On second thought...
...I think I'll just post my progress here, but not everyday. The more I thought about it, the more crazy it made me feel inside. Yeah...So...Stay tuned! :D For those of you who missed it:
When I was 21, I was in pretty good shape. I went to the gym several times a week, and was pretty active on top of that.
Living at home, I was fortunate to have wholesome meals cooked by my sweet mommy, and when I chose to eat an entire bag of Hershey's Treasures, my super-charged 21-year-old metabolism would zap those puppies away.
It was awesome!
Then I got married.
Between the day I got married, and the first day of the fall semester (about 60 days), I gained 15 lbs.
Being the typical newlyweds, we had the worst diet on earth, mainly consisting of sugar cereals and macaroni and cheese (on those off times when I didn't burn it...or everything else I cooked for that matter).
A year later, we moved into my parents' home. I was pregnant with my first child. In the first trimester, I lost those 15 lbs merely from having morning sickness.
After my baby was born, I struggled to lose any weight (I had gained back the 15lbs). I had heard that nursing would literally suck the fat off my body, and I waited in anticipation.
Nothing.
BUT, I kept up being active. My husband and I went on walks almost every night, and I did pilates about 3 days a week. I would also go to the gym intermittently.
Over the following four years, I had two more children, and during those years, my weight fluctuate, but mostly just increased.
Now, I was still active, doing pilates, walking, sometimes running, going to the gym, doing every Denise Austin workout I could find, yoga, weights...
I could still fit into my size 7 jeans without a problem.
I had gained 40 lbs since getting married. I went from a slight 135 to a not-so-thin 172. But, like I said, I could still wear my regular clothes.
After having my third baby, I decided to do something about my weight. I worked out and dieted, trying all sorts of diets. I even tried the 1/2 grapefruit and 3 stalks of celery diet, and I couldn't do it for one day.
Frankly, I like to eat, so not eating really wasn't an option.
I controlled my calories and was active.
I lost 30 lbs in six months.
It was hard.
REALLY, REALLY HARD. I was cranky ALL THE TIME.
But, I got down to 145 lbs.
And I felt really good!
I had lots of energy, and that was one of my major goals. I wanted to be able to play with my kids and not feel like I was going to die.
After I got down to 145, I got pregnant with my fourth baby.
And I decided that eating ice cream was awesome, so I ate a lot of it, and gained a TON of weight.
Now, in my opinion, there is NO SUCH THING as "baby weight." You only increase your calories during pregnancy during the second trimester (or is it third? My brain is fried...), and you only increase it by 300. That's like a piece of bread, an apple, an orange, and a carrot. Or, if you are into that kind of thing, 3 TBSP of butter. Or half a cup of sugar. Or 40 stalks of celery.
So, all that weight you gain because of your "cravings" is a bunch of bologna (sometimes literally).
Pregnancy is not a time to lose self-control.
But I did.
And now I am paying for it!
Yesterday, I was analyzing myself in the mirror (I do this a lot...and weigh myself a lot...).
I asked my husband, "Do I look fat?"
He looked at me and said, "No, you look great for having had four children."
I turned and looked at him full in the face and asked a question I knew I wouldn't like the answer to.
"How about if I HADN'T had any children?"
He smiled, knowing he was cornered, and replied,
"You look 'healthy.'"
"You're mean..."I faked cried, but it is true, and probably a nicer answer to my question than I deserved.
When I weighed 172 lbs almost two years ago, I was healthier than at my current 160 lbs.
Like I said before, I was really active. A lot of what I was carrying around was muscle (under a nice layer of fat).
NOW, it's just mostly fat.
There is a huge difference between 172 lbs of muscle and 160 lbs of fat.
And I can feel it.
Now, I am in a "healthy" range for my height. What bothers me is my waist-to-hip ratio.
For a regular, healthy person, the hips should be wider than the waist. That isn't the case with me. I carry my weight in my belly, and that is the worst place to have it. Belly fat will kill you. It's better to have your junk in your trunk, if you know what I mean.
I'm not so much hung up on being skinny as I am about having my body be in the fittest state for my body. There are actually skinny-fat people out there. What I mean is, that there are people who are thin, but they aren't healthy. And there are people who weigh more than the average Hollywood starlet, but are super fit. It's not about numbers.
