Journey to a Happier, Healthier, ME!

Throughout my life I have heard about a lot of different "get thin quick" schemes and these great diet pills that promise extreme weight loss in little to no time at all. My daddy raised no fool and over the years I have ignored all of these methods of weight loss in favor of walking, running, and going to the gym.

I've never had a real issue with my weight and my height helps to hide the little bit extra that I do carry around.

This is a somewhat decent photo considering I was trying to get a good side shot while holding the camera myself.

According to the doctor's office my BMI is 24.71

I'm not entirely sure what it's supposed to be for my "ideal" weight but I know I would like to lose between 25 - 35 lbs before I'm done.

I know that getting myself healthy is not something to be done overnight. It is going to take time, and sweat, and effort. Thank GOD it's getting warmer out so I can do some of that sweating outside rather than in a gym.

Phase 1 of my goal involved deciding on some kind of diet program / change. And not necessarily a "diet" such as Atkins of Weight Watchers, but just a change in my diet - you know, the foods I stuff myself with. So I looked around at what my friends were doing because let's face it, I'm a sheep. I like to follow others and learn from their trials and errors on what works. Why start from scratch if a friend has already fine tuned a plan that works?

A couple of my friends are on this "Zone Diet" program which involves dividing up your food into blocks and you can only have so many blocks of certain things per day. For instance you can have 1 carb block, 1 protein block, etc and so on. And there are only certain foods that qualify and you are told the quantity which consists of one block. I decided NO on this one because I don't want to have to weigh my food before I cook it to make sure I'm only getting 3 ounces of something.

Next I looked at the Atkin's diet. No bread for a certain amount of time, and then no milk for a separate period of time. Not going to happen. Can't live without milk so scratch that.

Fast forward a dozen more diets I didn't like the look of and I finally decide to start listening to my boss at work about the program he and his wife are doing. It's called Visalus which is more commonly known as Body by Vi. It is a meal substitution plan that guarantees results even if you don't exercise and the shakes taste like cake batter.

The amount of weight and inches that you drop depend a lot on what you eat for your one meal of the day and you obviously will lose much more by exercising. Reading more into the program you can actually receive your product for free by signing up three people under you. This doesn't mean you have to sell the product, you only sign them up to take the 90 day challenge (which is what the company is famous for) and you receive your product for free!

I'm going to be keeping a record of my progress so keep checking back!!