Lost and Found

I lost 3 pounds again last week by tracking my food intake and swimming every single day, but I’ve been worrying about keeping up the sustained reducing over time. I need to take off 2 pounds every single week to achieve my goal in the time line I’m working toward.  

I found this really neat tool to calculate how many calories you’re burning in a day and it is free to use. You just click on the link, then fill in the blanks with how many minutes you do of each activity on the list in a day. It even has sleeping, sitting, reading and writing on the list as well as sports activities!

Remember your total minutes in a day are 1440, so try and total that as you fill out the list accounting for what you do. After you enter everything you do in a day, by minutes, it will give you a total of how many calories you're burning in a day.

Then if you’re counting your calories or food exchanges, you need to burn 3500 calories more than what you eat to lose 1 pound. So if you’re eating 1500 calories a day on the exchange plan, then you need to do enough activities in the course of the week to burn 7000 calories more than what you ate every day.

I REALLY like this tool and see exactly what I need to change to get those 2 pounds + off every single week.

I must be mindful of everything I put in my mouth. For me this means writing absolutely everything down. Then using this great calculator to figure out the calories I’m burning should take every bit of guesswork out of the equation and help me achieve that 2 pounds a week until I reach goal, then help me sustain my goal weight.   

Here’s the link to try it yourself. http://www.healthstatus.com/calculate/cbc

Farewell to Joy Cook

Founder of the Take Off Pounds Sensibly TOPS WA 1147 Graham group, Joy Cook, gave a fond farewell program at today's weekly meeting. She was presented with a gift from the chapter for her years of service and inspiring programs.

In 1988 Joy earned the prestigious recognition of TOPS Washington state queen for achieving goal weight and losing 124 pounds.

"Stick with it...success is incremental...it might be 1/4 pound at a time to get to goal, focus on living and eating healthy" was her parting advice to the group.

"We know how to lose and gain weight, we have to learn to live in the middle at goal," she added.

When she moved to Graham she couldn't find a group to transfer to that worked with her schedule of availability, so she started a new chapter.  Over the years it has blossomed to 39 members with several who have reached their goal weight and maintained it earning them KOPS (Keep Off Pounds Sensibly) status.

Joy and her husband are moving to Arizona to pursue a career opportunity. She looks at the change as a way to demonstrate to her grown children that at over 60 years of age you can still do something new in your life.