Sometimes, I find it hard to love who I am. I find it hard to look at the person staring back at me in the mirror and say, "I like you. I like who you are."
Granted, I love my personality and who I am, I guess. I just am not okay with my physical appearance. I guess not many of us are. Someday, as I grow older and wiser, I think I will be okay with the way that I look. However, I am young and in the spry time of my youth, and I think that one of the only ways to happiness is to be physically attractive to other people.
Which, I guess, is pretty shallow when you think of it.
So, in order for me to become healthier and more physically pleasing to others, I have decided to start anew. I have decided to monitor what I eat, and when I eat it. I need to lose some weight, and I think that by dropping my calories to 1,000 a day, I think I can jump start my body into getting to where it needs to be.
Has anyone out there had to do something similar? Lose a lot of weight? Do you have any suggestions?
By the way, I don't plan on seeing Mr. Robinson again.
Oh, from the title I was expecting something more...never mind.
ReplyDeleteI support loving yourself in ways that leads to self-acceptance with action. Good on ya.
Ha ha! Wow. I guess the title would be a little misleading. Maybe that will be the topic of a new post. Who knows?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment, sir.
I'm not a nutritionist, but I've done diets (including plenty of research) and I think 1000 calories a day is a bad idea.
ReplyDeleteAt that low a caloric intake your body goes into "starvation" mode and starts hanging on to its fat stores (more efficient for long-term storage) and metabolizing muscle instead for its short-term energy needs. Less muscle means a lower basic metabolic rate over time, which means you're more likely to gain weight.
At 1000 calories/day you will almost certainly lose weight, but you'll also almost certainly gain back more than you lost when you start eating a resonable amount again.
If all you're doing is dieting (no change in exercise habits) the best thing to do is to monitor your eating for a week or so (the diet your body has gotten used to) to see how many calories you're currently eating, and then reduce that number by no more than 1000/day. (Rule of thumb: a reduction of 500 calories/day = weight loss of approx. 1 lb/week; weight loss of more than 2 lbs/week is considered unhealthy)
Most likely, you'll end up somewhere around 2,000 calories/week as your goal (plus/minus a couple hundred)
If you're exercising, take the calories burned into account (i.e. if you're spending 30 mins on the treadmill you're burning around 250 calories, so add that to your target intake).
Again, I'm not a nutritionist, or a doctor, or anything like that. I haven't even played one on TV. But I read a lot, and every once in a while I try to eat right and get fit. :) I'm working on losing 10-15 lbs myself right now.
Good luck!