You know when is a terrible time to declare you’re getting back in the saddle? Right before Christmas. Sheesh. I hosted my family early and then travelled all over the north east for over a week, seeing my husband’s family, friends, and a wedding. I gained like 4 pounds in a week. No lie.

I’m not making crazy plans or anything now. Just trying to get back into regular eating and moving mode this until this weekend.

Here I am! Married! Honeymooned! Thanksgiving-hosted!

And now finally: Ready to Focus. On me.

As much fun as the wedding was (and it was a ton of fun!) It was so go go go planning it, that although I lost a fair amount of weight most of it was through stress and not through healthy food and exercise. Now that the wedding is over, and some of our big house projects are done (I painted 3 rooms in one weekend) I’m ready to give myself more attention and start creating healthy habits.

While weight loss is the destination, the journey is all about making a more healthy me. When I think of a healthy person, a healthy version of myself, here are the things I imagine:

1. A person who eats only when they’re hungry. One of the things that really bothers me about my eating habits is I eat when I’m not hungry. A lot. And by that I mean quantity and schedule. I may have had a snack earlier but a friend wants to grab drinks. So I order one drink, but cave when it comes to splitting a plate of nachos. And then I eat more nachos then I wanted. I wish I could be at peace with food, so I didn’t feel like it was a constant struggle of forcing eating, or resisting eating. I want to eat when I’m hungry and pass when I’m not. And be at peace with those decisions.
2. A person who makes good food choices 95% of the time. Am I going to skip eggnog entirely this holiday season? Hell no! But do I need to have it with a cookie, after a rich holiday meal? Probably not. I need to be able to fit in treats and enjoy them, but most of my food choices should be whole foods with meals centered around veggies and lean proteins.
3. A person who moves more than they don’t. This is a struggle for me. I do enjoy running and yoga, but I find myself foregoing them when I’m stressed from work, or tired, or when I just don’t feel like getting off the couch. I want to make movement a regular part of my life style.
4. A person who isn’t stressed. Ha. Hilarious. Okay, a person who deals with stress in healthy ways. I feel like fixing this issue will be a by product of the solutions to the previous three issues. With some regular movement in my life (movement as release of energy and not as punishment), whole foods, and not stuffing myself with food I feel like I will be better able to face life’s challenges in a healthy rational way.
5. At a healthy weight. Again, this will hopefully be a by product of my other solutions.

How do I plan to accomplish this? Baby steps. I think in the past I’ve attempted this, but then I get upset that I don’t lose 20 pounds in a month and start upping the ante: eating less, working out more, which frankly is not going to help with #4 at all. Right now I’m focusing on adding movement into my life in a sustainable way, and making better food choices. To do this I’ll focus on the following until Dec. 1.

• 3 days of yoga for 30 minutes.
• Drink water instead of diet soda at dinner

Next week I’ll reassess. I may add another goal, or I may stick with these two, depending on how I’m feeling.

Whew.

It’s been a while. Almost two months now! I’ve been…busy.

While I knew there would be work moving into our new house–painting, packing, setting up, etc.–no one tells you that those chores basically never end! We’ve been in the house  a little over two weeks now and each weekend (and most weekdays) has just been packed with house work.

I think (and I hope I’m not jinxing us now) we’ve turned a corner recently. That’s not to say that we’re finished with our projects, far from it, but we’re finished with some of the most pressing tasks and we’re starting to come up to the bigger, more long term, more expensive tasks. Buying furniture, building decks, etc. Things we will have to budget for and therefore, thank goodness, things we don’t have to do right now.

With this break in house work I’m trying to re-align my focus for healthy living and weight loss. Buying the house was not the best for me in that department. With things packed away, and living at two houses, and being away from home so much we turned to take-out more than I’d like to admit. There were no focused workouts, although packing, cleaning, and painting obviously offer workouts all their own.

The truth is I can gain weight in the blink of an eye, I can maintain weight fairly easily, although it requires a bit more attention. Losing weigh? That requires concentrated effort on my part. I have never been one of those people who weighs themselves every few months and has a realization: “Oh! I lost 5 pounds in 2 months…I wonder how that happened.” I need a plan, I need to rally my commitment, and I need to set up an environment for myself that fosters success. Not too many nights out, home cooking, a regular exercise routine.

My wedding is 4 months away now. Ideally I’d like to lose 20 pounds by then, but I’m going to settle for 16. That’s 1 pound a week, and very doable. I need to get back on track in order to make that happen.

I’ve already started doing so in the food area. I’ve been cooking meals at home and bringing them in. I’ve started tracking again although I didn’t last weekend, and I really need to–weekends tend to be my downfall.

I’ve started adding exercise back into the program too, but I really thinking eating needs to be my focus for a little while.

Shouldn’t be too hard!

More specifically though ignore the whole thing about LiveFit. I finished week ,1 was doing really well, and then I had a tough week at work and everything went to pot. I didn’t have time to work out, I didn’t pre-prepare my food, so basically the whole thing went off the rails.

