My decision to change the food habit for the healthy lifestyle.

I was born and brought up in the rural Indian village. I grew up as a vegetarian and have been a vegetarian my entire life. Until I was in India, I used to be physically active. We did not have a car to commute, we were required to walk to the bus stop and take a bus to go anywhere or use a bicycle to commute. Due to good weather, we used to spend most part of the day outdoors whether working or doing some activities. Once I moved to the United States and started working, my days are spent in front of the computer all day, and life has become sedentary. I have started seeing impact on my physical health where experiencing more aches and pain, harder to walk even one to two miles distance. When I had kids, I gained too many extract pounds of weight. Started to feel low energy and no interest in any activities.

In 2019, I decided I should do something about how I feel. I did some research on lifestyle management. I found a good coach. I learned about food intake tracking, started to track my food intake. Learned about various food calories. Learned about too much sugar and processed food eating effects on the body, weight gain and other health impacts. It was an eye opening how bad my food habits were, how much over calories I was consuming daily than what I was burning. It is very simple math which most of us miss or never pay attention to understand. We try to find excuses for not being active and eating too much.

Goal setting:

Part of my lifestyle change, I set a goal to myself that, in 2019, I will learn and adopt eating habits where per day food intake is equal to calories I burn. What it means is, first I have calculated how much calories I needed to maintain my current body weight. The important point to note here is, I calculated the total daily calories needed for me for the sedentary lifestyle. Any additional physical activities such as walking, biking etc. I do. are bonus. I tracked my food intake every day for about 9 months, and I started short distance walking / very light exercise. I started to notice a difference in my energy level, better sleeping. Slowly started to shed a few pounds as well. Learning about the food intake, calorie management, no or less sugar & less carb items consumption are the game changer for me.

Increasing physical activities:

Once I became accustomed to food habits, I started slowly increasing the physical activities, added a few stretches and strengthening. Started with a goal set to walk 3-5 miles every week. At that time, even walking one mile at a stretch was harder, and painful. I did not give up. In spite of back and leg pain, I continue to keep up with my goal. The effort paid off, within a few months, I started to shed few more pounds of weight and started to experience decreased pain, increased energy. This commitment to myself and being consistent about my effort helped me lose 18 pounds of weight so far. I can walk up to five to six miles at a stretch or 20 to 25 miles biking. This whole effort helped me to eliminate my lower back and leg pain. Overall, I feel very energetic, happier, enthusiastic. 

A few lessons I have learned in this whole journey are, eat so much you can burn in the same day (simple math, intake = calorie burned), exercise is equally important as eating food, if you are not ready to miss a meal, why compromise to miss a exercise? Don’t expect quick and short-term results. Always aim for long term results with long lasting impact. I am still not done with my weight loss journey; I still must lose another 20 pounds to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight and to stay within a healthy BMI. With the tools and techniques, I have learned, I am very confident that I will achieve my goal. When I do, I will open my new chapter and set a new goal. Life is always a learning journey; we are not done until the last minute.