All About Beginning Again..and Again

When I see the beginning of an episode of Biggest Loser (or any other show like that) I feel so excited for the person on the show. They have such an amazing journey that they are only just about to begin. They can come so far and it is all about to happen for them. All they have to do is make the decision to change and stick to it....and of course a ton of sweating away all those calories. While I don't envy the weight they have to lose or the long, difficult road ahead of them I do feel like they are so lucky to have the opportunity to be an amazing success story and all they have to do is begin. I will not have such an amazing story but I do have the opportunity for a new beginning...or a few of them!

I have been reluctant to write here for the past month or two. This is because I was busy being human and making all kinds of yummy mistakes and excuses. It all started with a little mini vacation filled with food and drinks without restriction. Before leaving for this vacation I was doing wonderful, going to the gym five days a week, running often, attending boot camp classes and cardio kick boxing. I was feeling good and I was getting very close to my goal weight. One four day mini vacation derailed me entirely. I came back hung over and about five pounds heavier...that means I was gaining more than a pound a day!! When I came back I was a little discouraged but tried to get right back into my workout routine. The problem is that when I stepped on the scale it was so much further from where I had been I was losing motivation fast! So what did I do? Sabotaged myself of course! I would work out and then cook a meal that wasn't healthy or go out and eat afterwards. On the bright side I was still working out so I wasn't gaining weight but it is pretty difficult to stop the junk food/adult beverages habit when you are fooling yourself into believing that working out isn't doing anything at all. Fortunately I am not new to this whole losing weight and getting healthy thing. I will never forget how unhappy I was when I was 30 pounds heavier and refuse to ever let myself return to that unhappiness. I recently started to think about all of the people who have so much more weight to lose than I do and started thinking about how exciting beginning their journeys will be for them and I realized I can have another beginning too. I just need to get excited about it....

Last Thursday I decided enough is enough...time to start! Of course starting must be planned so I chose Monday as the day. That gave me a few days to get in all of my favorite foods and beverages so that I would not feel deprived when my journey began (it was a yummy weekend!). Monday came around and I was ready...until I woke up and realized I was sick. Totally miserable with my head cold I decided that this was my beginning, ideal or not, I would not waste it making excuses. So while I couldn't go to the gym or run I did have my diet in my control. I began, as planned, on schedule. I started the "Curves diet" that has helped me so much in the past. This diet (which is more of a lifestyle than a diet, it is not meant to be temporary) begins with a very difficult first week. I am allowed only 1200 calories and very specific amounts of fat, carbohydrates and protein. It is now day four and I will not lie...I am pretty hangry!

The idea behind this difficult first week is that it jump starts your metabolism. I am not an expert on this so I can not say whether or not this is true. What it really does for me though is get me to choose my foods very carefully making sure that every calorie consumed was a good choice. I have said before that I like to track things. For food/calorie tracking my favorite app on the iPhone is the SparkPeople app. This app lets you store your favorite food so that it is easy to track foods you eat often. It also allows you to easily search for foods or upload nutrition info for a food. You are able to use the nutrition info that other users have uploaded making it very easy to find just about anything you may find yourself eating. It also has a fitness log (which I am not overly impressed with because it doesn't count the calories burned for you). One bonus of this feature is that you can set goals and track your progress. It also has a weight tracker...I wasn't tracking this over the past few weeks cause well, it was not something I really wanted to see. Here is my new beginning-

That recent high point was my starting point on Monday morning. 130.1 pounds. The jump to there was not as drastic as it looks, as I said before I hadn't been tracking because my behaviors were less than healthy. I weighed in at exactly 128 pounds this morning making it a pretty good week considering I hadn't been to the gym in a full week. A few pound drop is to be expected in this first (brutal) week. In my Curves guide book it states that most of the weight lost this week is water weight...honestly though it doesn't matter what it is as long as the numbers keep getting smaller- a pound is a pound :) Now that I am finally getting over my cold I can get back to my fitness routine and get a little further down the road on my journey to health and happiness.

I want to add that when I say that I am on a "diet" I do not mean it the way most people think. I feel that you should only diet with foods/amounts that you can eat, healthily, forever. The (Higher Protein Version) Curves diet worked very well for me in the past and I had continued eating it almost perfectly for about two years. Eating this way got rid of my heart burn (which I was experiencing every day) and my headaches (also a daily occurrence) as well as  helped me to lose 35 pounds pretty quickly. It just occurred to me that people may try to find out what this "curves diet" is all about so I googled it. Unfortunately the info that I came across was either false or the diet has changed since I got their book. I have taken a picture of the guide for the diet for the first week as well as the following weeks...just in case you are curious about what worked for me.

Sorry the picture isn't wonderful but the iPhone camera did it's very, very best! These guidelines are only for the first week and are not to be continued longer as the body needs more than this to be healthy and health is what we are striving for right?!

Here is the guidelines for the second week. You continue eating this way until you plateau or reach your goal weight.

(Again, thanks iphone camera for your amazing quality photos!)

I just wanted to post these so that no one was thinking that I was saying it is healthy to limit carbs to 20 grams per day...that's what I was finding in my searched and I would never limit myself like that. The body needs carbohydrates. 

Ok...when I start these blog posts I have a direction and mental picture of what it will be and then when I finish I realize that the post sort of did it's own thing. Hope I didn't ramble on too much!! The point that I really wanted to get across is that taking that first step towards your health and fitness (no matter how many steps you have in front of you) is, and should be exciting! My journey begins (again) here...join me. Lets find fitness, health and happiness!!