Stephany Writes

Categories: Healthy Living

Throwing Away the Scale

I made the decision on Thursday night. I was eating dinner, thinking back on this past week and all the good things I had been doing when it comes to my health and fitness. Harder workouts, healthier meals, less snacking on processed sugar, more water, etc.

I came up with a long list of victories that could all vanish in a second if I were to step on the scale and it reads back to me a number I don’t like.

So that’s when I decided.

I was going to throw away my scale.

I feel like I’ve tried everything when it comes to losing weight. I haven’t followed any fad diets or gone on any crazy juicing fasts, but I’ve been doing it the old-fashioned way for so long. Eating less, moving more. Counting calories and points. Cutting out sugar and soda. Boot camps and gym memberships and spin classes. Stepping on the scale almost weekly. Up and down, up and down.

Nothing seems to work. Or perhaps it’s more appropriate to say, I haven’t been consistent with anything.

Weight Watchers works – if you use the program correctly.

Calorie counting works – if you’re honest about what you’re eating and consistent with it.

Right now, I’m not counting anything. I’m not even cutting anything out indefinitely. I am trying to eat intuitively and follow a 70/30 diet. (70% of the time, I eat healthy and 30% of the time I splurge.) While I have added soda back into my life after my 30-day fast, I only have it one or two times a week. I have drastically reduced how many sweets I have – limiting myself to 3 pieces of dark chocolate a day. I am trying to eat out less, make more healthy meals at home, and choose wisely when I do go out to eat. I am exercising on a consistent basis and trying to make each and every workout count. I want to sweat, I want to push my limits, I want sore muscles.

I feel good.

I feel really, really good.

I don’t feel deprived. I feel proud of my accomplishments. I feel like this is a sustainable way for me to live for a long, long time. I feel motivated and less inclined to “cheat”. And while it’s entirely possible I could step on the scale and it could show me a magical number that would motivate me even more, I don’t want my motivation to lie in a number. I want my motivation to come from a desire to be healthy.

I want to stop depending on the scale to tell me if I have had a good week or a bad week.

I do plan on taking my measurements on a monthly basis, especially as I go through another round of Best Body Bootcamp. But I want to use other measurements to define how I am improving with my health: the way my jeans fit, lifting heavier weights, being able to do more than 10 burpees at a time, the way I feel when I look in the mirror.

The scale has been such a big part of my life – such a motivator and a deterrent for me – that it’s going to be hard to let it go and just motivate myself through other means. But I also think it’s going to help me to stop focusing on eating better and exercising just to lose weight and be skinny, but to do it because it makes me feel good.

Do you have a healthy or unhealthy relationship with the scale?

Categories: Healthy Living

Best Body Bootcamp: A Review

I’ve been around the boot camp block a few times.

My first experience was with a boot camp at the gym I belonged to at the time. As new members, my mom and I got a discount on the 8-week program so we signed up. Her excited, me apprehensive. And while the workouts were intense and kicked my butt, the trainers were terrible. Between getting reprimanded for taking a too-long water break (which I swear wasn’t longer than a minute) to being told it didn’t matter if we came back because we’d already paid to being called out at the end of boot camp because I’d improved the least… well, let’s just say I didn’t have the best view of boot camp after that.

My next experience was a billion, trillion, zillion times better. My mom and I snatched up a Living Social deal for a boot camp run by former Tampa Bay Bucs running back, Michael Pittman. It was once a week for a little over an hour and it was a great experience. The workouts were intense but the trainers were so encouraging and helpful. There was no yelling, no screaming, no belittling. Unfortunately, a few months into the boot camp, Michael moved to California leaving the boot camp in the hands of the trainers. It just wasn’t the same after that and my mom and I stopped going.

My third boot camp experience was also a good one, and it helped me to see that most trainers are encouraging and helpful and supportive. They want to see you succeed. The first boot camp was an anomaly, and I wish I had reported their belittling ways now that I look back on it. I thought I was being too sensitive at the time.

So then one of my favorite healthy living bloggers, Tina Reale, started hosting an online boot camp. Three rounds went by and I kept telling myself I should join, but never had the guts to actually sign up. Finally, I decided what better way to start off the new year than by participating in round four of Best Body Bootcamp?

I am so, so glad I decided to bite the bullet and sign up! I plan on making these boot camp workouts a regular part of my fitness routine – as long as Tina continues to host them. First of all, I wish, wish, wish I could have Tina as an actual trainer because I’m sure she would be awesome to work with. She’d kick my butt, no doubt about it, but do it in a positive and encouraging way. 

