Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Now vs. Then

I'm caught in a love triangle with between fitness and pizza. Seriously. So far pizza has won my affection! I'm frustrated with myself for giving in and playing the whole beating myself up game. I try to tell myself normal people eat pizza for lunch and then go on to have dinner, normal people eat! You have to eat to survive. But I still have to work through all that stuff.

Losing the weight this time around has been so much more difficult. When I made the first steps to my new lifestyle years before, I truly didn't think that it'd work. I'd tracked calories before with no success. And I played Dance Dance Revolution because I enjoyed it, not because I considered it exercise. I wasn't aware that I'd lost weight. About six months after tracking my food and playing DDR, I noticed that my pants were a lot looser. I didn't realize it was due to weight loss though! I remember telling my mom that I needed to go clothes shopping because all my waistbands in my sweatpants had dry rotted. We went to Sears to buy new clothes, and I'm picking size 24s off the hanger and my mom is grabbing clothes she thought I'd like too, the only difference is she could see that I had lost weight and she was picking a much smaller size. When I pulled on a pair of pants in the dressing room, they fell right off me. I assume I made a total shock face with my mouth a big O shape, because my mom started laughing and said, "Try these." It was the smallest size I could ever remember wearing. I think it was size Large, but I was a XXL before. Doing something I truly enjoyed, and tracking my calories (no special diet, just sensible eating) and finally, I was seeing results. And I wasn't even trying because I didn't realize it was working! Losing the weight was hard, but then again, it wasn't. I didn't even realize it was happening the first six months.

This time around, I'm definitely trying. I'm super impatient, too. I had completely forgotten that it took me almost a year to lose 61lbs, too. I was reminded of that when I went back and looked through my old blog posts! And then I went back checked Facebook. My uncle passed away in 2013, and I went to buy clothes for his funeral because I had nothing nice to fit me. A friend I went shopping with took a picture and put it on Facebook congratulating me on a 40lb weight loss. That was six months after starting my journey. It's hard to remember that it takes time! It was all so different the first time. I had ignorance on my side the last time. This time, I'm just so hyper-attuned to EVERYTHING, I have a lot more knowledge and that's both good and bad. The first time I went through this, I still would eat a cupcake, track it, and be like, "Oh well, that's okay!" I don't do that now; if I eat a cupcake, I immediately start to get mad at myself. Eating pizza today - I want to get back to living life. Living life healthily but also living. Having a slice of pizza or a beer or whatever, and not feel like I'm completely derailing myself. So I miss the ignorance factor then. I don't miss that first-go me felt like like I needed to add and add and add more hours of exercise if I wanted to make a change rather than switching up my routine. I know now that if I experience a plateau that you don't ADD to your routine you CHANGE your routine!

I'm trying to be healthier overall and in the end, this may result in a much healthier loss, one that I can maintain even when crazy things happens (I don't plan on burning down my house again! But thinking of getting sick, or power outages or whatever; one of those freak things). I want to be healthy for as long as possible.


