Weigh In Number One

I honestly thought that I would be a bit more excited while writing this post, and don't get me wrong I am super happy to see 5lbs less on the scale. I am not bummed with the number. I am just bummed with my effort. I feel like so far I have been doing this by dipping my toe in cold water and slowly wading in to get acclimated to the temperature instead of just jumping into the deep end. Over this last three weeks I feel like I have lost and gained back the same 3 lbs over and over again. I would be really dedicated with my diet during the week and then splurge a little on the weekends but the problem is that every weekend I feel like I have been undoing the progress that I have made all week. Other than a few walks I have not been working out at all and I just know that overall I could be doing so much better. I thought that starting this blog back would be the magic missing puzzle piece that I needed to get myself motivated again. The blog was and is a great tool for accountability for me and it is a great outlet to express how I am feeling, but I feel like I romanticized it a bit and attributed all my previous success to the blog. The blog is not the reason that I was successful last time. I was successful last time because I dug deep and did the work. I feel like I am there now. I am in a brand new headspace and I finally feel like I am ready to take this on for the right reasons and I am excited to see the weigh in three weeks from now to see what my progress looks like when I am really trying.

My husband has a strange work schedule so that has left me with a lot of excuses to skip out on getting back in the gym. I know that I can work out at home, but there is just something about getting in the gym that really lights a fire under my butt. So we have a new plan. We are going to sit down together every Sunday and look at his schedule for the following week and I am going to plan out and schedule my workouts. That way I will have a plan to know which days I will be going to the gym in the morning before work and which days I will be going once Harrison goes to bed. I am actually going to be writing down my workouts in my calendar to help me stick to them. 

To be honest with you, the workouts for me are not as much about the weight loss as they are about how they make me feel. I am so much more motivated to stick to my diet when I am working out and it honestly just makes me feel so good and I have so much more energy when I am making time to get to the gym. My anxiety is so much better when I am working out as well and I always feel much more clear mentally when I am pushing my body and elevating my heart rate. 

I hope that you will stick with me because I have a feeling, this is about to get GOOD!

Screen Time - Distraction

It seems like every where you turn someone is expressing an opinion about limiting screen time for children and how bad screens are for children. People are letting YouTube babysit their kids. Everyone wants to talk about the effects that it has on children, but what about the adults?? Have you been to a restaurant lately? Next time you go, take a look around and count how many people are on their phones. How many times does that person pick up their phone during the course of the meal? If you think that screen time is not affecting you as an adult, you’re wrong!

 First of all, it’s addicting and I don’t use that word lightly. Every time you get a like or a comment or a notification you have a little dopamine hit going off in your brain which is why you keep picking it up and keep picking it up to see who liked it, how many people liked it, etc.  What is dopamine you might ask? It’s a pleasure sensor that goes off in your brain, similar to when people are on drugs and that’s the thing that makes them keep doing drugs despite the risks because they are craving that pleasure sensor hit.

 Secondly, have you ever looked at someone on Facebook or Instagram and thought, man their life looks perfect. They have the perfect husband, the perfect kids, the perfect house, the perfect job, the perfect body, and so on and so on. BULLSHIT! Pardon my language because I know my Mama reads this blog but sometimes you need a strong word to express just how strongly you feel about something. Sorry, Mama! I’m telling you guys, you are not seeing the whole picture! You are not seeing the pile of laundry in the corner that was cropped out of that photo. You are not seeing the credit card debt as a result of that dream vacation. You are not seeing those perfect kids being sassy and talking back. The thing is, you can’t blame people for posting the good things because that’s what we want the world to see, that’s what we want to remember. No one wants to post a picture of their sink full of dishes. Of course not! They want to post the picture of a perfectly clean kitchen with a candle burning on the counter. The problem is not that people want to post the good things. The problem is that we have convinced ourselves that because we only see the good that the bad doesn’t exist and it’s just not the case!!

