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!

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.

“WELL, CONGRATULATIONS, YOU FAILED. Now what?”

I know people have been harping on The Biggest Loser this season because of the child ambassadors or Jillian Michaels’ crazy training tactics. She’s tough and she’s mean but I like her. I mean, I would hate her as a trainer but she gets results and she pushes people beyond their limits. Or rather, what they think are their limits.

The first or second show in, she had a screaming match with one of the contestants and said this above line. The contestant was having a hard time because she was afraid of failing with the workouts, that they would be too hard and she couldn’t do them.

Congratulations.

You failed.

NOW WHAT?

I love that. Because I have failed. I have failed a lot, especially when it comes to healthy living. I think we can get stuck on those failures, it runs an endless loop through our brains as we remember all the different times we have failed with a plethora of different things. Workouts and eating and drinking and calorie counting and food journaling. On and on and on and on. I have failed so much.

Well, boo-freaking-hoo.

I failed. It happens. Congratulations to me. I have fallen off the wagon. I have binged. I have made plans and fallen apart. I have treated my body like crap.

I have failed.

But NOW WHAT?

What am I going to do now? How am I going to get back up and try again? That’s the key to all of this. Recognizing failures and setbacks but moving on. Not giving up because you failed once, twice, three times, or even twenty times. Moving forward, making action plans, figuring out what to do differently next time to turn that failure into a success.

One day, it’s all going to click. I can’t describe it, but it’s as if a sensor goes off in your brain and all those past failures, all those times you got smacked to the ground but stood up and tried again only to get smacked on the ground again… they lead to success. They are necessary, sometimes, to find success.

I tried over and over again to give up soda. I tried quitting cold turkey. Didn’t work. I tried slowly working it out of my life, baby step by baby step. Didn’t work. Until finally, things clicked. Something shifted in my brain where I suddenly got it. I am on Day 16 of my soda fast and holy hell, it is hard. I crave it. I want it. But I just don’t give in. Why? Why is this time different, when all those other times I gave in?

I don’t have the right answer. The craving to end my addiction to soda is greater than the craving to have soda. As much as I want it, I feel so much better about myself when I deny myself the craving. I feel strong and in control of my body.

I’m not doing everything right. In fact, I’m doing a lot more things wrong when it comes to healthy eating than right. But I will get there. Slowly. With failures rattling behind me. But I will keep pushing, keep fighting, keep trying. 

Failures happen. It’s inevitable, no matter what we do. We’re going to slip up and make mistakes. The important part is to move on.

So you failed at something.

Congratulations! You are human.

NOW WHAT?

Starting Weight: 166.6 lbs
Current Weight: 164.2 lbs
Weight Gained This Week: +.4 lbs
Weight Lost Total: 2.4 lbs

Before I get to my weigh-in post today, I have to take a moment to congratulate the San Francisco 49ers for making it to the Superbowl! My brother has been a faithful fan since he saw them win the Superbowl in 1994 – when he was 8 years old. He’s followed them through all their losing seasons until now – NFC Champions heading to the Superbowl. It feels surreal, but they earned their place there.

I decided something last weekend. I decided that I’m not in this healthy lifestyle for a specified period of time. I’m not doing this to see a particular number on the scale and my journey doesn’t end when I reach my goal weight. I am doing this for overall health. I want to treat my body better by listening to its internal cues. I want to move more, eat less junk, and fill my body with good, wholesome foods.

I know. Duh. But I think I’ve had this dieting mindset for so long. I just have to be good ’til cheat day, I would always think to myself. I didn’t focus on overall health. I can really feel this shift in my thinking as I approach a new way to look at my health and fitness.

But it’s a process. It’s an up-and-down battle with my cravings and understanding change. It’s about discovering what parts of my life aren’t fitting into my ultimate goals of health and wellness. Changing your entire mindset on how you eat and what you eat is really, really hard. (Duh.) It’s not an overnight process, or will even happen over the course of a few months – especially not with me, with how stubborn I can be about food.

I want to slowly chip away at these unhealthy behaviors I have in my life until I have rid myself of them.

Right now, I am focused on two things: exercising consistently and quitting soda cold turkey.

Exercising consistently has been rather easy. I have Best Body Bootcamp to thank for that, as I have three built-in strength-training workouts a week (my favorite way to exercise) and then I just have to come up with my own workouts two to three times a week for myself. Once I get into a pattern of working out, I’m in it for good. My alarm wakes me up at 5:30 four times a week and as long as I go to bed early, it’s really not hard for me to drag myself out of bed to work out. I feel good about the progress I am making and I can feel my body getting stronger and my endurance levels increasing.

The second habit is one I have struggled with for years, well documented on this blog. I love soda. A lot. While some people reach for wine or beer at the end of a difficult day, I reach for soda. The combination of sweetness and carbonation calms me. But I know it’s incredibly bad for me and I am addicted to it. I’m emotionally attached to the stuff. I’ve tried unsuccessfully to quit it before, sometimes trying cold turkey and sometimes by gradually working it out of my life. But I think I needed all those failed attempts to bring me to where I am now. It’s been over a week since I last had a soda. I’ve never gone this long. Either the headaches or the constant fatigue or the cravings hit me too hard and I give in.

I think all of my unsuccessful attempts have helped me to ease off the addiction as towards the latter part of last year, I wasn’t drinking it as much so my body isn’t as addicted to it as it has been previously. Friday night was the first time I had a real craving for it but I held strong and got over it.

I feel so ready this time. I finally feel as if I am strong enough to resist the temptations. I have never felt like this in my past attempts. I am not constantly thinking about the next time I’ll get to have a soda and luckily, it’s not readily available at work (and almost every coworker drinks water constantly) so my only battles come when I’m at restaurants. I think the hardest part of this has been the constant tiredness. I’m getting 8 to 9 hours of sleep a night (and I take a daily iron pill) but I’m still so tired every day. I don’t want to use this time to get addicted to coffee and caffeine so I’m just going to keep getting lots of sleep, keep exercising, and pray my body gets used to no caffeine SOON.

While I’m acing every test when it comes to those two habits, I’m not as focused on eating perfectly. But honestly? I’m not worried about that right now. I am not going to put pressure on myself to heal every unhealthy habit right now. I have my entire life to do that and I think these two areas are necessary to get me on the right track.

The next goal I want to work on is meal planning for healthy dinners every week. I can get so lazy with this and then I have a week (like last week…) where I ate out all but once because I didn’t have anything planned for dinner.

In any event, with my eyes focused on exercising and not drinking soda, and not eating healthy all the time, I was a bit worried about weigh-in but I told myself it’s not about the number on the scale and even if it shows a gain, I still made incredible strides in cutting out soda. (Luckily, the scale didn’t disappoint!)

Starting Weight: 166.6 lbs
Current Weight: 163.8 lbs
Weight Lost This Week: 1.0 lbs
Weight Lost Total: 2.8 lbs

What is one unhealthy habit you’re trying to kick this year?