Sunday, October 20, 2019

Operation: Floral

Hey everyone!
I can't believe we're in the homestretch of 2019! Where has this year gone? How's everyone doing with all the Halloween candy temptations? I'm faring well-ish. For a while there, I wanted all the chocolate but recently I've been so lucky that I've not had any cravings for sweets or salty snacks. (A treat is okay! I just like to turn treats into all day affairs. Ha)
A few days ago I came up with something called Operation: Floral. If you've been following for a while, you'll know my house caught on fire, and from November 13 through July 8th, I lived in a hotel while our house went through a lot of repairs. Totally gutted on the inside and outside. The house was taken down to the studs, some walls were knocked out, we got a whole new roof and siding. We lost all our furniture, a ton of electronics, sentimental stuff, old paperwork... crazy. But anyway! A lot of our clothes were salvaged! Or a good portion of them! (Thank goodness that most of the damage was water damage! Some items did get smoke or burnt up, but most clothing items were able to be dry cleaned.)  Some of my favorite clothing items like my unicorn shirt made it home! And also my absolute favorite floral shorts!
The sad thing is, I've admittedly put on some weight. The shorts fit me (yay!) but they're uncomfortably tight. I don't feel comfortable going out and wearing them in public. They give me an awful muffin top and wearing them is a total bummer.
That's where Operation: Floral comes in! My goal is to get back in these floral shorts. I know, it's almost November and we're entering in the winter months, who's going to be wearing shorts?? I'm taking a short vacation to the Smoky Mountains the week of Veteran's Day and I would love to wear these shorts, even if I have to wear a pair of winterly leggings underneath. What a fashion statement! ha. But I have a goal, and it's been immensely helpful. We leave in 21 days and I've been at this for a few weeks now. I'm trying. If anything, I feel like I'm going in the right direction.
I've made a few significant changes to my workouts. I run on the treadmill in the early afternoon, as I always did. When I was living at the hotel, at first we were in separate hotel rooms, and I would run in the mornings, do Jillian in the afternoon (or something Jillian in the AM, an hour run in the afternoon, but I always had both workouts done before 4pm) and I LOVED having the evening to work on things that needed done. Well, I've gotten back into getting both my workouts done before 7pm again, rather than a run in the afternoon, and a JM workout sometime around midnight. I'm sleeping better now because of the schedule change. I have the evenings to get things done, work on projects, work on orders, (watch This Is Us, haha!) and so on, and I get to bed at a reasonable hour and sleep for an adequate amount of time. That's a big change for me. I feel like getting it all done is helpful overall because I'm able to manage my time a little better, do what I like to do, do what I need to do. On the subject of Jillian Michaels, I'm almost finished with Body Shred for a third time. I just finished Week 5 and 6, which still are my all time favorite weeks for Body Shred. I don't do the cardio days currently, but I plan on adding them back in. Only I will switch Jillian's cardio for something more fun like DDR or Country Heat). I finish Body Shred the week before we go to Tennessee. That last week I'm planning on doing Lift and Shred OR One Week Shred. When we come back from Tennessee, I'm thinking of switching over to the dark side. We have a Smart TV and I am very intrigued by LIIFT 4. Maybe I'll try something like PiYo on LIIFT4 off days??? How about some 80 Day Obsession? Maybe I'll try FitFusion by Jillian?
I'm building back up to where I was with running, also. When I first began again, I was embarrassingly slow. I could get about 3 miles in an hour. I've picked it up to four miles an hour, which is a time I'm still unhappy with (15m/m) but I'm going in the right direction. The dreams of running a half marathon and eventually a full marathon are coming back as I'm starting to get back in a groove. I tried running outside but was ashamed I let myself go so bad, but that desire is coming back to me as well.
I'm trying to go about re-losing the weight again healthier than I did before. Trying not to overtrain, trying not to be a slave to the almighty calorie. I want to be able to live my life, and be healthy. Being healthy means having a piece of cake and not freaking out about it, but also wanting to kill a workout and help keep the results by having a salad. :) I feel like I'm finally on the right track though, after months of barely hanging on. Let me tell you - getting back on it, finally seeing results again, eating healthy again - it's fantastic. I am really feeling like I'm getting somewhere. If anything, I feel better mentally and emotionally than I have in the longest time. The lack of support from my family (and this isn't meant to dog on them!) isn't bothering me anymore because we all have our own spaces again, and being back home has been wonderful for all of us.

In upcoming blogs, I hope to talk about running my first 5k (The Color Run!), updating about Operation: Floral. I'll share my feelings on Lift and Shred or One Week Shred (depending on which I do) and what I do when we return home from Tennessee. :) I also hope to talk about making my brand new DDR pad (since I lost several in the fire, including my Red Octane Afterburner) and trying to unlock songs again. I started playing again to get back on the ball and it was incredible!

(This is likely a jumbled up blog. I may edit.)