New Goals

Sorry for the non-existent blog posts lately.  Procrastinating on school work has just caught up with me recently so I've been super stressed out.  I have no excuses though, I brought it on my self.

But in other news I have set some new mini-goals for myself.  I used a handy-dandy tool on Spark that helps you figure out how much weight you can lose by a certain date to come up with these goals.  I know I want to lose weight by my 21st birthday which is June 18th so I put that date in and that I wanted to lose 1 pound/week.  Spark's calculator says I can be 179 pounds by then if I work out 3 days/week for 30 minutes/day.  The next goal date I gave myself was September 6th when I start the fall semester of school.  Spark says I can be 168 pounds by then.  And the last goal date I gave myself was Christmas.  According to Spark I'll be able to be 152 pounds by then.  Only 2 pounds away from my goal of 150 pounds!

If I lose more than 1 pound/week I'm definitely OK with that (of course!) but I would really like to lose at least 1 pound/week.

Now my plan of attack to lose that 1 pound every week will look something like this:

• Nutrition ~ Watch portion sizes, eat more fruits & veggies, drink 8 glasses of water, limit soda (HUGE battle for me), limit desserts or at least portion sizes of them


• Fitness ~ Cardio 3 days/week (walking, running, EA Active), weights 4 days/week (one day each: full body, upper, lower, core)

I know I have made plans before and just not followed through but I'm getting really frustrated with myself for doing absolutely nothing to achieve my goals to live a healthier lifestyle.  I'm going to work on channeling this frustration into motivation to follow through with this plan.

No more putting it off!  I will start this afternoon when I get home from work.  I plan to run as much as I can for 1.89 miles with my dog Duke.  Tomorrow will be a day of weights (I forgot what part of the body it is though lol) and Friday I will hit up some cardio again.

I can do this and I need to not use school as an excuse.  School should be an excuse to work out as I am currently stressed out about it and working out will be a good stress reliever.

I'll do my best to check in and update y'all with my progress soon!  School isn't over for me until May 19th so bear with me until then if my posts are scarce or super short.

Until next time...

Real Quick...

Just wanted to post a quick little something so I can keep up with the 5 days/week blogging thing.

• Blogging - Monday and today...guess that means I need to blog every day for the rest of the week as I already didn't blog Sunday and now yesterday.


• Nutrition - Logged pretty much everything in Spark on Monday but now haven't done it yesterday or today.  Buuut I have been watching my portion sizes.  Staying away from Mountain Dew has been a fail except for yesterday.  Moving on to tomorrow, not going to beat myself up about it.


• Fitness - Monday I took my dog for a 33 minute walk.  We made it 1.89 miles.  Yesterday due to yucky weather I did nothing.  I should have done something today but it was like a half-day snow day for me so I ended up being rather lazy.  On the bright side, my mom and I have talked about where we could put the Wii in our basement for quite some time but never followed through with our plan but today we came up with a new plan.  This new plan is much more attainable than the last one so I have a good feeling it will be happening soon which means I'll have no excuse to not use the Wii as a form of indoor exercise.


• Weigh in - Did not weigh in yesterday as planned.  My grandma called me right at 9 when I was going to be getting out of bed and invited me over for breakfast (waffles yum!) and to use her oven as our new one still has not arrived.  I made 3 loafs (is this the correct "term"?? Spell check doesn't like this word for some reason??) of banana bread, sooo good.  I will for sure weigh in tomorrow or Friday.


• Weather - Like I mentioned in my last blog there was some yucky weather headed my way and it came in full force.  It snowed pretty hard yesterday morning, stopped for a while, and then snowed in the afternoon into the night.  It was like a thunderstorm but instead of rain it was snow falling from the sky.  This resulted in my dog being scared and keeping me and my dad up the whole night between the two of us.  This morning it took my dad an hour to make it to work (normally 30 minutes or less) with a 4-wheel drive truck.  Yea, that's how bad it was.  So my mom and I called in to say we would be in no later than 10.  We work at the same place so we rode together in one car and ended up making it there by 8:30.  My mom's boss later decided that anyone who didn't live in town should really consider leaving early; translation = my mom should go home.  We left at 1, meaning I only got 4 hours of work in so I will have to go in tomorrow to make up the 3 hours I missed but I will probably work 4 as I was planning to today for an even 8 hours.


