OP- I was put on HBP meds at your age. 8 years later, my company sponsored a healthy eating program called Naturally Slim. I went from 5'5"/ 155 lbs to 135 lbs with way more muscle. I was able to stop taking 2 HBP meds when I started to get lightheaded with low BPS. I weaned myself off of both and to this day I remain bouncing between 130/135. For my frame I SB 127, but I'm no saint.
The program was taught by a nurse PA was the teacher over 1 hour webx video + written worksheets, the usual deal of really tracking your food. The topic was not always how much you eat, but what, when & how. It is impossible to unsee what she held up an example of 5 lbs of fat- in living color YUK!
The biggest takeaways for me were:
1. budget and log your physical actv., nutrition & servings . I budget our sweet tooth first every day then backfilled from there. The food diary is easy; I use myfitnesspal.com.
2. Understand what a serving is. Your stomach is the size of your closed fist. How many of us eat that way? I sure hadn't been at the time.
3. Every day, once awake (and throughout the day) they had you drinking first thing b4 coffee an 8 oz mixture of 1 part orange juice to 7 parts cold water. It turns out that some of the time when I'd want to eat I was just thirsty. I always drank a lot of water but DH did not until he went through this process (he did it with as all classes were online).
4. Get active... log it all. House cleaning counts, be honest with all logs & try to figure out avoidable triggers.
5. We dumped alcohol completely for an amazing amount of food budget increase. I also learned how to cook healthier versions of our fav. restaurant foods.
During 2015 or so, we added intermittent fasting on a 9/13 schedule/ no food after 7pm. That also fixed our occasional need for tums. When we eat later, we just stay up later.
Good luck!
