You may remember that I recently started a new 101 Things in 1001 Days challenge, and in that post I talked about wanting to finally put that last piece of the puzzle in place – being a healthy weight. So, since it’s been on my mind a lot lately I thought I’d do a post about where I’m at and how I’m working toward my goal.
I am changing my lifestyle and eating habits in a couple of ways. I am a member of Weight Watchers and I am also loosely following the South Beach diet. What I mean by that is that I count points, but what I eat is dictated more by SB. A while back my doctor suggested that I needed to be more aware of my cholesterol and see what I could do through diet and exercise to get it to a better level. She suggested I take a look at the SB diet, as one way to do this. Eric and I went through and completely revamped our diet. We cut out all pasta and bread, all sugar, etc. We began incorporating more vegetables into our meals, and we took a look at what kind of meat we were eating, cutting down on the amount of red meat we were consuming for instance. It was a little hard at first, but not that bad. Since going through that initial period, we’ve added back in whole grains and complex carbs. For the most part, day to day, this is how we eat. And while the weight isn’t just melting off, I feel better and I know we are both healthier for it. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks taking a look at my points and trying to figure out what I can do to switch things up in order to start seeing a bigger difference on the scale.
The other thing I am doing is exercising. I workout five days a week, most weeks. I am also in the process of adding yoga back in to my daily schedule in the mornings. Yoga keeps me centered and also helps me stretch out all the tension that I seem to carry in my body. At the gym I do a combination of strength training and cardio. I have found that my efforts at the gym seem to be what pays off for me size-wise and scale-wise the most. Over the past year, with a new job and also going to school at night, my efforts at the gym haven’t been 100%. So, I’m in the process of rectifying that and refocusing. As part the WW new walking challenge, I have signed up for a training team that begins in June to train for a 5k. It’s been a helluva long time since I participated in a 5k, but I am excited about doing this. I hope that it will be a good step in the direction of participating in more events like this. So, expect that come June I’ll be talking about my training sessions here, in preparation for my 5k in August.
I am also working on drinking more water. I don’t seem to get enough water in throughout the day…not that I’m drinking anything else…so it’s important for me to do this. We’ve basically cut all sodas out of our diet (and there are days I would kill for a Coke), so water it is. Any tips on getting through the water would be appreciated!
So, that’s where I am on my road to fitness. I have an ultimate goal weight in mind, but I am only focusing on five pounds at a time right now. As of last week’s weigh in, I have four more pounds to lose. So, hopefully tomorrow’s weigh in will show some more progress in that direction.
I don’t intend for this to become a weight loss blog, but I thought it would be good to refocus myself by posting this and keeping up with my 101 Things goals. And since it’s Spring (although I think it’s in the 90s here today), it’s a good time to make some changes and get in gear!
