Lately, I’ve been working on exercising and paying attention to what and how much I’m eating. I started March 1st after an on-again/off-again start in February. I was doing really well and then everything shut down. I looked at the shut down/stay home order as a challenge. How much weight can I lose during my time off? I have decided to do this slowly instead of incorporating a specific diet plan into my life. I’ve tried almost all of them and as soon as I go off the plan, I gain most of the weight back. This time I’m just counting calories and making sure I’m in a calorie deficit at the end of the day. By doing it this way, I can still have carbs, fruit, and some sweets. I’m using the My Fitness Pal app for calorie counting and it’s super easy. I’m also weighing almost everything I eat which isn’t a big deal for me at all. We were already using our scale regularly when we divided up meat that we buy in bulk from Sam’s so it’s handy to use. I am also trying to make sure to eat protein and healthy fats along with the carbs. My goal is to try to lose about a pound a week but as long as I’m seeing a downward trend, I’m not going to worry if it’s a little slower than that. So far I’ve lost 6.8 pounds since the middle of February.
I’m also doing some exercising. My original plan was walking on my treadmill or doing about a 30 minute walk outside. Now that I’m working from home, I’ve upped my daily walk to a 3.25 miles which takes me about an hour. The weather has been mostly great, and I’ve loved getting outside daily! I joined a weight loss motivation group on Facebook, and it’s been pretty helpful for the most part. Someone in the group mentioned an app called 7 minute workout. It has different workouts for different areas of your body as well as a general workouts for weight loss. I added the app to my phone, and it’s been really nice. I started doing one workout a day for 5 days a week. It wasn’t much, but it was a good kickstart into using my muscles!
My goals for the month of April are to continue with the same eating plan for the most part. I might change it up the 2nd half of the month after I weigh and measure on the 15th. So far I haven’t lost any weight the first week of April so I want to wait and see what my weight and measurements say at the end of two weeks. My exercise goal is to walk my 3.25 miles 25 times and to do 50 of the 7 minute workouts.
I know this was somewhat of a boring post, but I wanted to write it all down for myself. By putting it out there, I am challenging myself to meet my goals.
Midlife Natalie 