on age, height, activity, etc. To lose weight, you had to eat less than this number. The way I understood it, if you ate 250 calories less than your TDEE number for one week, you would lose one point. Keep your daily total at 500 less than your TDEE number, you could lose two pounds a week. The two pound/week weight loss is considered to be the best number for weight loss. Any more and you could have issues down the road. 

With all of this information, I determined that my daily calorie total was about 1900 calories. I entered that number into My Fitness Pal and started down the road. I was tracking everything, learning a lot about the food I was eating, and trying to pay attention to how I was feeling. Thanks to eating GF, my stomach was becoming much happier. 

All along the way, I've been weighing myself every morning and noting my weight. Some will tell you not to weigh yourself everyday, but I knew that your body weight can fluctuate from day to day, thanks to your food intake the previous day or how much water you drank. There have days I wasn't able to weigh myself (or I just plain forgot), so I feel that weighing myself has been a good way of learning how my body was doing. 

So where am I now? Like I said earlier, my stomach is much happier. I'm starting to get clear of my "gluten" symptoms, which is something I want to share in a future blog entry, as it is quite fascinating. On the scale, I have lost about 30 pounds! That puts my total weight loss from my heaviest at 135 pounds! 

This photo was taken last month in South Carolina.
I can see the weightloss in my face.

I take every day as a win, but I know that for my weight loss journey, I still have a ways to go. I need to lose about another 55-60 pounds to get down to where my physician would like to see me at. 

I hope you found this informative. I will continue to post more about my weight loss journey in the future.