Tanisha lost 91 pounds with surgery, healthy eating and exercise

Update March 2015: Congrats to Tanisha for reaching her goal weight.  Here’s her update:

I’m down 103 lbs and I’m at my goal weight. I’ve discovered that after reaching goal weight, a whole new journey of discovering what combinations of foods to eat to maintain goal weight begins. Losing weight requires us to focus on eating protein and veggies, while maintaining weight requires us to focus on protein and healthy fats. I still continue to journal my food and exercise daily. I’ve started a wellness coaching business, Fit For Life By Tanisha (www.fitforlifebytanisha.com). I help clients find the motivation, inspiration and tools needed to achieve their lifestyle goals through fitness and nutrition. I often remind my coaching clients that living a healthy lifestyle requires you to do things that don’t have an expiration date. What you do to lose the weight, you still have to do to keep it off.

Check out more photos from her journey on Instagram: @fitforlifebytanisha

Original post from 7/2014: Weight Loss Story of the Day: Tanisha lost 91 pounds with weight loss surgery, healthy eating and exercise.  She says, “I love the person I’ve become,, because I fought hard to become her.”  Read her story and find out what it took for her to change her lifestyle and lose the pounds.

Hello, my name is Tanisha Burke. I am a wife, mother, and business owner (also working a full-time job) residing in Rockledge, Florida. I vividly remember waking up one day and deciding enough was enough! I was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. My mind and my heart wished to do so many things, but my body just didn’t have the energy to allow me to accomplish those activities. I felt like I was sitting on the bench of life watching everyone else play the game. I had tried every diet and program known to man from pills to injections to drinks and processed food deliveries. Oh sure, I lost the weight, but then I also gained it back plus more.

Everyone talks about living a healthy lifestyle but I never truly understood what it meant. I now know that a “healthy lifestyle” means proper nutrition AND daily fitness. You can’t do one without the other and expect to be successful, for I’ve tried it all my life and it never worked. So, I decided to start living a healthy lifestyle in May 2013. I journaled my food using My Fitness Pal, exercised at the gym 3 times a week (30 minutes cardio & 30 minutes strength training), and walked at least 10,000 steps a day using a Fitbit activity tracker. Performing these lifestyle changes helped me lose 41 pounds in 6 months (height: 5’8″).

There are thousands of tools available to help people live a healthy lifestyle. There are gyms, classes, DVDs, activity trackers, surgeries, weights, injections, bands, programs, bikes, shakes, bars and more. In November 2013, my tool of choice was to have gastric sleeve surgery to help me with portion control. It was by no means the simple and easy way out, which many people tend to believe. Since my surgery, I still continue to journal my food AND exercise everyday. My day starts at 4:45 am, and when my alarm goes off I either walk four miles before work or I go to the gym for strength training. Since Nov. 2013 I have lost an additional 50 lbs for a total of 91 pounds! We all have plenty of excuses for why we don’t eat right and exercise, but at the end of the day excuses don’t burn calories. If we stay in the habit of doing what we’ve always done, we will always keep looking the way we’ve always looked. My goal is to help as many people as I can fight obesity and live a healthy lifestyle. We all know what we should be doing to live a healthy lifestyle, but more often than not we lack motivation, inspiration and accountability. That is what my health and fitness page www.facebook.com/TanishaFitForLife is all about. We are changing lives one pound at a time. I love the person I’ve become, because I fought hard to become her.