rtperez72 
Who am I?
Hi there! I am so glad you are here! Who am I? My name is Rachael (pronounced Ru shell) and I have been on quite a journey. Let’s see where do I begin? I have been working really hard to lose weight during this pandemic with kids at home. That has been quite a challenge. So far I have lost 35 pounds with various revisions to my plan! It has taken me almost a year (at this point) but I am proud that I did it all by myself. There were no pills, drinking powders, eating prepackaged foods all the time or paying a lot of money for some weight loss services that may or may not have worked. I am still working on losing about 8-10 more pounds and am hoping that it doesn’t take much longer to get there.
My highest weight was 173 pounds last summer (I’m only 5’3″ tall) and I made a vow to myself that it was going to be my last “FAT” summer. I was tired of being embarrassed to put on a swimsuit and get into the pool with my kids. It was awful wearing loose pants all summer because I refused to wear shorts. Those high numbers on the scale just made me so upset! AND I was SO tired of not having anything to wear (because everything was tight and I was NOT going to go out and buy bigger clothes). I know…silly right? However, I knew I could do better.
How I got started
After my 4th child was born in 2018, only 20 pounds (of my 30 pounds gained during pregnancy) came off. And since I was so tired all the time (I’m not exactly a spring chicken….lol), I wasn’t exercising. I chose to nap instead when the baby was sleeping. So the pounds started coming back on. THEN we had this Coronavirus Pandemic which basically shut everything down. Joining a gym wasn’t an option. Kids were home all the time…so going out to exercise at the park wasn’t an option. I just felt truly defeated. There had to be a way I could be successful at losing the weight.
First, a friend of mine had started taking a fiber supplement with a prebiotic and told me that she was taking off some weight. I decided that I had nothing to lose (except the weight…of course….OK…I know…bad pun). After taking that supplement for a month, I only lost 2-3 pounds. This turned out to be something that wasn’t going to work for me. It was time to look elsewhere for answers.
Time to take action!
So I started looking into weight loss programs. I just didn’t want to spend a bunch of money on something that I might not be able to stick with and was afraid of failure. The internet is so full of different nutrition and exercise programs so it took some time to figure out. I looked into different types of diets for women that were over 40 and did some research about how my metabolism was different at this stage in my life.
At the time, I was still breastfeeding my little one and decided to do what had worked for me in the past (which was calorie counting but I was hoping that the nursing would also help). I decided to keep my daily caloric intake at about 1200 calories to see what would happen. The commitment was made to exercise every day in order to maximize results. Since I had to do my workouts at home, I found YouTube videos that I could do in my living room. In my research, I learned that HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) workouts were very effective in taking off weight. The exercise program that I created for myself consisted of alternating HIIT workouts with weight training.
Getting Results!
This method helped me to lose about 18 pounds! I was super excited that it was working. So I continued but the weight really didn’t come off very fast…in fact…it kind of levelled off often . It was time to make some changes to my nutrition program and routine. I found out another friend of mine lost a good deal of weight using an intense Keto program. That program was not for me so I created a system for myself that was also Keto based where I consumed approximately 1000-1100 calories per day. Do I make this goal every day??? No. For sure….I don’t. When we go out to eat it is often difficult to manage calories. Sometimes our dinners have a lot of carbs and I want to have some. There are times when there is a birthday party or other special event and I will allow myself to enjoy my food.
It is important to do my best each and every day without beating myself up if I don’t stay within the designated calorie range or if I have to skip a workout. I also changed my workout schedule to 6 days per week with one day off to allow my muscles to recover. My new schedule consists of 3 days HIIT workouts alternating with 3 days strength training every week in my living room.
Where do I go from here?
