QUICK- FIT WEDNESDAY

 Today is Wednesday that means that we can talk about our fitness routine or healthy lifestyle.  If you have been keeping up with my  posts, you know how important it is to me that everyone live their life as healthy and fit as possible. I feel that as parents, we need to be the first line of defense against obesity, and diabetes and other health issues related to poor diet and exercise so our children can live long healthy lives. So, I have promised to keep you all updated on my work out routines, eating habits, etc.

I've been using a work out program that incorporates HIIT training and Tabata style exercise. These are very short and very intense workouts. Well since I began the program in May, I had begun to see some differences in my body as far as muscle definition, and loss of inches.  However, I was beginning to feel a bit discouraged when I weighed my self and only saw a 3lb loss. Now I was getting reassurance from other people who do the same work out routines, that it was just muscle mass, and I shouldn't be too worried about it. But I just still didn't feel satisfied with that. Then, I read over an article from Woman's Health magazine that was tweeted on the ragazzabazaar twitter page (https://twitter.com/ragazzabazaar) that talked about burning calories and consuming calories. After reading that article it hit me...my diet was all screwed up! So, I started documenting everything I was eating and I realized that my calorie input was the same or more than what I was burning. I wasn't really focusing on portion sizes, or empty calories or even taking out junk food.  I decided to change that. 

I know that counting calories seems like so much work, and it could be. However, I found an amazing app for my phone that made this whole calorie counting thing so much easier. It's called Myfitnesspal. This little app is so wonderful. It creates a profile for you. You enter your age, weight, height and weight goals. Then based on all that it will calculate how many calories you should be eating to reach your personal goal. You then log in every day and enter everything you eat. The app will do all the adding for you. Then when you work out you input how long your work out was and again, it tells you how many calories you've burned. The nice thing is that it will separate the food calories from the calories from your workout. You can either choose to eat those extra calories or just stick to your original 1200. Since I am trying to lose weight, I just stick to the 1200 and once I reach my goal, I can focus on maintenance and I can go ahead and gobble up those extra calories.

So, have I seen any changes since changing my eating habits? YES! After just one week of counting calories and fixing my portion sizes I lost a total of 8lbs. Now, you should note that I do work out 6 days a week and have been since the beginning of May and I credit that for the quick weight loss. Having said that, it is important to stress that I would never tell anyone to eat less calories than their bodies need. Eating less food than you need can actually put your body into starvation mode and will make it very difficult for you to function on a day to day basis and it can even disrupt your weight loss.

Also, please note that I am not a professional I am just someone who has done lots of research and is avid about working out and eating right. I am only sharing with you what has worked for me.

I really believe that people who support each other see better results. That is why I am more than willing to share with you what I have learned and what has worked for me. Likewise, I am always open to hearing what some of you may be doing. We try to put up healthy recipes and  healthy living tips often on the blog. But another way to get updates is by following us on Twitter or liking us on Facebook. I look forward to hearing from you!




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