I’ve been thinking about things I want to accomplish in 2012… I use the word accomplish because resolutions always induce a sense of failure in my mind if they’re not accomplished. I wanted to come up with a small list of goals I know I could realistically reach by the end of the year. So this is what I came up with…

Keep moving
No matter what keep moving. These past few months I’ve tried to do some sort of physical activity every day unless I’m sick or on the rare occasion I’m booked solid all day. I want to keep this up, and I don’t think it’ll be difficult since it feels like exercising has become a habit. I can definitely tell a difference in my mood and how I feel physically on days when I can’t fit anything in or I’m forced to stay in bed because of sickness.

Eat more veggies
I have no problem getting fruit into my diet everyday. I love fruit. Veggies, on the other hand… Some sort of salad is my veggie of choice but lately I’m so burned out on leaves of any kind. In all honesty, I need to be more proactive about finding healthy recipes to make veggies taste better. Plus, the weight would probably come off a bit faster if I ate more veggies.

Stay focused
When I say stay focused I don’t mean stay focused on getting healthy but all aspects of my life. We live in a world where everyone is multitasking and distracted (or is that me?) so it’s always hard to stay focused on one thing. If I have downtime, I’m not resting, I’m probably wasting time on my iPhone. I need to enjoy more downtime that requires me to be off the grid and actually enjoying that downtime.

Date
I like being single a lot and have no plans of it changing in 2012 on account of that selfish reason. That being said, it’s fun to go on a date with someone new, getting to know someone, flirting, etc. As I was brainstorming these goals, I set a number for how many dates I should go on (no, I will not say publicly how many I wrote down!) Then I remembered how many dates I’ve been on in the past five years, and I thought I shouldn’t get too set on a number. Plus, I don’t want to force going on a date with someone I don’t really want to go on a date with to meet some quota.

. . . and if I’m feeling really good:

Run a 5K
The ideal time of doing this would be Spring or Fall because I hate Kentucky’s humidity. I need to look into it for sure but I’m behind on training if I plan to do it in the Spring. Realistically, if it happens it’ll be in the Fall.

2012 is going to be my year. What do you have planned?

Can you limit your sitting and sleeping to just 23.5 hours a day?
Yes, you can.

Happy December! As I was beginning this post I remembered that this past week was week 13. Is 13 supposed to be lucky or unlucky? Either way it was a lucky week for me. First, according to my dailymile stats I’ve walked 300 miles since 9/12! That would be the equivalent of walking to Nashville and back. Second, my weight finally moved! Third, and unrelated to my health, Ryan Adams is playing in town next month and I have tickets! Weee!

Monday I had a strength training consultation with one of the owners of my gym. I was surprised that she remembered me and greeted me with a big hug. I know many people prefer to remain anonymous at the gym and quite honestly I preferred that in the past. When people don’t take notice it’s easy to slack off or not show up. We went through a routine together and it requires balance and coordination; two skills I haven’t mastered. Needless to say, my form wasn’t great but I did it and I’ll get better the more I do it. The strength training was a workout by itself so I’m not sure where I mustered up the energy to get on the elliptical for 35 minutes after but I powered through.

I woke up Tuesday to some major soreness in my hamstrings and my chest. I was reminded of it in everything I did. I took the day off because we were at the hospital most of the day with Dad and honestly I wanted to take it easy.

Wednesday when I woke up I decided to weigh myself for some reason. I lost a few pounds – and my total weight loss is 20.2 pounds!!! 20lbs was my first big goal and I was completely ecstatic I finally reached it. I went back for round two even though I was still sore from Monday. I got through it and attempted to do some cardio but lasted a whole two minutes. My legs wouldn’t let me go any further. It wasn’t me being lazy, it was me knowing my limits, and I needed to give my muscles a rest. Later that evening I was still sore but I wanted to go for a walk and see if that would help. I’m not sure what got into me but as soon as I turned the corner on the road I normally walked, I started jogging. I made it pretty far, stopped to walk briefly, and back to jogging. I did that through the first half and decided to walk back. I guess it was the adrenaline of the cold and jogging but I didn’t feel any pain. Walking back was another story, with every step I felt the pain again in my hamstrings. It wasn’t an unbearable pain otherwise I wouldn’t have been laughing at myself the entire trek back.

