Going to up the Ante

So my recent weigh in has me at 192lbs, but I am not finding I'm losing weight fast enough for my liking and I have gained 4 pounds since. Then again I've only been doing 35 minutes of cardio and not giving myself time to really do any strength training.

So the new plan is...

Monday -Friday 5:30am-7am
35minutes on the eliptical
25 minutes on the bike
30 minutes of strength training

Saturday 8am-9:30am (on Saturdays I don't work) or 3pm-4:30pm (on Saturdays I do)
35minutes on the eliptical
25 minutes on the bike
30 minutes of strength training

Sunday 10am-11:30am
35minutes on the eliptical
25 minutes on the bike
30 minutes of strength training

If I find that gets boring, I can always run on the treadmill, do the stair stepper, or do what I call the DEATH MACHINE because it hurts my legs.

I figure 420 minutes of cardio vs the 210 I was doing would make an improvement. And enforcing the strength training, I think, will help. Sad thing is, before I got my car I used to do that many minutes of cardio by walking to and from work. At least I know that my laziness has to be stopped.


I want to get down to 150-145 as far as my weight goes. I'm just hoping that I can keep it off without hurting myself or doing any damage.

The Backstory of This Blog

For some people, realizing that they are overweight is not being able to see the numbers on their scale over their gut.

Some realize they can't go for a walk without wheezing after a few minutes.

Some have friends or family that tell them that they really need to get into shape.

For me, I found out that I really needed to work on my weight was when I went to San Francisco on a spur of the moment trip. Looking back on photos made me wonder who in the world was in the pictures I took. It was a shock to look in the mirror at home and see how big I had gotten.

Back in September I had lost a lot of weight and had gotten down to a weight of 175lbs and I felt great and looked better than I had in a long time. Weighing myself two days ago I had bloomed into a scary 198 lbs within 5 months.

So I began looking desperately through different sites for ways to lose weight quickly, desperately afraid of looking for summer clothes and looking like a hippo or a tent (as cute as I think that hippos are at a distance).

 I mean look at that thing, it is soooo adorable :3

I have a fear of pills so I avoided all of those sites and began looking at different diet sites. I couldn't find a single dieting site that didn't charge. I got frustrated with all of the 'miracle' foods and diets and fads and I just wanted to give up and go through my life as a giant cow hippo beast.

Or a hippo trying to eat a cow beast (wildebeast).

So, I decided to find something that would help me keep track of my eating and exercising, like a blog or a journal, but I knew that realistically, with school and work, that it would be hard to write down, or sometimes even just remember what I ate during the day. I began looking for apps on my phone to help me in keeping track of food I eat and my exercise routine and found something called: My Fitness Pal.

It's a free app and after entering your current weight, age, current activity status, and workout/exercise plans it figures out your goal on calories per day. You can also enter your weight loss goal as far as pounds you wish to lose per week. 

The calculator set me up on a diet of 1,620 calories daily, which at first made me a bit fearful that I wouldn't be able to do it. So far I am on day 3 and I've lost 5lbs. This is mostly because I've suddenly cut my intake of food from 3,000-4,000 calories down to daily allotted 1,620 and I feel great. 

As long as I eat on a regular basis, that is. Yesterday was a workday in which I don't get a regular lunch break so I tried to keep myself going with a snack every two hours. By the end of my 6 hours I was hungry and very cranky, rushing home to eat some soup and bread. (I still stayed under the amount of calories allowed, hallelujah) It's just something I need to note. On short shifts I need to be able to take time to eat something substantial or it's going to effect my work. 

So learning that I've dropped 5lbs makes me feel very excited when my goal is to lose 2lbs a week, though I know that I will probably level off somewhere, the hope that I will lose 50lbs by July is a very hopeful dream. :3 I hope my next posts won't be so boring, but everything has to start somewhere.

So my current status is:

weight: 194 lbs.

Workout plan: Six days a week. Mon-Sat. (Sunday will be my light, or off day)

Weigh in Day: Sunday

I hope to post some meal ideas for anyone else who is dieting and interested in low calorie or just different meal plans. :)