First 12 Week Plan

You may have read my analysis that predicted how much weight I would lose by simply breaking my bad eating habit of a candy bar every time I shopped for groceries. If so, you also read that I was satisfied by the total amount of weight I would eventually lose that way, but I was not satisfied with losing at the rate of 10 lb in 15 months! I wanted to lose faster than that. So, instead of just planning to lose weight by giving up 3 candy bars a week, I came up with my "First 12 Week Diet and Exercise Plan."

You may be wondering: First plan? Well, experience tells me is this: If I go back to my old habits, I'll gain back the pesky 10 lbs. So, I need some type of plan for the rest of my life. But you know what? It's too hard to come up with a plan for "forever". So, I made a 12 week plan; I intend to make a new plan every 12 weeks there after.

To maintain weight loss, I needed to establish habits. Having read tons of exercise book I also decided I would attack the problem on three fronts. These are: a nutrition component, an aerobic component and a strength component.

The purposes of the nutrition component are to improve my eating habits to provide enough nutrients and to limit calories so that I can lose weight.

The purposes of the aerobic component are to keep my cardio-vascular system in good working order and to burn calories to so that I can lose, or maintain, weight.

The purposes of the strength training program are to improve my ability to perform daily functions (yep, I was asking hubby to open jars....), to make me look more toned and to maintain or increase muscle mass. My reading suggests that a pound of muscle burns between 35-100 calories a day while a pound of fat burns only 4-5 calories a day! So, if I can gain a pound of muscle, and keep the muscle on, I may be able to vanquish this 10 lb weight problem for ever.

My concrete objective for my first 12 week plan were:

Nutrition: Limit "dieting" to cutting out the 3 candy bars a week and otherwise keeping my calorie consumption fairly constant. This would cut approximately 750 calories a week.
Aerobic: Ramp up quickly to burning approximately 1000 calories a week through exercise. Gradually increase my ability to burn calories through exercise.
Strength: Start some weight training to get stronger and build some muscle to increase my resting metabolic rate.

You can read about the aerobic and strength training components of the plan on their own web pages. You can also read the results. The nutrition component is too simple for a web page. I had been grabbing a candy bar every time I went to the grocery store. I would stop. That's it. I still drank wine with family dinners. I still ate cheese cake when we celebrated my mother-in-laws birthday and my wedding anniversary. I'll admit I became more aware of my eating, but I didn't diet -- other than giving up those three candy bars a week.

I hope my plans help you come up with a perfect plan for you!

Lucia