Friday, July 13, 2012

Try and Try Again

This year I have A LOT of goals for myself. Some of them I have already finished and am super proud of. Others I have come to realize are a little bit unrealistic. And some, one in particular, has been a goal of mine for about 7 years now. 

For the last seven years I have been setting the same goal over and over again. I bet it's the same goal most people set over and over again. I want to lose weight! 


When I started I had a goal to lose a bunch of weight and be super skinny for my wedding. Then, when that didn't happen, I decided that I needed a gym membership. After a few years of going to the gym about once a week (on a good week! Ha!) I closed the membership. Then I got pregnant and kinda gave up on the losing weight thing. I tried to lose weight again after I had Michelle, but didn't really have the energy to put much into it. I would go on spurts of dieting and working out, but burn out after a few weeks. Then, last year I gave up completely when I got pregnant with Tina. After I had Tina I decided that losing weight was kind of a silly goal to have while I was still having children. Why work so hard to lose all this weight when I'm just going to gain it back as soon as I get pregnant again?! I figured I would kinda watch what I was eating and try to work out when I could, but not do anything crazy. WELL- let me tell you how well that worked out. Have you ever thought you were doing really well with something and then when you really sat down and laid things out, realized that you weren't doing very well at all? Yep, that was me. Apparently only eating small meals is a really good idea, as long as those meals don't consist of a chocolate bar or cookies.

Recently my sister introduced me to a new app called My Fitness Pal. 



It's a pretty simple app, and not always 100% accurate. Let me explain. The app allows you to keep a digital food diary, and log any exercise you do through out the day. You can set a goal weight and then choose how much you want to lose each week. For example, I put in that I weigh 1** pounds and am 5'2". I want to lose 30 pounds. Then I said I want to lose at least a pound a week. (You could choose to do more then that, but I was trying to be a little more realistic with myself. ...I love Pasta and Ice cream and didn't want to have to give up too much.) Then it calculates everything down for you and gives you a calorie count. I'm allowed to have 1370 calories a day. So I scan in whatever I eat, and log any exercise I do and Voila! Easy-peasy. Now I can tell if I'm eating well or if I really need to watch it. Sometimes things aren't as accurate as I would like (for some reason Jessica and I can punch in the same recipe, but because the brands we choose might be different, we could come up with two different calorie numbers) but it's never more then a few calories off. And, let's be honest, if you're worries about 10 extra calories for your whole day... go run a lap! Lol!

So far I've lost a ton of weight!


Just kidding! That's not me! ;p But, I have lost weight! So far it's been 15 days and I've lost 3 pounds! Not too shabby, right?