Picking up speed….

I forget how exhilarating it feels once you start sticking to a healthy program.  While trying to get motivated for this change in my life from April 21 – May 21, I discovered that I lost 8 pounds!  That’s with about 25% effort!  It has me geeked for month 2 and I am giving it 100%!

So I have been sticking to a diet consistent with the 1330 calories a day that http://www.myfitnesspal.com/ recommends and I gave myself some freedom and didn’t track over the holiday weekend.  This doesn’t mean I went on a bingefest for the weekend, I just didn’t want to look up and post every thing I ate/drank for the holiday weekend.  I still tried to make smart choices and allowed a few treats.  I was warned by a well meaning friend that 1330 calories was too low for someone burning 500+ calories a day at the gym.  So I posted my stats to Instagram and received advice from none other than the amazing Jillian Michaels herself.

So basically I am not eating up to 1650 calories every day, but on the days I hit the gym, I am not beating myself up if I go over 1330.  If I seem to hit a plateau, I will revisit it.  I am still flabbergasted that someone who gets paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to train and coach people took time out from her busy day to give me some advice.  She is A-Ok in my book!

I am also enjoying playing with healthier foods and cooking around the calories I have left every day for dinner.  Whole Foods has become a more regular stop for me after the gym and I have found a few things there that I love.  Their spicy Italian chicken sausage is from free range, hormone and anti-biotic free chicken, it’s delish and it’s only 140 calories a link!!  Sauteed that up with a chopped up organic yellow bell pepper, a quarter of a sweet vidalia onion, 1 jalapeno pepper and a serving of Cento tomato sauce and tossed in 1 serving of organic basmati brown rice!  Yummy and satisfying dinner that filled an entire dinner plate and was 394 calories!!  Left some room for the delicious dairy free cherry nirvana by Purely Decadent that I picked up at Whole Foods.  My other Whole Foods favorite (thanks Mom!) is The Republic of Tea’s Hibiscus Pineapple Lychee Tea.  I am not a tea drinker and this stuff is yum-o!

I am not getting in as many runs as I really need to for my marathon training, so that needs work.  I am NOT a morning person, so successfully waking up with the sun to squeeze in a morning run has been a challenge.  I love my spinning classes (now that I’ve narrowed down who the lousy instructors are at LA Fitness) and I don’t want to give them up since I am burning above 500 calories in each 1 hour class AND it’s one of those cardio exercises that pushes your body to burn even more calories after you are done.  So I am trying to get to bed earlier and sleeping with the blinds and curtains open (don’t even think about it pervs, I sleep in pajamas!) so I can rise with the sun.

I think the thing that I feel best about is feeling the bloating going down and my pants aren’t tight anymore.  I look forward to pulling some of my smaller sizes out of the closet in the near future. 

It’s not always easy….  you won’t ALWAYS want to work out…  You will crave ice cream, pizza and an adult beverage from time to time.  But when I begin to lose focus I just look at the screen of my iPhone…

Searching for my “WHY” and it smacks me in the face…

So since my last blog, I have been trying to identify my “WHY”…  the reason for wanting to lose weight. One that is so important to me that it will be the key to getting me thru the low moments when I just want to pull the blinds, put on my yoga pants and t-shirt and plow thru an entire Louie’s large deep dish pepperoni pizza and 2 pints of Treat Dreams luscious ice cream without the outside world’s judgement.  (Yes, I’ve done that…  don’t judge me.)

What some of you may (or may not) know is that I made a decision back in January to try to get pregnant and fulfill the lifelong dream to become a mother.  I had a close friend of 20+ years volunteer to be the donor.  I have my reasons for feeling more comfortable with this option than others, but that’s for a fertility and life choice blog.  This is a health blog.  Again, I realize this decision may open me up to judgement from others, but I am comfortable in my decision and only have one being to answer to for it when all is said and done.

The challenge with my decision is that my donor lives in Las Vegas.  This means pinpointing my ovulation day and planning my trip around it.  Sounds simple. Well, what most women can tell you is that if you are dieting, exercising or experiencing any stress in your life, your body reacts to that by changing your menstrual cycle on you.  In January, I tried starting a diet before my trip and it resulted in starting my cycle one day early and $120 in fees to change my plane ticket to a day earlier than planned.  This month I started hitting the gym and eating a healthy reduced calorie diet and it resulted in a 5 day delay in my normally “set your watch by it” cycle.  This had me stressed because I had already planned my vacation time at work around this and actually booked the plane ticket too.  After a week of worrying and stressing and freaking out about what the heck was going on with my body (the only other time I had been this late, I WAS pregnant.  Before you ask, that was not possible this month without divine intervention, reference the virgin Mary) I finally decided that this was not the way to go about things…

While I want a child and to be a mother more than anything in this world, I realized that I was worrying about being an overweight pregnant woman, which comes with a whole new set of risks when your 40+.  Then I started thinking how it was going to be extra hard to get not just pregnancy weight, but the existing weight off with a new born in the house as a single mother.

Then something Jillian Michaels said about wanting to see your kids graduate and get married hit me like a brick in the face.  How irresponsible is it to bring a child into this world full of unexpected deaths and health risks when I can control the biggest cause of death in our country today?  Losing weight and eating healthy can significantly reduce my risk for type 2 diabetes and heart disease.  I’ve lost 3 of my grand parents to heart disease already, two of whom had type 2 diabetes.

So I took a step back and made a decision that could eventually effect fulfilling my biggest lifelong dream of becoming a mother, and in that decision, I found my “WHY”.

I need to focus on my health and losing weight before I can responsibly bring a child into this world (or adopt one who has already experienced the heart break of losing it’s biological parents).  This means a lot of hard work.   This means being diligent in eating a healthy, calorie conscious diet.  If I want to see dramatic results in a short period of time, it also means working out as much as possible.  My ultimate goal would be to get up and run 5/6 days a week before work and to do circuit training at least 3 days a week after work with spinning on the days I am not doing the circuit training.  Allowing myself a rest day on Sundays.  Until I am under 200lbs I can not feel comfortable making another attempt at having a child.  The emotional eater in me just uses the disappointment to over eat when each attempt is unsuccessful (we’ve tried twice).   I need to be in a healthier place.

So I have found my “WHY”…  This will be my driving force.  Have you found yours?  I’d love to hear it so that I can help root you on in your journey too!