January: Week 1 in Review

Good week, people! Good week.

• I worked out 6 of the last 7 days! Of those 6 days I jogged 5 days.
• I, indeed, used all of my flex points but I did not exceed my limit. In other words, I used NONE of my activity allotment.

I was able to eat 3 meals out this week too without overdoing it. Two of those meals were at Subway and one was out for sushi.

I'm not sure if this has been a conscious strategy or not, but last week I was super good and strict for the first part of the week and then I gradually treated myself to my flex points as the week went on. It's definitely way easier to not be under such harsh constraints heading into the weekend. It's also way easier to eat more reasonably when I put myself to bed early! It's not always practical, but it's so nice.

If I can take this week and multiply it by 4, I will surely have a successful January. Can it be done? I'm sure as hell going to try. I cannot wait until I have to buy new jeans! Even if they're just a crappy interim pair. I want my current size 12's to be so roomy it's ridiculous.

January: Day 6

I'm feeling ok about myself again. It was a little shaky over the 4 day span surrounding New Year's, but I'm back and grounded.

As bad as it is for my self esteem to feel my pants getting tighter after an extended splurge, it feels so good when my swollen belly deflates a little and ample breathing room in my clothing magically reappears.

I'm committed to re-establishing my more structured regimen from the days of yore. In the first 6 days of this week I've gotten to workout 5 times and run 4 of those times. Yesterday when I went to jog, it would have been my 5th in a row, i just couldn't. My legs were so heavy and I had virtually no energy. I guess I deserve a day to rest every now and then.

The key is really going to be keeping it up. If I do, I think the added cardio could really help boost progress. And I really like progress.

January: Day 1

OK, so here's the deal with my "new plan". The Weight Watchers food tracking system is working. I had a brutally honest friend of mine accuse me of losing weight the other day. Score! So I guess I keep plugging away. Because of the holidays and traveling and how my tracking weeks start on Mondays, I'm going to consider this Day 1. (I had only wanted to take one day off for NYE, but it sort of morphed into 4-ish...)

I think the real new part of this is that I'm gonna hold myself accountable for monthly goals rather than 100 day goals, although 3 months is about 100 days anyway... Like I've mentioned before, I'm going to lose (at least) 5 pounds in January. I'm trying to decide if I should weigh myself more than once a month. I know that I can resist the urge, and this way I'm dropping much bigger amounts per weigh in. We'll see how it goes. Maybe seeing weekly progress will help motivate me.

• I want to really, truly, honest-to-god minimize eating out. It just makes tracking what I eat so much more difficult. I think my only exceptions will be things that are easy to count, like Subway or sushi and only in a bind!
• I'm still staying off caffeine, I'm not sure if staying off artificial sweeteners is all that important...I don't think I necessarily feel better and it was brought to my attention that sugar is not very good for you. Replacing my splenda with sugar avoids adding unnecessary chemicals to my body but is the alternative better? Using nothing would probably be ideal, but for now I think maybe I'll use splenda sparingly.
• I'm pumping up the cardio. Ideally I'd like to do (at least) 5 days a week and burn (at least) 500 calories each time I'm there. This is totally do-able and I've done it before. With a mix of elliptical and jogging I can get it all done in an hour. Once I build my runs back up I can probably bang it out in 45 minutes.

So, all in all, maybe not that much is different. I did pretty well (I think) in December, I can only imagine how much I weighed back after Thanksgiving. I need to work super hard now to feel good later. But I also need to take each day on as it's own individual challenge and knock them down one by one.