Weight Loss WooHoo! to Cammy (The Tippy Toe Diet)

diet

Weight Loss WooHoo! to Cammy (The Tippy Toe Diet)

Meet: Cammy of The Tippy Toe Diet

Age: 50

Where she lives: Tennessee

Height: 5′6″

Weight: 150 pounds

Pounds Lost: 100

How long it took her to lose the weight: 17 months

How long she has kept it off: 6 months

Almost every time I read Cammy’s blog, The Tippy Toe Diet, or one of her comments here, I laugh out loud! But I also seem to learn something from her. She shares her weight loss/maintenance journey in such an authentic, heartfelt way and offers her wisdom and advice… at times with that Cammy sense of humor, so check out her blog when you get a chance. It will leave you thinking and smiling. Cammy – here’s your Weight Loss WooHoo! – Just FatFighterTV’s fun way of celebrating healthy weight. ;)

How Cammy gained the weight:

“I’ve always been chubby or above, and in the last 15 years or so, it was just bad choices. There was some emotional eating in there… but I like Mexican food, I like pizza, I just like to eat tasty but non-nutritious foods! It was just a combination of bad choices and developing habits that are sedentary – I love to read, I love to write. That’s how it piled on there. I’ve been either obese or morbidly obese for 15-20 years.”

Wake-up Call:

“A friend of mine had to have triple bypass surgery. Shortly after that, I went to my doctor for bronchitis and he paused when he had the stethoscope over my heart and said, ‘I would like you to go do a treadmill test.’ The doctor said I might need angioplasty. I got so worked up and they couldn’t fit me in for three weeks. I was encouraged because obviously I wasn’t facing imminent death, but I thought, this is just what happened to my friend. I was just frantic and I worked myself up so that my blood pressure was out of control. I had to go to the doctor to get a tranquilizer kind of thing just to calm myself down. And I thought, I do not want to ever go through this again as far as knowing that the way I was living my life was likely contributing to something like that, that all these choices were catching up to me.

“It turned out someone misread the test results… I think the kicker was I did all that worrying, all of that imagining the most dire thing, and the whole time telling myself, you could have done something about this years ago. It was a great lesson. I would never want to go through it again. But if I faced it again now I would be able to say, ‘No, I eat right, I get plenty of exercise. There may be a problem here but it’s not because I haven’t been trying to take care of myself.’ I took control back there and I think that was the issue before is I didn’t have control of my life.”

How she shed the pounds:

“I was doing some plus-size yoga and walking for a couple of months. Then I joined Spark People and learned everything about nutrition, then I started working with a personal trainer.

“The sessions were 45 minutes of strength training and 15 minutes of cardio. I worked out with a personal trainer three times a week almost every week. They gave me homework assignments, mainly involving cardio on my nights off from them.

“For years and years I’d tried so hard to follow all these diets and none of them fit with foods I like, so I decided to make the foods I like fit a healthier diet. I eat out a lot. I don’t cook. The trade-off there was I don’t go to McDonald’s or Burger King or Taco Bell – maybe once a year for any of those. I go to Chick-fil-A and get the grilled chicken salad if I’m on the go. I go to Jason’s Deli and have the salad bar. I do Subway sometimes, too. I made those fast foods work because I really don’t want to cook.”

Weekly workouts:

“I try to do strength training two to three times a week and then straight cardio two to three times a week, with the cardio being anywhere between 40 minutes and an hour, and the strength training and a little bit of cardio I do on those nights being anywhere between 40 minutes and an hour. I go to the ‘Manville’ area of the gym and work with the free weights and annoy them to no end. I usually do a full body workout each of those times.”

Diet Philosophy:

“Get it mostly right. I focus on making healthier choices. And by that I mean, if I’m faced with the choice of a Fiber One bar and a Little Debbie Snack Cake, Fiber One is not health food, but it’s a lot better than a Little Debbie Snack Cake… not taste-wise you understand! It’s just about making healthier choices as often as you can and doing it constantly.”

Daily challenge:

“I built in splurges all over the place with this thing – I call them splurgettes, actually. By having things like that, I don’t have a daily danger. Probably my biggest problem is getting enough protein.”

Tips from Cammy:

“The one thing I learned is I shouldn’t try to change everything at once. That’s what I did for years and years. If I made a household list that said, ‘Mow the lawn, paint the house, re-pave the driveway, do all the laundry, make a dress, and do it all Monday’ – there’s no way! So why did I think I could change my entire life – the way I live – every Monday, starting over and over again? It doesn’t work.

“My other tip is to avoid setting goals involving things you can’t control. I can control how I eat and how much I exercise, but I can’t make that scale go to a certain number.”

Favorite healthy recipe:

Honey-Teriyaki Chicken, modified from this link

Ingredients:

3 oz Boneless Chicken Breast
2 tbsp Honey
1.5 tbsp Teriyaki sauce
1/2 tbsp of sesame seeds

Preparation:

1. Slice chicken breast into sliver-like pieces or chunks to your liking.
2. Mix honey, teriyaki sauce together in a separate bowl.
3. Coat pan with cooking spray (I used Olive oil cooking spray)

Cooking Instructions:

Warm pan on low setting. Put pieces of chicken into pan. When completely cooked, pour honey/teriyaki mix onto chicken and let it warm to your liking. Be careful not to burn it. Apply sesame seeds on top of chicken.
Don’t forget to cook your rice. I did the boil-a-bag brown rice (7-8 minutes).
Serve over rice…enjoy.

Number of Servings: 2

Cammy’s Weight Loss WooHoo!:
“I made a commitment to myself and honored it. I decided I was worth it and I deserved it. I think that is what means the most to me.

“There are other good things – fitting in a desk chair in a classroom for the first time in my adult life, walking into a store and having the sales clerk say, ‘I think you’re about a size 8 or maybe a 6′ (No I’m not, I’m a 12 or 14!)… those were all great things, but getting to that 100 pound mark and just honoring myself by doing it, that meant all the world to me.”

That takes so much, Cammy – to make a commitment to yourself and honor it. You do deserve it, and you should be so proud of yourself.

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