Life Happens

Several factors upset my plan for today. I overslept, which I tend to do. I have a gig tomorrow, and I was (before today) pretty unprepared for it. I usually have rehearsal for my church gig on Thursday nights, so i wanted to get as much work as done on my gig as I could before I went. So I spent most of my afternoon working on a new original song and spicing up a Taylor Swift song for my gig tomorrow. At about 3:30, I found out that my church rehearsal was cancelled due to weather. It thus far has snowed maybe 1 1/2 inches in Knoxville, which is enough to shut down life. So, even though I had the time to go the gym, the road leading into my neighborhood being incredibly steep and slightly snow-filled kept me from leaving the house. So what do you do? LIFE HAPPENS. Situations arise that screw up your plans. You have to adjust. I still did my crunches at home and ate a little less for dinner. On the upside, I'm much less hungry than if I had gone to the gym because i didn't burn as many calories. AND I got to watch The Biggest Loser episode from Thursday! Silver lining, my friends. :)

Let me take this opportunity to talk about Weight Watchers. Here's how the program works: based on your current weight, age, sex and amount of everyday activity, you get a certain number of points a day. So, a 25-year-old male construction worker gets more daily points than a 45-year-old female office worker. These points reflect the amount of calories, fat grams and fiber grams that you eat. Foods that are high in calories and fat are worth more points, foods that are higher in fiber are worth less. Basically - it teaches you good foods and bad foods while keeping track of caloric intake. So potato chips are high in points but not filling, where grilled chicken is medium-high in points but very filling. In addition to your daily points, you also get 35 weekly points that you can spend however you like. If you have a special dinner planned and don't want to count points, or if you want to have an extra 5 points a day, whatever. You can also earn weekly points by going to the gym. So, I get 28 points a day, 35 points a week, and thus far I have earned 6 extra "exercise" points in the past 2 days. Yesterday, I earned 5 since I was at the gym for over and hour. Today I only earned one by doing crunches/ab work for 10 minutes. If I go over my daily points today, I just have to either work out an extra day or use some of my weekly points. This is the reason I love Weight Watchers - how you spend your calories is up to you. They do strongly encourage that, per day, you get 5-6 fruits & vegetables per day, 8 glasses of liquids, a multivitamin and 3 healthy oils (vegetable, olive or canola oil). So obviously eating chips or pizza all day is discouraged, even in smaller portions than I usually would.

On that note, I've noticed that my usual diet is extremely carb-heavy. And I've been making an effort to eat more fruits and vegetables. Yesterday and today I got a salad for dinner in effort to stray from chips or pasta. The trick with salads, I think, is to find ones that you actually like. I've noticed I stray toward ones with fruit in them, like apples or cranberries. I try to order mine without cheese or nuts (if it has them), because these things can quickly increase the calories in your "salad." Also, I've learned that not all salads are nutritious! For example, caesar salads are the worst possible salads for you. Take lettuce, cover it with cheese (fat), croutons (carbs), and caesar dressing (liquid fat), and it almost completely negates eating lettuce in the first place. Switching to a low-fat dressing is a great step in the right direction if you're not ready to cut out croutons or cheese. Cheese, at least, provides a filing protien. Croutons are basically toasted pieces of bread coated in butter. So, if anything, I leave on the cheese.

Lastly, let me say how much I LOVE the show The Biggest Loser. If you are touched or motivated by this blog and you don't already watched this show, WATCH IT. It can get a little dramatic with the challenges and stuff, but the basic message is the same - changing your life is hard but it is possible!! Don't let their their incredibly rapid weight loss discourage you - if you worked out 6 hours a day, you would lose weight that fast too. Celebrate your losses and work through your discouragements! Any weight loss is a step in the right direction! (For the record, I never though I would sound so much like a motivational speaker. But this is true!) Again, thank you ALL for your support and for taking the time to read this!

New Dawn

First, I must say how much I've been touched by the response I've already gotten from writing this blog. I never thought that just by being honest, so many people would support me even more than they already did. And this is only the second entry! All of you that have contacted me and let me know that you were moved by my words, you should know: it was you I thought of in the gym today when I wanted to stop running, but kept going anyway. It was you I thought of on my drive home when I wanted to pick up mexican food, and got a salad instead. It was you I thought of at lunch when I wanted to have 2 pieces of leftover pizza, and only had one. YOU inspired me to stick to it! And I hope that I have the same effect on you all - I can be someone you think of when you're having a hard time. Not to make you feel guilty or berate you if you gain a couple of pounds. That I will be someone who will celebrate your successes and understand your defeats. That whether you're on the highest weight loss peak or the lowest possible point of weight gain, I'll be here and I'll understand both parts.

My New Year's resolution is two-fold this year. 1) Live a healthier life and take care of my body, mind and soul. 2) Be a better friend, especially to those who aren't close by. These 2 resolutions might seem backwards to some, might seem selfish for putting myself before my friends. But I realized that I can't be the friend I want to be until I love myself as much as my friends love me. (Or at least half as much!) If I depend on my friends for the acceptance I can't find in myself, that's putting an awfully large burden on them. And that's not really being a good friend at all.

Today has been a good day. I woke up later than expected, but still managed to spend about an hour and 15 minutes at the gym. I'm lucky right now in that I don't work most afternoons, so I have time to be a little leisurely as far as when I get to the gym. But too much free time can be dangerous, too because I'm VERY prone to bored-snacking. So next week starts the new waitressing job - I'll let you know how that goes! Anyway, for those of you that are curious, here were my gym activities for the day: 10 minutes of abs, 15 minutes alternating running/walking around the track, 15 minutes of arms and 20 minutes on the elliptical. Add stretching and that was my workout! (I'm a HUGE advocate of stretching thoroughly before and after working out, especially if you're relatively new to working out regularly. Please do it!) This is my usual gym workout. For the record, I HATE arms and DESPISE abs. But (maybe not surprisingly) these are the parts of my body I'm least proud of. So, I've found that if I do abs first and get it out of the way, it's not as despicable. Arms I put in between cardio so my heart rate stays up while I do them. I'm really not a fan of running either, but most of the people whose bodies I admire are runners. So, I'm trying to work my heart up to running. Right now I can't run much more than a lap (at my gym that's 1/12 of a mile) without maxing out my heart rate. Which I think at 23 is incredibly depressing, but it's pushing me to work harder to fix it! And speaking of heart rate, I'm also a HUGE advocate of heart rate monitors! You can plug in your own weight, age and sex, and it will tell you exactly how many calories you burn! A fantastic tool if you don't want to sit on an elliptical machine during your entire workout and still want to know how much you burn. Get one at your local sports supply store!

For those of you interested in how I'm keeping track of my calorie intake and burn, I'm on Weight Watchers. I'm a HUGE advocate of this program. I think it's the only program out that there really teaches you how to make decisions for yourself. Who wants to eat prepackaged meals at home every day of the week? And have to turn down your friends when they go out to dinner, or risk gaining weight because you went off program for one day of the week? Weight Watchers give you the option to have a dessert one day or a slice of pizza another day. I'll explain all the details another time, but for now suffice it to say this is how I lost weight in 2006 and I KNOW it works. They give you all the tools you need - after that it's up to you! You learn what you can and can't eat for yourself - or how to sacrifice a little if you REALLY want that extra cookie! The one mistake I made before was I never followed through with them and learned how to maintain my weight. This is a step I certainly WILL NOT be missing this time around!

Thank you all again for being such an inspiration to me and for taking time out of your lives to read and respond!!