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General Weight Loss Tips

Why Today Was Awesome

Today I created a list to live by based on what I consider to be a successful day. It’s slightly embarrassing to share this on the internets, but I really love lists and encouragement so here goes…

To take care of my body by:

Exercising: 60 minutes a day (taking Sunday’s off)

Eating Well: planning meals a day ahead, taking time to cook and count calories

Caring for my skin: Washing my face morning and night, using moisturizer

Caring for my teeth: brush morning and night (minimum), floss and use mouthwash

Caring for my feet and hands

To take care of my environment:

Keeping the dishes clean:  not going to bed with a dirty kitchen

Making the bed and putting clothes away

Quick tidy-up in the bathroom, living room and dining room

Caring for plants and animals: watering and tending

To Work Hard:

Complete “musts” on to-do lists

Complete small chunks of large projects daily

To meet deadlines and fulfill expectations, to do more than expected

To Be Creative:

To blog daily

To create new jewelry

Create new recipes

Take photographs

Paint and sew

To Connect:

Return emails as I read them

Stay in touch via phone, email, visits, twitter and facebook

Leave comments on blogs

Take time to do something fun with husband every day

Plan special events with husband, friends and family

All of the red tasks are items that I checked off my “successful day” checklist. I won’t do this every day, but it’s good for me to check in with my goals and to see if what I’m doing every day is taking me closer to them.

I’m making a true effort to get my eating in check this month. I feel like I keep saying it, but I really need to do it. It’s not that I feel that I’m eating horribly, but I can do better. My plan is planning. For tomorrow I have my breakfast and lunch already planned out and prepared with the calories counted. Everything is in a container and ready to go. I feel good about this, but I always feel good on day one. We’ll see.

We’ve entered week SEVEN of insanity and I just cannot believe it. I can hold a steady plank pose now. My stretches are much deeper and I am moving better in general. I’ve noticed that I don’t want to eat bad foods because I am having the thought “I won’t feel good enough to exercise if I’m bloated, or feel sick from food”. Having that thought is shocking for me. That is a thought that I think truly healthy people have; considering food choices because of how they makes you feel. I want to do so much that eating poorly would only take my energy away. I’m just now realizing this, food=energy, bad food takes energy, good food gives energy. Why did it take me so long to realize this?

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General Weight Loss Tips

Week Five

I’m in week five of the Insanity Workout and have so much that I want to make note of. So much so that I’m thinking about doing a video post. Here are my random, jumbled thoughts (when I really should be in bed) about exercising everyday…

1) It’s okay to exercise everyday. This hurdle has been huge for me and one that took me awhile to get over. In my mind daily exercise was unnecessary. I even got a comment on twitter from someone saying “watch out or you’ll burn out”. I felt defensive over that, a feeling that I often battle with when unsolicited advice comes my way. I feel like I shouldn’t have to defend exercising everyday.

My perspective is changing. What used to seem like a lot of exercise, 45 minutes, now seems like nothing. In fact I’m thinking in a whole day 45 minutes isn’t much. And then to think that I was barely getting that a week, or even three times a week is sort of astounding to me. But that’s what changing your perspective will do. I can exercise every day and not burn out. I think the reason is that I’m not expecting perfection with every workout. Most days I push myself and give it my all, but there have been some days when I’m barely showing up. I’m just going through the motions to get it over with. But I’m showing up and that’s what matters. I think before, just showing up was never good enough for the perfectionist in me, so I wouldn’t show up at all. I was all or nothing,  now I just do my best.

2) I am not losing a ton of weight. Before I started exercising intensely everyday  I used to think that’s all I needed to do to lose weight. Just one hour or so of intense exercise and I could eat what I wanted. I’m not sure why I thought this or where this idea came into play, but it’s simply not true. It is helpful for not gaining weight and that’s it. I’ve lost a little weight and I can tell that my waist is more defined and I’m much stronger. But, that 10-20 lbs. of weight that I thought would fall off effortlessly? not so.

I’m very very slowly getting my eating habits in check. This will be my next hurdle that I need to deal with. Exercise has been the first one and next will be food. And when I have both, well, I’ll be set. I mentally count calories, but sometimes I just want to eat. I still want to eat for comfort. I am eating better in general, cooking more at home and not eating refined sugar. I know that my next step is getting serious about planning ahead and counting calories. I can do it for about four days before I just get so tired of it.

3) Exercise can be mentally uncomfortable. I used to think that I had a hard time exercising because it was physically uncomfortable, it was too hard, I didn’t have enough time, I was lazy, etc. But, the truth is, exercise makes me face the uncomfortable facts about my body. It brings out emotions that are dormant during inactivity. I notice my size more, I notice the space I take up, I notice the effects of excess weight on my body. Stuff that I’ve tried to ignore or hide- suddenly become clear when I move my body like it’s meant to. When I can’t do yoga poses because of fat getting in the way. When my arms and wrists give out when I try to do push-ups. When I can’t grab my ankle for a quad stretch. Basic, human movements that are hard to do when you’re obese. Exercise is like shining a spotlight on everything I can’t do, and it is uncomfortable for me.

I once heard that the body stores emotions. It holds on to whatever we are dealing with (or not dealing with) and when we exercise these emotions can be released. I’ve experienced this. It makes me want to cry, or hide away. It can be intense when what you aren’t dealing with is released even when you’re not ready. And I think this is one reason why I’ve had a hard time sticking to consistent movement- it can unleash pain. For me, not letting it out in the form of exercise has lead to depression. I still suffer from my one hormonal week a month, but I feel like things are becoming clearer mentally.  Like the things I’ve been holding inside are coming out through energy and movement. I’m okay with being uncomfortable.

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Weight Loss Exercise

Today Matters Most

Today Matters MostI wrote an email to the people that are signed up for my 10 days of fitness program last week talking about my struggles with getting things done this January.

What I wrote was that just like everyone else I was scrambling around trying to do everything and what I had to do instead, what we all have to do instead, is to FOCUS on just what matters.

So this last week has been better. I just thought I would write this followup to that saying that indeed when you get the focus, peel off those extraneous things, then you can know what you really want and what you have control over to succeed.

Have you done this yourself?

I had a little booklet that I was writing everything in that I needed to do and last week I was able to get that focus going but this week has been a lot better. I have just a few “have to do” things

  • Write articles – for this blog and others
  • Exercise and have a plan for that everyday
  • A plan for the evening
  • Updates on Facebook and Twitter for quick hits for fitness stuff

The biggest problem there is the businesses that seems to invade January. I have been busy during the day and I knwo that the kids will keep me busy in the evening so I have had to note that and try to just steal a bit of time in the evening to get done what I need.

Have you tried to structure your day?

The other big thing this week is that I have honed in my focus on things that I can actually do now. I can exercise now today but i can no gain 10 pounds of muscle or lose 10 pounds of fat today, those things come as a result of what I do today. Actually this very post I was thinking about today and this morning it will be posted and done with. One of my goals this next while is to write 100 articles in 100 days so I thought if I got a post in and up in the morning then I would have the rest of the day to get ideas or inspiration for more to write about to help YOU out.

I always feel like I am a work in progress but just getting these ideas out and refining my own crazy thinking process always helps me to get more done that I know has to get done.

How about you?

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