I've finally decided to start exercising and eating healthy again. For the last few years I kept saying to myself that I need to start working out. It'd be like this over and over again while I kept gaining weight. At times, you just do not realize you are actually gaining weight.
In the past I was really addicted to eating healthy and exercising. At one point in the past I was 287lbs and eventually got down to 196lbs!! From a size 46 pair of pants down to probably a 36 I think it was.
One reason I started working out back then is that I had just lost my job and needed something productive to do to keep me from being depressed. I had a Bowflex back then and had a goal of working out every other day for 30-40 minutes. Of course once I got into it I got up to an hour.
During this weight loss period, I got off course a bit and made a few small mistakes. I should have kept with what was working. One mistake I made was eating too few calories. It helped with fast loss, but I didn't gain as much muscle as I should have. The Bowflex is a good piece of equipment, but it's not the absolute best for muscle building I think. I don't ever regret using one and it made working out fun. These days I'd almost always suggest something getting a weight bench and some dumbells. Believe it or not, going for walks helps out a ton! Water is another thing that helped. I think I must have gone through a gallon of water a day.
Once my business took off I had very little free time. When I did have free time I made the mistake of getting into Final Fantasy XI/Online. Let me just tell you now that that game is like crack and once you play it and get into it, you will be hooked! Most people watch TV after work, but I would play FFXI. As you can imagine, sitting down all day at work and then playing video games is not a good combination. I probably could say that I was addicted to that game, but I never let it eat up the time working on my business. Maybe a few times.
The good thing about this is that I was saving up every penny I had. My goal was to buy a house. Something bad happened after the first year of saving and every single penny I had saved had to be spent. I kept at it and after 2 years I got enough saved to put a huge downpayment on a house.
So here I was with a new house and the same long hours of work. I never felt like I had a lack of energy, but I could have a lot more still. About a year and a half ago I gave up meat and became a vegetarian. I guess i'm not a true vegetarian, because I still eat eggs once in awhile and do eat cheese and drink milk. I guess the cheese and milk would be ok. Some things i'm not willing to go without. Haven't eaten a single meat product in a year and a half and don't really crave it. I was never a big meat eater anyway. Just maybe hamburgers and whenever I ate a Sandwich.
Sadly, I gained a lot of the weight I lost back. The reason for this is due to inactivity and having a job where I sit for 8-10 hours a day. That combined with not eating healthy is where it all started. I don't feel that I ever ate very poorly. My problem is that I would order Pizza too much and that i'd always have the habit of eating snacks. Whenever I went to Subway i'd always get a cookie to go with it. What's the point of eating at Subway if you're going to get cookies with it? I also had a bad habit of eating ice cream more than I should. Theres probably only 3 or 4 really bad foods that I ate. I think the problem is too much sugar and too much sitting on my butt all day.
On Wednesday I had the entire day off. I went to the bookstore and read for a bit and then came home. I ended up doing a lot of yard work and then even cleaned my house up a bit. After all that I took a rest on my bed for about 15 minutes and then guess what I did? Worked out for over a half hour! The first time in years.
I have no excuse really to not work out. Some people go to college AND work several jobs. I work a ton of hours, but I can easily give up several things to make time. There are 24 hours in a day and people can't come up with 30 minutes a day to exercise?! Not having time to work out is just an excuse. One i've used a lot! I don't know what else there was keeping me from working out again. Maybe I just liked how everything was so set and I didn't want anything to change. I also was a bit worried about weight training and being a vegetarian. It might get a little tricky for me.
There are several reasons I wanted to get back into shape. When I exercise I work really hard on my business and it creates more sales. I love the feeling of waking up in the morning after a hard workout and thinking about what I could accomplish. I rarely got that when I wasn't weight lifting.
I also miss having so much energy all day. I remember in the past waking up and having energy all day until night time. Sometimes I had so much energy that it was even hard to sleep. Of course this was after months and months of exercising.
I also miss being able to go into a clothing store and never ever having a problem with finding the right size. These days it's more difficult to find my size of clothing and theres not much variety.
I've been having problems sleeping lately and always blame it on my bed. Perhaps it's because I've gained so much weight? I don't know.
There's just a combination of small things that made me want to work out again I guess. After the first day of working out I got back all the memories i've had before of eating healthy and exercising. Once I start something I usually stick to it. I remember back when I was first exercising I only ate one "BAD" thing in that entire year. Want to know what it was? A Pop-Tart. No lie! I also did not treat myself to "rewards" such as junk food days etc.
At one point I gave myself a reward day to eat whatever I wanted at one sitting, without overdoing it of course. I myself do NOT like this and it did not work for me. I want to just forget what sugary food and other junk food tastes like. Once you've quit junk food for good, you often forget what it tastes like. One thing I might do is occasionally reward myself each Saturday with one or two slices of pizza, but that's it! I don't even want to know how much I could save by NOT eating pizza each year! Pizza is such a rip off. Pizza is not worth $26! Good pizza is worth paying for, but not for $26.
My first workout went ok. The main problem is that I had a hard time remembering all my exercises. I missed a lot of body parts the first time, but I will only get better. I skipped the abs and shoulders on the first day, but I worked out for about 45 minutes I think. I've got my very own exercise room so that's another reason I NEED to workout. Some people would love to have exercise equipment and can't afford it. There's some people out there that work out just using milk jugs filled with rocks! I've got a nice set of exercise equipment, so put it to use!
My goal now is to figure out an exercise plan. I don't want to overdo anything and want to make it easy to stick to my goals. I will only work out every other day for 45 minutes to an hour. I have not yet decided to do cardio on my off days. I may just ride a bike or take a walk instead. did you know what when I lost over 100lbs I did zero cardio for the first 6 months? Yes, it's true!
After my first day my muscles hurt, but nothing too bad since it was only a first day. Today I work up and ate a good breakfast. They say you shouldn't workout after a meal, but I did anyway.
For Breakfast I had:
Kashi Cereal with 1% Milk
1 Fiber One Yogurt (50 calories)
Water
I need more protein in there of course, but I think the cereal has protein in it. I think I had an overdose of Fiber though! Luckily this Kashi cereal doesn't taste like cardboard like the last kind I had. You know what cereal also gives me a lot of enery? Plain Cheerios! I think tomorrow I will eat some Steel cut Oatmeal I bought.
Yesterday I went grocery shopping and spent $97 on ALL healthy foods. The only "bad" food I bought was chips and salsa. The chips were salt free though and looked fairly healthy despite being fried. I'll only eat a handful for a snack.
I'm going to try to eat several small meals a day. That's the best way to do it. It's best for me to consider two of them just snacks I guess since eating 5-6 small meals a day makes it sound so much worse!
Here's my goal so far:
Workout every other day for 45m - 1hr
No fried foods
No Sugary foods
Limit foods with white-flour and no highly processed foods
Try to get more exercising in by walking etc on off days
Try to work regular hours and don't stay up until 3am! (this is hard)
Don't go without food (puts me into a bad mood very fast)
Take measurements of progress with fabric measuring tape weekly (this is extremely important!!)
Check scale each week and write it down
Lots of fiber and whole grains
Drink more water give up Diet Pepsi (this will be easy)
Write down what is eaten each day (this is going to be hard)
Limit fat, eat lots of protein
No Pizza! (maybe two slices once per week)
Eat out less or never (going to be the hardest thing for me)
Cook at home more. Actually learn how to cook better.
I'm going to update this blog as often as I can. I was going to get my own domain name and update that, but I want to save my money.
No comments:
Post a Comment