Tag: losing weight and keeping it off

Using My Experience to Empower Readers

Christina BruniLeave a comment

It’s January and too often people join a gym exercise madly for 2 months then quit when they don’t see progress.

The fixation on weight loss disturbs me. The fact is that when a person adopts consistent healthy habits permanently they will naturally lose weight.

Without having to go on a restrictive diet or any kind of “diet” written about in the plethora of diet books published every year like clockwork.

I’m compelled to write about my experience to empower readers. I lost 15 pounds and that hadn’t been my goal.

My goal was to eat more healthful food and continue to lift weights 2x per week as often as I could.

Would you like to know how I lost 15 pounds without even trying to?

I’m 55 years old and living in menopause. Yet I haven’t gained weight.

What I propose is a simple plan. It might not be easy to adopt at first if a person is totally out of shape.

Only it will work especially for those of us who are older.

Should you want to dive right into the details you can buy the Frank Lipman, M.D. book The New Rules of Aging Well.

Before I checked out of the library this book I had already been doing the things Dr. Lipman advised us older folk to do.

A preview of what I’ve done over the years:

Have yogurt only 2 or 3 times a week.

Stop eating meat of any kind that comes from a CAFO.

Not eat a lot of food every day.

Engage in intermittent fasting: have dinner between 6:00-7:30 p.m. Wait 16 hours to eat again when I’m at home the next day. Scramble eggs for breakfast after this fast.

Have only 2 meals a day every so often.

Make my “3 square meals” small ones.

Cut out eating granola and grains.

Cook my own dinners more often every week.

Change the frequency and duration of my workout routines. Lift weights in my living room. Use lower weight and higher reps for each exercise.

Have the cannoli on New Year’s Eve because I’m not perfect : )

Losing Weight and Keeping It Off

Christina BruniLeave a comment

In only ONE YEAR from the time I was 22 until I turned 23 I gained 20 pounds. In ONE YEAR.

When my mother is with me when I’m giving a talk she turns to the audience members and tells them: “Chris was a former chubby.” Thanks, Mom.

I wouldn’t use the term chubby  or the far worse term fat to describe a person.

The personal trainer at the gym gets it right: you can carry a few extra pounds and be healthier than a person who’s skinny and flabby.

You can be thin and in ill health because all you eat is chips and cookies and junk food. You can be heavier and eat mostly fruits and vegetables.

As I reported in this blog elsewhere maintaining your weight is not as simple as the number of calories you consume every day versus the amount of exercise you do.

Nearly as soon as I gained those 20 pounds I felt poorly. I made an appointment with an actual M.D. who had a private practice focused on nutrition. She wasn’t a dietician or a nutritionist.

Her name is Rama Z. Koslowe and she practices in Staten Island, NY–one of the boroughs of New York City. I’ve recommended her to other people.

How did I lose a total of 15 pounds and keep this weight off for good?

Once a week I replaced unhealthful food with a nutritious alternative: skim milk instead of whole milk. Skinless chicken instead of eating the skin. And so on.

In 2011 when I turned 46 I stepped up my efforts. That’s when I started to lift weights at the gym. Within a year of doing this I dropped one pant and one skirt size.

In my life I find that lifting weights that is doing strength training was the most effective exercise out of any kind I ever did.

Other people swear by spinning classes or Pilates. That’s fine if you find these kinds of workouts help you better. I haven’t tried spinning. I used to do Pilates years ago.

You can view my blog entry on setting up a home gym.

It took me 6 years to lose those stubborn 20 pounds I had gained in one year. As the years rolled by I read every reputable fitness and nutrition book I could check out of the library.

In a coming blog entry I’ll give a list of my Top Fitness and Nutrition Books of All Time.

I’ll end here by saying that the New York Times has indicated that engaging in 75 minutes of vigorous exercise per week or 150 minutes of moderate exercise is perfectly fine.

Inspiration and Perspiration

Christina BruniLeave a comment

Thomas Edison is quoted along the lines that achieving a goal is “One percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.”

The Changeology Step 3 of Perspire lasts at least 30 days. It’s followed by the Persevere and Persist steps which round out and end the 90-day action plan.

Two prior goals I’ve already achieved using the Changeology method.

One was to wear makeup every day to my job. The other was to wear jeans to my job only 2 days a week. In fact I rarely wear jeans at all to my job anymore. And I do apply makeup in the morning before I go there.

Controlling the environment as regards these two goals was simple:

Placing my makeup in a cosmetics case and keeping the case on the bathroom sink ledge for easy and quick access.

Storing the jeans in an out-of-the way rack. Placing the pants front-and-center hanging in my everyday closet.

While I buckle down in the Perspire step I’m going to write in here about other fitness and nutrition topics.

I want to write about these things to give readers hope.

There’s a lot of confusing, conflicting, and downright contentious information about health that is passed off as the only right approach to living your life.

Remember: my claim to fame is that I wrote a book titled Left of the Dial. I see things differently and think differently from most people.

What I know to be true is that a dose of common sense is required when tackling problems that seem insurmountable.

Isn’t a 90-day action plan a short time frame in which to accomplish a goal that has the potential to become permanent for the rest of your life?

In a coming blog entry I’m going to focus on how I lost 20 pounds as a young woman and kept most of that weight off.

In fact I weigh the same at 53 as I did at 40. This indicates I know something about which I speak.

You could get toned lifting all the dozens of diet books that are published each year.

My goal is this: to empower readers not only to dare to dream but to actually do what you dream of.

More on how I lost weight and kept it off in the coming blog entries.