The secret to a 110-pound weight loss
Miranda Couch joined the Princeton Club on Sept. 1, 2014, and decided to try a 75-minute double pump class even though she only needed to climb a flight of stairs to feel winded. She found a spot in the very back row and grabbed a set of dumbbells. She was 260 pounds. Last week, Couch took her usual spot in class again, way in back, almost hidden between two doors and a yoga ball. She is now 150 pounds. Her achievement is incredible, and so is this:
Couch has recorded everything she’s had to eat in MyFitnessPal food diary for two years straight. That’s 716 days in a row as of Sunday.
She has maintained her 110pound weight loss for a whole year now.
Couch didn’t sign up with a weight loss company or send away for prepackaged meals or take diet pills or starve herself or scan the rows of self-help books at the book store or library.
She surfed the web for healthy recipes, listened to others around her and started tracking what she ate on the free app.
The Mayo Clinic says it takes a deficit of 3,500 calories to lose about one pound, so if we want to lose one pound a week, we have to cut back about 500 calories a day. This is not easy at all.
The weight came on easily enough, of course. Couch used to worked erratic hours in retail and was used to eating and drinking out a lot.
But when her second son was born, Couch and her husband decided it was best that she be a stay-at-home mom. She joined the gym and brought her sons, now 4 and 2, with her to the day care. There, she rejoiced in sore muscles — “it means I’m working my (expletive) off” — but she really had to look at her food.
“The weight really didn’t start to come off until I got a hold of what I was eating,” said Couch. “The best thing that’s come from tracking is how much it’s opened my eyes to portion size and calories.”
Fast food meals and chain restaurant specials really added up to stunningly high calorie, fat and sodium totals.
“My husband would suggest going out to Chili’s or (TGI) Fridays and I would look at the menu online and say, ‘I don’t want to go there,’ ” said Couch. “It’s more than half my day’s calories in one meal and, to be honest, the food is not that great. For it to be 1,200 calories, it should be the best meal I’ve ever had in my life. And it’s not! It’s a burger and fries.”
She started making chicken or ground turkey tacos with corn shells. She started swapping unhealthy foods like Doritos for healthier options such as pretzels. She started measuring and weighing with a food scale.
“Keeping a food journal is, in my opinion, an underestimated, underutilized tool,” said Kelly Drew, the registered dietitian at Princeton Club. “Tracking your intake fosters a different level of awareness, even if you think you already know what you’re eating — you might be surprised.”
With this new knowledge, Couch developed a strategy for get-togethers and pot luck parties by loading her plate with fruits and vegetables and adding little dollops of everything else she wanted.
She still enjoys garlic bread but now she eats it with spaghetti squash. Her pizza now is thin crust, or topped with chicken. And when she wants an ice cream cone, she now buys the lighter version, measures out a serving and sticks to that portion.
“I eat ice cream a couple times a week – because I like it!” said Couch. “And I don’t want to do without anything.”
Now it’s hard to keep up with Couch. In the last year she’s done several 5K runs, a couple of 10Ks, a 15K and a half marathon, many of these races through the Badgerland Striders running club. She had never run three consecutive miles in her life when she lined up for that first 5K — and she didn’t run all of that race either. She found out that doesn’t matter at all.
“The 15K I did, I think I was the fifth-last person to cross (the finish line),” Couch said. “Instead of me feeling really bad about myself — it made me appreciate how awesome everyone else was there. It was like, holy cow, these people are amazing.”
To keep herself motivated, Couch uses the Photo Grid app to make before and after collages. And, she still tracks. She isn’t as strict and sometimes she guesses, but she records what she eats.
“If you have trouble knowing where to start with making healthy changes, or if you feel ‘stuck’ with your progress, this can help you to identify areas in which you are doing well, and areas in which you could improve,” said Drew. “If you prefer to track long-term, it can serve as a form of accountability – a sort of check-in with yourself, knowing, everything you bite, you write.
“One overlooked aspect of keeping a food journal is documenting times you eat and any emotions surrounding food choices. Doing this can assist you with identifying triggers and patterns, which in turn can assist with identifying healthier ways to respond. Just make sure you go back and review what, and how, you ate after a week or-so.”
Couch is still in that back row, but there’s no use in hiding. Every time we see her she’s a reminder that the pursuit of good health is always worth the fight, whether you’re taking the first step, or the millionth.
“In the beginning I didn’t recognize my new self. And now, sometimes I don’t always remember what I used to look like,” Couch said. “Your brain takes even longer than your body to catch up to the changes.”