About a year and a half ago I decided to get healthy. I first off changed up my eating habits. I eat five small meals a day with each meal
between 200 – 300 calories each. In
order to do this I had to make a daily menu and follow it, not as easy as it
sounds. I do allow myself cheat meals,
because after all I am human and I need my junk food fix once in a while. I then started an exercise routine. Ride my exercise bike in the morning for 30
minutes, Pilates at night, hiking on the weekend and Wii fit whenever I could
fit it in. Sounded like a great plan to
me.
The first year I lost 47 pounds, yeah. I was very proud of myself. Then January happened. In the first four months of the year I had to
have surgery on both legs, we lost four people that we cared about and a couple
of relatives had health issues. I’m a
stress eater and so you can only imagine what I did with each one of these life
events, I ate and ate. I have since
gained back 15 pounds and don’t feel as healthy as I did in December. Oh well this was a lifestyle change.
To keep myself motivated for the first year I would tell
myself that I didn’t gain all this weight overnight. I didn’t go to bed one night thin and wake up
fat, it happened over time. I had to
remind myself that there are no magic pills; eat everything that you want,
never exercise and then take a pill and you are thin and healthy. I know that the diet industry wants us to
believe that there is such a thing but if there were we would have a world full
of thin people. While we are at it why
don’t we make a pill that makes everyone look like super models? I would be first in line at the pharmacy for
that pill. I would love to go to bed the
size and shape that I am currently and wake up tall with long legs and perky
breasts.
So in May I decided to get back on track. I challenged my daughter to a squat challenge
for June, crunches for July and pushups for August. I thought this should be easy enough,
right? Boy was I wrong. The first few days of doing the squats were
pretty easy, but after that was pure hell.
My rear end hurt so bad that I couldn’t sit, stand, walk or move. There were days that I thought “what did I
get myself into”. I had to continue no
matter how bad it hurt because I had made a commitment to my daughter and if
she was going to put herself through the same pain then I was then I couldn’t
let her down. To keep myself going I
started telling myself that I was going to have buns of steel and I would give
myself stars on my calendar for each day that I did squats. I needed some self-gratification and putting
a star on a silly calendar was giving me this gratification.
With June being done and over with I ended up losing seven
inches over all, 3 of those inches in my hips.
I was feeling real good about going into July and crunches, boy was I
fooled. Crunches hurt more than squats,
my stomach muscles feel as though they are on fire. I keep telling myself that I’m going to have
six pack abs, ok let’s be realistic one pack, but that is better than having keg
abs. So I’m going to plug away at my
crunches for this month and then on to pushups while dreaming about the day
that someone comes up with that magic exercise/diet pill.
