Where Have I been?

After my last post, I was hired at Xerox in Redmond, Washington. I have worked there for almost three years. I was working on a contract with a major worldwide technical industry. I have worked on a contract with them before. I was troubleshooting devices that did not perform as they should and eventually moved into digital content issues, as a level one tech support customer service agent. It was a most interesting position and I loved the people I was working with and for. Finally, the contract ended. I was left with no job and several pounds of fat I do not need.

My physician told me I would need more blood pressure medication or I could lose weight. I decided I wanted to lose weight and did not need more medications to waste my money on. So I had a referral for a nutritionist and a few months to lose 52 pounds. Before I made the appointment, I found a logging or tracking tool on FitnessPal. I began on the 3rd of May, 2016 to track every mouthful of food that went in my body. I have been working out with a weight trainer every week for almost two years, with him prompting me to go to a nutritionist.

I decided to lose 1 pound a week for a year. It has been seven weeks and I lost 8.1 pounds so far. My biggest challenge is making certain I am getting the portions logged correctly. Weight Watcher’s point system did this for their clients. Now I have to figure it out with the help of my nutritionist. It is a real issue when I eat out. I am not certain how much they are really adding to the food.

I can only have 2000 mg of salt and it seems fast food establishments and restaurants love to dump the salt shaker into the menu. It is no wonder that so many people have hypertension. We are not even going to discuss sugar, which I have all but eliminated from my menu. With the exception of natural sugars which occur naturally in raw fruits and many vegetables; so, sugar is not in my foreseeable future.

In a recent article by Fox News they state Americans consume about 3500-4,000 mg of salt a day. A good consumption level would be less than 2,300 mg a day. I struggle daily to keep my intake at 2,000 mg. I cannot eat a lot of the foods I like, because a piece of pizza or fast food hamburger can have over 1,000 mg in just one portion. So the battle continues.

I am still looking for work, working on my diet and exercise and wondering if I can ever eat the foods I love without making them myself. So I will be spending my weekends checking all nutritional facts on my food. A rather time consuming endeavor for the sake of health.