Bringing it back... join me!

(source)

Weekend Challenge

April 29 - May 1

Remember, this is a challenge so it's supposed to be something hard to achieve... hence the word challenge.  Go out of your comfort zone, tighten the reigns on your nutrition, or just get in more exercise than you normally do.  Either way, keep it fun and safe.

My goals for this weekend are to get in a boatload of exercise and to make nutrition super clean.  I'll be shooting for a 650 calorie deficit per day and have a 2+ hour hike planned for Saturday which is why my exercise minute are so high.

0/330 exercise minutes
0/1,950 calorie deficit

But not only will I shoot for those 330 exercise minutes, 120 of those minutes have to come from a *new* exercise.  Whether it's an exercise machine I've never used, a class I've never tried, or a workout dvd that hasn't even been opened yet... two hours have to come from something new.  Who knows... I might just find a new love again!

Bring it on!

Recommitment to my health

Lots of emails asking how or what caused me to get my motivation back, and I don't have one simple answer - if it were simple, we'd all be all goal already, right - but a lot of has to do with my change in mindset.

Here are a few examples of what changed:

• tired of feeling like it was "okay" to gain the weight back cause everyone does it, but then hate getting mad at myself for doing it
• tired of feeling like a complete failure
• tired of breaking promises to myself everyday about getting exercise in
• tired of feeling like living healthy was a chore
  

These are just a few of the things I've tried to change over the past weeks but if you take a look at my daily food intake, I'm still not making the best choices... some choices aren't even close to bad - they're HORRIBLE!

Taco Bell, ice cream at night, fries, etc. BUT by refocusing on one thing at a time, I'm able to balance the bad eating.  My exercise has been great over the past couple of weeks and although I'm not down a ton of weight, my weight is down and in my book, that's a huge win!

Now I know some of you might be rolling your eyes at me and saying "Had you not eaten like crap, you would have been down a lot more".  And yes, that's true, but again... baby steps.  Right now I'm focusing on my exericse habits (or lack of habits) and once I'm comfortable with that, I'll move on to taming the calories.

No matter WHAT!

No matter how many times you fall... 

No matter how hard you think this journey is...

No matter how many times you have a "bad" day...

 
No matter what difficulties you face...

... never forget how far you've come...

... or where you're headed next.

Keep fighting and moving forward in this battle.

Calories AS exercise minutes

This is a conversation I had the other day with Anthony:

Me (shouting to Anthony in the kitchen): Can you bring me back a cookie, please?
Anthony: Are you sure you want one? (He has been assigned to be my nutrition boot-camp instructor at home which is why he's being difficult about the cookie.)
Me: Yeah, but only bring me one, not the entire container unless you want there to be no cookies left.
Anthony: You sure?  One cookie is like being on the "dreadmill" (our word for treadmill) for an hour or more.
Me: Sh*t, forget that!  I don't want it that badly!

Is that genius or what?!  To think of snacks, drinks, and all other food I don't need as exercise minutes.

I love it!

So for example, have one of these:

And you'll have an awesome date with this guy for about two hours:

Thinking of treating yourself to this bad boy:

Well this guy is going to require about an extra hour and a half with this:

Thinking of an extra slice of pizza for dinner:

You might as well walk to the Pizzaria cause it'll cost you about three hours of walking.

Kinda not worth it when I look at my favorite foods like this.  It's all about perspective and now that I started to get my exercise groove back I'll totally be thinking of food as exercise minutes.  That should totally keep me away from my Ben & Jerry's... or at least it will keep my serving size down to a bite or two.

Can't stop... won't stop

Hey Bloggies...

I'm still going at it but took an unexpected day off because I wasn't feeling good.

Fri: day off (yay!)
Sat: no exercise  =(
Sun: 45 min circuit training
Mon: 45 min elliptical

On Saturday I had a lovely wedding to go to and the reception was at a restaurant known for their buffet.  To say the least, I ate too much in too little time so I was sick, sick, sick for the rest of the day.  It even carried over to Sunday but I manage to get in my circuit training in the afternoon.

So last night, I got on the computer to check some emails and catch up on my favorite blogs.  The first blog I pulled up was from Jen, A Prior Fat Girl.  It was a pretty normal post for her but as I got to the end of the post, something clicked inside of me.  She wrote:

"I used to just nod my head at people who made a bunch of food towards the beginning of the week, like “yeah yeah, that sounds nice” but I PROMISE it sets you up for success."

She is so absolutely right!  

When I was consistently losing weight last year, it had a lot to do with meal planning.  The minute I read that sentence (I didn't even  finish the rest of the post because I was so motivated) I shut down my computer, and headed to the grocery store to buy ingredients for my planned week of meals... at 10:15 pm. 

I quickly avoided the drunk people looking for a late night snack in the store, grabbed a bunch of stuff and headed back home.  By 11:45 I was done with my lunches for the rest of the week and tonight Anthony and I will cook dinner for the rest of the week.  THANKS, JEN!

Failing to plan is planning to fail... keep it in mind, people!

OMG! Miss this!

Believe it or not, I've been staying away from blogging on purpose.  Didn't want to jinx myself or anything so I haven't been on too much but this is what my last week and half looked like:

Tue: 45 min elliptical + 45 min circuit training
Wed: 60 min walk
Thu: 50 min circuit training
Fri: full body weight training
Sat: 75 min walk
Sun: 90 min hike + 60 min walk
Mon: Full body weight training
Tue: 35 min HIIT
Wed: 45 min hike
Thu: lower body weight training

Do you see that?!

My workouts have been on point and even when I was 20 lbs. lighter, I never got in weeks like this!  And I know I'm due a rest day but that's coming up this weekend... I'll have two because I'm pretty busy the next couple of days.  Plus, I really count an only-walking-exercise-day as a break day.

And since we all know that nutrition is 80% of this fight, here are my recent eats  and nutrition breakdowns.

Anyway, now that I put it out there, I hope I can keep it up.  Tonight I have an upper body weight training workout and a short cardio workout planned.  CAN'T  WAIT!