My Personalized Nutrition and Exercise Plan Essay

My current health problem that I am experiencing is my weight problem. I weigh one hundred and ninety pounds. I am unhappy about it and I also cannot afford to buy new pants due to my big size. A lot of the women and a few of the men in my family do suffer from being overweight or obese. Currently I am not obese but I am overweight for my age and height. I am five foot four and my healthy weight is between one hundred thirty pounds and one hundred forty pounds. Being overweight has affected me by lowering my self esteem and has pushed me into a weird sort of depression. Being down and depressed in not who I am and not someone I want to be. Making healthy choices now and changing my situation will help me greatly with not only my physical health but also my mental. Today’s insurance companies are not realizing that mental health is just as important as physical health. My realistic nutrition plan for me is very simple. Stop eating junk foods and stop drinking soda. Discontinuing the consuming of soda is not a hard thing for me to do as long as I get some caffeine throughout the day. In the morning I leave earlier for work so I can pick up a coffee and a blue berry muffin from a coffee house. Then for lunch at work I eat fruit and drinking juice or water. I work in a grocery store, so it is easy for me to find and obtain healthy foods and drinks, but it is also very tempting to grab that candy bar at the check-out. For dinner it varies since then I am at home, but I watch that I only eat once and I do not for back for seconds. The motivation for me not to grab that candy bar or any other truly unhealthy food, is that I am simply tired of being overweight. Motivation was a hard thing for me to do since I do not have a problem with what individuals think of me. I have already started this diet and I have already lost some weight, since it is simple it works for me and I do not have the feeling that I am getting stressed out by what I cannot have. My recommended amount of calories for me to consume a day going by my age and sex, is between 1,600 and 2,200 calories a day depending on my level of activity. My realistic exercise plan includes doing two sets of ten crunches and running on my elliptical for ten minutes. At work I break down our deliveries which can be a hard task depending on how heavy the boxes are. When we get a typically truck there are usually about one hundred fifty pieces on it. Half that is lunch meat, a quarter of it is meat that comes in already packaged and the other quarter is the meat that the butchers cut up for steaks and roasts. I cannot lift the boxes that come for the butchers but I do lift all the other stuff. Lunch meat consists of taking a box off the pallet and putting it on a cart. Do that about fifty times and that feels just like a workout, so I do feel like I do get exercise at work as well as at home. That may seem small and not a lot of exercise, but I am out of shape and I lose interest very quickly with working out. So this is a way where I am baby stepping my way into it and it does not take a lot out of me. When I do not feel strain from doing those exercises then I will increase my number of sets and I will run five minutes more. According to the mypyramid plan, I am in good standing with my work out plan. It is not an aggressive one but it works for and I am seeing results. When I feel like I can push myself I do try to do more. My goals for achieving my weight loss and a more healthy lifestyle is by eliminating foods that are basically junk, like chips, candy, greasy fast food, and soda. That alone is not enough because I also have to begin consuming foods that are healthy. I already love fruits and some vegetables, so switching to those foods will be easy. Instead of snacking on some chips I can get some baby carrots and snack on those. Another healthy switch that I make is instead of going to the deli at my work and getting fried chicken I go to produce and get a fruit cup, and I avoid the bakery. Beginning to eat healthy is not very difficult for me since I do like many healthy foods, stopping eating the junk is hard for me. I am getting my daily fruit servings at work and at home by eating fruit cups which are low in calorie, and I also keep some bananas and oranges in my kitchen. So my four goals for my nutrition is to make sure that I do not eat junk regularly, that I keep track of my calories and that I keep in mind what my goals are. Goal one, to make sure I eat my daily recommended servings of fruit and vegetables. My actions to make sure I reach that goal everyday is to eat a fruit cup at work and when I get home eat a piece of fruit. To make sure that I get my servings of vegetables is to make a can or corn or green beans ith my dinner, if I want to snack then eat some baby carrots. Goal two, make sure to eat breakfast. Breakfast is the first meal of the day and it is also what starts your metabolism for the day as well. When you do not eat breakfast the slower