I can’t remember what happened Thursday but I was only able to get in a walk that turned into a repeat of the night before. I was smiling most of the way thinking about how a couple months ago I couldn’t jog this far and now I can. I’ve still got a long way to go but these little things make me feel wonderful and all of this is worth it.

Friday I went back to the gym for my third day of strength training. I only had a certain amount of time I could spend at the gym due to other obligations and I knew I was being sloppy as a result. I managed to fit in some time on the elliptical but not as much as I would’ve liked. I guess my body is slowly adapting because there’s not much lingering pain after the workout and I don’t feel like I’m crawling to get out of my car which is always a plus!

The weekend was pretty uneventful at the gym due to other plans but I managed to get in some exercise both days. I made it a point to start writing down a few goals (fitness related and non-fitness related) for 2012 and I’ll post those eventually.

Oh, look at this! OK, I’m done feeling good about myself now! ;-D

For a while my weight loss has slowed down to the point that it’s not moving. I finally stopped weighing myself every week because it was disheartening seeing my weight not moving, or that I gained weight. I took a week to count calories but I got as far as the fourth day, and while I was keeping it under every day, it was overwhelming to keep track of everything with other things going on. I am going to try again soon.

It’s been chilly and/or rainy the past few weeks, which doesn’t necessarily keep me from walking, but it’s hard to keep up with the mileage I’ve been doing on nice days. I’ve been trying to do workout videos in addition (usually Taebo or Jillian Michael’s 30-day shred) to make up for the mileage. Last Friday, I was determined to go back to Iroquois Park since I needed a change of scenery and something that would kick my butt – thank you Christina for introducing me to this park! I knew it was going to be cold that morning (30-something F) but after my body and brain fought one another for about 20 minutes I finally got used to it. I was so happy after I finished.

As much as I didn’t want to pay for a gym membership again, I figured it would be necessary when it’s really cold and snowy this winter. I signed up at Anytime Fitness; I’ve been a member twice in the past and really enjoyed the atmosphere, and the couple who own the place are really nice. When I was signing up, I told one of the owners about things I mentioned above, and he suggested strength training to get things moving again since I haven’t been doing that. He also set up an appointment tomorrow to meet with someone to talk about strength training and come up with a routine so that I can get the results that I want. I’m not sure if it’ll be a training session or more talking about what I should be doing. Either way I’m excited about it and looking forward to moving onto the next thing.

Lastly, I leave you with a nice sunset from a walk earlier this week. :)

Happy November! I’m into week 9 of my fitness journey and feeling great aside from some (temporary) physical pain but more on that later…

When I first started out I was apprehensive about blogging or even making a separate twitter account documenting what I’m doing/eating/etc. to be healthy because what if I fail? Thinking about that now, I’ve missed out on things in life because I’m too worried about failure. I guess we all have this fear of failure to a point, but I feel like in certain aspects of my life that fear is more paralyzing than it should be. I’m so glad I started blogging and tweeting about this. It’s held me accountable and kept my mind stimulated – often when it should be stimulated on other things. When I began I doubt I could come up with anything nice to say about myself, and the more I think about it; I’ve felt this way a long time. It’s sad that I let it get to that point. With that being said, I feel like in this short time my confidence is back to what it should be. I haven’t lost a huge amount of weight this early on but I feel like I’ve lost twice that amount. These small victories keep my head up and onto the next challenge.

Speaking of challenges… Yesterday I was inputting data from the previous day into my Dailymile account, and I noticed I was at 193 miles since 9/12 and so close to 200. I completed 3 miles earlier in the day and I began wondering if I could pull off 4 more miles by the end of the day. I wasn’t sure if it was going to happen but I made it to 200.41 miles last night! I knew as soon as I sat down on the couch my body was going to seek revenge. It wasn’t the mileage but the fact I took a certain trail with an intense hill 3 times. Needless to say, when I woke up around 2am to pain in my hips, thighs, and knees I wasn’t too surprised. For the most part it doesn’t hurt so much now but I have no plan to do anything intense today to test that.

I’ve been listening to this song called “What Doesn’t Kill You (Stronger)” by Kelly Clarkson on repeat the past couple of days and I absolutely love it. It’s such an empowering song that gets me going. Enjoy!

