Oh how sweet it is...

For the last month I have struggled with my weight loss.  In September I only lost 6 pounds for a 6 month total of 86 pounds.  Now don't get me wrong 86 pounds is really great, but when I was used to losing anywhere from 10-20 pounds a month I knew that something was off.  So I set down and started thinking about what has changed in my life over the last month.  I was still eating the same amount of calories, but I was working out twice as much as I was before.  In my mind I thought that I would lose more, but that is not how it works.  If you are working out more you need to add calories in order to continue your weight lose or at least in my case that is how things worked out.  When your body goes into starvation mode you will stop losing.  I was not putting enough fuel in my fire and my body was holding onto as much as I put in and I slowed down on my weight loss. 

This really did not make much sense to me, but I thought well I could either eat more or workout less.  After about a minute I decided that I would go back to how I was working out before because I don't want to add to my calories.  This week when I did the recumbent bike I went for 45 minutes on the bike and I burned 400 calories instead of an hour and 20 min and burning 800 calories.  I also slowed my speed down a little so that I would be able to go further longer and not take as many breaks.  When I did the strength training I only did one round instead of 2, but I don't think it will hurt me to do that twice when I do my strength training.  Now you have to keep in mind that everybody is different but for me this seemed to work.  As of today, Wednesday October 12, 2011 I have lost another 7 pounds for a 6 month and one week total of 93 pounds!!!! I think I am onto something and I will continue my workouts and calories the way I did before and see how things go.

It's extremely important to not give up when the numbers are not what you want them to be.  I will be honest and tell you that there were times when I thought I was going to lose my mind but there was no way thing I was going to give up.  Eating healthy and exercising is a part of my life now and I hope that will never change.  There will be times when I hit a plateau (which to me is a dirty word lol) or I might even gain, but if I keep changing my exercise and eat the right foods and get good calories then I should be able to keep up my weight loss.  It really is just a game every week to see if the work that I put into myself will have a good outcome or not.  And I love to win!! :-)

Stunk in a Funk

(This was done 2 weeks ago but I forgot to post)

There are times when we all feel like we are stuck in a funk.  And by funk I mean we don't feel like working out, we don't feel like watching what we eat, and we know we should do better.  For me the last month I have been in a funk.  I still do my 5 workouts a week, but I don't do as much as I did before and I have not been working out on the bike like I did in the beginning.  I know for sure that last weekend I didn't eat things that I shouldn't but I had more than I should have and I know if I lose anything tomorrow it will not be much.  I made up my mind that I have to find something to get my mind in body back on track.  So the last couple of days I have been doing the workout bike and watching what I eat.  Last night I did not feel like doing what I usually do on the bike, which is burn 700 calories, so I told myself that I had to get up early the next morning and finish the workout.  And I did it!  Last week before my last workout before my weigh-in I did 2 rounds of my strength training.  I feel so much better once I get my workouts done and I know what works good for me. 

The second part of my motivation is a little thing I like to call the "Wedding Dress" motivator.  I'm not trying to say that I'm getting married anytime soon, but one day if I get married I want to look good in my wedding dress!  Growing up I never envisioned myself in a wedding dress because I never wanted to be a big bride.  So I went and bought a wedding magazine and cut out 18-20 dresses that I thought were pretty enough to cut out and put on a poster board to put next to my workout bike.  This way I can move it where I want it and if I have a date comes over to the house then he won't get freaked out by the wedding dress pictures hanging on the wall :-)  I will not know until I get married what kind of dress will look good on me, but if I work on myself now it will make it easier later on.  We all have to find our own motivators no matter if it's to get in a pretty wedding dress, have a baby, get healthy, or to be thinner than your best friend haha it important to see what is most important and go with it! 