your metabolism works throughout the day. On days I have to work I stop by a coffee house and grab a blueberry muffin and a coffee for my breakfast and when I do not I eat two bowls of cereal for my breakfast. Goal three, to make sure I do active things at home and that I do cave to my cravings for junk food. I put those two together under one goal because I can balance it better that way. Whenever I crave junk food I get up and do something to take my mind off of it. Clean the house or run a couple minutes to get it off my mind. It is a great plan since my house stays clean and I get to expel some energy. Goal four, to not look at the scale more than twice a week. This goal my seem weird and off since I am trying to lose weight and be healthy. I find that because I am trying hard to lose weight that looking at the scale everyday would be what I should do, but if I look at it and I do not see what I think I should see I may lose motivation. Losing motivation to stay healthy and lose weight would very bad since I am overweight as it is, being one hundred eighty seven and I am a short five foot four. On to the setbacks or any hang-ups that might come along. I find that I do love chocolate and my cravings go nuts around the female time of the month. What I can do to help avoid the craziness is to make sure that I buy one pint of ice cream and that is all I have to make it last the week. Since the servings for one of those is typically run between 2-4 servings I will not eat way too much of it and probably only consume half a serving or less. I know that is cheating on my diet, but I feel like I would talk myself into binging and that would be worst than spreading out a couple servings of ice cream over the week. The one main motivation that I have for keeping true to my goals is that I simply cannot afford my bad habits anymore. Funny how that can be, but I cannot afford to keep buying new wardrobe every time I gain some weight. Clothes are expensive and I work a miminum paying job, so I find it difficult to have to keep paying a lot of money for things I cannot afford. My other motivator is that I am tired that when I climb the stairs I get winded, and since those stairs are to my apartment I am reminded every day. So I have every day reminders when I get to the top of the stairs tired or when I cannot get my jeans to fit right. I am not someone who is looking to lose some vanity pounds and I am also not looking to have a perfectly flat stomach, I am simply looking to slim down a bit and look healthy. How I will judge success is by how my body feels, I have been on my diet for a week know and I have already lost four pounds, before I wrote this paper I was already doing what I said for about a week. During that week I lost four pounds bring me down from one hundred ninety one pounds to the one eighty seven that I am now. The potential risks of me conintuing on the path that I was the next step, obesity. With mainly my fat being around my middle that increases my chances of having heart problems, high blood pressure, and many other awful problems that were avoidable if they were caused by me being obese. Since I am not conditioning or heavily exercising, I could keep this plan through my age with changing a few things depending how my health is through my life. When I grow older I will have to make sure that I get more calcium due to the fact that when I age my bones will be just as old and will need help and assistance in keeping their strength. Making sure I am getting enough fiber to keep my digestion, since I have noticed in my family we develop digestion issues, but usually everyone has digestion problems and their metabolism starts to slow down when we age. The changes in the weather will slightly affect my exercise plan more than anything. During the summer I can go swimming and take walks more often. The winter is so cold and that takes away both swimming and walking outside. Since I am starting my exercise and diet plan in the winter I will not be strayed due to the fact that I have to remain inside all of a sudden. I started doing my diet and my exercise plan during the winter. I am more active during the warmer months so that will help when it comes to me staying healthy and keep the calories burning. The only thing I see stopping me from keeping the weigh off is if I become pregnant, which I do want very badly. If I become pregnant I will have to increase my calorie intake to about 2,800 to help keep me and the baby healthy. Increasing the amounts of food I eat does not mean I get to eat whatever I want to have. Increasing the healthy foods I eat will help me staying on track with my diet and also give the baby healthy sustenance. Being pregnant will affect my exercise plan, instead of running on the elliptical I will take walks and instead of crunches I will focus more on dancing lightly. When I imputed dancing lightly in the mypyramid plan it was the activity that I did that burned the most calories and it is the one that would affect the baby less.