Find Out How I Walked Off Almost 40lbs!

Paired with a cleanish diet, which I’ll talk about in a later post, I lost almost 40 lbs walking 6 miles a day starting off and 2 miles a day after the first six months!

I know some of you may be sitting there thinking, “Ashley…babe…honey bunches of oats…are you crazy? Six miles a day? Who has time for that?” Well, that’s what I said to myself too some five months ago. When I was just over 240 lbs, exhausted and aching 24/7, and unhappy with how I looked.

I guess you can look at it how I did. Every day is going to go by whether you decide to exercise or not. You can either end your day a slightly healthier you or exactly the same. Plus it only takes about 2hrs (for me! It could be faster or slower for you depending on your speed) to walk 6 miles! It takes me about 20 minutes a mile which means I can do 3 miles in an hour. I can go for a walk for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening and I’ve got all 6 miles completed!

And walking 6 miles a day is 30 miles a week. Or 120 miles a month! At this time (December 2018) I’ve walked over 750 miles!

When I first started walking back in March I was at 240.6lbs and it was very hard on my joints – plus a bone spur on my heel – just to walk, much less do any jogging or running. Anything too jarring has me aching for days! Even after losing 30 lbs (that is 120 lbs of pressure off of my knees!!!) it’s still too uncomfortable for my joints to run right now.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t run or do a Couch to 5K if you are trying to lose weight! I know people who are/were much heavier than my heaviest and have no issues with their joints or anything. And I’m super jealous!

Walking is so much easier on my body right now. I’ll definitely be adding in running later on, but for now, walking is my main source of exercise!

How I Started

As I mentioned before, I started walking back in Early March (2018) weighing 240.6 lbs. I started slow & low for the first week or so. I was only walking a little over a mile after work.

By the end of the second week, I was walking about 2-ish miles after work. I was already tracking my food intake using my favorite app LoseIt at that point and was comparing my exercise tracking on my Endomondo app to my intake. Doing this made it so much easier to see how I was doing every day and what changes I needed to make. Like cutting out peanut butter Ritz cracker sandwiches from my daily diet because they were the highest calories I was eating every week!

Getting back to the basics

Whether you think you know it or not, everyone has the knowledge to lose weight, it’s so ridiculously simple.

Exercise more. Eat healthily.

Unless you have a health condition that prevents it, that is literally it. Burn more calories than you intake. Bam. Done. The numbers may be different for everyone but the equation stays the same.

But keeping up with those changes or even starting to begin with? Well, that’s a whole different story. Even as I write this post I’ve been on an almost two-month plateau with no changes to my weight which is driving me crazy! But I’ve been mostly keeping up with my routine and I’m working on a new fitness plan – and post – to help me get over this plateau and continue working towards my goals!

Keep Going!

Do you have trouble sticking with your new healthy life choices? Don’t worry! It isn’t just you. It’s me, your neighbor, the man that works at the corner store, so many people have this same issue with healthy choices. And everyone deals with these issues in their own ways. Usually by forming habits! The two biggest I started to help me keep up with my healthy life choices are pretty simple.

• Prep. Prep Everything.

Before I go to bed every night I prep for the next day.

I put together my breakfast, snacks, and lunch into my lunch kit and store it in the refrigerator so that I can just grab the whole thing in the morning and leave. Doing this saves me about 15 minutes in the mornings so I can hurry out the door for my walk before work. And food prepping is great! Making healthy food choices is 100x easier when you pack healthy food choices. It’s hard for me to waste the little money I have on a burger and fries or a subway sandwich when I have healthy foods within reach.

I also lay out my clothes for the next day. Which has been nothing but workout clothes for the last six months. Luckily my boss is super cool and has no problem with me looking like I’m ready to run at any second. Lol

If, like most people, you have to have a more professional look at work invest in a small bag to carry everything you need for your workouts. Don’t use forgetting your stuff as an excuse, not to work out.

I also prep little things. Like putting a green tea K-Cup and creamers in my coffee mug to make the first thing.

• Tracking food and exercise

Tracking your calorie intake, outtake, and calculating your net calories can sound very daunting. And at one point it was very time-consuming!

But it’s 2018 and there is almost an app for everything. And even better so many of them can be used together to make things even easier.

Get in the habit of tracking your food. Otherwise, how do you know how much exercise you need?

Where I’m at Now

Currently, I’m right at 203 lbs! I’m super excited for myself to be honest. All through healthy eating (most of the time!) and walking! I want to start adding to weight training soon to help along my weight loss and health journey.

And I’ll leave you with a few safety measures I’ve taken for my walks and health.

Safety Warnings

• Stretching
• Sunscreen
• Keep hydrated
• Clothing appropriate for the weather
• Pepper Spray

Please leave any comments or questions!