Back on Track

Back on Track
It’s been nearly a whole month since I last wrote for the blog. Much has transpired in that time; not all of it good. For the last 7 days, I have exercised every day; all of us it using ‘The Biggest Loser’ videos. I’m doing the Bob’s ‘Boot Camp’ level 1 except 1 day I added ‘Weight Loss Yoga’ in to get started. That run of exercise was after about two weeks of not doing ANY exercise. During that time I also got into the bad habit of not tracking my calories as timely; sometimes having to do an entire day the next day. While I tried to account for everything I ate, I figure it is inevitable that I forgot at least a few things. Inasmuch as I didn’t forget food, my calories stayed pretty good. The first week of March I averaged 1759/day and the next two weeks it was between 1900-2000. I was still motivated to lose weight and I did a pretty good job of eating right, but I’d lost the motivation to exercise.

It happened a week after first doing ‘biggest loser’ videos and stopping what I had been doing on the treadmill and with free weights. I’d resisted using the videos before because I was afraid to change what had already been working and which I had a pretty good routine with. I feared that changing would lead me to losing the will to keep at it. And either because it was a good instinct, or a self fulfilling prophesy, that is exactly what happened.

But I felt guilty about it every day. And eventually I started getting the head aches again, which had slowly gone away when I had started exercising in January. I thought back when I started that exercise would make them go away, but I assumed it would be immediate. That the head aches were stress induced and so a workout would remove that stress. When that didn’t happen, I was a little discouraged, but kept at it. Gradually I got them less and only when I started getting them again a week or 2 ago did I realize that it had been some weeks since I’d last had one.

The first week I didn’t do any exercise, I still managed to lose 1.8 pounds. Considering that the previous week (with exercise) I had only lost 0.4 pounds, that was a victory. Then last week, after two weeks of not exercising, reality set in and I actually gained back a pound I’d lost. That was the wake up call. The progress I’d made in the previous 50 days could all be lost very quickly. So, last Sunday, I got back on the wagon and started up again. And what do you know, the head aches went away within a couple days of starting and I didn’t feel guilty every day any more.

The other decision I made last week was to change my daily average calorie goal from 2000 to 1800. 2000 was actually pretty easy to do and I wanted to challenge myself a little after the previous two weeks of back-tracking and I figured it would also maintain, if not accelerate my weight loss. I did really well with it and came in this week with an average of 1738/day. And I am confident that I counted everything I ate too, because I got back to tracking what I ate during the day and not going to bed without ensuring that entire day was logged. The result? I lost 4 pounds this past week and finally surpassed the 20 pound mark (21.4 to be exact). That felt really good. This was also the first week since I started that I had done all 7 days with exercise.

I decided to post an updated picture, I think I can see a little difference in my face; not so puffy as before. Can’t really tell if my stomach is any smaller in this picture, but I think it probably is.