Intoduction

Hi there. I'm Amanda. I'm 18 years old and I've decided to loose weight.

There have been a few reasons for my decision. 1) I want to live a healthier life - I've grown tired of eating and living the way I have, and I am making a change. 2) I have a 6 month old nephew, and I want to be around for as much of his life as I can. 3) It feels good to be eating healthier and not weighed down with many fatty foods.

For me, food is a huge comfort, and I have often found myself snacking on ice cream, chocolate, chips, or candy if I'm upset or if I've had a bad day. Sometimes, there is no real reason for gorging myself with all sorts of junk food - just a craving, or habit. So I've decided to take control of myself and my life. For the past month and a half I've been eating much healthier. My diet consists mostly of:

• meat - largely chicken, some beef and some pork
  
• vegetables - anything from zucchini to broccoli to carrots
  
• fruit - apples, bananas, oranges, peaches - whatever I fancy when I'm in the grocery store
  

I have cereal in the morning for breakfast, and I will eat yogurt once in a while too. It's amazing how a small change can bring such great results! In the first 2 weeks of this change in my life, I lost about 8 pounds, bringing my weight just below 200 pounds. My goal is to bring my weight down to 145 pounds, and then continue to keep myself healthy afterwards so that this work and effort only has to be done once.

You'll hear me refer to this journey I'm taking as "A lifestyle change" rather than "A diet" because it's more than just something that I'm going to do for a month or a even a year, and it is not just changing what I eat. This is something I plan to stick with for a long time.

My hope in creating this blog is to give me more incentive to keep going with this on the tougher days, as there could be someone out there going through the same things that I am, and that by continuing to write this, I'll help them out as well. :)