Getting back into the swing

Lost track for a little bit, I've been busy with work, I was sick for a week, and I had to take prescription pain meds for my broken teeth....so I gained all the way back up to 426 :-(

But a few days ago, I started walking again, and I'm back down to 419.  I can't help but feel that it is exactly where I was two months ago...lost some time with no progress, but at least I'm back at it now and I didn't gain too much.  I'll claim I'm intentionally going slow to lessen the amount of loose skin I'm going to have when all is said and done...but really I just lost my way.

Right now my goal is to at least walk 4 times a week.  Before I was trying to go every night and I felt guilty if I skipped a night, but the fact of the matter is that I have a stressful job and sometimes I just don't feel like doing anything, so beating myself up for missing a night here and there isn't going to help me progress.

20lbs down as of today

I hit a little bit of a stumbling block since my last update.  Spring break happened, and while I'm not in school and don't get any time off, my bf and my brother did get time off.  I took a little bit of a break while my brother was visiting, and put back on a few pounds.  Then the week after spring break, I was deathly ill with some awful flu, so I certainly wasn't walking.  So right now I'm getting back into the swing of things, and I've finally got myself back into a place where I'm making progress again.

When things don't go the way I want them to, I have had the tendency to just give up.  "It's not happening exactly the way I planned, so I'm done trying."  I'm trying to be better about this, and I'm happy to continue making progress even if I've slipped up here and there.

20lbs is an awesome milestone, so I'm going to pat myself on the back a little bit, but carry on and keep pushing through.  20 down, 260 to go!

423 as of this morning

So I've walked every day except last Saturday.  Other than that, I've managed to do at least 15 mins and sometimes 20 mins daily since starting.  This morning was my lowest weight since starting this process, so that's awesome.

One of the students at the school I work at commented on my weight yesterday, saying it looked like I had lost weight, which was awesome.  I'm hoping to get to a point where my bf notices, I don't think I'm there yet.

0.72 miles in 20 mins, and I felt every bit of it.

All right, so adding 5 mins was a bit ambitious because that workout was significantly harder than last night's, but I'm going to try to keep it up.  Today I had a stressful day at work and ate poorly, so that probably didn't help me feel energized for my workout.  Even so, hopefully the longer workout partially made up for the bad food.

One thing that is a little concerning though is that I had a couple dizziness spells while I was on the treadmill tonight.  I continued walking, but had to hold on to the rails.  I did experience occasional dizziness before I was on levothyroxine, particularly when going up the stairs, but hadn't really experienced dizziness since then.  I stopped the levothyroxine months ago, and hadn't had the dizziness return, but this is just a reminder that I need to get my health insurance squared away and get my ass to a doctor.  Which really sucks because I am still paying off my bills from last year.  Oh well.

Staying motivated through setbacks

So this morning I weighed myself and I've gained a couple pounds back.  I probably weigh myself too often and I'm seeing normal bodily fluctuations and I realize that, but it's still tough seeing the number go back up when you're doing what you can to make the number go down.  I'm trying not to let it discourage me, but it is disappointing.

I also noticed I didn't really get as out of breath or sweat as much during last night's workout, which was good, but also a sign that I may need to up the difficulty a little.

Tonight, I'm going to bump my time up to 20 min instead of 15.  If I've been doing just over 0.5 mile in 15 mins, I should be able to do 0.67 in 20 mins.  Maybe I'll work up to getting 0.75 done in 20 mins, but for now the goal will be 0.67 in 20 mins.

8lbs down since I began walking which is 16lbs down overall, woohoo!

I know that the weight will not come off this fast the whole way, but it's still pretty nice to watch the numbers go down.  At this rate, I could be under 400 by the end of the month, which is an awesome thought.

My bf is considering starting DDP yoga, so that might be one of the next things that gets added.  This is one of the videos that has him really interested in it.  My bf isn't that heavy, he doesn't even breach 200lbs, so I know he's looking at it more so for me, but I am interested too.

For now though, I will keep walking every night because the results are awesome so far.

Pushing on

I took some measurements today so that I have some record of how big I am early on in this process.

I have a 43" waist and 67" hips.  I am pear shaped and high waisted (short torso), and my extreme waist to hip ratio is ridiculous even when I've been smaller.  Maybe this week I'll take a photo to have a visual record to go with the stats.

I wasn't sure I was going to walk today because I had to do some things for my bf, and didn't finish with that until 9:20pm.  To get 8 hrs of sleep, I should be in bed at 10:30pm, but I did my workout anyway, and am not actually ending up in bed terribly late.  Happy with myself and glad I decided to walk anyway.

Now off to bed with me!