I came out of 2015 at the highest weight I can ever remember reaching. When I got married in August I remember being frustrated that my wedding photos were going to immortalize me in a body shape that's doesn't look "me" to me. Then we ate poorly on the honeymoon, and I got home heavier than the wedding, and by the end of the year I'd put on even more weight.
If my body were heavy but were healthy and strong, then I could live with that. But I don't feel good, and I don't fit the clothes that I love to wear, and I am not strong. I decided that this needed to change. I've lost weight before -- the most was about 35 lbs, in 2010/11ish -- and I felt amazing! But I didn't maintain that, largely because I lost the weight through (sometimes extreme) restriction. At one point after my first year of university I was eating fewer than 500 calories per day. It worked, and I lost weight, but I balooned again.
To avoid the definition of crazy -- doing the same thing again and expecting different results -- I need to do something different this time. And what I've decided to do is to incorporate weight training. I've gotten some advice from a dear friend who is a personal trainer, and have acquired some dumbells (3lb, 5lb, and 15lb) and circuit exercises.
I'm aiming to do 30 min of interval training on a stationary bike 4-5x/week, in the mornings before work, and 30 min of circuit training 3x per week (evenings). I'm aiming to hit 10,000 steps every day.
Last week:
Bike: M, Th, S
Circuit: T, Th
10,000 steps: F, Sat (very close for T, W, Th)
What I struggled with last week:
I'm doing a terrible job of getting to bed on time, which makes getting up to work out before work really hard! I also feel better equipped to do the circuit training this week, since I've gotten my dumbells and done more research about what to do. Before, I was trying to do body weight exercises, I was getting a lot of wrist pain, and I can't afford to hurt my wrists. I did some research and apparently one should try to put one's weight on other parts of the hand, but in practice that didn't seem to be doing the trick, and the wrist pain would make me stop long before the workout was done. Perhaps I'm just too heavy for my wrists right now? In the meantime, I'm going to use dumbells instead.
What I'm proud of last week:
The first day I "lost" a lot of weight, basically just water weight, of course. Then the next six days were an excruciating inching towards an ends-with-a-0 number, but never quite tipping over into the ends-with-a-9 number. When that's happened to me in the past, I've gotten very discouraged, because it feels like you're working so hard without any results. I'm proud that this week I stuck to my plan, even when the scale went up a bit, and even when I needed to go out to eat or where there were delicious nibblies at with friends. I was rewarded this morning when the scale tipped over into ends-with-a-9 territory!
What I'm looking forward to this week:
I'm looking foward to using my new dumbells! I did my first circuit with them this morning, and I enjoyed working different muscles than my usual biking and walking ones. I'm also looking forward to having a quieter week than normal, since I only have two evenings dedicated to work activities. I find busier weeks lead to "decision fatigue" and my resolve to eat well and stick to my exercise plan fails.