Here’s the thing. It’s an 8-week program for $25. I challenge you to find a boot camp that offers a better deal than this! It’s really such a steal for all the work Tina puts into these boot camps. Every two weeks, Tina sends out an email that includes two weeks of planned workouts. This includes three boot camp workouts and suggested cardio, as well as a flexible training schedule to follow. Tina also suggests making two weekly goals related to health and fitness. And she’s always around for help and guidance, should you need it.

If you’re still hesitant about signing up for an online boot camp, I’m going to give you five reasons why you should join in.

1. The workouts change every two weeks. You’ll never be bored by working out again!

The one thing I need in a fitness program is change. I get bored easily, which causes me to skip workouts. The best part of BBB is the fact that every other week, Tina sends out a new workout program. They get progressively harder as the weeks go by, and are all so different from each other. You’re not doing the same moves every week, or even the way the workouts are set up changes so it really challenges your body. Tina also links to Youtube videos that show proper form for each move, and she’s always around to answer questions if you need it. Getting an email with new workouts was always like getting a little present. I loved seeing what she was going to come up with next!

2. Accountability, which can lead to some awesome prizes.

Accountability is key, especially for me. At the beginning of BBB, Tina sends every participant a Google Doc spreadsheet (shared between only you and Tina) to keep track of how many days we exercised, as well as how we did with our weekly goals each day. There are four ways to enter into the weekly cash drawings: marking off five days of exercise, completing five days of either of the two goals set previously, or sharing about the workouts either through blogging, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Some weeks, I would have 4 entries in to the drawing and some weeks, I would have none. It all depends on how much effort you put into your workouts and health goals.

There’s also a crazy awesome grand prize at the end that gives you all the motivation you need to get the workouts in and the goals completed.

Admittedly, I didn’t hit my goals or workouts every week but it only gives me more motivation to do better in Round 5 so I can get into the cash drawings more frequently! (And, um, lose weight/feel better, of course. Ha!)

There is also a Facebook group and Twitter chats to help you feel involved. I didn’t use either (I completely forgot about BOTH Twitter chats. Darn!) but I hope to be a more active participant in the next round.

3. There are modifications for all levels.

Whether you need more of a challenge, less of a challenge, or you’re at home without gym equipment to use, Tina’s got you covered. She includes a detailed modifications chart for each workout to help if needed. Since I do my workouts at home and only have two sets of free weights and an exercise ball, sometimes I need the modifications. And believe me, the at-home modifications are just as tough. I always ended every workout feeling sweaty and accomplished. (There were a few times I even collapsed on the floor at the end of the workout, hearing Bob Harper say in my head, “THAT was your Last Chance Workout.” Yes, they are that intense!)

4. This is a program designed for the user, not for the trainer.

There is so much flexibility within the program. Tina gives a weekly schedule that participants can follow, but it’s not a requirement to follow it to the tee. It’s up to you how you want your program to look. If you only want to do two days of workouts and three days of running – totally fine! The program is designed to fit into your life. You don’t have to change everything you’re doing to fit the program.

5. Tina puts her heart and soul into these boot camps, and it shows.

If you’ve ever read her blog, you know Tina is passionate about healthy living and fitness. She brings all that passion with her to BBB. She puts a lot of time and effort into these programs. And not just in creating the workouts, but all the administrative work that goes into hosting these boot camps. I think she had over 600 participants in this past boot camp, so you can imagine all the work that goes into making sure everyone is set up and ready to go, and then keeping up with everyone throughout the program. She’s passionate about these boot camps, and it’s hard not to get caught up in the excitement.

So what are you waiting for? Go sign up for Round 5! It’s just $25 until March 29th and I promise you will not regret signing up. It’s absolutely, 100% worth it.

Categories: Healthy Living

Weekly Weigh-In: The Eighth

Happy Monday!

I hope everyone had a fabulous weekend. My weekend was filled with some highs and lows. I got in a great workout, my brother and nephew came over Saturday night which was a blast, and I spectated at an 8K race my mom participated in – followed by an epic nap. I also visited my grandma and grandpa to show them my new car. My grandma is having a tough time with her chemotherapy so any prayers you can send her way would be much, much appreciated. The lows? Well, I’m back on OK Cupid. If that tells you anything. (More on this in the coming weeks. Still trying to wrap my head around everything.)

Onward to my weigh-in post!

The Workouts

Monday – Rest day.

Tuesday – Workout A of BBB, Strength & Cardio Burst Supersets, 3 rounds. New workout goal: be able to complete an entire minute of high knees.

Wednesday – Stationary bike (15 min), elliptical (15 min). I wanted to do 45-60 minutes of cardio but my arches started cramping up. I have still been wearing my high-arch insoles but I have since switched them out because I think they cause more problems than solutions.

