Brandi lost 108 pounds. This mom of 3 wanted to be able to keep up with all of her children’s activities and be a healthy example. She did the work, created a game plan for her eating habits and found a love for exercise. Check out her journey.
I was a mother of 2 boys who wanted to be able to do everything I had to do to be able to keep up with them. When I got sick and tired of being sick and tired, I decided to lose 100 pounds… and I did just that. I did it by eating right and working out. No tricks, no gimmicks. Now, I’ve aded a little princesses to the bunch and she wants to be in lots of activities too, from gymnastics to ballet. I’m so glad that I made this change.
I will never turn back. Healthy living is what I do. I went from 267 pounds to 159 pounds at 5’6″. My transformation has taken approx 13 months.
I worked out everyday, twice on some days. I did cardio, cardio and more cardio. NO weights! During my transformation, I fell in love with Spin Class. I took Spin maybe 3-4 times per week at the fitness center near my home.
I would advise anyone who wants to lose weight that when you are sick and tired of being unhealthy, sit down, do your research, make a game plan and stick to it. Failing to plan is planning to fail!
Instagram: @halloffamerswife
8 Ways to help your children avoid childhood obesity
Progress has been made in lowering the statistics of childhood obesity but it remains a significant problem. Over 17% of all children ages 6 to 19 are overweight. While there has been a small reduction in overall childhood obesity, there has also been a rise in children who are considered to be morbidly obese. Childhood obesity has been linked to everything from diabetes to asthma and learning difficulties, mood disorders and addiction tendency, plus new studies show that there may be a correlation between childhood obesity and early adult cancers.
Why are our children obese?
Childhood obesity is not just an American problem, but a problem in all industrialized nations. As economies improve, there is less time for home meals and more money is spent on the convenience of prepared foods. Prepared food has much higher rates of sodium, fats, sugars and is served in larger portions than should be consumed to maintain a healthy body weight. Also, in industrialized nations, the nature of childhood play changes from one that is based in physical activity, to one that is based in the passive entertainments of video games and computers.
How to help without creating even more problems
In the United Kingdom, a recent survey showed that while initiatives to reduce childhood obesity had been moderately successful, they had created a different problem – a rise in childhood eating disorders and mood disorders. There are ways to help your children avoid childhood obesity that don’t make food the enemy or create a low self-esteem. Here are 8 of the best ways to help your child stay healthy.
1. Show, don’t tell
Children copy what they see adults do. Don’t just tell your child how to eat healthy, do it yourself so they can see you making the right choices in types of food and the amounts that you eat. Avoid rewarding behavior or providing consolation through foods like ice creams and pastas. Find another way to make good grades special or to console your child after their first dating breakup.
2. Make the beginning important
A balanced breakfast sets the tone for the day in the amount of energy a child has and what they will be drawn to eat. Eating sugary things or breakfasts with a lot of carbs creates a craving for these items that will last throughout the day. Keep it simple and focused on proteins and fruits.
3. Make water fun
Drinking water can help curb appetites and serve as a snack. Plain water is boring, but a lot of the flavored waters on the market are loaded with sugars and additives. Try adding a slice of lemon or lime to water for added flavor.
4. Manage servings
A good rule of thumb is to never eat any one thing that is larger than the palm of your hand and to not go for seconds until after 20 minutes has passed from the first serving. It takes the body about 20 minutes to get the signal from Leptin that it is full.
5. Get active
Be the bad guy and put down some limits on the amount of time spent on the computer or playing video games. If you live in an area where sending your child outside to play is not doable, create a play area in the house that features soft sport toys or get one of the motion activated video games that feature dancing.
6. Get off the sugar train
Mind the sugar. Remember that almost all prepared foods have sugars added in them already so don’t allow your child to add more. It is important to know that if the body consumes sugar, it wants more. Don’t set up that craving.
7. Ban Soda
There is not one good reason for a child to drink soda. Even sugar free sodas are not a good idea as the artificial sweeteners reduce the ability to taste what is sweet so the child will then add three times as much sugar elsewhere in their diet to get the same sugar taste as the artificial sweetener.
