How I Lost 13 Pounds In A Year-- The Series

*Aside from extremely sporadic bits of exercise here and there, my weight came off simply from changing the way I eat. Hence, this is not an exercise post. I hate exercise. You have to like... move and stuff...*

I used to have metabolism that was faster than a horse that just saw glue-- I could eat roughly 2500 calories a day and not gain a thing. My after-school snack was usually an entire can of spaghettios and my dessert was a bowl of cereal. This absolutely wonderful blessing of eating without consequence continued until my sophomore year of college when I noticed that my jeans started to fit a little tighter. By my senior year I had gone up a size. Finally at a doctor's appointment I realized that I'd gained no height whatsoever as well as 15 pounds.

It was a shock. I never weighed myself regularly and the last weight I'd seen was from my high school days when I weighed 135 and fit into size 3 junior's jeans! Those were also the days when I went up stairs regularly, hauled heavy books, and played sports during lunch period. So I'm guessing some of those pounds were associated with muscles.

Anyway, I realized I had to make some serious changes to my lifestyle. If I wanted to lose the weight and keep it off, I was going to have to make permanent changes that would last, not temporary ones that would cause the pounds to shed and then creep back up. I'm not a fan of exercise, unless it involves playing a sport. I don't like going to the gym, I hate sweating for no immediate gratification (such as hitting a double or getting a point in a volleyball game) so I wanted to start out with changes in my diet.

I'll be posting a different change every day for 5 days. Keep in mind, these are all lifestyle changes, so start with one and then once you have that down, take up another. It's a very gradual weight-loss process so it may seem like nothing is changing at all-- but I promise, you'll feel better on the inside right away, and that will be enough to motivate you to keep at it until you feel better on the outside, too!

Today's Change: I stopped drinking soda. Completely.

Regular sodas are full of sugar, which is bad for your teeth and bad for your weight! So I stopped. I switched to drinking unsweetened tea with Splenda when I craved something other than water, and I only drank fruit juice once or twice a week. I kept soda completely out of my life for 6 months before I started adding an occasional diet soda with no sugar. Diet sodas aren't that great either, though, so I kept my sodas down to about 4 or 5 a week at the most. Even now there are times I will go a month without having a soda. I usually keep a pitcher of water, a gallon of milk, and a pitcher of sugar-free drink mix in the fridge so I have plenty of choices.

See if you can do it: Give up sodas and juices completely for 2 weeks. If you have extras in your fridge or pantry, set them aside for guests. Limit yourself to water, teas, even smoothies. When the 2 weeks is up, try to limit yourself to adding only a few glasses of fruit juice every week. Keep in mind, juice has a lot of sugar, too. You can supplement your beverage flavors with some of the many sugar-free powder drink mixes in the grocery store.