Thursday – Workout B of BBB, Strength & Cardio Burst Supersets, 3 rounds. Let’s talk about my hatred for mountain climbers for a minute here. I would rather do 20 burpees in a row than even a few seconds of mountain climbers. Hate, hate, hate. Effective, but lots of hatred for that exercise.

Friday – Rest day.

Saturday – Stationary bike (20 min), then Workout C of BBB, Double Ladder workout. Basically fell to the floor in a heap of sweat and breathlessness at the end of this workout. Killer.

Sunday – Rest day.

The Goals

Goal A – No sugary snacking. Fail. I ended up snacking 4 out of the 7 days. Emotional eating at its finest!

Goal B – Eat 3 servings of fruits/veggies a day. I didn’t track this goal as well as I should have, but I know I didn’t meet this goal every day. This is an area I need lots of work in.

The Goals… for this week

Goal A – Eat 3 servings of fruits/veggies.

Goal B – No sugary snacking.

The Weight

I gained 2 pounds this week, which is not all that surprising for me. My workouts were subpar for the most part and I went a little nuts with eating my emotions. When a boy breaks your heart, well, I think it’s A-OK to break some of your food rules for a week. But I’m back on track this week, broken hearts be damned.

Overall Thoughts

This was an okay week for me. I know I need to cut down on my sugary snacking and start eating more meals at home. While I’ve been meal planning, I haven’t been great at sticking to my plan. I’m lazy, okay? I despise cooking and will do anything to get out of it. But sometimes, you have to do things you don’t want to do to get the results you really want to get. Nobody said this journey was going to be rainbows and butterflies all the time!

The gain on the scale wasn’t too surprising, but still a disappointment. I know I can do better!

Categories: Healthy Living

Weekly Weigh-In: The Seventh

I’ve been lax on my weekly weigh-in posts lately. Mainly because the number on the scale hasn’t been moving much. Even though I’ve cut soda out of my diet and have been consistently exercising for the past 6 weeks, I’ve been pretty disappointed by the scale. Apparently, I’m not one of the lucky ones who can just cut soda out of her diet and lose 10 lbs, no big deal.

Ah, well. At least my addiction is gone and I can move on to other unhealthy habits, right? Right. And my clothes are fitting better so I imagine I’m losing inches (still haven’t gotten out the measuring tape to see) and I feel better. That’s so much more important.

I wanted to change up the way I wrote my weekly weigh-in posts. While I enjoyed the more “stream of consciousness” posts I was doing, I realized I wanted to talk more about the day-to-day. I’ve broken the posts up into a few sections:

  • The Workouts: A run-down of my workouts this week, as well as how I felt about them in italics. 
  • The Goals: With Best Body Bootcamp, Tina likes us to make two goals for the week. If you meet your goal at least 5 times, you get entered into the weekly cash drawings. It’s great incentive! I’m also including my goals for the upcoming week.
  • The Weight: Because it’s not a weigh-in post without a weigh-in, right?
  • Overall Thoughts: Any thoughts or musings about how I felt about the week.

The Workouts

Monday – Elliptical (15 min.) and then Workout A of BBB, a Legs & Shoulders Strength Pyramid. Felt good, and didn’t have to modify anything for the boot camp workout. I really, really love strength training.

Tuesday – Bike (45 min.) and a short core workout (5 min.) My core is so weak, it’s not even funny.

Wednesday – Workout B of BBB, High-Intensity Circuit. Oh my heavens, this was one tough workout. Lots of high-intensity cardio. I was breathing hard and sweating buckets. I had to make some modifications to the moves because some of it was too much for me right now.

Thursday – Rest day.

Friday – Rest day.

Saturday – Bike (30 min.) and Workout C of BBB, a Chest, Back & Arms Strength Pyramid. Tough circuit and I felt soreness the following day. But I felt really good during this workout!

Sunday – Circuit workout. I was planning on a long bike ride in a park, but it was too cold out (I will not say how cold, lest those of you in actual cold climates laugh at me) so I grabbed my mom and we did a fun circuit workout using playing cards. In total, we did 50 squats, 50 burpees, 50 push-ups, and 50 sit-ups. We also did a 1-minute plank and 1-minute wall sit. It was a tough, tough workout!

The Goals

Goal A – Track my food daily. This has been a goal I keep putting on my list and then promptly forgetting about. I’ve gotten very unmotivated lately to track my food. It’s not that I’m eating super unhealthily. I’m really not. I’m probably following a 70/30 diet – 70% of the time, I eat healthy and 30% of the time I don’t. I just don’t have much motivation to input. And I think I’m just going to lay off on myself with this. Give myself a break and let go of the need to track every single food I eat. Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t but I don’t want to get bogged down in what I should be doing and forget that I am making major strides in healthy living by the choices I make. Whether or not I write them down.

