On The Road To Healthy: An Update

About a month ago, I wrote a post about how I wanted to start maintaining a healthier lifestyle by eating healthier, exercising regularly, and generally taking better care of myself.

This week, I finished a Pilates workout calendar for beginners created by my favorite online fitness guru, Cassey Ho of Blogilates. The workout calendar was 6 days on, 1 day off, complete with either three or four workouts per day. The days focused on abs, lower body, upper body, and total body – most often, it was a combination of everything.

I admit, it was hard for me to work out 6 days in a row. If I’m being totally honest, I think that only happened during the first week. For the most part it’s been three or four days on, a day or two of a break, then back to three or four days in a row.

As a result, it took me about five weeks to finish a four week workout calendar. Oops.

However, despite not following the calendar religiously,  I have definitely noticed a change in my body in the last few weeks. On the whole, I feel so much stronger. I’m not as strong as I would like to be, but I’m definitely getting there.

During the first week of the workout calendar, one of the daily exercises was “Wake up and do a one minute plank”. At 15 seconds, I wanted to cry. At 20 seconds, my body was shaking so violently, I thought I was going to fall over. At 35 seconds, I started making some very unlady-like grunts due to the amount of pain I was in. At the end of 60 seconds, I fell on the ground and laid there for a few minutes, cursing the stupid workout calendar.

Yesterday, though, part of my workout was another one minute plank. Though my body started shaking a little halfway through, it seemed like the minute passed by without any trouble. I was so happy, I could have cried.

I’m also starting to physically see the results on my body. My legs are trimmer, my butt is slightly perkier (though, at this point, I’m convinced nothing is going to make that thing firm), and I can see some definition in my abs. It’s exciting to see and feel my hard work paying off!

The one thing I’m still having trouble with, though, is doing enough cardio. All the muscle I’m building will never show through if I don’t do something to burn the fat that’s still covering it up. I’m so tired after my Pilates workouts that it’s tough to go out for a run afterwards; conversely, I wear myself out so much when I go for a run that I have no energy left to do a Pilates workout post-run. I need to figure out a way to be able to do both and have enough energy to keep myself going.

The thing that has been the easiest to change is my diet. Since I’ve been living with my roommate and only buying groceries for myself, I find that it’s so much easier to buy as many fruits and veggies as I can handle and consistently come up with ways to keep my diet varied enough that I won’t get burned out on eating any one thing. Maybe my next post will be sharing a few of the healthy recipes I use on a regular basis…

The toughest part of changing my diet is cutting out refined sugars. Lord help me, I love me some refined sugar. You name it: Snickers bars, cookies, cupcakes, ice cream, frozen yogurt topped with the absolutely unhealthiest toppings…I love it all. And it has been so freaking hard to not eat any of it. It got to the point where I craved them so much that I literally couldn’t stop thinking about them. I have learned, though, that giving in to a sweet craving every once in a while is not going to skew my diet and it’s not going to destroy all the hard work I’ve been doing. Eating something sweet and sugary feeds my soul and perks me up a little.

Don’t get me wrong, though – it still sucks not eating it all the time.

I still have a long way to go before I get my body in the shape I want it to be in – lean, toned, and, most importantly, strong. I heard somewhere that it takes around 30 days to build a habit…and I’ve been working on this one for about the last 37. I hate to jump the gun, but I think I’m finally getting the hang of taking better care of myself.

On The Road To Healthy

If there’s one thing I believe most women can relate to, it’s issues regarding body image and its apparent (but unnecessary) ties to self-worth. I, like many women, have spent the better part of my life struggling with these issues and trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle while knowing that my self-worth is not determined by a number on the scale. However, it’s been a tough journey.

In high school, I was a tall, awkward 5’9″ and weighed in at a slim 110. A too slim 110, I might add. At the time, I was dating a boy who made constant comments about my weight and made snide little remarks about how I could stand to shed a few pounds. As a result, I was underweight and ate next to nothing most of the time.

When I finally wised up three years later (it’s always a little embarrassing to admit that I continued to date someone who belittled me for so long), I changed my eating habits drastically. So drastically, in fact, that I gained about 50 lbs after graduating from high school.

I remember crying the first time I saw stretch marks on my thighs where my skin couldn’t keep up with how quickly I was gaining weight. Even though I desperately needed some of the weight I was putting on, I put it on much too quickly and it was the result of entirely too much beer and junk food. My weight improved, but my health did not.

That phase of my life lasted for about five years. I was consistently eating junk food, drinking too much beer, and exercising almost never. And honestly, even though I wasn’t happy with the way I looked, I never once thought about doing something to change it. I was complacent and in no hurry to change my lifestyle.

It wasn’t until I was sitting on my couch one day that I realized I needed to make a change. I looked down at my belly and it was so perfectly round that it looked like I was a few months pregnant. That snapped me out of my complacency so quickly, I damn near got whiplash.

While it wasn’t easy to start changing the way I ate, it became easier the more often I did it. I swapped out candy bars for fruit and yogurt, I traded sodium-heavy snacks for vegetables, and I gave up frozen dinners for home-cooked ones. I drank more water and less beer. And, most importantly, I started running.

I can’t express how difficult the exercise was for me at the beginning. I hated running. I hated even thinking about running. I hated that I couldn’t seem to run for more than a few minutes without getting winded and feeling cramps in my side. But day by day, minute by minute, I got better. Running got easier, I got faster, I ran longer distances, and I actually started to enjoy the way I felt, both while I was running and after my workouts were over. It was incredible.

All of those changes took place two years ago. In the last two years, my personal life has undergone some drastic changes and it has been difficult to balance dealing with the emotions from those changes and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. So, in short, I just haven’t. I stopped exercising as often and I stopped caring about whether I was eating healthy or not.

But today, that changes. And I wanted to blog about it in an attempt to hold myself more accountable for these changes (and I hope you’ll hold me accountable, too).

I signed up for a beginner’s workout calendar with my favorite fitness blogger Cassey Ho of Blogilates. I ate a clean breakfast (oatmeal with strawberries and a cup of coffee). I’ve had 32 oz of water this morning. And I’m about to complete my first workout on the workout calendar.

I miss the energy I had when I was regularly exercising and eating healthier. I miss how well I slept when I wasn’t drinking beer every day. But mostly, I miss how strong I was when I was running and doing Pilates on a regular basis.

So, here it is. My challenge to myself – to rebuild my strength and maintain a healthy lifestyle. It’s time to eat clean, train mean, and stay that way!