I definitely do want to follow the plan though. If only to set myself up with some healthy habits. I need to kind of reboot the whole thing though and make sure I’m getting to the grocery store early on Sunday, making all my meals, and making sure I have good snacks on hand, and then getting the workouts in even if it means in the morning.

It feels ridiculous to say that life is getting in the way. Doesn’t everyone have a life, and yet they still manage to work out and eat well? I need to rethink my priorities, but that’s tough to do when you’re at work until 8, home by 8:30 and then in bed at 11. Those 2.5 hours in between I’m just on the couch spacing out.

Maybe I’d have more energy if I worked out?

Well, next weekend is the half marathon, then we take possession March 30th, and then I run a 10 miler Apr 1st! Maybe a nice reboot in April? That sounds good to me!

So, how’s it going with everyone?

I, personally, am swamped.

Wedding stuff is going pretty well. I have a HUGE to-do list of everything single thing I need to do + due dates leading up until the day of the wedding. I only have 73 tasks left, and most of the big tasks (and vendors) have now been checked off. I’ve got the venue, photographer, day of coordinator, DJ, officiant (although he’s not locked down yet), and…I bought my dress! So far everything has come in right around our budget. A few items under, a few items over, but not by much. We created our registry through Pottery Barn, and are going to create one at Crate and Barrel as well. We’re not registering for much given that we already live together and have a house together. But there are a few things we’re missing (namely towels for more than two people and serving dishes for entertaining).

Basically wedding wise I’m pretty set from now through April.

Which is good because we close on our house on March 30! It actually overlaps our lease for our current apartment for a month. Which is good in terms of cleaning and painting. I’m sure we’ll spend most of early April doing that, and then move maybe mid-to late-April.

What does this have to do with living healthy and working out?

The marathon training was really not working with my hectic schedule unfortunately. I made it up to 20 miles (YES TWENTY AND IT WAS AWFUL AND SLOW LET ME TELL YOU), but for the next three weeks my schedule was packed with wedding+house things and I was never able to get in a real long run. I’m considering moving down to the half. Why, after I had already done twenty miles? Um, because twenty miles running is terrible and I’m so slow it took me a little over 5 hours to do, and the time limit for the full 26.2 on this course is 5.5 hours. Uhh…

Yeah.

So, that may happen. I’m a little dissapointed, but frankly had I known I was getting engaged and buying a house this year I wouldn’t have signed up for it. So there you go.

So what am I doing?

As part of this whole wedding process I’ve joined a couple forums with other brides-to-be to help figure out the details of things and get opinions. One topic called: “My Dress Doesn’t Fit” caught my eye. The problem was obvious, and several brides commiserated, but one response was really interesting. She responded that she had had the same issue with her dress when it came in. She had about 3 months to the wedding so she started working out hardcore at a bootcamp, and lost a little weight but ended up on a plateau–something I really relate to. She said the bootcamp instructors told her that she was never really going to see results unless she followed the bootcamp meal plan too. She started following that, lifted weights primarily and had some cardio thrown in and lost a bunch of weight and fit into her dress perfectly. She posted before and afters and she looked amazing! Not only did she lose a lot of weight, she also put on a fair amount of muscle and just looked so toned in her dress.

I have obviously read about weightlifting to lose weight vs. cardio, but never really considered it. When I lost weight the first time I was really cardio heavy, and didn’t really get into weights until the end, and even then it wasn’t a focus.

The other reason I hadn’t tried lifting weights is that actually you have to eat a LOT during the gain period.  You need tons of protein and calories to build mass. And while I know it’s muscle and it’s good for you the combo of more calories + no cardio really freaked me out.

But after a little more research I’ve decided to go for it!

I’m on day 4 of Jamie Eason’s Live Fit program, and it’s actually going really well so far!

The first thing you notice is that while you eat a lot of food on the program it’s really clean eating. Lots of lean proteins, unlimited veggies, some whole carbs, and only good fats. When I try to lose weight through calorie restriction and running I’m usually trying to hit 1200-1500 calories, and trying to run 3-4 times a week 3 miles each. On this program I’m eating closer to 2000 calories (I tracked one day and ended up at 1940) with no cardio at the moment and 1 hour of weight lifting 4 days a week.

I honestly thought I would immediately gain 2-3 pounds–both because of the increased calories and the weight lifting–but instead I’ve lost a couple! Sure, the weight loss is not a ton, and hasn’t gone on long enough really, but it’s fascinating to realize I’m eating 500-700 calories over what I normally would when trying to lose weight and I’m not gaining.

The second thing I notice is that I’m never hungry. I have to eat waaaaaay too much food to ever be hungry. If anything I can’t eat as much as she wants me to. You’re supposed to eat 5 egg whites in the morning and 5 at night, but I just cannot. I’m eating 3 and 3 right now. You’re supposed to eat every 3 hours as well to keep your metabolism revved, and that helps keep hunger at bay as well.

