Healthy Eating / Weight-Loss Challenge

I am looking for a few people to join me in losing a few (or quite a few!) kilos.  It's so much more motivating and fun (!) when you have friends along on the journey with you!  So whether you just need to lose the baby-belly or you have years of bad food choices behind you, you can join in and make some progress towards becoming the best YOU that you can be!  I have about 6 kilos to lose, which isn't a huge amount but considering the rate I've been putting it on, I'm looking at a weight gain of 12 kilos per year at this rate!  I certainly have to watch what I eat and exercise a LOT more now that I'm in my 30's!

Now I am not generally a big fan of counting calories, but I have decided that keeping a food journal with calorie counts is the best way to be accountable to myself and prevent me from shoving unnecessary food into my mouth (like kids left-overs!).  I'm much less likely to make a bad choice if have to write it down. 

Now I have a very cool (free!) tool that makes keeping a food & exercise diary SO much easier!  You can either download it as an App on iPhone, iPad or iPod or Android, or you can use it online.  It's called MY FITNESS PAL.  I have the App loaded on my iPod touch, which is a super-easy way to use the system.  Thousands of foods are already pre-loaded with calorie, carb, protein, fat and vitamin & mineral contents.  You can program in you current and goal weights and how much weight you want to lose per week (though it is only in pounds not kilos so you'll need to work that out).  I don't recommend going below 1600 calories per day (about 1800 is probably better) as you put your body into starvation mode which prevents weight loss and causes weight gain when you go off it because it's too restrictive to maintain. 

An idea I heard yesterday on Dr. Oz was to have one FAT-URDAY no-guilt cheat day per week...a day when you eat more calories than other days (so you can get your treats in!) which is supposed to boost your metabolism and prevent your body from going into starvation mode and holding onto the kilos. 

With My Fitness Pal you can program in your daily allowance at 1800-2000 calories (depending on how active you are) and save some of those daily calories for your FAT-URDAY treats and still come out under your calorie target for the week.

If you'd like to join me on My Fitness Pal, you can add friends to your news feed and keep each other motivated. The news feed will show if you burn calories through exercise or if you are under your calorie goal for the day (it doesn't show everyone if you go over or what you eat etc).  So you if join My Fitness Pal, add me - my login is angtheflyingkiwi so you can search for me and add me as a friend.

I hope you'll join me!!