 The third thing is that screen time for adults is a time drain. You think you don’t have time to do an excercise video in your living room for 30 minutes? Check that handy screen time feature in your settings to see how much time a day you average on your phone and then come back and give me that excuse. I can say this because I am one of the worst!! I am telling you right now, my name is Sarah and I’m addicted to my phone. The first step is admitting you have a problem right?!? My screen time average was 3 hours and 23 minutes PER DAY last week and that was with me making a conscious effort to spend less time on social media. It’s hard for me to admit that to you but my whole point in this blog is making myself transparent and holding myself accountable so if I’m going to tell you that your screen time is a problem I’m going to be real with you and show you my flaws first. I am trying something new and I want to challenge you to try it with me. I am making a rule that I will not be on my phone at all for the first 30 minutes after I wake up other than to turn my alarm off. My hope is that this will help me break that habit of waking up and immediately looking for my phone. The next thing I want to challenge myself and you to do if you have children is to schedule time to put your phone in another room and to not touch it at all during that time. So my goal is to have my phone put away from the time that I pick Harrison up from school until the time that he goes to bed so that I can be more present and active with him. Your time frame doesn’t have to be that long but try scheduling an hour or two per day when you’re with your family to not touch your phone. I think we will all find that we have a lot more time for the things that we’ve been making excuses not to do. Try it with me!

Priorities

This post might start to sound a little "woe is me" with a side of victim mentality but stay with me, I promise I have a point. Have you ever felt guilty for taking a shower? To most of you, that might sound like a stupid question. If you answered yes, then my guess is that you are a mom. Let me explain. When my husband wakes up he doesn't think to himself, "if I take a shower that means Sarah is going to have to watch Harrison and feed him breakfast". He doesn't think about that. He just knows that he needs to take a shower so he gets up and takes one. When I need to take a shower I think, "ok I need to hurry because Brandon will have to watch Harrison and if I take 45 minutes to get ready that means that he is going to have to get him dressed and blah blah blah ..." WHY DO WE DO THIS??? Let me clarify that it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that my husband minds watching our son. Quite the opposite actually, he loves hanging out with Harrison. Our son is as much my husband's as he is mine so why do I feel selfish and like I'm inconveniencing my husband so that I can bathe?? My best guess is a two part answer. First, I have made myself such a low priority that even something as simple and NECESSARY as a shower feels selfish. Second, we were raised by generations of women where the norm was for all of the responsibilities of raising the children were almost exclusively the woman's. Now we live in a generation where the majority of women work, whether that be by choice or by necessity. We are working moms but we still feel this pressure to do it all and to do it all perfectly. Before I get misunderstood let me make something perfectly clear. Even if you are a stay at home mom, your children are not SOLELY your responsibility. I know that this will not feel like the case for some because I do know some people that have husbands who truly feel like it is not their job to help out in any way when it comes to the children. However, I would venture to say that the majority of your husbands/partners are like mine and don't mind at all. They just don't know that we need/want help or need/want a break if we don't tell them!

Do you think that if I was feeling guilty about something as simple as a shower that I was making it a priority to work out? Um, no. Here is the thing though, I have come to realize that I am able to best show up for my family when I am taking time to spend on myself. The quality of time that I am able to offer to my son and husband is on an entirely different level when I have taken some time to take care of me. I would much rather lose thirty minutes to an hour with my family to take care of myself it that means the next 3 hours that I do get with them is good quality time that I am present for and not overwhelmed and frustrated. I have news for you, they would much rather get that quality time with you over any quantity of time that you are exhausted, frustrated and stressed. I urge you to think about that quality over quantity and think about how much more you will be able to offer to your family if you feel sane because you took 45 minutes to shop for a new outfit or 30 minutes to go for a run. Take time to go do things for you. I have started carving out at least 1 night a month for dinner with my girlfriends (you know who you are!) and let me tell you we ALL look forward to that time away. We recently took a weekend trip to Chattanooga with just the girls and I'm telling you we needed it so badly. I felt so recharged after that trip because I made myself a priority and took time to do something for me. Find a way to do something for yourself and I think that you will find yourself a little happier and a little more motivated to tackle the tricky stuff! If you are a husband/boyfriend/partner and you have children or even if you don't have children, encourage your loved one to spend some time taking care of themselves, I promise it will benefit you more than you know.

The Blog is back in town!

