Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Fighting the cravings

Oh! My! God!

The last few days have been one set of cravings after another for food that I simply can't have. This will be a short post. I just wanted to stop by to say that if I don't lose weight on the scale this week after having this much will power, I'm going to drop kick the scale into the garbage.

That is all.

-Carisa

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Yo-Yo Scale

I have a significant amount of weight to lose. This and the fact that I've been sticking to my eating/working out plan made it ridiculously annoying to step on my scale and not see results. 

Last week when I weighed in, I was actually 1 lb up from where I was the week before! I could have died, I was so frustrated, stressed, and just annoyed at my body.

It is things like this that normally derail me and make me wonder why I'm even trying. I'm not going to lie, the first couple of days following that weigh in came with a lot of struggles, and I fell down. A lot. 

That was last week though, and today is the start of a new week. Weight loss is so important to me, but I think I need to start looking at the bigger picture. Even if the scale doesn't move, I KNOW that I'm properly fueling my body with healthy foods, and I KNOW when I hit the gym that I feel better. 

It is time to count milestones and progress in more than just weight, because the scale will let me down, and sometimes make me want to chuck it off of our 3rd floor balcony. 

This week I'm going to stick to it no matter what my frenemy, the scale has to say about it. 

Even though I've been let down by the scale recently, it has shown some progress overall. I've lost about 35 lbs (slooooowly) from the beginning of the year, and my goal is to lose 36 more before 1/2/13, and then 25 more by 3/15/2012. I'll still have weight to lose when I get to March, but I'll reset some goals then. Breaking this HUGE journey into 'bitesized' chunks of weight has helped a ton so far, as I don't feel overwhelmed all the time. 

Hope you're all in good health!
-HappyHealthyThin

Monday, September 24, 2012

Jealousy at the gym

I stuck to my commitment to go to the gym right after work today, and I'm so glad that I did. I feel like I'm on the right track here, and if I just focus one step at a time, I believe that being healthy will become a habit.

While I was strolling along on my treadmill, breaking a sweat at just 3.4, I happened to glance at a girl just to the side and one row in front of me, and notice that she was running smoothly and confidently at a 7. 7! She must have been going along like that for quite some time, as I switched machines after 20 minutes and she was still going strong.

In everything that I do in my regular life, I'm super competitive. When it comes to work, gaming, and life in general, I like to be in first place. Watching this girl sweat it out and LOOK GOOD while running at a 7 on the treadmill immediately sparked some jealousy.

I don't know this girl at all, don't know her background, and don't know how long it has taken her to get up to a 7. I do know that at my measly 3.4 (4.5 at the highest) we are just in different leagues completely as far as fitness.

I don't want to be stuck in the fat league anymore. Stuck feeling like I'm going to die just from walking from the car to the gym dressing room. I think that I'm just done with all of that.

My aim for this week is to be inspired by Ms.Fit, and not insanely jealous. I'm going to use her strength as a place to aim for, and not as something to make me feel ashamed of my own progress.

We all have our own paths to walk (or run, as it were) and this week I'm going to focus on competing with myself, and not with other people.


-HappyHealthyThin


Thursday, September 20, 2012

I'm still alive

Yes, it is true. I made it a whole 30 minutes at the gym without dying. My time on the treadmill and cycle did put my being completely out of shape on display for everyone around to see, and while I would usually be embarrassed about my fat arms or rolls in my workout clothes, I felt relief.

Relief that I had made it to the gym, despite my 5000 excuses, relief that I can walk and even jog a little on the treadmill, albeit not for very long, and relief that I've committed myself to a healthier and happier me.

The gym may have won this round (as evidenced by my sweating profusely and generally feeling like I was going to die) but one day, I will be the victor.

Every time I take a step on the treadmill, I know that I am stepping towards my future.

On a different subject, I managed to stay on track with my eating today as well. I started the day with some celery and yogurt, which is a lighter breakfast than normal, but it kept me full until lunch. My lunch was a cobb salad minus the eggs and blue cheese, and I've made a low calorie turkey chili for dinner that I'm really looking forward to.

Woohoo!

-Carisa

Getting my fitness on

Okay world,

Do you know what is terrible? I've had a gym membership for over 2 years and I've only been there once. That was the day that I bought the membership. I got a pretty cheap membership ($21 a month), but that still equals over $500 wasted during the past few years.

I have a million excuses for not going to the gym, ranging from "It is all the way across town" to "I'm too tired after a long day of work". It is time to put all of those excuses behind me and get my fat ace back on the treadmill.

I've resolved that I'm going to go the gym today. It is my day off of work, and I have only 1 or 2 other things that need to be done.

I'm hoping that this first day will be the hardest, and that I can make this a habit. I want to go 4-5 times a week.

Okay.. I should get off the couch and get dressed for the gym now.

Baby steps will eventually lead to being happy, healthy and thin.

-Carisa

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

The start of it all


Hello world!

I've decided to start blogging as an additional tool to keep me on track and accountable for the choices that I am making regarding nutrition and fitness.

Up until the beginning of the year, I was living a fast food lifestyle. After weighing in at a significantly higher weight each time that I stepped on the scale, I realized that it was time to change my lifestyle.

I've been a Sparkpeople.com member for a few years now, which has really drilled the fact that this is a lifestyle change and not a diet into my head. I made small changes at first, like completely cutting out Dr.Pepper and Coke, which were two of my daily addictions. It has been nearly a year without them now, and I don't think I'll ever go back to that.

My next baby step was to slowly start eating at home instead of eating out. The difficulty that I faced with that is that although I am married, my husband works the opposite shift that I do, so we never have meals together. I had convinced myself that because of that, I could justify both of us just eating fast food and going about our days.

Starting in June, my husband and I did a one week challenge with ourselves to eat at home, and it worked! We made a weekly grocery shopping day, planned dinners that I could cook and refrigerate for him, and it sort of caught on.

We've been doing this quasi healthy(ier) eating for a couple of months now, and I'm just ready to take it a step further and kick my weight loss into gear.

So here are the numbers:

I need to lose 80lbs. (Oh god, I hate writing that)
I want to do it in 10 months, which means I need to lose 8lbs a month. This is definitely a healthy pace for my current weight.

Here are the issues:
PCOS and Insulin Resistance (I don't lose weight as easily as some people, and I have to be super careful with what I'm eating)
Laziness (Yep, I'm adding that because it is definitely an issue)

Here is the plan:
1400-1750 calories per day, as calculated by Sparkpeople.
Low carbish (No bread & grain, but I will still eat fruit and natural sugars)
Unprocessed foods as much as possible (No frozen lunches, artificial sweeteners, preservatives)

I'm going to be using this blog as a sort of journal/tracker/inspiration keeper.

Thanks for reading world (or one lonely person who randomly came across this), I'll be back soon!

<3 Carisa