In 2015, on my 33rd birthday, I decided I needed to lose some weight;not because I felt the need to ‘fit-in’ and be slim but because with both my pregnancies, I had battled pregnancy induced hypertension (PIH) and I did some more battling after my second baby to get my blood pressure to stabilize as I had to stay on the anti-hypertensive drugs for some time longer even after I had the baby. PIH is when a pregnant woman has blood pressure over 140/90 mm Hg. There is no specific known cause but there are possible factors that contribute to developing PIH;being overweight or obese,taking too much salt,lack of activity or sedentary lifestyle amongst other reasons.

Anyway, I decided I needed to lose weight for my good,so I sat down and took stock,I wrote down all the reasons why I needed to lose weight,the things I believed were contributing factors to being overweight,then I wrote down how much weight I wanted to lose and how much time it would take me to lose it. I wrote down how many kilograms I wanted to lose and I had a short-term and a long-term goal.

It’s been almost 18 months since that decision and 13 months since putting my thoughts and writings into action,😊I have lost about 18 kilograms over that period(my goal is to lose 28 kilograms eventually) I am on a journey and living healthy is a life time thing. The idea is to lose weight slowly and sustainably; losing half a kilogram to one kilogram weekly is in the medical circles the safest and ‘acceptable’ way to lose weight,that is anywhere from 2-4 kilograms monthly. I however think this would also be influenced by individual metabolism,level of commitment as well as genetic factors.
Image culled from www.2healthcare.net