• Laptop - After work tomorrow I am going to get a new laptop.  There is nothing really wrong with my current laptop other than it occasionally likes to blue screen on me (usually late at night for some reason??) so I am getting a new (better) laptop and will let my family use my old one for as long as it lasts, which with their light use it will probably be ok for a while.

Wow so that turned into a longer "little" update that I was planning.  Anyways, I'm off to finish making my bed from last night...I was lucky I got the fitted sheet on my bed last night before my dog jumped on my bed and laid down, not that I'm complaining because prior to this he wouldn't lay down and was pacing and panting.

And real quick, new readers thanks for checking out my blog and leaving comments!  I enjoy comments and am glad to see new readers commenting.  Keep 'em coming!!

How Bad Do You Want It?

Hey there blogger friends!  I hope you all had a fantabulous weekend!  Hopefully you had good weather.  Wisconsin's weather got a little crazy yesterday.  It was cold and raining/snowing.  Today sounds like it will be our last nice day with a high of  45*F until Thursday.  Tomorrow is supposed to only get up to 36*F and is going to be ice to rain with wind and Wednesday isn't going to be much better (probably worse actually) with a high of 28*F and a wintery mix to snow with wind.  Winter just does not want to let go yet I guess ;)

Enough about the weather...

Nikki recently wrote an amazing post about weight loss (read it here) that got me thinking about my own weight loss journey, or lack there of.  It was specifically this line that made me think, "But before anyone ever starts a weight loss and exercise program, you have to want it."  I question whether I really want to change my lifestyle and lose weight.

If someone randomly asked me if I wanted to lose weight my answer in a nanosecond is yes.  There is no doubt in my mind that I want to lose weight.  As Nikki also wrote, "I was unhappy, unhealthy, and out of shape." only I am unhappy, unhealthy, and out of shape.

So why am I questioning if I want it?  Because I am heavier now than I was in 2009 when I first decided to lose weight.  I have made no progress in my weight loss.  If I want to lose weight why haven't I committed to eating healthier, and exercising regularly?  That is exactly what I ask myself every time I look in the mirror.  To be honest I don't know why I haven't committed myself to changing my life for the better, or I at least haven't figured it out or admitted it to myself.

I apologize if I sound like a broken record whining about not losing weight when I'm not doing anything to change that.

As you all begin to know me better and better you will start to pick up on the fact that I relate things in my life to songs, a lot.  Of course this situation is no different.  The song that I think fits this situation in my life really well is How Bad Do You Want It? by Tim McGraw.  It is exactly what I need to ask myself...how bad do I want to change my life for the better?  Obviously the more I want to change the more dedicated I should be.  Right now I'm a bit off-balance, I'm not as dedicated as I should be.  I am going to change that, I want to be balanced.

I am a member of the weight loss site Sparkpeople but lately haven't been using the tools available to me.  To start the process of dedicating myself to weight loss I am going to re-set my account on Spark so I can start fresh with my nutrition and fitness log and my goals.

Here are some goals I have for myself with re-setting my Spark account, and with re-dedicating myself to losing weight.

• Nutrition ~ I will do my best to log everything I eat.  I always struggle with logging meals at home because I do not measure my food.  It may sound stupid because my family supports me but I do not want to measure my food in front of them.  It makes me feel awkward just thinking about do it in front of them.  So, I will do my best to estimate.  I will work on eating smaller portion sizes and limiting my junk food, including soda.


• Fitness ~ I will commit myself to 3 days/week cardio of at least 30 minutes and 2 days/week strength training of at least 15 minutes.


• Blogging ~ I used to try to blog on Spark but since starting this blog I think I will not set a goal to blog in both.  This blog will be my primary blog with maybe occasional posts on my Spark blog.  I am going to commit myself to blogging 5 days/week.  I am not going to specify what my posts have to be about; they could be nutrition, fitness, or just my life.  This is basically what I am doing now so it will not be something I need to change other than making sure to blog at leat 5 days/week.

Well there it is, my plan of action.  I am going to re-set my account on Spark tomorrow morning so I can start fresh with a new weigh in.  This does not mean I am putting off what I can do today.  I will begin to work on my nutrition and fitness today, not tomorrow.

I can do this.

I want to do this.

I will do this.

Until next time =)...