Good-Bye Obesity!

As I write this, I am sitting here wearing my pair of current "mini-goal" jeans. They are a size 14. Just 14, not 14W (ok, they are stretch). I can't remember the last time I wore size 14 jeans. Seriously, I'm thinking maybe 10 years ago...I'm pretty sure I was wearing a 16 when I got married in 2000. So these jeans are still too tight to wear out of the house. They are as tight as pants that I have worn out of the house, but I was only wearing those because I had nothing else to wear and I was probably on my way to the store to buy the next size up. But hopefully in another 10-14 days I will be proudly wearing my size 14 stretch jeans and I will be on my way to the store to buy a pair of new size 12 "mini-goal" jeans.

I am proud to say that I have been able to keep up with the 3 goals I set for myself 2 weeks ago (hmmm....could there be a connection between keeping my food & exercise goals and fitting into smaller clothes?? Maybe I'm onto something here....) To recap...

1) Protein shakes....everyday, mostly breakfast and a couple times for lunch instead. For me, the shakes have been about consistently eating breakfast and helping with getting at least 128g of protein a day.

2) Increase elliptical and stairmaster times....With one exception, I have increased my times every time I've done cardio. So elliptical is at 18 mins and stairmaster is at 6 mins. Will continue until I reach 30 mins elliptical and at least 12 mins stairmaster.

3) Keep a food diary....everyday since Feb 16th. And that includes 4 birthday parties. I've been pleasantly surprised that I have been able to keep my various totals within goal range about 80% of the time...calories under 1700, carbs at or under 200, protein at least 128, fiber at least 30...I really like using The Daily Plate to track my food intake and exercise.

I've done pretty good with these steps, so I'm going to add 2 more to my list...

4) Drink more water....It's not that I'm drinking too much of something else, but that I'm not drinking enough fluids at all. When I kept Coke in the fridge, I would drink it all day long. My current fluid intake is 1 Caffeine Free Diet Dr. Pepper, 16-32 oz water when exercising (which is not everyday), maybe 12 oz water at dinner.

5) Add abdominal exercises to every workout. I think I have been avoiding the abs because I am ok with keeping them covered in public for the rest of my life...so, let's focus on the arms and legs first (I'm referring to muscle tone, not pin pointing fat loss). But I know that I need to "strengthen my core" and so I will work on including at least one set of abs into every workout.

Good-Bye Obese! The scale is down 26 pounds and that means my BMI is now 29.3, which means that I am officially Overweight. There are 28 pounds between overweight me and normal weight me (based on BMI alone).

I'm making my first trip to Whole Foods on Tuesday. I've been working on my grocery list for days now. I can't believe I am this excited about going to the grocery store.

That's all for now...my legs are going numb from my "can't quite stretch that much" size 14 jeans.