Today I had an official weigh-in the wellness center and found that I lost 13 pounds so far! I was really, really pumped and proud of myself. I haven't blogged since I started with the wellness center because I really felt like I wanted to figure a few things out before I spoke much about it---especially since I hadn't been doing all that great since I started this blog. Here's what I've figured out so far.....
1. 80% isn't good enough. When I was doing this on my own I thought that sticking to everything at about 80% would give me results. If I ate healthy 80% of the time, tried to track, exercised when I could....that I would have results. An honest conversation with a friend got me really looking harder at my efforts and thinking that as much as I wanted to believe I was doing my best....that it wasn't my best and it certainly wasn't good enough. After getting some blood work done and finding out that other than a slowing metabolism with my age, I got the news that there was no reason that I would be experiencing weight gain. This was a good wake up call. If I was going to be doing this---I needed to be "all-in".
2. Being "all-in" is a lot of work. I can tell just by the amount of focus that I've put in this so far that I wasn't trying my hardest before. I'm now exercising 5 days a week and tracking every meal every day in my food log. I've found that I do paper-pencil food logging to be much more convenient for me (which is funny since I love social media, I thought My Fitness Pal would be better for me originally). My nurse practitioner at the wellness center then combs through my log and gives me encouragement and nutrition advise.
3. Giving up pop and coffee wasn't the end of the world. I whined and whined over the caffeine headaches I got for the first 3 or 4 days, but after that I was all good. I've had about 2 glasses of diet soda since as a "treat" (I figured this to be healthier than ice cream). But I really don't miss it. I have some decaffeinated chai tea that is pretty tasty and helped me get through a brief but nasty cold.
4. Having a partner do this with me makes a huge difference. Michael joined me in my efforts as well and he has lost 10 pounds. It makes a difference because we are both shopping for healthy foods, we are trying to cook together a couple of times a week (more as a something fun to try together than anything else), and there have been several days where one of us doesn't feel like exercising but the other offered enough encouragement to make it happen. We've been doing exercise DVDs in our living room which is both comical and probably a good model for kids. As a consequence, our whole family has been eating better and being more active.
I feel like I'm in a really good spot right now with all of this. My clothes are fitting better, I'm feeling stronger and more confident, the effects on my family are also great. The wellness center told me to expect my weight loss to slow down now that my body will be getting used to these healthy changes and I'm going to try not to let any slow-down lead me back into failure. I've learned that every little choice really does matter.
