Losing It

A couple of years back I took stock of my fitness and made some changes to lose about 30 pounds. This summer, especially with schedules out of whack after the baby arrived, I noticed myself backsliding a little and wanted to fix it before things got out of hand.

Quick recap:

  • Weight in Nov. 2006: 216
  • Weight in 2007 after a year of improvements: ~187 (got down as low as 184)
  • Weight this summer: ~188 (touching the low 190s at times)
  • Current weight: 177

I initially took the same approach I’d used with success previously: I started being a little more conscious about what I ate and started working out a couple times a week at home again (weight training). I also get exercise playing sand volleyball twice a week and walk a round of golf a couple times a month.

I wasn’t seeing significant results, so I upped my workouts to daily and I downloaded Lose It on a lark and tried it out. Lose It is a free iPhone app to help you count calories – something I’d never done before.1 There are a bunch of apps like this out there now – if I were choosing today2 I might go with the app from Daily Burn (a TechStars company) which syncs back to the Daily Burn web site.

Counting calories has been a very interesting experience. Seeing how certain foods and exercise affect things on a daily basis has been eye opening. It’s worked well to keep me on track.

Results

In the last four months I’ve brought my weight down 10 pounds, and as a result of doing some lifting 5 days a week I’m probably physically stronger now than I have ever been (I’ve increased weight in all of my lifting exercises). If I can keep my weight hovering in the 175-180 range, I’m pretty happy.

For me, the process of losing weight basically boils down to willpower: I have to want to lose weight more than I want to not exercise or eat too many high calorie foods, and make choices accordingly. Keeping track of calories along with daily weigh-ins has definitely been worthwhile in making sure I’m honest with myself – I recommend trying it.

  1. Because there aren’t enough of these out there. [back]
  2. Or if I could export my data from Lose It and import it into Daily Burn… [back]

This post is part of the thread: Weight Loss – an ongoing story on this site. View the thread timeline for more context on this post.