I am not a large person (in fact I am quite lean), but for some reason this past year I gained an extra eight pounds.  I knew that I had been avoiding the scale, and the gym for that matter, but I was kind of in denial for a while.  It wasn’t until I went to the doctor for my annual physical exam that I noticed I had gained quite a bit of extra weight.  I could feel my pants fitting tighter and my energy levels decreasing but I definitely never attributed it to weight gain.

At first I was a little devastated.  It’s a hard thing to come to terms with when you have been fit and active your entire life.  But I knew that I would be able to shed the pounds eventually, even if it took several times longer to get them off than it did to put them all on.

I was speaking with some of my friends from work over the water cooler in an effort to get helpful tips and advice on how to get rid of the extra couple inches I had put on over the past few months.  Of course I knew I was going to have to get back into the gym and start running during my lunch break again, but I wondered if there was anything I was missing that would make an extra difference.

One of my coworkers who is the most fit, active, and healthy woman I know, told me about tracking my weight by using a weight loss calculator.  I’ll be honest, when I first heard what she had said I had asked her to repeat herself because I didn’t think I had heard correctly.  At first I definitely thought the idea was silly– how would a weight loss calculator, basically tracking every step I took and every calorie I consumed, help? I felt like I would just get ahead of myself, assuming that I would lose weight at a steady pace every week.

However, I heeded her advice, if only to make her happy.  I used a weight loss calculator, which told me that if I worked hard and steadily I would be able to lose the eight pounds off of my tiny frame in about three months.  Sure, it sounds like a long time, but it is totally reasonable because eight pounds is a lot of weight for me.  Losing a pound a week seemed completely doable.

Well here I am three months later and I’ve actually dropped twelve pounds overall! The weight calculator kept me on track one hundred percent and kept me wholly motivated to work hard at the gym to not fall behind.  If you are struggling to start your weight loss journey or are trying to drop those last few pounds, try a weight loss calculator.  It could make all the difference in helping you reach your weight loss goal at a reasonable pace without killing yourself at the gym or the dinner table.