My Story (Part 1)

My Story (Part 1)

Are you the person who always has dessert, who eats the entire bag of chips (not just a handful), who snacks on chocolate, who always has a bagel or a doughnut when they are out in the office? Are you the mom who is so tired after work that you just eat the pasta or Mac and cheese or chicken nuggets that is left over from the kids dinner?

I was that person and I'm sure there are many of you out there that can relate to this..

When my clothes stopped fitting me in September 2012, I downloaded the My Fitness Pal app on my phone and began counting my calories to figure out what I was doing wrong. I realized that while I usually ate pretty healthy food when I had time to prepare meals, eating all that crap caused me to gain back much of the weight that I lost after my youngest son was born three years earlier. I knew I had to do something. 

So why is it called the “No more crap” diet?

It's called that because that was the approach I took. I just stopped eating "crap".

Let's face it, there are tons of diet books out there but if you just stopped eating "crap", you would lose some weight. 

I started by cutting calories. I wasn't exercising, I was just cutting out all the excess from my daily diet. I didn't eat dessert, I didn't eat bread often, and I definitely didn't eat the kids leftovers. I ate a lot of broccoli and a lot of salad.  It was hard because it required a lot of prep work in the kitchen and a lot of will power, but I was determined. It worked, I lost about 15 lbs but after a while the pounds stopped coming off as easily. 

There are really two parts to my story. The first is about diet and the second is about exercise. Both of these things were not part of my vocabulary before September 2012. However, in April 2013, about 7 months after I started dieting, I began to embrace exercise in addition to changing my diet.  It was at that point that I really changed everything I ever thought I knew about dieting. I still didn't eat the crap but I had to put much more thought into what I did eat and when. Everything I have done and learned for the past two years was very new to me. It was a very steep learning curve but one that I have fully embraced.

Exercise has become a major part of my life and my introduction into it requires a post of its own. So stay tuned for part 2 (it will be ready in a few days).

On this blog I hope to share with you what I've learned and what I have and continue to struggle with and hope that maybe you will share your stories with me as well.