A Milestone – Battling Weight Loss

“Progress produces motivation” ~ Vee Kingsley

It’s Scott again.

Happily in love, and around the heaviest I have been in my life.

I, like many Americans, am not happy with my weight. At my highest, I was 218.7 back in May of 2015. With a family history of high blood pressure and heart disease, being overweight is not ideal. I knew I needed to take control and trim down and with Vee’s help, I’ve been able to do it. You can too.

Life is busy and I think just about everyone can relate to that. Jobs, family, friends, there is a lot to life that we try to juggle. I love to ride my bikes, but with a new position at New Holland Ag taking up more time, still trying to concentrate on photography and working on the Farm to Fork Fondo events with Tyler Wren (not to mention trying to be a good, supporting husband), my riding has had to take a back seat.

Being a numbers guy, I upgraded our iHealth scale for a new Tanita Rd-901 Bluetooth Scale to get better info about our body composition. We also bought an Omron 10 Series Upper Arm Blood Pressure Monitor to keep track of our blood pressure. Both tools connect to our phones by Bluetooth and their apps connect to Apple’s Health app. All of this info helped, but I was still hovering around 210, fluctuating a few pounds up or down, depending on what I ate or what I did that day. I wasn’t happy with this though, so Vee and I decided to do something more about it.

Beginning on February 1st, we started tracking our food through the MyFitnessPal app on our phones. It’s a free app that lets you set goals and track nutrition, while also adding a social aspect to it all. By doing all of this, we started to have a better understanding of what we were eating and adding accountability through being “friends” on the app.

I also made the decision to commit to going vegetarian, which isn’t too far off from how I was already eating. In reality, the only thing keeping my diet from being full on vegan is cheese. I also swapped out my typical oatmeal breakfast for a Vega Essentials shake made with 10 ounces of unsweetened vanilla almond milk and 10-15 ounces of water. My breakfast is now loaded with all kinds of vitamins, minerals, and plant based protein which helps me start off with a good foundation for the day.

So, through collecting all kinds of information about the current state of my body, and really looking at what I am eating, I’ve lost a little over 10 pounds in February (211.2 as of February 1st, 200.8 as of March 1st). My activity level has stayed about the same, which really shows what tracking what you eat can do. During this time, I can honestly say that I haven’t been starving myself either. On a typical work day, here is what I’ve been eating:

• Breakfast – Vega Essentials Vanilla shake made with unsweetened vanilla almond milk and water, two Newman’s Own Hint-O-Mint cookies, and two Newman’s Own Ginger Cookies
• Lunch – a half cup mix of brown, red, and black rice and black beans, a half cup organic frozen corn, a half cup of organic frozen peas, a little bit of cheese, and again, two Newman’s Own Hint-O-Mint cookies, and two Newman’s Own Ginger Cookies (I have a cookie problem)
• Snacks – two one cup bags of organic baby carrots, an organic banana, one or two clementines
• Dinner – Varies, but sometimes a smoothie, or sautéed organic veggies over pasta.
• Dessert – Marry Me or Yours Truly from Tofutti

With ten pounds down, the next ten are going to be harder. Vee says that it’s 80% food/20% exercise, but February has been more like 98% food/2% exercise. So that’s my next step, increase my activities. As the weather gets warmer, and the daylight lasts longer, I’m looking forward to getting back out on the bike, and working to increase that 2% to something closer to 10%. We are signed up to do a duathlon in April, and there are a few rides I might sign up to do too. Time to start training.

I’m looking forward to sharing more in March!

Follow my progress on MyFitnessPal – http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/diary/pub_cap_scott