No More Excuses!

Well, here we go again...

2008 was a very good year for my fitness program. From January to June, I lost approximately 40 pounds! From June to October, I pretty much held steady... A few pounds crept back on, but I was in a comfortable place. For the first time in my adult life, I was comfortably fitting in Large shirts, rather than X-Large. In fact, the XL shirts felt like circus tents, and all got tossed out because they were actually uncomfortable!

That was a HUGE accomplishment! My pants were in a similar situation. I still had another 10-15 pounds to go to reach my goal, but things were going really well.

November and December were NOT kind to me.

The normal Holiday feasting joined forces with the stresses (and time constraints) of beginning our adoption process, and then spending as much time as possible at the hospital for three weeks padded a full 10 pounds back on my body.

The Large shirts feel rather restrictive now. The few remaining XLs that I have, are comfortable, which makes me uncomfortable. (follow that?)

Pants, to put it simply, SUCK.

I've still been mostly getting to the Y on Tuesdays and Thursdays for racketball, but I haven't worked out at lunchtime, or on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Saturday in ages. I've also fallen back into the deadly habits of snacking at work.

All of these things have accompanying excuses.

"I was up feeding Danee, and now I'm too tired to get up and work out."
"I didn't get to bed on time in the first place, so I'm too tired to get up and work out."
"Wow! 16 mini pretzels is only 100 calories!"
"Wow! Since mini pretzels are so mini, I think I'll have a few more handfuls!"

And so on, and so forth.

One excuse that really IS a legitimate one, is that my life is very busy. I have 5 kids, including a newborn, and a learning-driver who is active in school sports and band. Add in the other two, and there's pretty much always something going on after work in the evenings that requires my presence.

I decided last year, and this was one of the things that made it such a successful year, that the ONLY time of the entire day that is truly MINE to do what I want and/or need, is the ridiculously early morning. Sure, many days, I can go to the Y during my lunch hour, but that can't be consistent because there are frequently projects or problems that force me to work through lunch. So getting up at 4:30 and getting my butt into the Y for a good workout is the only way that I'm able to be consistent in my exercise.

Unfortunately, since bringing home Da Baby, there are some mornings where getting up that early is much harder than it already would be.

However, I can guarantee you that if I needed to be up that early for work, or to catch a plane to Disneyland, I'd be up. It's all about discipline, which I'm generally pretty good at... Especially when there's some sort of accountability to another person involved.

I decided this morning after racketball that I was going to write this up, and officially start my program back up. I was shocked to look over the blog list and see that my cousin Marilyn wrote a nearly identical post this morning!

Her motivation in writing it is just like mine with this. By putting it up here, in public, we feel accountable. She's going to add brief status updates to the bottom of her posts - which I think is a brilliant idea, and one that I'm going to completely steal! (Thanks, M!)

The other thing that helped me in 2008 was accurately logging my food intake. Those handfulls of pretzels are far too easy to eat and forget about... But if I have to add to my daily journal that I ate 16 pretzels, I know from experience that it keeps me from doing that very often. It certainly makes me stop at the allotted serving size! I use a website called Fitday to keep track of all that, as well as my exercise and weight. It's been several months since I've logged into my account, so as a final rude awakening today, I had to update my weight from my last-posted 198 to my current 215.

Ouch.

It'll be going down now though. It has to. I will NOT be buying any XL shirts. I WILL be getting comfortable in my current batch of clothing, and moving beyond 2008's successes.

Feel free to check up on me. You can click here to view my Fitday journal. I log everything that goes in my mouth while I'm at work, but I'll just say in advance that I usually don't add dinner. Too hard to calculate stuff. For dinner, I just exercise portion control and avoid after dinner snacking. I used to have a link to my journal up in the "The Good Stuff" section at the top of the page. It's going back. Even if nobody actually looks at it, just knowing it's publicly available should help keep me on track!

So, once again - seriously, this is probably the 3rd or 4th time I've blogged my fitness goals - I'm going to buckle down and get disciplined.

I will break below the 200 pound mark.

This time, I will stay there.

Any encouragement(s) will be truly appreciated. ☺