If I am being honest with myself, I've wanted to write these words for over a year now. You may ask yourself, "Why didn't she just write the dang post?", well that's because writing this post is requiring  me to do something that I don't do well. That thing is...admitting that I failed. I am a perfectionist and admitting that I failed is hard enough for me when I'm admitting something to myself. Admitting that I failed publicly? No thank you, I will just be over here hiding under a rock. That's the funny thing about weight loss though. I don't have to write a blogpost or a status on Facebook telling you that I failed. Every time that you see me in person or even in a creatively cropped photo, you can SEE that I failed. Then it becomes the elephant in the room that everyone tries not to look at but you just can't help it because it's a freaking elephant! Look I am fully aware that you have most likely looked at a picture of me and thought to yourself, "she gained all that weight back." Heck you might have even told your Mama, "Poor Sarah. She lost all that weight and then gained it all back. Bless her heart." I get it! I've done it myself I assure you.

I say all of that to say this...I finally convinced myself to look the elephant in the eye and say, "I see you! We all see you!" I took it's power away by acknowledging that it is there. So here I am admitting to you, my name is Sarah and in 2013 I lost 75 lbs and here I am 5 years, one beautiful son, and a whole lot of excuses later at the same weight that I started my journey at last time, 220 lbs. My plan is pretty simple like last time, to take in less calories than I burn off. Looking back at pictures of when I previously lost the weight, I think I looked best at 160 so that is my goal weight this time around. If you're ok at math, you will put together that I need to lose 60 lbs. That number would normally sound overwhelming, but this time I have the added benefit of knowing that I have done it before. I have lost more than this before...I can do this. I will be doing weigh ins every three weeks and I will be making posts twice a week. So if you want to read along and see how this goes be sure to check in. If you just want to check in for the weigh ins to see how I am progressing, that's fine too. Writing about this stuff is like therapy for me even if no one else reads it, but knowing that people can and most likely will read it is an accountability for me like no other. WELCOME! I look forward to having you along on this journey!

Harder Than I Thought

If you had asked me a year ago if losing weight or maintaining weight loss was harder, I would have rolled my eyes and answered "losing weight by a long shot". Now, I think my answer would be different. I was convinced that once I had lost my weight that maintaining that weight loss would be a walk in the park. Wow, was I sorely mistaken there! I had restricted my diet for so long that I wanted to allow myself to eat the things that I enjoy in moderation. The problem is, when you are someone like me who struggles with food on an emotional level...that moderation thing is tricky! I wish that it hadn't taken me gaining back 20 lbs to realize just how out of hand my eating habits have gotten again, but unfortunately the case. I have wanted to write this blogpost for a while, but I was afraid that I would be faced with so much judgement for putting weight back on. I realize that most of that judgement comes from myself, but people are critical when people put weight BACK on. Don't think that's true? Tell me that you haven't looked at a picture of Jonah Hill lately and said, "how did he let himself get that big again." Oprah is continually mocked for her "yo-yo weight". Well, judge away if you want but it's more difficult than you think I assure you.

I had done fairly well with continuing to exercise at least once or twice a week. Then, I met Cierra. Cierra is a girl that I worked with briefly, and although we only worked together for a short time we became friends. Cierra and I are fairly evenly matched on a fitness level so we became workout partners. We started working out together several times a week, and I had accountability again. Kind of. I had accountability again, but only in the gym. We were doing lots of cardio but my body was staying the same. I was no longer gaining weight, but I certainly wasn't losing either. A couple of months ago I suggested a new workout plan for us. We both wanted a personal trainer but did not want to pay the money for one. I suggested that we start taking turns planning our workouts with the intention of challenging the other as much as possible. We decided to add weight training into our workouts as well. We each strive every week to plan a workout that pushes the other to the brink and it has worked wonderfully for us. We no longer waste a single workout. We go in with a plan and we give it our all until we can't go anymore. You put a lot more effort into a workout when you are planning it for someone other than yourself. We have been using this system for about two months and I am starting to see results in my body. I am stronger, and my endurance is much higher, but my weight is not changing. Want to know why? Because I haven't been putting the effort into my eating. Well, that is changing. For the last week, I have been making a conscious effort to be careful of the fuel that I put into my body. I am going to get this weight back off and I will keep it off this time. I'm sure that you have your doubts, why wouldn't you? I am more determined than ever and I am excited for you to watch my progress in the coming months! The blog is back! I have missed this outlet as a means of staying on track. Here we go...

