Week 1 Update

Happy Monday Everyone!

Week 1 is officially over and I have to say I think it went pretty well.  First things first, step 1 is complete:

my brand new Gold's Gym keytag!

 I finally joined the gym, so now I can workout whenever I want.  They have a lot of classes that I'd like to start trying out and lots of cardio equipment for me to use to whip my body into shape!

I did 3 workouts during week 1; here's a recap of my activity:
-2/2/13: ran on the treadmill at the gym for 45 minutes
-2/5/13: swam laps freestyle for 30 minutes, did a total of 600 meters!
-2/7/13: ran on the treadmill at the gym for 30 minutes

*A note on swimming: WOW is it hard!!!  When my friend suggested we go I was thinking "yea, swimming, sure, I love the beach!"  Needless to say I was in for a big surprise when we went to swim laps.  The workout was really tough, but it felt great!  I definitely want to incorporate swimming into my workouts at least once a week, if not more.

Making myself workout during the first week was actually the easy part.  I know that I need a lot of cardio to make progress with weight loss and the excitement of the first week motivated me to get moving.  I also had some workout buddies to help encourage me to get active.  The hard part actually had more to do with food.  I have a huge problem with controlling my portion sizes, and I know there are a lot of other people out there who have the same issue.  I think in general people tend to eat more than they really need to because our idea of portion sizes are totally out of whack.  It doesn't help that I was raised under the 'you can't leave the dinner table until your plate is clean' system, so I've been programmed my whole life to eat everything that's on my plate, even if it's too much.  This week I tried to start re-training my body to be satisfied after a smaller portion, and not just when all the food is gone.  One of the tricks I used to start doing that is splitting every meal I eat in half.  Then I save the other half for a few hours later, turning one huge meal into 2 small ones.  Typically you're supposed to eat 4-5 smaller meals per day anyway, so this trick also helps me spread out my meals better.

An excellent resource that I've been using is the livestrong.com MyPlate food log.  Once you register on the site you input all your information pertaining to your weight loss goal, and it will tell you how many calories you should consume each day to achieve that goal.  Throughout the day you enter in your food and it tells you all the nutritional information, including calorie count, etc, so that you know when you've hit your limit for that day.  This system is beneficial to me for many reasons, but mainly it keeps me honest about what/how much I'm eating.  The only downfall is that when you eat out or eat things other people have cooked, it's hard to know all the nutritional information, so usually I just guesstimate.

So now here's the moment I know a lot of you have been waiting for....the numbers!  I was very nervous for my first weigh-in.  15 weeks is a long time and I think it would be hard to stay motivated to continue if I didn't see a difference in the beginning.  I also recognize that weight can fluctuate a lot, especially when you're trying to lose it, so there will be weeks when I lose weight and other weeks when I don't, but that's okay.  That being said, this week my weight loss results were, drumroll please....

2 POUNDS!!!

I've lost 2 out of my 15 pound goal and I'm very pleased with that progress, I'm hoping to keep up the momentum as the weeks continue. 

I know some of you out there are trying to follow along with me throughout this challenge, and many of you have set fitness goals for yourselves.  I want to hear from you!  How are you doing with your own personal challenges?  What parts of your plan have been especially challenging?  


Stay tuned this week for tips and tricks, and my workout song of the week!