My Diet: Reasons and Update

As you all may be aware, a little under three weeks ago I started my diet and the start of my lifestyle change journey. However, despite the flowery text, my journey has not gone very far. The results, however, have been good so far.

My ultimate plan is to lower my weight from 286 lbs down to 195 lbs. When I was a teenager, I tore ligaments in my knees. Luckily, I didn’t need surgery for it. However, my knees have been giving me issues lately. My doctor says that my weight is one of the causes of it. This isn’t surprising to me. My knees have been a constant source of problems for me since I was sixteen.

Reasons

This is one of the main reasons why I want to get into shape. Another is heart disease and other health issues. According to many health authorities in Canada, like the website Obesity Canada:

“Obesity is a progressive chronic disease, similar to diabetes or high blood pressure, which is characterized by abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that may impair health.”

This is a significant problem facing people today. We eat too many sugary foods. According to an article published in the New York Times on Sept. 12, 2016, the sugar industry shifted the blame of heart disease from sugar to fat. It claims that the sugar industry has influenced and is influencing the nutritional information that we consume. This can be seen by merely looking at the nutritional information on packaging. Most processed products are full of sugar. You can’t buy anything without having sugar in it.

According to an article in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, there is a substantial similarity between drug abuse and sugar consumption from the standpoint of what excess sugar does to the brain’s chemistry.

Update

As such, I have cut out all sugary drinks, and foods out of my diet. I’ve not gone as far as tearing the organic section of grocery stores apart for meals with no sugar added.

I have also cut serving amounts and started to count calories. The principle is calories in, calories out. I make sure that I eat just underneath the calories that I need. That means no more five plates of delicious, gorgeous spaghetti. No more late night cheese pizza. I’m eating more salad, more quinoa, and fewer carbs.

I have not purchased an expensive gym membership or a treadmill for my home. Unless the diet is looked at first, no amount of exercise will cause me to lose any weight. I have tried that way before.

So far in the last three weeks, using the simple changes in cutting calories, I have lost 15 lbs. I understand that my current method won’t get me to my end goal. I will have to switch things up and exercise more. To get down to 195 lbs, I will have to continue on the lifestyle change journey. 

I will discuss those other changes as they happen. As well as what works for me and what doesn’t.

There are also downsides to this diet, which I will talk about in other blog posts.

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