You made the decision to take charge of your lifestyle, maybe as far back this year as New Year’s Day. You started exercising and committed to walking to get yourself fit. Good for You!! You went the next step and decided to keep yourself focused and accountable for a weekly goal of steps and distance so you went and picked yourself up a Good Pedometer, like the Omron Alvita at https://www.pedometersusa.com. It’s a great little pedometer that counts your normal steps and if you spice it up a little with some easy, long strides it can track your aerobic steps as well. Also, it keeps track of your distance and the calories you’re burning off each and every time your clip it on. You found this to be a great way to keep yourself motivated and keep you looking to achieving your weekly goals. Since you’ve started improving your health by embracing a fitness outlook, you’ve been able to set a few new goals since you conquered your original ones by surpassing your original distance. Good for you… But you’ve started asking yourself, if I’m doing so well, why am I no longer shedding the pounds?
You may actually be stopping yourself from peeling off the pounds by eating the wrong foods. It’s a fact that people that try and change their lifestyle around take some things like purchasing their foods at face value. What I mean is, people tend to gravitate to buying everything marked as being diet or low fat. Unfortunately, the FDA is only now making new guidelines to make sure products that are marked as being low fat or “Diet Foods” actually are what they market themselves to be! For a long time, packaged foods could get away with advertising themselves as being low fat or low sugar, even organic, but in reality those foods that claim that fact actually make up for the lower amounts of refined sugars by using other manufactured ingredients to make up for the flavor which turn out to be just as bad or maybe even worse than actually ingesting a few more teaspoons of processed sugar than not!
Bottom line is, if you want to be safe about what you purchase to fuel that body of yours, go as natural in your purchase as you can. Instead of reaching for that fruit filled yogurt. Reach instead for a plain yogurt and add in your own teaspoon of honey or cut up your own fruit, dates or chopped almonds and have the satisfaction that you’re eating something as natural as you can get.
Organic is better, but a word to the wise, all organic foods again are not what they claim to be. Advertising right now is a little lax as far as labeling goes. Any food item, whole or packaged can claim to be organic but can actually contain GMO’s in their growing cycles, whether it be grown, or raised, both plants and poultry, beef, pork, and products that are manufactured from them like sausages, hotdogs, brats can contain genetically manufactured organisms to help bulk up the animals and increase packaged life. These you definitely want to stay away from.
The key again, is use your senses of touch, smell, look and feel when you shop. And don’t be afraid to ask questions. Not everyone has access to a “Farmers Market” where you can question the farmer or rancher about their stocks and produce growing techniques. But that is probably the best way to be assured that what you are buying is naturally grown, the way nature intended it to be. Bottom line, purchase foods as natural as you can find them! Cut down on processed, packaged foods as much as you can and eat more whole grains, nuts and natural fats like from salmon and avocadoes to get the good fats into your system
If you do this, and continue to walk and stay active, you should see a downward tick in that scale you use to weigh yourself. And do yourself a favor, don’t hit that scale every morning. Instead, make a weighing date say every two-three weeks. This way your body can fluctuate from time to time and you won’t be beating yourself up if you see a gain in poundage day to day. Give yourself some time between weighing yourself and then react to the results you see.
So, again, we are proud of you for maintaining your walking regimen, now just tweak a few things in your food purchases and you should be back on track to losing the weight as you keep on track with toning your body for life!