Weight loss is hard, and it can be daunting — but if you boil it down to a series of attainable, short-term goals, you’ll give yourself a much better fighting chance. That was the approach Daniel Felvus took. A 27-year-old editor in Swansea, Wales, he decided he had enough of eating junk food and weighing more than 200 pounds. He tried a gimmick diet but found it wasn’t arming him with strategies to make lasting changes to his habits.
So last fall, he tried MyFitnessPal and simplified his strategy down to a simple credo: Track food, log exercise and aim for two pounds lost per week. How did it go? Felvus has dropped 52 pounds in less than six months. “I now feel great, and I’m looking forward to a bright and healthy future,” he reports.
Here’s Daniel in his own words:
I’ve battled with my weight all my life. I was overweight as a teenager growing up, weighing 200 pounds when I was only 13 years of age. As I got older, the weight started to drop off, even though my eating habits didn’t change. I thought I had it perfect: I was thin and still eating nothing but junk food, and I wasn’t gaining anything. Eventually, this changed and I gradually began gaining the weight back to the point where I ended up weighing the most I ever had at 219 pounds. I realized I had to do something about this. I’d been introduced to MyFitnessPal by a friend a few years back when the weight had started to increase.
However, I didn’t dedicate myself to it as I was impatient and I didn’t want to lose weight the healthy way — I wanted to lose it quickly. Evidently, this attitude only made things worse and I continued to gain. Eventually, I decided enough was enough and I promised myself I was going to stick with MyFitnessPal for at least one week to see if I lost any weight. To my surprise and delight, I lost two pounds, and that’s what the app said I was going to lose! So I continued to stick at it — each week, I’d lose exactly what the app said I was going to! It is now five and a half months later and I have lost 52 pounds and reached my goal weight. I can’t say enough good things about this app and it’s now helping friends of mine in a similar situation.
Check out the video he made to learn more about his journey:
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