I want my body to be in its own, specific, perfect state (or as close as I can get to it).
So, as I lay in bed last night, I tried to think of some sort of motivation to get myself back on track.
In the past, I thought of having a "cheat day" at the end of my goal, where I could eat all the bad stuff I wanted. But, that tended to back-fire--gaining all those lbs back is very disheartening. And I was having the wrong approach to this whole thing.
I mean, I want to be healthy for the rest of my life, and let's face it, that won't happen if I am eating cookie dough all the time.
Then I thought, how about a money incentive? $1 per pound? $5 per pound? $10???
Or, should virtue be it's own reward?
I decided that the best thing to do would be to be accountable to a bunch of people on the internet. Hee hee! I figured if I were to post every day for the next 30 days (or longer) what I am doing, and what I am eating, and (eeyyaaaa...) what I look like, it would be a greater push than anything else. I mean, when you have to admit to a million people that, yes, you just ate 7 cookies and chased it down with a cup of melted butter and a handful of sugar cubes, it makes you want to change.
Now, I'm not into diets that require me to only eat 389 calories a day. No, thank you. This is especially important since I am a nursing mother. I don't want to diminish my milk supply, and deprive my rolly polly baby.
I want to eat what I like that is good for me, like fruits and vegetables, grains, eggs, some meat...For this experiment, I'm going to try and keep my fat/sugar intake to only 10% of my caloric intake (ie. if I eat the average 2000 calories a day, I would only eat 200 in fats and sugars).
My approach is something like, "I am going to eat as much fruits and vegetables as possible, but when I feel grangey (my husband's word), I will fill in the gaps with bread, and throw in a smattering of eggs, salad dressing, and meat because I just really, really like them."
It is important to me that I am healthy for life, but it has been weighing on my mind that I need to do this so that my family is, too. Luckily for me, my husband is all for eating in a healthy fashion, and my kids, more often than not (unless there are brownies involved), tend towards whole foods. But I know they will go where I lead them. If I eat crap, they will eat crap. It's one thing to have my body on my conscience, but it's a whole different thing to have the health of my family on my head.
So, this blog is my way of tracking my journey to get healthy and fit, and stay that way.
When I was 21, I was in pretty good shape. I went to the gym several times a week, and was pretty active on top of that.
Living at home, I was fortunate to have wholesome meals cooked by my sweet mommy, and when I chose to eat an entire bag of Hershey's Treasures, my super-charged 21-year-old metabolism would zap those puppies away.
It was awesome!
Then I got married.
Between the day I got married, and the first day of the fall semester (about 60 days), I gained 15 lbs.
Being the typical newlyweds, we had the worst diet on earth, mainly consisting of sugar cereals and macaroni and cheese (on those off times when I didn't burn it...or everything else I cooked for that matter).
A year later, we moved into my parents' home. I was pregnant with my first child. In the first trimester, I lost those 15 lbs merely from having morning sickness.
After my baby was born, I struggled to lose any weight (I had gained back the 15lbs). I had heard that nursing would literally suck the fat off my body, and I waited in anticipation.
Nothing.
BUT, I kept up being active. My husband and I went on walks almost every night, and I did pilates about 3 days a week. I would also go to the gym intermittently.
Over the following four years, I had two more children, and during those years, my weight fluctuate, but mostly just increased.
Now, I was still active, doing pilates, walking, sometimes running, going to the gym, doing every Denise Austin workout I could find, yoga, weights...
I could still fit into my size 7 jeans without a problem.
I had gained 40 lbs since getting married. I went from a slight 135 to a not-so-thin 172. But, like I said, I could still wear my regular clothes.
After having my third baby, I decided to do something about my weight. I worked out and dieted, trying all sorts of diets. I even tried the 1/2 grapefruit and 3 stalks of celery diet, and I couldn't do it for one day.
Frankly, I like to eat, so not eating really wasn't an option.
I controlled my calories and was active.
I lost 30 lbs in six months.
It was hard.
REALLY, REALLY HARD. I was cranky ALL THE TIME.
But, I got down to 145 lbs.
And I felt really good!
I had lots of energy, and that was one of my major goals. I wanted to be able to play with my kids and not feel like I was going to die.