One thing that is something that I have not been able to do in a really long time is jog.  Last Friday Betsy and I went on a walk and the temperature was pretty cold, so I thought why not try to jog a little.  I would count to 20 while I jogged and then do another 20 and then walk for a little bit.  We did this off and on and I felt great!  I know that I have to be careful of my knees so I don't want to push it, but 84 pounds ago I would not have been able to jog as much as I did and I really enjoyed the workout.  I need to start trying out new workouts but the bad thing is it's starting to get cold so walking/jogging will have to wait until spring.  I can only imagine how much easier it will be when the time comes :-)

The Double Workout

In the first four months after changing what I was eating and my exercise I did everything to the letter, but then life happened.  No matter if I was tired, sick, or just didn't feel like working out I would do it anyway.  The weekend that my Grandma passed away I missed my first workout and since then I have probably missed 2 more. But this week I made up for the one that I missed.  Last Saturday I had a long busy day and even though I did get in my workout in the morning when Sunday came around I was just too tired to mess with it.  I told myself that one way or another I would make up the workout that I missed no matter what it would take and I did it.  Yesterday when I got home I did 2 rounds of my strength training, had dinner, and 30 minutes later I went out and mowed the yard.  I was worried that when I got up this morning I might be a little sore but I felt great!  Granted I didn't want to get out of bed, but that had nothing to do with how my body felt :-)

I'm getting to the point with my workouts that I'm wanting to try new things.  I have been losing weight over the past 5 months but I know that in order to keep up the numbers that I have had in the past I need to start trying new things.  I love working out on the recumbent bike because I can see how many calories I am burning, but sometimes it can be very time consuming.  My wonderful sister has a lot of workouts that look intimidating.  The great thing about them is they always have someone showing how to modify the workout so you are not doing too much.  I know that I am still heavy and I have to be careful what I do and do not need to do.  If I do something that messes up my knees I'm in trouble.  For now I kind of feel like if it's not broke then why change what I'm doing, but it's nice to be able to change up the workouts from time to time.

                                             

I am working on adding some better pictures but above I have added the first picture that was taken of me and the 2nd picture is my 5 month picture and 80 pounds less. 

It's hard to believe how much I have changed in just 5 months.  It's important to not get down on yourself and think "Why didn't I do this before!" because when I think about it I couldn't have done what I am doing now before.  I am the type of person that needs to have someone take me by the hand and show me how to do something, well sometimes :-).  People could tell me until they were blue in the face what I needed to do to lose the weight, but things did not click until my sister came over and showed me what I needed to do for exercise and laid out a plan for me to follow.  When it came to the things that I could eat she went though the book that explains Sugar Busters and gave me helpful information.  Since my sister had been following Sugar Busters for over a year she had found many recipes and foods that we could have and they would still be "legal" and still follow the food plan.  I even went to the grocery store with my sister so that she could show me the things she was telling me about.  It is easier to remember things when you have a mental picture of what they look like and where they are in the store.  It helped me tremendously. 

In every blog I'm going to try and tell something new that I have noticed in my body since I started losing weight.  The first thing that I wrote in my weight loss journal is the first time I noticed on July 1, 2011, after I had lost 52 pounds, that there was space between me and the steering wheel in my SUV.  Over the years it bothered me that when I would drive the steering wheel would always be against my stomach.  At times I felt like I was fighting between the car and my stomach! lol But now I am starting to feel like there is more and more room in the drivers seat then there was before and I love it!! It is the little changes that mean the most.

In the beginning...

I know some of you are saying "it's about time" that I finally started my weight loss blog.  I will be the first to admit that I am not a wonderful writer, but I will try my best. 

