My Path to Outer Skinniness

Yesterday I took the plunge (yet again) and joined 24 hour fitness. This is the third time I've joined the gym and I'm hoping it will be the last. Especially since it's almost double the monthly dues I paid before. Yay inflation. Anyway, as I've been saying, diet is just not on my side lately. Given, I choose not to eat the healthiest of things all the time, but even when I eat healthy I eat enough for three people. I blame hormones for making me ravenous. I fail at counting points and I fail at portion control. So I've decided to come at my baby weight from the exercise side instead. The 24 hour fitness by my house offers several fitness classes besides the various exercise equipment and the pool. I really like the constancy of classes (although I sucked at yoga) and I feel like if I have certain classes I always go to I'll be far more likely to get regular exercise. So I'm making the commitment to go to Zumba every Monday and Wednesday with the intenti...

This week so far has been a weight watchers points black hole. Saturday we went to mexican food for a friends birthday. I haven't been very good with planning my meals and before I knew it I had gone through my entire weekly points balance. This has been a bit of a challenge since my weekly points don't reset until Thursday. I see tracking as a way to remind myself of how much I'm really eating. It's kind of baffling to me that it's such a wakeup call every time. And every time I think, "Oh, I'm not that bad, I probably go a little over my points, but it's not that far off." Yeah, I'm off by about a mile. My weight watchers membership expires the end of this month, so I decided the cost effective strategy would be to finish out the month at weight watchers and then to join the gym next month. In the meantime I've decided to keep track of my points (something I haven't hardly done since I started WW). I'm glad now that I did becau...

For the month of January I made it my goal to eat healthier. This meant cutting out processed foods, fried foods, sugar, and cutting back on meat. As far as meeting my goals, lets just say I tried. Actually I did pretty well for the couple of weeks that I journaled for my doctor. But I can't afford a $20 copay every two weeks so she can tell me I need to eat better. That's what weight watchers was supposed to be for. I even told my meeting leader that I was going to give her my tracker every week so she could keep me accountable. Except she forgot and never asked me for it. I didn't completely bomb, but the last few days have been a free-for-all in terms of eating. To some extent I blame hormones. Even though I'm 7 1/2 months post partum things are still off kilter at times and it's the only way I can explain why I'm completely ravenous sometimes. So now that January is over I feel like I need to stop and reevaluate my goals. First I shall review what they...

I listen to a pretty fair amount of talk radio. There's an ad that plays pretty frequently about amberin, which is a hormone medication for menopause. This isn't really relevant to me, but it makes mention of how having a hormonal imbalance can make weight loss nearly impossible. I was thinking about this and how I've tried nearly everything I can think of with dieting and I've come to a conclusion. I'm just not going to lose my baby weight as long as I'm breastfeeding. Throwing money at the problem (aka weight watchers) isn't going to solve it either. What I can do is exercise. If I exercise now, at least when Charlotte's weened I'll be in good shape and losing weight won't be difficult (I hope!). So I'm going to cancel weight watchers, stick to my mostly vegetarian/sugar free/whole grain diet and join 24 hour. Now I just need to come up with a workout schedule around available childcare!

If you don't read My Way , my blog about being a mom, then you probably don't know about my list of new years resolutions. I wrote several, but these are the three that are pertinent to this blog: Walk 20 minutes EVERY DAY. Start Dragon Boating again. Cut out  all   sugar  (including fake sugar) for the month of January and July. I wrote these down the night before last. I couldn't sleep very well so I thought I'd make a to-do list and resolutions, while I don't usually make any, seemed like a good idea. I make resolutions about my health all the time. I feel like my New Years ones are a continuation of the healthy lifestyle I've been trying to establish. If you've been following me you already know that I've been instructed toward to a  Pescetarian  bordering on vegan diet that cuts out all processed foods and emphasizes whole grains, vegetables and fruits. I was doing pretty well at sticking to it up until Christmas day. The meal was an ode...

For about a week and a half now I've been on a basically vegetarian diet. What's really surprising to me is how much easier it's been than I expected. I tend to get it in my head that I need to do all this planning and preparation to make dietary changes. It really just takes awareness and determination, both of which are improved by the diet itself. For years I've been learning about nutrition and how your body processes food, not just in a weight loss program capacity, but in a science and health research capacity. The more I learn the more I'm convinced that being completely or nearly vegetarian and even vegan is what's best for humans to maintain their health. Because I know better, I thought that I'd continue to improve on my knowing better. I spent a bit of time researching foods that improve high cholesterol and found that what I've been eating is basically in line with multiple recommendations. Speaking of recommendations, a friend recommende...

I say pseudo because I really don't have the ethical conviction to be a true vegetarian. I'm not a fan of mass meat production so I've been trying to buy local when I can afford it, but seriously, I'm not going to join PETA anytime soon. I will say that I do like eating more toward the veggie side because I feel like it gives me really healthy manageable boundaries for my diet though. For anyone who missed my facebook updates, I've been put on a diet by my doctor. I suppose I could choose to ignore her advice if I really wanted to, but I feel like I'd rather not be diabetic by 40. I had a physical last month and my blood test showed that I have high cholesterol. When I've been on diets in the past, it has been both because I don't want to be fat because I feel like a whale (whale's are pretty, but definitely not sexy and not the most agile) and because I wanted to avoid health concerns later. These health concerns were always hypothetical before....