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, Stand a little taller.. What doesn’t kill you makes a fighter, Footsteps even lighter”

My relationship with food has always been a dysfunctional one. This past weekend I didn’t make great food choices. I take that back, Friday evening I had sushi, and I don’t think any roll I sampled was particularly bad for me especially since I don’t eat sushi that often. Saturday after walking around Iroquois Park with friends I was starving. Unfortunately, I had to go to the grocery to pick up things for what would’ve been a healthy dinner: veggie lasagna. After picking up ingredients for dinner I stopped at the Wendy’s drive thru because it was about 3pm and I needed to eat something. My diet coke ended up being a Coke as I pulled away from the window. I don’t particularly like Coke products anyway so drinking regular coke was enough to turn my appetite off. I didn’t eat much of what I ordered; 1/2 of my burger and maybe a handful of fries. Still it would’ve been a few hundred calories. I made dinner and probably ate too much bread before the lasagna finished cooking. Cue to 10pm and meeting up with a girlfriend at Qdoba. I wasn’t hungry, but I didn’t want to be at home, and being out with a friend is always better. I had no plan to order anything and after I got there I ordered food. What the hell! I got through 1/3 of it and was wondering why I was eating this, especially since a good portion of it is just an extra large tortilla and rice. I stopped myself and felt disgusted.

Sunday comes and I eat fairly healthy. I had some sort of homemade Japanese noodle soup that my brother-in-law made for lunch and left over lasagna for dinner. I still got over my goal in steps for the day, but I had to drag myself to walk that morning, and even then I only did half of what I normally did.

Monday was the worst. I’ve found if I don’t eat breakfast as soon as I get up and then go for a walk I’ll put it off most of the day. I got my walk in even though I was miserable that entire hour. I had to watch my niece that afternoon and evening so me being cranky + 6 year old who is equally cranky = both of us wanting to go cry in a corner. For a snack after school, Emi wanted ice cream. I love ice cream. I thought about it and I haven’t had ice cream in about 6 weeks. WHAT?! I should note, I haven’t been depriving myself of any food during this whole process, but I haven’t had a craving for it or been anywhere specifically for ice cream. We stopped at Baskin Robbins and I was let down by the options. I decided not to get anything especially since I have a Comfy Cow coupon I need to use. If I’m going to have ice cream, I’d rather wait and go somewhere I’ll actually enjoy every single calorie of it. I didn’t have a snack after lunch so at this point I’m starving. When I got home, I ate a few chips..next nuts…next grapes… It’s getting gradually better, right? lol I had two dinners that night followed by anything I could get my hands on after dinner and finally I decided I would just go to bed. I was binging!

Tuesday morning I wasn’t in a good place. I made breakfast and decided after breakfast I would take a nap in hopes that I’d wake up in a better mood. Instead of sleeping, I laid there watching a special on people with strange addictions: people who’ve eaten lightbulbs, couch cushions, toilet paper, etc. and suddenly I felt the tiniest bit better about myself. I mustered up some energy to walk and felt so accomplished after I finished. I thought about a lot of things but mainly: why did I binge, and why are you beating yourself up over it especially when you’ve come this far? Maybe I was indeed hungry on Monday and that was my body’s way of saying “You’re not eating enough for the amount you’re exercising” and I was making poor food choices to compensate, or maybe it stems from the emotional eating I’ve done in the past. Either way I just need to accept that it happened, dust myself off, and move on. By the end of the day, I walked a little over 5 miles. I was back!

Tuesday evening, I was testing out an outfit for the date I have on Friday (same guy from last week — I guess he has nothing better to do! heh). I haven’t worn this dress and the belt that goes with it since May so I wanted to make sure it still looked OK. I don’t really remember how the dress fit because it’s made out of stretchy material and so it’s hard to judge. I looked at the belt before putting it on with the dress to see which hole I was using before, and when I put it on I was down two holes and there are no holes after this one (!!)

Seeing accomplishments like this make me feel awesome and like all of my hard work is paying off. So why was I letting the one misstep bring me down for a couple days? I took this image from another website but I wanted to pass it along. Just something to think about…

It’s been a good exercising week — at least I think so! I recently purchased a Fitbit and I’ve been having some inaccuracies with it and so I’ve had to estimate how I’ve been doing each day in terms of mileage and calories burned. From the looks of Google I’m the only person who didn’t like theirs. In all honestly, I should’ve done more research before purchasing it but I read countless reviews where people raved about them. Now I’m back to my $14 pedometer that works pretty accurately out of the box and gives me the exact information I want.

