getting back on the wagon

I know i haven't talked about my weight loss in forever. That's because I've just kinda lost motivation. I lost the first 20 pounds semi easy and I'm struggling to get past this 5 pounds that keep going off and on. If you remember, this January i posted to the world how much i weighed (169 pounds if you don't remember), and mentioned that it was the heaviest I've ever been in my life, including when i was pregnant with any one of my three children. I joined Weight Watchers, I started exercising a little bit, started taking my vitamins, and started living the healthy life i was supposed to. I even started running. I started training for a 5K that turned out to not be a 5K but a 5 mile. I got halfway into my training and turkey hunting season came up. I was no longer able to stick to my morning running schedule and DarRell's small window of hunting. I fell off the wagon. I didn't make it to that 5 mile run (although i have plenty of reasons why, but seriously, they weren't the REAL reason why i didn't run it). Truthfully, i haven't been running since. Not a real run anyways. I got to a point in weight loss where my clothes starting fitting better, and had to, in fact, go and buy, get this... 2 sizes smaller! Right now i weigh in at about 145, give or take on the day. I hover up or down a few pounds and haven't made it lower than 144 yet. This is great news for me! Depending on the day, I've lost 25 pounds! However, I'm not near what my goal weight was for myself. Even when I've reconsidered what i want to weight now, I'm still not there. I would love to loose another 10 pounds or so. I haven't counted "points" in several months (which makes me wonder why I'm even still paying for my subscription to WW online). I've been eating better, but when i splurge, i make sure i splurge good. So, I've decided that i need to get back on that wagon. It's going to take baby steps. Lots of baby steps.

So, this is where The Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans comes into play once again. Right now they are doing a challenge on making good health habits. by taking 21 days to form a new good habit. Right now, it's not focused primarily on weight loss but more into incorporating a few good habits into my life which will make a good impact on my weight loss goal. I've been thinking about what good habits i need to make in my life that will help in getting me to my goal weight and helping me stay there when I've reached it, and most importantly, just being more healthy in general.

I've decided that I don't want to overwhelm myself with tons of goals, whether they be easy or hard. I'd be setting myself up for failure at best. So I'm going to settling on four of what i believe to be most important to me at this time. So here it goes...

1. Taking my daily vitamins. Yes, i know this should be super easy. But truthfully, anything i find healthy, i hate doing. It's a glitch in me that i see happening all the time... i guess a bit of self destruction going on there. Not good... but it's the truth. So what better goal to have than to have one that SHOULD be easy just to prove to myself that i can do it. And what makes it even easier is that i found a daily vitamin that i can stomach and so happens to be really yummy. Thank goodness for children gummy vitamins, otherwise this would be a much more challenging and HARD goal for me.
2. Eating my daily servings of fruits and veggies. Or should it be veggies AND fruits... fruits being the hard part for me. Seriously, this is not a hard goal for me at all. I've been living off of salsa for the last month or so and loving every minute of it. And what's making it even easier is that gardens are starting to produce boatloads of veggies right now. I know i shouldn't make my goals a given, that making them so easy will also set me up for failure also since I'm not making any progress. Thus, the addition of adding in fruits. I'm super lucky if i get in my daily serving of fruit in one week, little alone in one day. I'm not a big fruit eater. I think i got worse at it when i started WW after finding out that most fruits have points where as lots of veggies were free. Yes, i think this goal will be a bit harder for me.
3. Drinking more water. Another easy one for me if i actually make a effort at doing it. I used to be so good at this, drinking at least 64-80oz or more a day. I got used to the constant trips to the bathroom and knew when i needed to drink more by just the way i was feeling. Don't ask me what happened to fall off that wagon, I'm just not sure what happened. Right now, my intake is approximately 32-48oz a day. Not even close to what is normally advised for everyone. I know what i need to do and how to do it, it's just the matter of doing it.
4. Eating breakfast EVERY day. I know, it should be easy. And seriously, i know better. But there is that part of me that STILL thinks that if i don't eat breakfast, then i'm not eating as much throughout the day calorie wise. But i KNOW that if i eat breakfast, it kick starts my metabolism. It gives me that extra punch to help burn calories longer in given day then if i don't. I know that it doesn't matter much what i eat for breakfast (well, it does... but lets face it, any kind of breakfast is better than no breakfast right?), i just gotta do it. And yet, i find myself NOT eating breakfast just because of the fact that i want that milkshake later in the day and i'm making up for it calorie wise by not eating breakfast. Twisted thinking but true. Even though i know what i'm supposed to do, i justify it anyways. Definately the harder of my four goals.

Although these four goals I've chosen aren't things that i need to work super hard at achieving, They are some of my most important goals to help me in my journey of a healthy lifestyle and helping me get to where i want to be in life, health and weight wise. Like i said, it's all about baby steps. These baby steps are going to lead to bigger and better steps and before i know it, I'll be out running that 5 mile next year... you wait and see!