Time to rein it in!

So I have to admit that the "not eating so restricted" thing has been fun, but enough is enough. I had told myself that maintaining my weight would be so easy compared to losing the weight. I would just eat well most of the time and splurge from time to time. The thing is, for me in particular if I am not setting specific restrictions, I end up splurging WAY too much. I am ashamed to say that I have gained seven pounds back and I have GOT to rein this in before that number gets any higher. I have decided that I am going to allow myself one splurge meal per week and one splurge dessert per week. If I plan my splurges than I know that I have to eat well the rest of the time, no excuses. It is too easy to eat badly today and say, "oh well, I'll eat better tomorrow." The problem with that is, tomorrow rolls around and I say the same thing again. Before you know it, seven tomorrows have gone by and you still haven't "done better". 

I am going to do things a little differently this time, in that I am not going to set a goal weight. I am actually not going to pay attention to the number on the scale at all. I am going to put all of my focus into what I want my body to look like, because in the end that is what really matters. People who have super toned bodies do strength training, and they usually weigh a lot more than what you would think. Muscle, as we all know weighs more than fat and therefore negates what the scale says. As a woman in particular it is kind of scary to throw the scale out the window, but also very freeing. I am obviously not going to actually get rid of my scale, but I am going to let the way my body looks determine my goals verses a magical number. 

Let's see how this goes, I look forward to keeping you updated! If you want to check out one of my favorite fitness youtubers, I encourage you to. She explains things much more efficiently than me. Here's the link!

http://youtu.be/tEoc-E_I8HY

Thanks for reading!

Sarah

No Gym...No Problem!

Having a gym membership has become much more affordable in the past couple of years. Still, not everyone has access to a gym. Even though I have a gym membership, I don't always feel like fighting the crowd. Regardless of the reason, not being able to make it to the gym should never be an excuse not to workout. I know what you might be thinking, if you are like me your at home workouts tend to be a little all over the place. It is easy to lose focus and slack off with an at home workout. I have a suggestion if you find this to be the case for you. There is an app called "Pump Up" that can help you tremendously when working out from home. You will need to program your weight and age into the app to register. Once you have done the initial setup it will give you the option to build a workout. Here is where the magic starts! You will get to choose if you are working out from home, the gym, or if you are traveling. Once you select "home" the app will take you through a series of screens to customize your workout. You can choose how long you plan to workout, as well as if you are a beginner, intermediate, or advanced. Then you get to choose what body parts you would like to focus on, what equipment you have access to if any, if you wish to do cardio with your workout, and so on and so forth. Once you start your workout it will first take you through a short warm up. After that the app will take you through the workout by telling you exactly what to do, and for how long or for how many reps. There is even a timer that appears with each screen of your workout. Once you are finished with your workout, the app will also take you through a very short cool down and voila! Its like having your very own personal trainer. You could also have the app build you a workout for the gym, but this didn't really work for me because of the layout of my gym. My gym has the strength machines and free weights in one room, and the cardio machines in another. I do however HIGHLY recommend the app for at home use. I find it so much easier to focus at home if I have something telling me exactly what to do. I like this better than doing a workout video because it is customized to you, even down to the amount of time that you have available for your workout. This app will take away your excuses because it even shows you correct form. I first heard about this app from the recommendation of Carly Rowena who is a fitness youtuber that I subscribe to. Which brings me to my next tip, if you are working out at home and you don't have much time, head to youtube! There are plenty of fitness youtubers who post quick workouts focusing on just about any muscle group you can imagine. Carly Rowena is a great one, Blogilates is another favorite of mine, and I've mentioned them before but theLeanMachines have also been a big help for me. These are just a few of the tons and tons of youtube channels posting fitness content. Check them out and try a workout or two if you want to fit in a quick workout at home. I hope that these tips have been helpful! I have included a picture of the "Pump Up" app so that you know what you are looking for.

Thanks for reading,
Sarah