With only 3 pairs of “workout” bottoms I have to do laundry a couple times during the week, and since I’ve been busy every day this week I’ve fallen behind. There were a pair of workout shorts I bought earlier this summer that have been sitting in the bottom of my drawer barely worn, because they were too tight to be seen out in public in. I couldn’t even be bothered to wear them just around the farm because they reminded me I really needed to lose weight. I reluctantly put them on Thursday morning and they fit really good! They were no longer tight in the hips, stomach, or legs. I could actually sit down in them and breathe! I haven’t taken many photos of myself as I’ve been going along but this needed to be documented! And I didn’t care about the fact I just woke up and hadn’t showered before taking the photo. And I didn’t care too much about the fact I posted it to my public fitness twitter account! (@GeekToFit) I was really happy!

When I woke up yesterday morning I remembered a vague dream of running continuously. I’m not sure what that means. I did go back to bed for another hour, I suppose the dream wore me out. When I got back up I was thinking that today would be my lazy day since I’ve been doing something active a couple hours a day for the past 6 weeks. I laid around for a while, had a shower, made lunch, and opted to go for a walk out of boredom. Ha. I left without my iPhone this time. It was a nice day, the sky was a nice blue with puffy clouds, and it would’ve been distracting and less enjoyable trying to find the perfect song to walk to. I didn’t do my usual 2.8-3 miles but it was still a brisk 35 minute walk. It was better than nothing especially when I planned on taking the day off.

I’ve been trying to come up with ways to reward myself along the way that doesn’t involve food. It’s so easy to use food as a reward or a way to console yourself when you’re having a bad day. I’m definitely guilty of the latter but that hasn’t been the case lately. Now that I think about it, I haven’t had too many bad days since I’ve been exercising more often. In terms of rewards, Monday I got a pedicure with Matt and Lindsey before leaving Cincinnati so that was something nice to do for myself that didn’t involve food. Last night I had a coffee date (that turned into dinner as well) with a cute guy so I guess that’s another reward, but I guess that did involve food. Hopefully the latter doesn’t happen as sporadically as pedicures or require me to hit certain milestones to do. :-P How do you reward yourself?

About a week ago I finally had enough of being sick and went to the doctor. I very rarely go to the doctor because most of the time they give me a slightly higher dose of something I could get over the counter and it’s a waste of money since I don’t have health insurance. Usually after a week of a cold I am feeling better, but it only seemed like it was getting worse and it was affecting my sleep. Long story short, I had a sinus infection. Thankfully, I’m feeling much more like myself now.

This past weekend I went to Cincinnati to visit Matt and Lindsey. It was nice just hanging out, taking photos at a couple parks, and eating lots of good food. I have some left over Green Lantern pizza (mozzarella cheese, garlic, pesto, mushrooms, goat cheese, and artichokes) from Dewey’s that I’ll be rehashing today for lunch.

I got back yesterday and I was a little apprehensive about stepping on the scale this morning. Despite not exercising as much as I had been the past few days and eating lots of good food I lost a pound. Which brought down my total to 15.6 lbs lost all together. I’ve been wanting to hit 15 lbs for a while. It’s not a big number but it’s a milestone nonetheless. It gave me a bit of a high this morning seeing that number. I had another exercising high this past week. Thursday, instead of taking the shuttle from where I have to park to campus I walked. It was only about a mile one-way, which was less than I was expecting, but it added an extra 3,000 steps to my pedometer. I remember walking back to my car with a huge smile on my face and entirely optimistic. I hope I continue to get these highs.

I finished week four of this new fitness journey. I haven’t quite decided how frequently I want to blog about health/fitness things. I don’t want to jump into too much too fast so doing this weekly seems counterproductive at the moment.

Monday started off on a good note, I ended up logging a little over 4 miles on my pedometer. I noticed that evening I was getting a sore throat and assumed it was because of the jogging/running I did earlier in the afternoon (sucking in too much cool air). Tuesday morning I woke up to body aches and an even sorer throat. I went on to class and made it through two classes and decided I needed to go home and lay down. I felt bad because I was getting sick and also because the number on my pedometer wasn’t where it needed to be for the day. Yeah, I’m becoming that person! I got home and took my temperature and it was at 101.