8. Have set meal and snack times
Get consistent about meal and snack times so your child never feels as if they are so hungry they are starving. The more consistent the meal and snack time, the better able your child will learn how to manage their diet to avoid hunger.
April Challenge Day 1 – Things you should know about reading food labels
Ladies, one of the main things you will want to use a guide to find out just how processed your food is during our April Challenge is Food Labels. This month we are committed to eating more REAL food and cutting out highly processed food and junk food, so these labels are KEY.
US food labeling requirements mandate that manufacturers give us certain information about the ingredients and nutritional value of foods, but sometimes we don’t pay attention. It’s very easy to see from the numbers, percentages and lists of ingredients that some foods have very little nutritional value and may be contributing to our weight gain. If you really, really want to know if your food is REAL, the food label is the place to look.
Here are some points you can look out for:
- Fat Free/Sugar Free – Don’t believe the claims on the label or the front of the box without thinking about how all of the ingredients can contribute to making a food “fatty”. If a fat free item has a lot of sugar grams listed in the nutrition info, that sugar can be converted to fat in your body. That is the case with “fat-free candy”. LOL! I wish I could just chow down on some gummy, fat free candy as if it’s carrot sticks. Nope.
- “Only 100 calories per serving!” – Make sure you know just how much of a food makes up a serving by checking the food label. You may see that a food is just “XXX calories” but what they don’t like to tell you on the front of the package is that you have to multiply that number by the number of servings. For example, if a bag of chips has 210 calories per serving and there are 4 servings in the bag…you can quickly eat 840 calories in your mid-day snack. Wow! It’s my experience that most of the time, the serving size is very small compared to what most people eat as a serving. A digital kitchen scale can help in this regard so you know exactly how much you are consuming.
- Calorie Counts – I like to think of the calorie counts on food labels as a deterrent to me eating heavy, calorie laden foods. You can’t deny the truth that is a label that telling you that if you eat that pint of ice cream (4 servings at 400 cals per serving) that you will eat 1200 calories. For some, that is their whole calorie intake for the day! Make sure you are checking calorie counts and considering what lower calorie options you could have instead. You may also find that cooking more allows you to better control calories from things like butter, oil, corn syrup, trans-fats, etc.
- Liquid Calories: Food labels on liquids like juice and soda are also very telling. Calories in liquid form have been shown to be a major factor in the rising epidemic levels of obesity in this country. Since there is usually not much fiber in processed sugary drinks, you don’t feel full and there is no protein to balance out the carbs. Your body can experience a sugar high as your blood sugar elevates. Sports drinks, commercial pasteurized or from concentrate juice, sweet tea, soda, coffee drinks, energy drinks…all have little nutritional value when compared to real food options like water, fresh juice and green smoothies. Oh, and don’t think that artificially sweetened is the way to go to avoid calories. It’s thought that some sweeteners can cause bloating, nerve issues and increase your sugar cravings.
- Fats, Cholesterol and Sodium – Everyone focuses on calories, sugar and carbs when they are watching their weight, but many forget about fat, sodium and cholesterol. Watch for this content and limit it as much as you can. There are of course good fats, but you want to look out for saturated and trans-fat as well as cholesterol. Also, too much sodium is going to weak havoc on your body’s need to retain water and can affect your blood pressure in a negative way.
- Here is a great tip on carbs and sugar from Joy Bauer: “Low-quality carbs that shouldn’t take up much space in your daily diet (unless they’re naturally occurring, such as those in unsweetened fruit and dairy products). The USDA recommends limiting “added sugars” from packaged foods and sugar/honey/jelly packets to no more than 40 g per day, the equivalent of 10 teaspoons. But less is best!”
- How do you know what kind of sugar is in a food? – There are so many names for sugars in term of ingredients. Here is a good rule to go by: Look for Syrup, sweetener, and ingredients that end in “ose”. Here are a few examples, but there are many more: corn sweetener, corn syrup, cane juice, high-fructose corn syrup, lactose and glucose.
