I am not one of those people blessed with a fast metabolism. If being able to gain weight fast were a game, I would be a major contender. I also do not have an abundance of time to spend in the gym. And, even if I had the time, I am not a big fan of exercise altogether. Putting on weight has always been easy for me, and that is why I was once always on the look out for diets that worked. Five years ago, I stumbled onto a diet that finally did the trick. I was 160 pounds, and I am only 5'2. You can picture in your mind how chubby I must have been, a porty shorty. I hadn't realized that I had gotten so fat until a friend of mine asked me, "Why are you gaining weight?"
The question was a tough blow to my ego, but it was just the shove I needed to push me in the right direction. I immediately set a goal to lose at least thirty pounds in three months. I lost them in two. Granted, I did work my butt off in the gym for at least an hour a day to lose the pounds so fast. However, I used the same diet plan a year ago, only without the extensive workouts, and I had great results. I could lose 7-10 pounds in a month without a heavy workout routine.
Every now and again, an unwanted pound will creep its way back into my jeans. Whenever I start to notice the pounds coming back, I revert to my handy-dandy diet that never fails.
The time to diet has come again. The Holy Month of Ramadan has just ended. Many people have the misconception that after a month of fasting during daylight hours, Muslims will have lost tons of weight. This has never been the case for me. In fact, it's always quite the opposite. Because I could not eat during the day, and because I did not have time to cook before class, by the time the sun set, I was starving and I ate what came quick and readily available: junk food. At one point during the Month of Ramadan, I baked a pound cake. I'm embarrassed to admit this, but over the course of the Holy Month, I ate a slice of that cake almost every night until I had eaten almost the entire cake to myself. Amazing and disgusting, I know. It wasn't a surprise to me that by the end of the month of fasting, I had gained seven unwanted pounds; my poor hips and stomach were the innocent victims. They never stood a chance against the butter and sugar in that pound cake.
Hope is not lost. I like a challenge that I know I can overcome when I'm faced with so many other obstacles that feel utterly impossible to deal with. My plan is this: tomorrow, Monday, September 21, 2009, I will post my current weight; I will also begin posting a food journal daily. If I do exercise, I will post the details of the workout. God willing, thirty days from tomorrow, I will have shed the seven pounds that I gained, and then I will work on losing another five- Thanksgiving is just around the corner; it's better to lose the weight prior to gaining it.
What I am hoping is that YOU will join me on this journey. If my diet plan works, then I would love to share it. If you do decide to follow my diet, please post your results or lack there of. Feel free to comment with any questions you may have. Tomorrow's post will contain more detail about the do's and don'ts of the diet and a few sample meal plans. FYI, this diet will contain no pork or beef products as I do not consume those foods. However, you can include whatever foods you wish so long as you follow the main rules of the plan.
Check back tomorrow for my guide to losing weight easily.
No comments:
Post a Comment