My favorite lunch			You can't go wrong with salad for lunch.  I make a HUGE plate of it, starting with a cup or a cup and a half of straight romaine lettuce or a mix of romaine and spinach leaves, chopped up.  Then I add the standard fare of cucumber, radish, tomato, celery and an assortment of bell peppers (green, red and yellow.)  That's where the fun starts because then I add chopped hard-boiled egg, chickpeas (rinsed from the can or custom roasted to a crackly crunch with spices), avocado, blueberries, a couple of large spoonfuls of assorted salad seeds, a couple of teaspoons of parmesan cheese, and I always finish with a few twists on the black pepper mill. To top it all off I am currently into Asiago dressing.  The brand I use isn't too thick so one or 1.5 tablespoons goes a long way on such a huge salad... but all the great things I put on help with that.  Each mouthful is delicious and satisfying. I'm always on the lookout for whatever is in season that I can add to my salads.  A key ingredient for me is the addition of a fruit though... it adds liquid that aids the dressing and also gives the salad a great zip and zing and even more exciting texture. Created by MyFitnessPal - Free Weight Loss Tools
	Use the Total Energy Expenditure calculator to see what your true daily expenditure is in calories.  It seems like this tool overestimates my expenditure, but it's interesting none the less.			Enter your total daily expenditure into the Weight Loss Calculator and your daily intake of calories to evaluate your weight loss program.  According to this tool, my weight loss is too fast, so I'm not sure it's all that accurate as my doctors assure me my loss rate is fine.

I started this healthy lifestyle journey with a lot more than three strikes against me.  I started this journey with at least half a dozen really good excuses in my mind of how it wasn't going to work and how it wasn't going to even be my fault.  I'm an eternal optimist tho, so I confess to also starting this believing I could somehow find a way to succeed.

When I started, I had such a sedentary lifestyle that my feet hurt so bad I could hardly walk if I was on them for any length of time.  A day out shopping always led to intense foot pain and a night with my feet up, aching and swollen.  How can I work out with feet like this?

I started this after noticing that I could hardly breathe, or move, or get down on the floor and get back up... I noticed I was starting to move less and less because it was just getting too hard.  I even avoided sitting down because the thought of getting back up just wasn't appealing to me... or my knees!

I started this after spending nearly six months mostly in bed because my feet had taken to turning all manner of shades from blue to purple and finally to black, which unbeknownst to me, my heart arrhythmia drug was actually causing.  I went out and did things now and then during this time, but if I didn't have to be somewhere I was in bed with my feet up.  I couldn't even sit at my desk and work on things during the worst of it.  I even got a painful "foot infection" in my foot that was treated at ER, but most likely was not infections at all, it was probably gout, as it turns out.  The day I started this was the same day I switched arrhythmia medicine and the black feet went away and didn't come back.  About a week later I got classic gout in my other foot, but after a few days it went away and hasn't been back.

When I started I was over 50.  A lot of experts agree that losing weight after 50 is really almost impossible for women.  I think I've even read that in a magazine or two.

When I started I had had a hysterectomy the year before, and well... everybody knows if you've had a hysterectomy, you're probably going to gain weight, right?  Everybody says so!

When I started this my thyroid had not been functioning properly for over 20 years and I was taking a synthetic thyroid replacement tablet at about half the therapeutic dose because the full dose could cause my heart arrhythmia to trigger a defibrillator shock that could cause tissue damage and burns because I have a very powerful ICD designed to work the first time it fires.

When I started this I had had a defibrillator implanted into my chest the year before to restart my heart in case an arrhythmia developed into sudden cardiac arrest because I have a genetic condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy that can result in the heart beat becoming disorganized and confused and suddenly stopping.

I had quit smoking prior to when I gained the majority of my extra weight.  I've read articles stating that it's normal to gain after quitting but I was not eating candy or having cravings after, so I never put much thought into it.  Years later I read that the body is in some sort of shock and will retain and gain fat whether you're eating extra after quitting or not.  Still - in my opinion, the combination of calorie counting, cardio workouts and strength training can bust up ANY excuse you can throw at it.  Maybe not at the speed of a bullet but the tortoise catches the hare when it comes to weight loss and the tortoise is a lot more stable and steady along the way.

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