I still will need to do some running for the next month or so as I still have the half, as well as a ten miler I signed up for 2 weeks later. But from here on out that’s the plan I’ll be on for the next 12 weeks. I’ll let you know how it goes!

To the WEST side.

Yeah. Jay and I put an offer in on a house on 1/30. We negotiated for a couple weeks and the sellers ratified our contract on 1/11. We had the home inspection today.

Commence freaking out…

NOW.

Ha, no, not really. I am nervous (since it is probably the single largest purchase we’ll ever make), but I really love the house, it’s in a great area and I think we’re getting it for a good price. It is RIGHT next to a huge park with a great trail for running. The kitchen is going to need updating but Jay and I are both really interested in doing a lot of the work ourselves.

This has definitely cut into my healthy eating and exercise time though. The wedding and the house together is just crushing my weekends. I ran an 18 miler two weekends ago (and that was super tough believe me), but I haven’t done a long run since. My weekends have just been slammed. I may drop from the full marathon to the half on March 17th, and train for a different marathon after all this stuff has settled.

The biggest thing about this move is that it’s a definite change of lifestyle. Right now while we are not inside DCs limits we live on the metro line and we are literally across the Potomac from DC. That means we can walk to restaurants and bars, or hop on the metro and get anywhere in the city in minutes.

Our new house? Is in the burbs. I mean the real suburbs. There is no walking to anything (except parks nearby). I will also be losing my gym in the apartment. We have long term plans for putting some gym equipment in the basement, but seeing how much cost a house takes to keep and maintain that might be a while. I’ll have to do a lot of body strength exercises.

In the mean time I’m hoping I can take advantage of the gym I still have to lay a good base. It seems like we may only be here for another 6 weeks though.

I haven’t posted for two months.

The following is a list of reasons why:

• Planning a wedding
• Venue and Date confirmed
• Day of Coordinator hired
• DJ hired
• Photographer hired
• Save the Dates designed, ordered, addressed and stamped. Just dropping them off today
• Went dress shopping
• Running a marathon
• My longest run to date was 18 miles
• Oh my god, does running that much hurt
• Buying a house
• We’ve seen a ton of houses
• We currently have an offer in (eep!)

On top of all of that I’ve basically had a cold for the last two weeks. Ugh.

So as you can imagine I haven’t been losing a ton of weight (although going dress shopping has certainly lit a fire under me).

I hope at least some of this stuff calms down a bit so I can breath again. I’m actually thinking of just doing the half marathon in March. I wasn’t able to do my long run last weekend, and this weekend looks just as busy. Plus, if our offer on this house is actually accepted we could be moving the weekend of the marathon.

Ugh. I just want it to be September 16th! (Wedding date is Sept. 15. )

I just ate 3 pieces of a Toblerone bar with little to no thought. Whoops.

Not exactly a stirring start to this whole lose weight for the wedding thing.

I’m kind of in the dumps right now because I’m getting stressed with everything that’s going on. Here’s the short list:

• Holidays
• Traveling–doesn’t help that I won’t have a weekend at home until the new year especially considering I haven’t finished my Christmas shopping yet!
• Planning the wedding–Did you know that Washington DC is stupid expensive?
• Marathon training
• Buying a house–see note above re: expensive

Yes, basically every big thing ever. It does help that things are slowing down at work though. I just need to make a plan for Christmas shopping and get as much of it done as I can now. I’m on track for marathon training, and I’ve got things narrowed down to two venues for the wedding stuff. The things that seem to be suffering right now are sleeping and eating. I just can’t concentrate on all of this at once. I feel like a plate spinner hoping nothing falls!

I think I’ll just concentrate on maintaining my weight over the next couple weeks, and then regroup come the new year.

Oh man.

I know it’s totally cliche, but I’m trying to lose weight for my wedding now. Haha.

That’s not the only reason. As I struggle through some of my longer runs for my marathon training (which is right on schedule thank you very much!)  I watch with envy as some of the smaller girls seem to just float over the pavement. Now, I know realistically they’re probably struggling a little as well given that running for distance is tough no matter what, but I also know that running 26.2 miles is going to be a little easier if I’m not carrying a 10 pound brick made of fat with me.

I also really want to get to a “normal” weight sometime soon here. I love the 10 pounds I lost this year, but I’m hoping the next 10 doesn’t take nearly as long, because I’m hoping to lose 20!

The working out is built in thanks to my training schedule. The other part, the food is going to be difficult with the holidays coming up, but when is it not difficult really?

I think it’s good I have all these events coming up. I need some motivation to push more than the 1 pound per month I’ve been losing now. Tomorrow I’ll start coming up with a meal plan and post some ideas and recipes.

Today was a perfect day for a hike.

Jay asked me a few days ago if I wanted to visit Great Falls, a park near DC that has some nice waterfalls. We had to get out early in order to be at a late lunch we had planned with friends.

Around 10am we parked at the start of the Billy Goat trail which is about 3 miles long.

We saw a couple deer.

Some pretty foliage.

A few ducks.

And had some nice views of the Potomac.

And right about here:

He proposed.

And I said yes.