March 9, 2013

Small Steps

I have the weekend off, which is great because it gives me more time to get things done around the house (especially since my fiancé is away). However, weekends off also kind of suck because I don't usually have enough to do to keep myself busy. That being said, while I won't be on my feet for eight hours a day this weekend, I am working on the small steps that make up "the plan" I mentioned in my first post.

Drink More Water:
I have one of these babies:
It is the 32 oz. Guzzler from the Rednek mason jar collection. I loooove it, especially in the summer because I can fill this bad boy up with the refreshing adult beverage of my choice and not have to refill for... well, it doesn't last as long as it would with most people, but it lasts long enough! However, I also made the connection that it is fantastic for monitoring my water intake! I've been popping a chunk of lemon in there, filling it up with nice, cold water, and going to down. This weekend, I am committing to finishing three of these per day. I am almost down one for today!

Move More:
While I haven't started a formal exercise regime (too many things at once leaves me overloaded and giving up, I've found), I am trying to integrate more movement into my day. My fiancĂ© and I are both working on the "100 pushups program" using apps on our phones, but I am also trying to add more steps into my day. I don't have a pedometer, but I realized last Wednesday that taking the stairs down from my 11th-floor apartment to the basement (to do laundry) adds 250 steps onto my day.  So far today, I've done that twice, plus walked up from the 6th floor twice (lets say that's about 100 steps each). 250 + 250 + 100 + 100 = 700 extra steps, just by (mostly) forgoing the elevator! On an otherwise idle weekend, this adds some valuable activity.

Eat Less: 
This right here will be my struggle, especially on days off. Food is still my comfort; I'm used to eating constantly throughout the day, despite attempts to curb it. Logging calories hasn't worked because if I overeat (as I usually do), I just don't write it down. I am hoping that drinking a ton of water will help by making me feel too full to eat, and then after a few days/a week of that, I might be able to work on actively refusing food when I don't need it.

I am the queen of long posts, whee!

The Beginning of The End...

This sure is a blog.

The title of this post should actually be, "the beginning of the end of my struggles with my self, my appearance, and my weight", but that would be way too long.

My name is Jen, and I have been engaged in a constant struggle with my weight (my self, as well, but this is mostly about the weight) for as long as I can remember. The first anxieties I suffered around my weight were in the fifth or sixth grade when those Child ID cards that never panned out brought my attention, and that of everyone else in my class, to the fact that I was much, much heavier than everyone else. I had always been active, but I guess I have also always loved food. As much as I hate to echo the same sentiments as many others who have gotten ridiculously overweight, food was not only delicious but it was my best friend; made me feel better when I had a bad day at school, when I was stressed out. Devilishly enough, food also comforted me when I was stressed about my weight.

I've been trying to actively lose weight since the eighth grade through a number of different methods: less snacks (and certainly no cookies after dinner), Herbal Magic (which did help me lose weight but also messed up my stomach for life, was insanely expensive, and was not sustainable), obsessive calorie counting and restriction (in my 3rd year of University, I restricted myself to 500 calories per day; to its credit, this is what helped me lose the first 30ish pounds which I have mostly kept off), and lowering my carb intake. That last one was a preventative measure against gaining ridiculous amounts of weight on the evil drug prednisone, and it helped a bit! Somewhere in that mess, I also got very sick (later diagnosed as IBD) and got down to my lowest adult weight ever, 136 pounds. It's a little sickening to know how much I enjoyed seeing that on the scale, despite how much pain I was going through at the time.

Today, I weighed in at 162 pounds. The older I get, the more I realize that this much weight on a 5'4" frame is not only extremely unattractive, but also very unhealthy. I started this blog to allow me to reflect on my successes (and probably moreso my failures) with losing this weight once and for all. I don't really have anyone I can talk about this in the offline world, so I hope that keeping a blog will help me (a) be accountable, (b) have a place I can rant and rave about my cravings while I am trying to stave them off, and (c) keep track of the steps I have taken towards my goal. I don't have a plan, mostly because every time I make a comprehensive weight loss plan, it ends up being disregarded after a week or so, so I am just starting simple: work on eating less, drinking more water, and moving more. That's "the plan".