This is How I Did It

People keep asking me how I've gone about losing the 22ish pounds I've lost so far. I've been repeating myself far too often, so I figured this would help.

Exercise. I wake up and try to figure out how I'm going to fit exercise into my day. I make great plans, but really only get to follow through on those plans about 3 days a week. I'd love to exercise every day, and maybe once school starts and all the kids will be in school at least some of the time I'll be able to get it done every day. That's the goal, anyway. The kids know that Mom getting her workout time is a priority, but sometimes events transpire (like broken glasses or doctor visits) that make it impossible.

I've tried getting up early to exercise, but I'm not a morning person anyway, and I find I get my best sleep between the hours of 5 and 8am. Any time later than that, the kids are already up, and they need my attention in the morning, so I can't use that time to walk.

And walk it is, primarily. Those of you who've known me for a long time, since HS, remember how skinny I always was, even though I ate garbage? It was because I walked EVERYWHERE. I think I was walking an average of three miles a day, but a lot of times more than that. If I walked three miles a day now, I'm sure I'd be skinny again. I can't run, thanks to crappy knees and ankles (and every so often I forget, and try to run, because I WANT to be a runner, but when I do, I pay for a few days after), and I love to swim but don't get to do it often enough. I primarily use exercise DVDs and walk in my living room, or do aerobics, but I also lift weights and do strength training. I found when I only did cardio, or only did weights, I really didn't make much progress, but doing both in combination is making me stronger, more fit, thinner, and has improved my energy level by an order of magnitude.

I'm eating less, and eating healthier. I've never been good at having a clue how many calories are in something, because up until after I had kids, I never really needed to know. And my diet was crap. All carbs, all cheese, all the time. So I joined sparkpeople.com, and I've been following their diet plan. It has been quite the education in serving sizes (who knew a whole banana is two servings? not me) and has helped me improve my diet immeasurably. I also like it because I'm not so good at coming up with things on my own, but I can follow directions reasonably well, so I pick a menu plan for the day, then eat a half a cup of whatever when it tells me to.

I'm careful about what I drink. I drink water, milk, and very very small amounts of orange juice. That's it, for the most part. No other kinds of juice. No soda. Only the occasional alcoholic beverage, but it really is quite rare - special occasions only.

I've done the hard work to learn about my diet. BigDaddyFish is quite impressed with my fitness results and has asked me several times to put him on a diet so he can lose weight, too. I keep telling him that he has to reach the point where he is motivated to do the work himself. He needs to look at the scale and be frightened enough at the number he sees that he does something about it. He needs to learn about serving sizes. He needs to spend a few weeks measuring every single thing he eats so he learns what a cup of cheerios or a half a cup of pineapple or four ounces of chicken look like. He has to track every single thing he puts into his mouth, like I do. I've done all those things, and learned how to make better choices.

That said, I don't deprive myself. I give myself a day off every week or so, a day where I just eat what I feel like, or eat a burger instead of a grilled chicken breast. On my birthday I ate El Salvadoran ribs and beans and drank two margaritas, and I didn't pay attention to how many calories it was. I knew it was more than I need to eat, and I knew I didn't need the empty calories from the margaritas, so I just stepped up the exercise the following week. What I have found is that because I've changed the way I'm eating overall, I don't want the sweets and the high-fat foods I was eating before - they don't taste good to me anymore. I've made pans of brownies and baked banana bread for my family and not eaten any myself. We go to get ice cream and I either get a tiny serving of frozen yogurt or nothing at all - full fat ice cream tastes too heavy to me. I still have a weakness for chips and salsa, and the occasional cottage cheese and potato chips (don't ask), but for the most part, when I'm feeling hungry and have already eaten my menu for that meal, I'll supplement with broccoli and tomato sauce or carrots or squash or watermelon. If I blow it sometimes and eat salsa with more than about half an ounce of tortilla chips (and really, that's something like 5 chips), I don't get too worked up about it, I just eat better the rest of the day. Or the next day.

I don't beat myself up about setbacks, I just reset myself and go on. If I got all upset about not getting to the workout I planned, or doing a shorter one than I wanted, or I made a really good batch of fresh salsa and ate the whole thing with far too many chips, I wouldn't be making any progress. I had to learn to just let it go, go on and do what I needed to do, and not dwell on my screwups. Which anyone who knows me at all knows are many, because I'm an awkward dork. It's okay, I'm adjusted to myself.

I follow other fit people whose athletic feats I admire. Like Carmen. And Christina. And Linda. And my preschool mom friends DJ, who doesn't blog but who is on facebook and who is rocking triathlons, and Shelley, who is a runner. And my friend Heather, who blogs and runs and has four kids and is going to kick the NYC Marathon's butt in the fall. And countless others. I see their posts on their blogs and on facebook and Daily Mile, and their progress inspires me to go move my own butt.

The single biggest thing I've done, though, is to stop being afraid. Yes, afraid. If I spend my time worrying about how badly the kids are going to trash the house while I work out, or worrying about how goofy I look doing my workouts, or worrying about the fact that I might not be able to do the workout I want because I'm not fit enough yet, I wouldn't do anything. I had to stop being afraid of how exhausted I was and whether I'd be more exhausted if I started exercising (in fact, the opposite has been true), and this was particularly hard for me. My energy was soooo sapped for so long while I was nursing, and it honestly took about 9ish months after I totally weaned for my milk to finally dry up and me to get the energy back that was going to production. I had to get hard on myself, to push myself, and to make myself take that first step. And the next. And the next. And keep going when it was tough, because I knew it would make me stronger, and I could go further the next time.

That, in a nutshell, is what I have done. It's really quite simple, and yet not, all at the same time.

Comments

[jodifur]

Good for you. Sometimes you just have to do it.

[Michelle]

Good for you. In order to effectively lose weight and keep it off, it has to be an entire lifestyle change which sounds like what you are doing. Finding the courage to break out of comfortable routines and make real changes for the better is very admirable.

[Wife and Mommy]

Way to go! That's just awesome.

[swimmer71]

Excellent advice, especially about the serving sizes! I can often get 2 or 3 healthy serving-size meals out of restaurant meals. The other day I ordered one piece of chocolate cake as a treat for myself, and it was four times bigger than I thought it would be. I'm not kidding. My husband and I together ate a fourth of it.

[FishyGirl]

Restaurants are nuts - I dont eat out much anymore, but if I do when its not a day off, I automatically pack up at least half my meal to take home, and I get at least one, usually two more meals out of it. Its crazy. And I dont get dessert - Ive had a hard enough time convincing Brusters that I dont want the equivalent of 2.5 scoops of frozen yogurt in my single scoop. I make them give me the toddler serving, but I really wish I didnt have to.

[Elizabeth]

I thought it would be. I'm not kidding. My husband and I together ate a fourth of it.