My Weight Loss and Workout Plan

I have finally gotten motivated to get back to losing weight again. I had been doing pretty good before I got pregnant over the summer. Unfortunately I had a miscarriage in September and it took me some time to adjust. I gained 15 pounds in the few months I was pregnant taking my goal back up to 40 pounds to lose. I have since lost those 15 pounds and am hopefully going to keep going until I reach my goal this time!

As far as eating goes all I am doing is counting calories and trying to be sure that those calories are fairly healthy and well spent. I am down to 1400 calories per day. I got the Biggest Loser Complete Calorie Counter book and it suggests that you eat 7 calories per pound of current body weight until you reach your target weight. (For those over 300 pounds, use 300 as the measure to figure calorie use and those under 150 should use 150 to figure calorie usage.) However, using this calculation I should be at 1300 but I am only adjusting my calories when I stop seeing much movement at my weigh ins so I will stick with 1400 for awhile. I actually just left 1500 this week.

Of course every weight loss goal needs to include exercise. I had stopped all exercise over the summer because I really felt horrible while I was pregnant. So it was really tough to get moving again. My treadmill was sitting there and I could not get up the motivation to use it. So I decided to look for a video of something fresh and new that might help get me started. I kept finding these videos that had all these modern dance moves. I am sorry, but I am a very conservative Christian 42 year old mom. I don't really have the Hip Hop moves...know what I mean?? Besides seeing these women looking almost anorexic doing them isn't really encouraging to me either. I wanted something like the old Richard Simmons videos that used real people who had really lost LOTS of weight by doing this. That's when I found the Biggest Loser: The Workout video.

I had seen the previews for the show but never really had an interest in it but I figured I would give the video a try. I have to tell you I am loving it! It's so great and not "cheesy" at all. In fact my husband even started doing with me! The movements are simple movements, you don't "dance" or anything. You do some punching, kick-boxing, jump roping moves and it really has a great balance between working both the upper and lower body. It also is great because it doesn't work on just burning calories and fat, it also works on sculpting your body. By focusing on the abs, the arms, and various other trouble spots you reshape your body as well as simply get lighter! I have been doing this a month and can really see and feel the difference!

The trainer on the video is one of the trainers on the TV show, Bob Harper. He is really motivating and encouraging, and not geeky at all. The rest of the people are actual contestants from the show. Each has lost anywhere from 60-115 pounds EACH! They share the story of two of them and give a little info about each of them which is also motivating. They also really seem to still struggle doing the exercises in the video. It's real people struggling just like you, but they reached their goals which means I can too. None of these moves makes me feel silly or stupid, a 42 year old, 22 year old or 65 year old would do this just fine. One of the things I love the most is that he always gives you an option as to whether or not you move onto the next step. If you are already out of breath lifting a knee, keep doing that instead of going on to the kick. Even just stepping side to side while he does more difficult moves keeps you moving and burns fat. Anyone can do this! (There is a lot of bending at the knee, so people with serious knee issues might be the only ones who struggle, but again, if they skip those parts and instead do things they can do it can work. I have some knee issues myself but after they explained how to do bends WITHOUT putting pressure on my knees I was able to do everyone of them!)

Anyway, here is the only trailer of the video I could find. I do not know anything about the store advertising the video, so don't use this as an endorsement for the store, it's just for the video. I originally got mine through Netflix to try it but when we found out how much we liked it we bought a copy from Walmart.com for under $9. Here is but a small sample of what I have been up to this past month. I am currently exercising 5 days a week for a total of at least 3 hours per week. Having gone from no exercise to begin with, I am pleased with those numbers.