Why I Sound Like Yoda When It Comes To My Fitness

This is what I feel like I sound like when someone asks me how I lost 83 pounds.  First thing I say is you're not going to like what I have to say.  Then they immediately crinkle up their nose and say, "exercise?"  They say it with their face looking like they just ate a bad oyster.  They say it with the look of "Well that's not going to happen."  I reply, "Yep.  Exercise."  With a sad I'm so sorry to have to tell this look on my face.  Then they say, "Well, that can't be all you did.  You had to have altered your eating drastically too."  I reply, "Nope. Just exercise and a gentle tweak here and there to my diet.  I eat more.  I make sure my protein is up.  I make sure my fat grams are down.  I don't ingest any artificial sweeteners.  Yes, that includes stevia."

Personal preference on the Stevia.  This is when they argue with me about how one can lose weight without exercise and with all natural stevia.  I just smile a smile that says, "How's that been working for you?  I know it didn't work for me."  And this is when "exercise or do not exercise it's your choice to make" comes out of me.  This is when I feel like I sound like Yoda's famous quote, "Do or do not... there is no try."

I know where they are coming from.  No one... NO ONE didn't want to exercise more than me.  I did it to prove that exercise wouldn't work for me.  I wanted to knock that off my list of things I really tried when I talked to my doctor on what I could do next to lose weight.  I even hired a trainer to tell me how exercise, so I'd have a witness to "she exercised so hard and it didn't work for her."

What I found out was exercise did work.  It worked probably immediately.  The first month I lost 2 pounds without changing my eating style.  The 2nd month I lost 2 more pounds.  I did this through Thanksgiving and Christmas.  January came around and my trainer gently suggested I might want to stop drinking diet soda.  This is when the weight loss really took off.  I stopped diet soda originally just for a month.  Liked the way I felt so much I never when back.  I started adding healthy fats to my diet.  My trainer suggested I make sure I was eating enough protein and I wasn't even close to eating enough until I started watching it.  Even though I didn't add salt to my food there were things that were high in sodium.  Salad dressings high in sodium.  The Seasoned Rice Vinegar I used to replace salad dressings had a lot of sodium.  My diet has evolved a lot over the past 2 1/2 years really with just little changes.  I knew if I made big changes and big restrictions from my normal way of eating I'd never be able to stick to it.

Exercise is my baseline.  I don't ever sway from doing it.  It is what keeps my body and my eating on track.  Who wants to mess up a good workout with bad food.  I don't.  So, as Yoda so profoundly said, ""Do or do not... there is no try."  You decide for yourself how you want your future to look.  Mine looks fit and trim.