While the summer break is ending, a new season is beginning. In one day, I will be back to work at the school and ready to be back into a routine. It has been a long time since I have written anything, and with the change, I am hoping that this will be a fresh start. One thing that I have learned about my weight loss journey is that sometimes along the way, you must start fresh with a clean slate. You have missed so many of your smaller goals that it makes it near impossible to reach your next one, so rather than stressing about it, you start fresh and new, with a new set of goals. You look at your past achievements and know that you didn't come this far doing nothing. You set goals all along the way and made changes to your life to help you get this far. It has almost been exactly 2 years since the very beginning of my weight loss journey this time around and I have lost 57lbs. That is quite an accomplishment to be proud of. I cannot be unhappy with what I have done so far. If my body were to say right now that it just could not do anymore, than I will be happy. But I do not believe that I am done yet. I am still losing weight. Slow and steady. I actually do have a goal to try to reach my ideal weight by Halloween. It is probably pushing it a little bit, but sometimes it is good to take on a challenge and see if you can achieve it. I hope that as I start fresh, some of you reading this might be thinking the same thing. While I still have lost quite a bit of weight over the summer, it was not as much as I had hoped. With the new season and changes happening in my day to day life, my hope is that it will help me to be more consistent.
Challenge yourself with the new season to just start over and start by drinking more water, doing light exercise, and eating more fruits and vegetables and less of everything else. That is a great start! I do want to emphasize that if it has been awhile since you have exercised, please don't try to run a mile or do a 60 minute class/video right away. You have to work up to it or else you could wind up injuring yourself. Over the summer, I read that majority of successful weight loss cases were people who decided just to take up walking everyday. When you are starting your workout regimen, I would recommend first off to listen to your body. If you are feeling a lot of pain during your workout, you are pushing yourself too much. The most you should feel during a workout is maybe a little fatigued, but not pain. I would suggest starting with 20-30 minutes of cardio 3 times a week and 2 sessions of strength training. If your body has not fully recovered by your next workout, then either take a break or do a very low intensity workout, such as walking. Sometimes movement can help the soreness to go away because you are warming up the muscle and helping the lactic acid to exit the area. However, one of the reasons the muscle is sore is because there are little tears all the way through it and they still need to repair. You do not want that muscle to tear all the way through.
It has been awhile since I have done my early morning workouts, and I'll be honest, I'm a bit intimidated at the thought simply because the last time I did a video workout I had a hard time breathing. It is peak allergy season for me. So rather than starting off this new season doing 60 minute workouts, I will be doing 30 minute workouts each morning until I am ready to move up. I feel that I need to take it easy since my body has had a rest from the schedule I held last year. My intent is to get up again at 5am each morning to workout before work. I really found that this schedule worked well for me last year and I'm hoping that it will work well for me again this year. It had me going in the morning and by the time I was done with work, I knew it was already done for the day and all I needed to do was go home, make dinner, and not have to worry about trying to fit working out in with everything else that needed to be done at night.
I do also want to mention that I am currently using www.myfitnesspal.com for keeping track of my calorie counts. While I loved using www.sparkpeople.com, I discovered a large number of my friends use www.myfitnesspal.com and since I am not only looking for a way to keep track of my calories, but also have accountability, I decided to switch over. If you are interested in using this program, you can friend me just like you would on facebook. My username is KaraBeem. One of the features that I like about this program is that you can allow your friends to see your food diary and get some pointers or allow them to see what you are doing to make you so successful with your weight loss. You can also see some of your friends diaries as well to get some ideas for meals. Especially when you can see that they are very successful in their weight loss.
Hoping you all hit the ground running this time around! If you are ever in need of some pointers, let me know. I'd be happy to share what I have learned. :)
