After looking at my BMI, I decided that 140 would be a reasonable weight; its dab in the middle, not high and not low so I don’t have to worry about gaining a few pounds making me overweight or losing a few pounds to make me underweight. At 140 lbs I felt it is a good weight with some flexibility on both sides. My BMR was set to eating 1600 calories a day 🙁
I don’t think I have ever eaten 1600 calories of healthy food in my life. The generic set minimum for women my age and height though is 1200 calories so I figured I’d start with that first and then work my way up to 1600 calories.
The first thing I did was setup and commit to a daily exercise schedule which I set to walking 2 miles a day because I know it was something I could do without whining about it. For someone who has not exercised in probably a decade if not more, believe me, it’s easy to whine about it. So every morning I get up and walk fast pace (2.5 mph) for one mile before the sun gets too high in the sky and it gets too hot. I wasn’t quite sure how fast I was walking or how far a mile was, so I used an app from Google called My Tracks. Google My Tracks uses your phone’s internal GPS to calculate how fast you are going and what distance you have traveled via on foot, bike or vehicle, and then records it to your Android phone. Epic app. So every time I exercise, I take my phone with me (which almost everyone probably does anyway), turn on my favorite music, mostly techno or some soca or calypso, Björk, Rasputina and walk a mile. I was happy to find that walking in a complete square from the back of my complex to the front and back home was a mile’s walk.
The second thing I did was use My Fitness Pal Diary to calculate my water, calorie, carbs, fat, protein and sodium everyday and made sure I didn’t go over those numbers. This is what the MFP Diary looks like. And I do this everyday. I try to eat 1200 calories a day and stay within my limits while exercising 2 times a day and trying to consume 8 cups of water a day.
