One week down, a lifetime to go….

My nephew recently approached me for the first time ever for help with his food. An avid martial arts guy, regular cardio guy doer, and unfortunately long time smoker, being 40 has finally caught up with him and he is starting to lay down some unwanted fat and getting it off isn’t as easy as it used to be. (Yes, he is my nephew, I was 7 when he was born.) I told him what I tell everyone, it will require counting calories and recording your food intake every day, as well as only weighting himself one a week (he stepped on the scale daily), period. And he must have been desperate, as he agreed, though his motivation is not what I like for my clients, as he is making a trip to Vegas in 2 months and wants to lose 10 pounds for the trip. While 10 pounds and two months a totally acceptable and attainable goal, the for Vegas mentality I abhor, but I took him on only because he told me “how tired” he always is and I knew that changing the quality of what he puts in his mouth would not only allow him to lose weight, but allow him to have energy once again. So, we made a trip to Trader Joes together, and I made suggestions on what to buy at the grocery store and Costco, my only shopping stops. I have checked in on him several times over the last week, and today he reported a 6 pound weigh loss. Men, they are so annoying. We won’t see that amount again, as the first week is when you body sheds that excess water weight from the crappy food he was taking in and cleansing out the intestines of the same (sorry, TMI I know). Hopefully the good feeling he gets from the fat loss and extra energy will be the catalyst for him to continue to eat healthfully once he reaches homeostasis. He doesn’t have a lot of time working full time and taking care of the house and kids, so we have kept his food choices limited for now. He will start to know what meals contain what calories and in time it will be come second nature. Today he told me of what he was going to eat for lunch, asparagus, grilled chicken, with an apple and cashews for a snack, but he made no mention of what I consider the most important part of the meal, that being complex carbs. He knew he had a bag of whole wheat pita chips in his truck could include those. I preferred he carried his scale with him, but since I know he doesn’t, he will have to count out the amount of chips considered a serving based on what calories he still needs. I would have preferred him measure out serving bags of the chips and had those in his truck, like we do with the cashews. Little tricks of the trade we learn along the way.

As for me, for plane ride home, as trip to Subway for Turkey/Avocado with all the veggies and no condiments, on 9 grain honey oat, they don’t have omega three bread in most part of country I have learned, and ww pita chips given out on Southwest, to go with the roasted veggies I brought along. FYI, yogurt easily passes through security check if you wondered.

At this point, I have tried to blog each day. I am not sure if you are getting notifications of my blogging, other than if you happened to run across it on the FB newsfeed, as I have not had any responses/comments all weekend. I don’t know how to notify you in any other way, so let me know if you do get notification. It is feeling good to write now, and not a burden, so I will continue to write about this as long as I enjoy it and I start to see you all getting something out of it.

Stay tuned, g