Karen Maxwell's Personal Diet

General Description: FREE (except you will have to buy food, but I don't use expensive ingredients) and you will have to cook, moderation, good healthy fats only, moderate carbs, and high protein. Nothing fried and no full sugar desserts or drinks.

Purposes
	Promotes long term weight loss A healthy living alternative Teaches sustainable weight loss skills Provides an energy boost Improves mood and outlook A roadmap for a healthier lifestyle

Tips

Make exercise a part of your daily life. I started out working out in the mornings since it got my metabolism going early in the day. I felt great and loved it. Then the time change occurred and I can't seem to find a perfect time to exercise! Still working on that. But the important things is to just do it! I started out walking for 30 minutes as fast as I could every other day. Then after a week I found myself wanting to walk EVERYDAY since I was seeing results. Then I upped it to 1 hour a day. As I built up my stamina, I started jogging with my walking. I would jog as long as I could, then walk, timing each so I could report it properly. I took along my cell and texted my hubby my progress so that I could add it all up later.

Drink water! Try to drink 64 oz of water each day. I started with drinking 1 glass while preparing my meals, then 1 glass with my meals. This worked out great. Then I drank a glass before my workout and then drank usually 2 glasses after my workout. This worked great for me. Also add lemon to your water when you can. This works as a natural diuretic and helps you fight the water retention.

Go to fatsecret everyday to record your foods and exercise. I preplan my meals everyday. I either do it the evening before or the morning of. (Now I preplan my meals a week at a time!) This way you know what you are getting into. If you enter it afterwards, you may end up way out of balance.

THIS TIP is for once you are comfortable with using fatsecret, not for those of you just starting out. Use fatsecret.com's pie chart at the bottom of the food diary. Aim for 20% or less fat, 50% or less carbs and 30% or more protein. Make sure you edit your RDI and answer the questions correctly.

If you aren't getting enough calories in your diet, you could sabbotage yourself and make your body think it is starving. Don't ever go below 1100 calories in a day. If you do, don't make it a habit.

Find friends or relatives to share your success with. I text my group every 5 pounds! They give me props and I feel encouraged to keep it up.

Take a pic of yourself in the most unflattering outfit when you start! You will wish you had after you loose 20 pounds. I hated having my pic taken, but now that I have lost 22 pounds, I wish I had that fat me pic! (update! I have lost 35 pounds for the second time in 2 years! My mother provided me with that dreaded pic of myself in an unflattering outfit. That's the before pic of me on this blog!)

Detailed Information

Description This diet is my personal diet. I have had a lot of people ask me how I have lost all this weight and I have been able to maintain the weight even at times when I may have been less than stellar. I feel more confident in my food choices. Also since diabetes runs in my family and I was borderline diabetic during my pregnancies I am predisposed to diabetes in the future. So I choose to learn how to eat properly and keep my weight down so that I can perhaps keep diabetes at bay, or learn how to cope with it now instead of when I HAVE to. About / History I have been on fatsecret.com for 5 months. It took me 12.5 weeks to figure out how dieting works. I still may not have it all firgured out, but I have managed to loose 33 pounds in that time. I was averaging 2 pounds a week up until week 8, where I hit a plateu and had to change things up a bit. But I beat that plateau and now know how to deal with them. Now I am back to loosing weight again, but about at my last goal, then I will go into maintenance mode. (this is old information here, I don't have to go to fatsecret anymore to log my foods since I KNOW what I can and can't eat!) How to Follow Read Read Read! Read all the information on this diet so that you can incorporate the information in your life. You will learn how to make wise choices when eating out or making choices for your own home.