My weight loss journey started back in March of 2011.  All of my life I have been over weight.  As a child my parents tried things to help me lose the weight, but nothing stuck with me.  I think I got to a point where I would tell myself it's time to lose all of this extra weight, but it was always put on the back burner until now.  Sometimes we all need motivation and it's not always easy to find that motivation.  For me the biggest motivation was the death of my Father.  In December 2010 my Dad had to have a valve replacement, have an aneurysm fixed in his aorta, and a procedure to correct the A- fibrillation (an abnormal heart rhythm).  We were told that the surgery would only take 4-6 hours.  After 6 hours we were told that the procedure went well and they were trying to get him off the bypass.  A couple of hours went by before they told us that when they tried to take him off bypass his heart would beat, but it was not strong enough to maintain his blood pressure.  Every time they tried to take him off the machine things just kept getting worse.  After he was in surgery for over 10 hours the doctors told us that he was having pulmonary hypertension, which is something that normally only happens in children, and they were doing everything they could to fix the problem.  At midnight the surgeon came in and told us that they were going to put him on a fresh bypass machine over night and there was one more thing that they were going to try in order to stop the pulmonary hypertension.   But the "hail Mary pass" that came 9 or 10 hours later did not work.  At around 12:30pm, after Dad was in surgery for almost 30 hours, the next day they came in and told us that there was nothing that they could do.  I remember my Mom asking how long it would be after they took him off bypass that he would pass and the surgeon said that it would be minutes.  In my mind and the minds of my family we thought that we would not be able to be with him when he died.  But the love that we had for him and the love that he had for us made him try hard to stay alive long enough for us to be with him one last time.  We were all shocked when they came in the waiting room two hours later to ask us if we were sure we wanted to see him and we all jumped up and followed the nurse to the SICU.  When we came to his side he was very swollen, tubes in his mouth and side, and more monitors attached to more tubes and wires then I could count.  But I didn't care I wanted to be there for him and I would never trade those 30 minutes for anything.  They did everything they could but told us there was nothing more they could do.  At 3:27pm he was gone.  That moment plays in my mind more than I like but it's part of the memories good or bad.  I tried to cut the story down as much as I could but that is a large part of my motivation to get healthy and lose weight. My Dad was always active when he was younger and in his early 40's but when the PSTD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) set in his life changed and so did his health.  He put on a lot of weight and even though he was able to lose some of it, it was not enough. 

At the end of February 2011 I finished my MBA degree and thought to myself what will I do with all of my extra time now that school is finished.  I told my Mom many times that I wanted to get healthy and see what I could do to lose the weight, but I didn't know where to start.  I knew I had to start eating better and start exercising, but I had no clue what to do.  Then came my "hail Mary pass" in the form of my sister.  She had started exercising and eating healthier since she had her last baby.  At that time she had lost over 80 pounds and she looked great!! So one weekend she came up to see me to talk to me about an eating plan called Sugar Busters, a wonderful meal replacement shake called Shakeology, and what I needed to do for exercise.  She also brought me a recumbent bike that my parents bought for my Dad that my Mom said that I could have if I promised to use it and not let it collect dust :-)  After a couple of tears talking about why we both wanted to get healthy, we got down to business.  My sister is very passionate about things that she loves and I am one of them for sure!  I felt very excited about the journey ahead of me and I knew that I would have to take it day by day.  One thing that she did was tell me that sometimes when you are trying to lose weight it is important to have someone that you are made accountable to as to what you are doing for exercise, eating, and how much weight you are losing.  Once a week I email her and my Mom to tell them how much I lost for the week and my total weight loss.  No matter if I lost or not I still tell them to keep up the accountability and also to get encouragement.  I couldn't do what I have done without them.  Yes, I had to do the work, but they made it easier :-) 

I always tell people that if they need help I will do anything I can do to help you lose weight. No matter if you need to lose 10 pounds or 1000 pounds!  My first month I lost a total of 21 pounds, 2nd month 16 pounds, 3rd month 19 pounds, 4th month 10 pounds, and yesterday at 5 months I lost 14 pounds.  So if you add all of that up I have lost 80 pounds in 5 months!!  I know that I will not always lose weight like I have in my first couple of months but if I watch how many calories I'm taking in everyday and change up my exercising I can do anything I set my mind to :-) 

When I started exercising I did at least 30 minutes on the bike 5 days a week and worked my way up to an hour in a month.  I also like to do strength training and take walks with the dog.  It's not a chore to me it's something that I have to do no matter if I feel like it or not.  I know that my first posting is missing a lot of things I want to share but hey there's no time limit and I will try to write on here a couple of times a week to add what I am going through with my weight lose journey no matter if it's good or bad.  All of this is new to me so please be patient with me :-)