The Forum

Issue date: 1/26/10 Section: Campus

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According to the Physical Activity, Nutrition and Obesity Program at the Utah Department of Health's website, 1,156,000 Utah adults are overweight and 461,000 are obese-I am one of them.

My name is Jennifer and I'm writing to share my weight loss experience. For the next several weeks, you'll be hearing from me as I design a workout plan with my personal trainer from HWAC. Let the weight loss journey begin!

Here's a little bit more about me. I'm 25 and I've struggled with my weight all of my life. At a very early age, I always ate what wanted. My parents tried to teach me how to eat healthy, but I was a stubborn child. It wasn't until I was a young adult that I realized my eating habits were affecting my health.

At the age of 18, I began working out and changed my eating habits. I lost about 30 pounds. After a bad breakup, I stopped working out and ate whatever I wanted. Of course, I gained weight.

In December 2009, doctors preformed surgery on me and removed my gall bladder. After the surgery my doctor explained to me that I would need to reduce my total fat intake to allow my body to digest foods properly. Because of this, I've changed to a low-fat diet such as switching to foods with less than 12 percent total fat. For example, I use fat-free ranch instead of regular ranch dressing and I cook with turkey meat instead of beef. With this change, I have lost about 10 pounds.

Currently I weigh 246 pounds. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's website, my body mass index (BMI) is 39.7 and I'm at risk for high blood pressure, coronary heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. With these kinds of risks, I've come to value my health more than food.

In the process of losing weight, I want to learn how to eat healthy and make the necessary changes in my life to become a healthy and fit person. To begin me on my journey of weight loss, I met with my personal trainer last week and he preformed a health assessment on me. I found out my heart rate is strong but I need to work on the following: increase flexibility, reduce body fat and increase physical activity.

After the assessment we came up with the following goals for me: lose about 20 to 30 pounds in three months, workout at least two to three times a week and learn to eat healthy by using the Michi's Ladder food guideline. The food guideline is divided in to five tiers: Pious, Happy, Swiss, Dodgy and Newburg. The top two tiers Pious and Happy contain foods such as beans, fish, strawberries and nonfat yogurt. If I were to eat from the Pious and Happy tiers, then I would reduce my calorie intake and increase my likelihood to burn fat as energy. Be on the look out for me as I begin to shred the pounds!

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