My health journey started 12 months ago this month and things could not be more different or better. On the way to great health, and an upcoming bodybuilding competition, at age 61, I was asked many times, “How did you do this?” The answer is multi-faceted but can generally be placed in three categories: What I ate, what I did for exercise, and who was on my support team.
My support team consists of friends, relatives, my husband, and co-workers, but my number one teammate is John Rodriguez, Owner of Fit Life Nutrition in Point Loma.
He took me in as an old and broken-spirited person and from day one said, “We will find a way.” He did that and more. You see, John has his own fat to fit story, so he knows the issues. More than that, he listened to me and what issues I had of the body, the mind, and the spirit.
I was fortunate to find John, but you do not need a trainer. You do, however, need to find a person who will help guide you along the right direction. I am not a trained professional at this, but people now come to me to hear my story and I am helping when I can. All you need to do is ask for help and usually someone will appear and be able to help. By the way, John offers everyone a free coaching session, so you don’t have a place to start your journey with someone who knows how it feels to not be in good health, then get there.
Eat as Much as You Can Without Being Hungry and Stay on the Plan
That headline really sums up how I eat now. You see, losing weight can take a lot of paths, but it comes down to eating less calories than you burn. That does not mean you starve. In fact, most days I have to eat more than I want – really.
John made a food plan for me to use, which included some of my favorite things, like the Starbucks Spinach Feta Wrap for breakfast. He helped me to understand how foods combine with each other to burn more calories and how to eat a lot, not be hungry, and to still have fun. And… STAY ON THE PLAN. That may seem like a tall order, and it does take some getting used to. I was on a 2000-calories-a-day plan for almost a year and lost over 50 pounds. It was a bit hard at the beginning because I liked to eat what I liked to eat and some of it had to go away, at least for a while. It paid off.
I was on 2000 calories a day and the macros (carbs, fats, proteins) were also being calculated. I used the free app on my iPhone “My Fitness Pal” and now for over 325 days I have tracked what I ate. If it went in my mouth, it went on the chart. It was the only way I knew I could chart my progress and it became a habit pretty quickly. A year later I am now in contest prep, we increased my calories to 2300 for two weeks (talk about a lot of food) and then we paired it down to 1900 right now. This was done to ramp up my metabolism and then to have me continue to burn calories. In the last 30 days I have lost 6.5 pounds and in the last 7 I lost 3.5 of those pounds. I have to say, this was about as easy as it gets because my mind had been trained on how much I need to eat and my body had become used to the amount I needed to eat.
Lots of people ask what my daily food intake looks like. Here is a sample of what I eat:
Breakfast:
Option 1: Starbuck’s Spinach Feta Wrap (290 calories)
Option 2: 2 Fried eggs with 4 more egg whites (make a delicious omelet). I add some mushrooms or other veggies and I get very full. (fried eggs = 166 calories / egg whites = 50 calories)
Snack #1: Protein shake with banana (shake = 280 calories / medium banana 105 calories)
Lunch: 6 oz chicken and 1 cup of brown rice (chicken – no skin = 200 calories / rice = 150 calories). I put hot sauce like Tapitio, or some no sugar added marinara on it and I have a tasty meal.
Snack #2: Salad (salad example: pear gorgonzola pre-made from Vons = 250 calories) I do mostly the premade kind as I can make them single serve and they are all 300 calories or less of the varieties I buy.
Dinner: This can go many ways depending on the day. I happen to like chicken, so I do a lot of that. But I also like vegetarian brats and burgers, and such so I have those too. I have some potato or rice or other carb along with this. Dinner, I keep to about 400 calories
Snack #3 (or dessert as I call it): I have fruit or a 6-8 oz of Greek yogurt with ½ scoop of protein powder and then I have the best chocolate pudding you can imagine, that is actually good for you! The Greek yogurt (Chobani plain) = 80 calories and the protein powder is 70 calories so a total of 150 calories.
All of this equals between 1825 calories and about 1940. I also make sure to have at least 80oz of water or tea every day.There you have it… Part of how I went from fat to fit. Next time we’ll look at the exact exercise plan we used to get me from broken to competition ready.
