Let’s show some Black Women Losing Weight Love to Jennifer. She has lost 51 pounds since April 2nd of this year and is striving to lose 49 pounds more!! Here is what she shared with us: “I’d like to share my story. I’ve lost 51 pounds since April 2, 2013. How did I do it? Just by stopping drinking soda, cutting out sweets and with an intense exercise regiment. I also eat clean. I went from 386 pounds to 335 pounds. My goal is to lose another 49 pounds and maintain my new lifestyle. My motivation was when my doctor told me that I could not have another child due to my weight.”
Upon returning home from vacation I decided I needed to do something about my weight. I was about 265 pounds and standing only five feet tall. At the time I was a year and a half from my 30th birthday, and I didn’t want to enter the next year of my existence with the unwanted weight. Further, I knew that it would be harder to lose the older I became. I started by joining a Biggest Loser completion at my office. It helped to keep me motivated in the beginning because I’m very competitive and there was money involved for the top two losers. I ended up coming in second place after losing 17 pounds in eight weeks; however, after a few months of working out I hit a plateau and became very discouraged. I was around 30 pounds lost when I decided to change gears and stop working out at the gym. I instead took to a female dance studio that hosted classes like Zumba, Belly and Pole Dancing. I looked like a fish out of water participating, but I kept at it. What I liked most about the studio is that there were women of all ages and sizes, and they pushed me to do better. I kept up with the classes for about two months and then decided to start working out at home to save money. I took to walking and the intense Insanity workout. This forever changed my life. The program was tough, but I pushed play every day because I knew that if I did I would get results. Eventually my daily one mile walk turned into a two mile jog and increased to running several miles later down the line. I finished two rounds of Insanity and then moved on to another home program called TurboFire. The convenience of working out at home helped me stay on track because all I had to do was walk into my living room, which gave me no excuse as to why I couldn’t work out.
What I’ve had success with (Let add no surgery, no diet pills here’s my plan) – Make sure to get your BMI before you start and how many calories you need to intake****THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT****
No matter how many different ways people try to lose weight – from drinking gallons of ice water to wrapping themselves in plastic wrap – success comes down to two factors: calories consumed and calories burned. In order to lose weight, you must consume fewer calories than your body uses each day to shave off a little bit of weight each week. Sure, there are other factors like your health, exercise, etc, but when it comes to food…this is the KEY! It’s not rocket science. In fact, the concept is quite simple. However, individuals have different calorie requirements, which can make it tricky to figure out your magic number for weight loss.
My boyfriend finished out the last 6 months of this journey with me. He was working behind the scenes for the first 6 months because he wanted the focus on me.
