Fitness Friday #1

Today I am joining in with Brenda over at The Family Revised for Fitness Friday. A few weeks ago she started Fitness Fridays with her readers as a way to come together and challenge and support each other in our fitness goals. I thought it sounded fun and decided this week to join in. So as soon as I post this, suddenly I am accountable to many, many people who will be checking in on my progress each Friday! That's awesome!

So here is my report for the week. I have been continuing on in my weight loss bible study and we are now in week 6. I am happy to report that I have FINALLY quit rebelling and have surrendered this all to God and had a huge weight loss for this week of 5.4 lbs!!! It has been awhile since I have seen numbers drop down on the scale so this is a good motivator for me and proof that I can't do this or maintain it without God's help. BUT, now that there has been success again, I need to be aware of Satan's antics. He always strikes when there has been a success and catches us with our guard down. My guard is up!! Last night I enjoyed a luscious dinner out with my husband, and today, to play it safe and not get tempted by delicious, sugar rich, fat filled, sodium saturated foods, I have opted to skip a lunch date planned with the women in my small group bible study (I hope you all understand!). I am staying home and sticking with my menu plan that I created for the week.

So here's what I did. This week, I started way back at the beginning. I did nothing except focus on my eating. I wrote everything down in a LIVE-it journal (because this change is for life not for death, get it...DIE-it...I know, a stretch, but it helps me!) and counted every calorie that went into my body. It's a little time consuming at first, but so worth the trouble. It helps point out where you are taking in too much! My calorie range for right now is between 1200 and 1300 calories a day and I especially try to watch my sugar intake as well, my huge downfall. I am trying to stay under 40g of sugar a day, (which is the equivalent to ten teaspoons, by the way). This includes natural sugars, too. I only drank water, because I am trying to increase that intake each day as well. I am also trying to take my vitamins three times a day until my diet is well balanced and I find my energy high enough on it's own. So probably in the next couple weeks, I will eliminate those, because I won't need them. My goal is to have my foods provide all the nutrition and nutrients that my body needs. I'll get there.

Next week, taking it slow, my focus will be to maintain the good eating and add in exercise 2-3 days. I haven't decided what that will look like yet, but probably Pilate's and walking, just to get my metabolism going again. I don't want to over do it, because I know it will burn me out. I have done that before.

Last week Brenda asked her readers this question...

What are you snacking on lately?

I haven't really snacked that much this week. I had a blueberry spelt muffin once, and a few pretzels another day, and an apple at one point, too. When your focus comes off of the food, mindless snacking just goes away. For me, when I am experiencing success, snacking is less appealing to me as well, because I don't want to waste the calories on something I know won't really satisfy whatever it is that is making me want to snack...like boredom, anxiety, or emotional ups and downs. However, to expose my habits a bit, snacking used to be a huge issue. My husband and I have been talking a lot about why we like to eat so much together. We are notorious for convincing each other to have late night snacks. Some of our favorites have been chips and dip, pizza, and ice cream sundaes. In fact, we used to have a fourth meal of the day, and we called it pizza, whether that's what we ate or not. We would say to each other, "So what do you want to have for pizza", just about every night. We haven't figured out the answer to why we created "pizza" yet, but we are exploring that, which is good, because it helps us evaluate what might be missing in our relationship.

So that's it for this week. I will be praying for a successful upcoming week for everyone and look forward to reading everyone's posts and encouraging you all too! Thanks Brenda for starting this. It's a great idea!