Losing Weight the Frugal Way

For long time readers of my blog, you know that I often make references to my weight being an issue, or me being on the large size, or wanting to lose weight, or on the rare occasions where I can commit to making it a priority I talk about my success in dropping a few pounds.

I don’t want to enter my 30’s in debt. I also don’t want to enter my 30’s carrying weight when a natural thing to occur in a later stage of my life would be to have children. I want to enjoy being a good weight for a little while before I have children. (To be clear the boy and I aren’t even entirely certain if we want children, but still I like to be prepared for every situation).

I feel this title may be a bit misleading. I believe falling into the money trap of buying every celebrity diet book/dvd/clothing range is stupid when all you need to do is move more and eat less. I also am reminded of an old Daily Mash post with the headline ‘Woman surprised to still be overweight despite having running app’. Running is free, a small investment in some weights and you can do any number of free Youtube exercise videos. I am also very fortunate in that the boy bought an exercise bike and I can exercise in front of the TV.

There is also the simple fact that I do not have lots of money to throw at the problem of being overweight.

But, I need advice, I want to do this properly.

That is why I have joined a good value for money gym, and I have arranged to have one personal training session a month.

My personal trainer has told me I need to be on 1550 calories a day, as I have MyFitnessPal it is easy for me to monitor my calories. Initially I found it difficult as MyFitnessPal originally gave me 1900 calories and I found that hard enough to stay under. But the thing is when you have to cut back a lot it is easier then cutting back by a little. You have to completely rethink everything.

In the last week, with minimal exercise, I have lost 4.5 lbs.

It involves a lot of food prep, I have had to ban TV on Monday nights so that I can batch make some salad stuff for work day lunches, and the last week I was almost constantly hungry as my body readjusted, but I feel good. Long may it continue.