Wednesday I woke up feeling much better albeit a little weak. I decided I was going to go ahead and do my morning walk. If I could only do half it was better than nothing. I did the usual 2.5 miles followed by an hour and a half worth of cleaning. I probably overextended myself considering I ended up doing over 20K steps by the end of the day.

I didn’t sleep well Wednesday night, I was coughing most of the night, and slept in a little longer than I should’ve. After class I headed to Nashville to see my favorite band, Hanson, in concert. As if any sickness really could keep me away! :-P I had some time before meeting up with a friend so I made a couple loops through downtown Nashville to make sure I got to 10K steps for the day. It was a really fun evening despite not feeling my best.

I stayed the night in Nashville and Friday morning I walked around downtown Franklin, which is a cute little town, got breakfast, and headed to Radnor Lake. I’m glad I talked myself into going despite how I was feeling. It was a really peaceful walk, the leaves are beginning to change colors and it was a nice backdrop on the lake.

Kathy and I at the walk. Thanks, Jenn Lee for letting me use this photo!

Saturday morning, was the Scott Kelby Photowalk in Louisville. It was really nice seeing old friends that I don’t get to see often as well as ones I get to see often. Honestly, that was the extent of my walking for the day because I came home and napped pretty much until time for my evening plans.

I’ve designated Sundays as my weigh-in day and I knew not to expect much when I stepped on the scale this morning given what week it was. I was up .6lbs this morning. It was disheartening at first to see that I was up but it could be water, bloating, or other things. And even though I’ve been/and am still under the weather I should log about 25-26 miles for the week.

I haven’t figured out if weighing in weekly is doing me any favors or if I should only do it once a month. Or if I’m prolonging whatever it is that I have by continuing to get out into the cold and exercising. That being said, I don’t think I want to stop simply because it’ll be hard to get going again. Thoughts?

I’ll leave you with a song I’ve had on repeat this week… :)

I’m always apprehensive about posting about things I’m accomplishing at the moment, because it seems like I always jinx myself when I begin sharing things and then I stop doing whatever it is I’m doing. I’ve heard it takes 21 days to form a habit and since it’s been over 21 days I feel like I can share this without falling off the wagon tomorrow. (Fingers crossed! lol)

It seems like it’s been one thing after another the past few months and about three weeks ago I reached my breaking point. I decided I could either feel sorry for myself about circumstances that were out of my control or I could change things that I do have control over. I started walking that morning and decided this is what I needed to focus on. Exercise makes me happy but I never really had the motivation to do it as frequently as I should. School is my only distraction at the moment and there’s no excuse as to why I can’t do this now.

At the end of July I began writing down my weight and at that point I was at my heaviest. I lost a couple pounds a few weeks after that weigh in, but the majority of my weight loss has been in the last three weeks. When I weighed in yesterday I lost 14 pounds all together(!!) When I saw this number tears began welling in my eyes. I felt so happy and proud of myself because all my hard work was paying off.

I’ve been using my pedometer religiously; watching the step, mileage, and calories burned count go up each day is more addicting than I care to admit. I’ve been trying to incorporate things here and there and last week I began using my DailyMile account again. I began by inputting data from the previous week into my account. Two weeks ago I walked 26 miles for the week. Last week I was already at 26 miles on Saturday. Yesterday I got to 29 miles and I was pretty sure I was done for the day, but then I began thinking that a mile will only take about 15-20 minutes of my time that I’m otherwise wasting. I did the mile and ended up at 30 miles for this past week. To me that number is pretty impressive given I live in a state where most people use cars as transportation rather than public transit. Those numbers were met out of my own free will.

In this short time, I’ve noticed changes in my feelings about food (more about this in a later post) and I’m noticing subtle changes in my body. It’s a nice feeling when I put on an item of clothing that used to be really tight that is now not so tight. There has been a not so good change that has created a little pain in my knees but then again I’ve been using 3-year old shoes most of this time. I think when my new shoes come in it’ll make a world of difference.

I’ll leave you with a great song that has kept me going!