After I got down to 145, I got pregnant with my fourth baby.
And I decided that eating ice cream was awesome, so I ate a lot of it, and gained a TON of weight.
Now, in my opinion, there is NO SUCH THING as "baby weight." You only increase your calories during pregnancy during the second trimester (or is it third? My brain is fried...), and you only increase it by 300. That's like a piece of bread, an apple, an orange, and a carrot. Or, if you are into that kind of thing, 3 TBSP of butter. Or half a cup of sugar. Or 40 stalks of celery.
So, all that weight you gain because of your "cravings" is a bunch of bologna (sometimes literally).
Pregnancy is not a time to lose self-control.
But I did.
And now I am paying for it!
Yesterday, I was analyzing myself in the mirror (I do this a lot...and weigh myself a lot...).
I asked my husband, "Do I look fat?"
He looked at me and said, "No, you look great for having had four children."
I turned and looked at him full in the face and asked a question I knew I wouldn't like the answer to.
"How about if I HADN'T had any children?"
He smiled, knowing he was cornered, and replied,
"You look 'healthy.'"
"You're mean..."I faked cried, but it is true, and probably a nicer answer to my question than I deserved.
When I weighed 172 lbs almost two years ago, I was healthier than at my current 160 lbs.
Like I said before, I was really active. A lot of what I was carrying around was muscle (under a nice layer of fat).
NOW, it's just mostly fat.
There is a huge difference between 172 lbs of muscle and 160 lbs of fat.
And I can feel it.
Now, I am in a "healthy" range for my height. What bothers me is my waist-to-hip ratio.
For a regular, healthy person, the hips should be wider than the waist. That isn't the case with me. I carry my weight in my belly, and that is the worst place to have it. Belly fat will kill you. It's better to have your junk in your trunk, if you know what I mean.
I'm not so much hung up on being skinny as I am about having my body be in the fittest state for my body. There are actually skinny-fat people out there. What I mean is, that there are people who are thin, but they aren't healthy. And there are people who weigh more than the average Hollywood starlet, but are super fit. It's not about numbers.
I want my body to be in its own, specific, perfect state (or as close as I can get to it).
So, as I lay in bed last night, I tried to think of some sort of motivation to get myself back on track.
In the past, I thought of having a "cheat day" at the end of my goal, where I could eat all the bad stuff I wanted. But, that tended to back-fire--gaining all those lbs back is very disheartening. And I was having the wrong approach to this whole thing.
I mean, I want to be healthy for the rest of my life, and let's face it, that won't happen if I am eating cookie dough all the time.
Then I thought, how about a money incentive? $1 per pound? $5 per pound? $10???
Or, should virtue be it's own reward?
I decided that the best thing to do would be to be accountable to a bunch of people on the internet. Hee hee! I figured if I were to post every day for the next 30 days (or longer) what I am doing, and what I am eating, and (eeyyaaaa...) what I look like, it would be a greater push than anything else. I mean, when you have to admit to a million people that, yes, you just ate 7 cookies and chased it down with a cup of melted butter and a handful of sugar cubes, it makes you want to change.
Now, I'm not into diets that require me to only eat 389 calories a day. No, thank you. This is especially important since I am a nursing mother. I don't want to diminish my milk supply, and deprive my rolly polly baby.
I want to eat what I like that is good for me, like fruits and vegetables, grains, eggs, some meat...For this experiment, I'm going to try and keep my fat/sugar intake to only 10% of my caloric intake (ie. if I eat the average 2000 calories a day, I would only eat 200 in fats and sugars).
My approach is something like, "I am going to eat as much fruits and vegetables as possible, but when I feel grangey (my husband's word), I will fill in the gaps with bread, and throw in a smattering of eggs, salad dressing, and meat because I just really, really like them."
It is important to me that I am healthy for life, but it has been weighing on my mind that I need to do this so that my family is, too. Luckily for me, my husband is all for eating in a healthy fashion, and my kids, more often than not (unless there are brownies involved), tend towards whole foods. But I know they will go where I lead them. If I eat crap, they will eat crap. It's one thing to have my body on my conscience, but it's a whole different thing to have the health of my family on my head.
So, this blog is my way of tracking my journey to get healthy and fit, and stay that way.
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