Losing Weight is Hard

Hi, all!

So, my fitness evaluation needed to be rescheduled for Tuesday. I know it is only a few days away, but I am a little bummed out that I was not able to find out my results. Oh well, that means I have a few more days to work hard. And let me tell you, I have been working incredibly hard. According to my scale at home, I have lost 12.2 pounds in a month. We'll have to see what the scale at the gym says on Tuesday. Either way, I know that I have made progress because I stuck to my nutritional goals 22 out of 32 days. I am sort of ashamed that in March I had 10 days where I either did not count calories, binged, or just went over. Even though I am ashamed of that, it also shows just how hard I worked the other days out of the month. Consistently I saw my weight dropping, that is a fact because on March 7th, I weighed in at 330 pounds and this morning the scale told me 317.8. The results are real.

Losing weight it hard, I will not deny that at all. If it were just an easy thing to do, I would not have topped the scale at 330 pounds, and I would have been able to keep off the 50 pounds I lost before. It is hard, plain and simple. There are days where I do not want to eat healthily, where I would rather just binge on all of my comfort foods. Or have a big bowl of pasta, a whole bag of chips, a huge bowl of ice cream. Or just a bunch of unhealthy but delicious foods from a fast food restaurant. There is nothing wrong with having pasta, chips, ice cream or fast food. Moderation is the key. To be honest, though, there have been days where I have said, 'Screw it,' I'm going to make a big plate of nachos or eat a big bowl of ice cream. Not to mention that some days I do not want to work out and sometimes I don't. This week I worked out all seven days because I wanted to. But other weeks I only work out 4 or 5 times, sometimes less than that because I just don't have the energy for it. The point is, I'm not perfect 100 percentage of the time. It just so happens that this was an excellent week for me. I ate 3,921 calories under my weekly goal. I worked out for a total of 299 minutes. And had a total calorie burn between food and exercise of 9619. If you don't know, that is 2.75 pounds for the week. Some days in March I did not do well at all, but I still was down 6.2 lbs.

Here's what I want you to get from this long drabble, you don't always have to be perfect! Some days will be bad and some good. Some weeks you will lose 2 pounds, and somewhere you will gain them back. Have more good days than bad. Eat all the foods you love in moderation or find healthier replacements that you love even more. Just stick with it, and the results will come. Slow and steady wins the race.

It is finally the weekend. I am still trying to get used to working again. My job may not be all day at this point but I am still trying to get used to being busier. It will get better when I am in my actual work schedule and not my training schedule. This varying schedule is weird but I will be into my actual schedule within the next few weeks. It will be nice to get my first paycheck on Friday though. My next one will be even better though, so I am excited about May 1st.  

Life

Hi, all!

Happy Wednesday! How are you all doing today? It's another beautiful day here in southeastern Wisconsin and I'm just feeling happy today. I was blessed with another day to live my life freely, without many restrictions. This is something not all people get to say, so I am thankful. Last night and earlier this morning I was pondering on this and I the fact that life is short was forefront in my mind. After losing one of my best friends 6.5 years ago, I realize how short life is and how it can end at any moment. I think this is something that we forget sometimes, we don't realize how any of us could be gone in a minute. Each of us have been blessed with another day of life and we need to embrace it and live. Today I want to remind each of you (and myself) to live, don't focus on the past because we can't change it. Live for today and look toward the future. Most importantly, do things you love, pursue your passions, don't take people for granted because you never know when it will be your last day (or theirs). When my best friend died, I wasn't able to say goodbye to her because of our accident and that haunted me for awhile. I never told her how much she meant to me and that her friendship was precious to me. Don't make the same mistake I did, tell your friends and family how much they mean to you because if you don't do it now, you might never get to.

I have to tell you, I'm feeling extremely blessed lately because I've had more good days than bad. This is something that probably won't always happen, I accept that fact, however, I'm glad that things are like this in the beginning. There will be days that I struggle and there will be days where I do well, however, I am going to use each day to learn more about myself and work through my food addiction. I have come to the realization that I will probably never eat completely clean, I will have some processed foods in my diet. I'll go out to eat from time to time. I'll have pizza, nachos, Chinese, Italian, chips, ice cream, and thousands of other foods. And yes, sometimes I will eat more than I should, it is a part of life. I'm not perfect if you didn't already know that, and you aren't either. None of us are perfect, 100% of the time. There will be times where we overeat or eat something that isn't 100% healthy. So what? That's life sometimes and we deal with it. Heck, there will be weeks (sometimes months) where we maintain or gain weight, but we shouldn't be ashamed. These things are all a part of our journey and there's  nothing we can do about it. We each need to own up to our mistakes and the things that we struggle with if we don't then we can never move past them.

Okay, moving onto yesterday's results. I had a pretty good day, I was under my calories again and had a shorter workout. I'm proud of myself though because my mother and I went out for dinner (it was teacher appreciation day and she got a free meal. Also, my father was working last night.). The restaurant we went to has a variety of yummy food, plus a lot of higher calorie options. However, I ordered foods that would fit into my nutritional goals, plus it was delicious. In the afternoon, I also had a shorter workout. I started out walking with 2 lb dumbells, but my ankle and hip were hurting, so then I just did some upper body strength training. In the past, I probably would have just stopped and not worked out because of this. Honestly, I probably would have just eaten crappy then as well. Things are different now though and I continued to eat within my calorie range and I exercised in a way that I could without pain. I may do the same today or I might have a rest day, only time will tell.

This morning I went out for coffee with my best friend again, I'm loving these get together's with her. Sadly, within a few days things will get back to our normal and then I won't see her for awhile. In fact, I may not see her in person again before I move. This is life, being an adult and being away from your best friend isn't fun. Distance won't get in between our friendship though. I'm going to be seeing her again tonight and we'll either be getting coffee or dinner with another one of our friends.

Well, I'm off to make myself some lunch. I hope that you all have an amazing afternoon and evening. Until next time!

~Sara~