Goal B – No sugary snacking. I made this goal 5 out of the 7 days, which is a success on the BBB plan. I had cookies on Tuesday night and then a deep-fried Oreo (blech.) on Saturday night so it’s a HUGE step down from how many sugary snacks I was having before and I think this is going to help me out so much with weight loss. Cutting out two of my biggest calorie suckers and sugar vices (snacking and soda) should help me out a lot on the scale.

The Goals… for this week

Goal A – No sugary snacking. Hoping I can continue my trend!

Goal B – Eat 3 servings of fruits and vegetables daily.

The Weight

I lost 3 lbs this week! I expected a great weight loss because I really challenged my body and ate much healthier than normal this week so I’m thrilled to see all my hard work pay off. Since the beginning of the year, I have lost 4.4 lbs. Not an impressive number by any means, but forward motion nonetheless.

Overall Thoughts

I really tried to ramp up my exercise this week, by incorporating cardio on my BBB days as well as doing longer workouts when I’m not doing BBB. I’ve only been doing around 30-minute workouts 4-5 times a week lately and I know I can do longer and harder workouts. And I feel good about my eating choices. By cutting out sugary snacking and adding in healthier alternatives (like hard-boiled eggs, string cheese, and nuts), I’m drastically reducing my sugar intake and it’s helping me feel better about myself and giving me super crazy energy.

Categories: Healthy Living

On Quitting Soda

As of today, I have gone 30 days without soda.

Those who have been following my blog for a while know soda is an addiction I have been trying to kick for a while. I drink regular soda because I can’t get over the aftertaste found in diet drinks. I’ve had friends send me links to articles about how terrible regular soda is for you, and what it does to your body, but still, the addiction lived on.

The hardest part of quitting an addiction is getting past the hump of cravings. People tell me all the time that once I get past that, past the headaches and fatigue and cravings, things got a million times better.

I could never get past that hump. Cravings would hit and I would give in. Because that’s what I had learned: sometimes, you just have to give in to cravings. “Have it and get over it,” countless Weight Watchers leaders told me. I agree with this mentality, but I also agree with the thinking that depriving ourselves of having the craving helps us out way more in the long run. It gives us more power. It makes us feel more capable and in control.

I didn’t set out with any specific goals or parameters. I didn’t announce it anywhere until I was at least 6 days soda-free.  I didn’t have a plan for how long I was going to go without soda. I just knew I had to cut it out of my life cold turkey.

My soda addiction has been the biggest thing holding me back in my weight loss journey. For one, it’s filled with calories and sugars and a whole slew of rotten things, and for another, to completely cut out soda would mean a complete shift in my diet and thinking. When I have a bad day, I’m not one to reach for a wine glass or a beer bottle, I’m more apt to reach for a bottle of crisp, cold Coca-Cola to refresh me and calm me. It was soothing, something that never failed to lift my spirits and make me happy.

I spent all of 2012 taking steps to cut out soda. And while I can look at all those attempts at failures, I did drastically reduce my intake. By the end of the year, I was rarely buying it for the house, and more often than not, I was drinking water at work. I could go a day or two without soda and didn’t experience any side effects, but cravings would hit and I would give in. I would allow myself to give in on the weekends or when I was at a party. On vacation. Soda was always my beverage of choice.

At the beginning of this journey, I substituted juice for soda. Water was still tasteless to me and I wanted something with a little sweeter kick. While these juice were made of natural sugars, they were still very sugary and I felt as if I was trading one bad addiction for another. As in, yes, I am not drinking soda anymore but I am still drinking lots of sugary beverages. But there has been a shift in the past week or so, where most days, I only drink water. And I drink a lot of water. My body is developing a taste for it and a need for it. It’s still water so it’s still tasteless and bland (even when I add a lemon to it!), but I’m finding it so much easier to drink now.

It’s been an interesting 30 days. Most days, it has been easy and I haven’t had any cravings. The cravings usually hit on the weekends but I learned early on that even though I crave it, I’m not wasting any willpower resisting it. I crave it, but I don’t want to have it. If that makes any sense.

So where do I go from here? What’s next? That’s a question I’ve been asking myself for weeks. A part of me is a little terrified to have a soda because I don’t want to fall off the wagon. (And break my streak!) But then there’s that other part that really, really wants to taste soda again. I know I need to give myself strict guidelines, at least for now. I can tell that, though my addiction is gone, my want for it is not. It’s still a part of my life, albeit a tiny part. If I want to have a soda, I can have one. But only on Saturdays and only when it is in a glass. (So, basically, only if I’m out to eat on a Saturday at a restaurant.)

I’m crazy proud of myself. I have shown myself how capable I am of achieving something that’s been weighing me down (literally) for years. I have beaten my worst addiction. I have transformed a part of my life. And now it’s time for a new challenge.