How Do You Do Recipe Builder On Weight Watchers App

BEFORE: 236

AFTER: 156

I was in pretty good shape in high school because I was playing tennis on a regular basis. But that all changed once I started college in the fall of 2011. I left home where I'd only ever been in one school system and suddenly felt like the new kid. The college I attended was very large, nothing like my high school, and I struggled making friends. Between that and the heavier workload, I was very stressed and overwhelmed. So every day when I would get home after a long day I would just sit in front of my TV and eat. I completely stopped playing tennis. Eating became my stress relief and I just couldn't stop. Even when I was full, I would continue eating. My family never cooked, so I was eating out on a daily basis—and this was before restaurants and food chains started posting nutritional information. I had no idea how many calories I was taking in.

The Change

Cortland West

Three years after starting college, in December 2014, I went to a tea room with my mother and grandmother and we decided to get someone to take a picture of us while we were there. When I finally looked at the picture, I was shocked. I didn't even recognize myself. I was disgusted by how much I had let myself go. After that, I said that I would work on my weight...after the holidays. But then I started to think about all the years prior when I'd say I was going to do something about my weight after the holidays. It was something I never stuck with. So I decided to start before the holidays this time. It was hardest thing I've ever done, but I knew it was what I had to do to push myself and stick with it. I downloaded an app called Lose It! to keep track of my calories. Once you download the app it asks for your basic information (age, weight, height, etc.). Then it calculates the amount of calories you will need to eat in a day to either maintain your weight or lose a certain amount of weight per week depending on what your goals are.

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Cortland West

For every meal I ate I'd open the Lose It! app, select what meal I was having (breakfast, lunch, or dinner) and type what I was eating into the search bar. The app suggests how many calories you should allocate for each meal based on your weight-loss goals and current weight, and that even includes snacking. It would give me the calories and nutritional information for whatever I was eating, and log it toward my daily total. I'm not sure what my original calorie consumption was, just that it was outrageously high compared to the 1,650 calories a day Lose It! said I needed to consume to lose weight.

The main things I cut out of my diet were regular soft drinks and sweet tea. Drinking calories adds up very fast, and I didn't like wasting my calories on beverages. Unfortunately I am not a big fan of fruits and vegetables, but I drank V8 and things like that to help get my daily amount of veggies in. And I ate plenty of protein. Grilled chicken is probably my favorite. I eat more grilled foods now than I did before—I was all about everything fried before I started losing weight. I also cut back on a lot of junk food, especially chips.(Hit the reset button—and burn fat like crazy with The Body Clock Diet!)

The most helpful thing I did for my diet was paying attention to portion control. Simply cutting back on the amount of food I was taking in made a huge difference. Another helpful thing I did was plug in my meals for that day into Lose It! at the beginning of the day, which left me reassured that I could enjoy snacks with the calories that were left. I asked my family what we were doing for dinner so I could go ahead and plug it in and eat around that meal for the day. In the beginning I did a lot of planning ahead. It took me about a year and a few months of this to lose 80 pounds.

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The Workouts

Cortland West

Although I didn't do any sort of formal exercise during my weight loss, simply just moving more definitely helped me lose weight. I love going on long walks, and would walk for an hour or two twice a week, and I still try to do this today. Going on a long walk with a good friend was great because we would end up talking throughout the duration of the walk, which meant we lost track of the time. As I lost weight, going on long walks got easier for me. Playing tennis is also a lot easier for me again because my endurance has increased. I don't play as often as I'd like, but on the rare occasion I do, it's easier than ever. I used to get really tired and winded after just a few games in the first set of a match—now three sets of tennis is nothing!

End your workout with a bang with these 3 moves:

Sticking With It

Cortland West

My weight now fluctuates within a 10-pound range, but I'm comfortable with that. I've been maintaining my weight for over a year, but with all of the recent holidays I have gained a few pounds back, so I'm back to losing weight again. I would ideally love to lose about 10 more pounds.

At the beginning of my weight-loss journey I was very strict with myself, but now I'm a little more lenient because I'm finally used to eating healthier, and I know how to listen to my body. I never wanted being on a diet or losing weight to ruin my life. I didn't want to be that person who didn't eat something or enjoy myself because I was losing weight, and I also never wanted to make my friends uncomfortable for being strict and not eating certain things that were being offered. If there's a day where there is a celebration or anything going on, I enjoy myself. Because if dieting starts making you miss out on everything you love, you won't stick with it and it will be miserable.

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The Reward

Cortland West

Losing weight has impacted me in so many ways. Wearing cute clothes was always an issue for me. I could never shop in the young women's section, and had to wear clothes that felt too old for me. It was devastating. I hated going shopping because I could never find something that looked good on me and going in the dressing room just left me upset. When the weight started to drop, I got to shop in the section that I always wanted to, and now I love shopping for cute outfits.

Cortland's Number-One Tip

Cortland West

If you decide to lose weight with the Lose It! app, make sure you're eating all of your calories. I thought that having a ton of calories left over every day would help—it didn't. No weight was coming off at that point. I did that for the first few weeks until someone finally told me that you have to eat all of your calories, otherwise your body will go into starvation mode. But once I started eating every single calorie I had, the weight seemed to fly off. So, don't starve yourself. Eat them all! Also, be strict with yourself when you need to be, but don't make your life miserable. Enjoy yourself every once in a while and listen to your body. It can tell you a lot. And lastly, just believe in yourself.

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