Healthy(ish) Vol. 1

I saw this post idea over at To Love and To Learn which she got from Franish. But here I am making it my own. Since starting up my blog again, I wanted to incorporate a few more things from my life, and an important one is my health, eating habits, workouts, and overall fitness. I am constantly worrying about what I'm eating, how much I weigh and how my muscles are changing. So I thought it would be fun to do a monthly sort of post where I share what my fitness and dieting habits are like.

Let me start off by saying that I know I am not fat. I know I am about average weight for a woman my age and height, and that even though I don't always eat that great, I am conscious of what I am consuming. I have been worrying about my body image for as long as I can remember and it would be great to feel like I look good the way I am, but let me be honest and say, I would like to look better. Again, not because I feel like I am overweight or really unhealthy, but because I know I have room to improve.

Let's Talk About Weight

The last time I weighed myself was a couple weeks ago and I was at 144.4 lbs. I've been fluctuating between 140-148 pounds for the last two or so years and have noticed that as I've gotten older it's been harder to shed the pounds and reach the 130's. My goal weight is and has been for a few years 125 lbs. I look back at my weigh-in's on MFP from years ago, and notice that when I was around 125(ish), I wanted to be lighter. Like I said, I've always struggled with accepting my body the way that it is, and I have come to accept that it's just part of the way I am. I don't mind thinking I could look better, and in no way do I think that my mentality is unhealthy.

Anyway, my goal is to lose around 20 pounds this year and maintain my weight. Is it achievable? Hell yes. 20 pounds isn't that much, but like I said, these last few years have made it harder. I don't know if it's because my metabolism is slowing down, because I am eating worse, or just because that's what my body is doing now. But I know that if I really put work into it, I can reach that goal. The problem is that usually I give up about half way.

My Short Term Goal

I am going on a cruise in April and I want to lose around 10 pounds in the next month and a half. This is a stretch because realistically I only think I will lose about 1 pound to 1.5 pounds a week. But I am determined and have been doing well (for a week and a half) and am hoping to keep up the momentum. The weekend before I started my diet, I binged a bit because I knew starting Monday, I really wanted to be serious about it, so I had KBBQ, snacks, a few alcoholic beverages, and a few other things here and there. I then got rid of all the snacks in my house and prepped some stuff for the week.

What I'm Eating

My current eating goals is 1380 calories a day. That's pretty good for me since I am usually aiming for 1200 or less. This amount is good for me because I work out 3-4 days a week and am on the shorter side. Every one's goals/calories look different depending on what they look like and what their goals are. I decided to stick to this amount of calories with the hopes of, again, losing one pound a week.

My eating begins around 12:30pm every day. I know this is later than most people but I follow an intermittent fasting schedule (16/8) and this works well with me. My days usually start at 7am and I drink water throughout the morning until my first meal at lunchtime. I then have a snack in the mid afternoon and my last meal before 8:30pm. This is something that just works with me and my schedule and I plan to stick with it for the next couple months.

This weekend I prepared overnight oats for the week. I am not a huge fan of oats, and was a little weary of this when my bf suggested it, but after trying them on Sunday morning I fell in love. We made them using lactose free milk, greek yogurt, fruit (strawberries, blueberries, raspberries), almonds, coconut shavings, and honey. It is so good that I haven't minded eating it every morning for a week and a half. Since that's my first meal of the day, I count is as both breakfast and lunch, so I also have something else on the side to fill me up. Sometimes its a salad, or chicken and rice, or maybe just a bar and a fruit. It depends on what I have available and how much I am willing to save for dinner. Depending on how many calories I save for dinner (I aim for at least 500) determines what I have for dinner. Usually I try to focus on eating more protein and carbs for my last meal, but it all depends on what I feel like eating as well.

The good thing about counting calories and macronutrients is that I can basically eat whatever I want as long as I can make it fit into my calorie goals for the day. It all works out pretty well.

Workouts & Fitness

I don't make as much time to go to the gym. There I said it. I wish I could say that I don't have as much time, but even though my days are around 12 hours long from when I wake up to when I'm back home from work, I could probably hit the gym for about an hour every night before I need to be in bed. But realistically, I won't be doing that. Instead, I go 3 times a week. I go every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Yes, I complain about it almost every time, and sometimes I'd rather go out than hit the gym. There have been a couple times where I have gone out instead of going to the gym. That's real life.

Lucky for me, I now live with someone (my boyfriend) who does not fail to go to the gym as scheduled. He is disciplined beyond belief and convinces me (usually) to keep to my gym schedule. So every Friday after work, Saturday afternoon, and Sunday morning, we find ourselves at the gym. Friday and Saturday are upper body days, and Sunday's are leg days. And every day includes cardio. I can't say that it's not hard because it is. And like I said, I don't always want to go to the gym but I do.

This works for me right now. Over a year ago, I was going to the gym about 4 to 5 times a week with one of my best friends, and we were really good about for a little over a year. We both fell off track and while I tried to keep going, it wasn't as frequent or consistent. Now that my boyfriend and I are living together, I have been determined on most days, to make sure I go to the gym on the days that I can.

I started counting the days I was going to the gym on Instagram because I wanted to see how many days out of the year I actually was at the gym. For some reason, posting about it has made me feel prouder and even more motivated to go to the gym.

I've also tried finding more fun ways to incorporate cardio into my life. A while back I took some pole dancing classes and had a lot of fun but didn't keep up with it. I tried boxing and did that for a few months before I couldn't actually make it to classes anymore because of work. Recently, I found a new pole studio that's about two minutes away from my apartment, and on a whim decided to try it out. I've only been to a couple classes but after watching some of my favorite Booktubers doing this for fun, I've wanted to try it again more consistently.
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So far, I am happy with how my diet and workout lifestyle is going. I will probably only weigh myself on weekends but that all depends on how I feel. I will update you guys again next month, and am excited to share my progress. I am looking forward to this new series on my blog and to sharing more personal bits of my life on here as well.