losing weight Posts

12Mar
Off

My Workout Routine Is Working For Me!

Staci G. sent an email applauding my recent weight loss. When I wrote back to let her know that I’ve now lost a total of 14 1/2 lbs. in the past 30 days, she fired off an immediate request that I share details about my workout routine on the blog.

I’m happy to do so — especially since I didn’t have anything else in mind to write about today — but keep in mind: (a) I’m not a fitness trainer; (b) I don’t claim that what I’m doing would work for you, it’s simply what’s working for me; and (c) I’m not at all efficient about exercise so doing a 90 minute workout actually requires a 2-hour commitment for me.

And, no, that’s not a typo: I’m setting aside 2 hours out of my day to exercise 6 days per week. Before someone wastes time typing in the comments “Oh, I don’t have that kind of time every day” let me just point out that YES YOU DO. If you’ve got time to read blogs and comment on them, you’ve got time you could be exercising. You’ve simply made a choice not to.

It’s no coincidence that I’ve been blogging less while exercising more. That’s a choice I’ve made for my life, and now that I’m seeing the benefits — losing weight without an outrageously restrictive diet, better sleep, less joint pain, clearer skin and seriously lower stress levels — it’s a choice I intend to stick with. Because, as I mentioned before, it works for me… but you may need to find something else that works for you.

That said, here’s what I’m doing:

    Monday, Wednesday, Friday

  • 10 minutes yoga (usually with Wii Fit) to warm up
  • 30 minutes “Sweat I/II” from Power90 In-Home Boot Camp
  • 10 minutes “free run” on Wii Fit hitting 1.5 miles
  • 15 minutes cardio workout with My Fitness Coach
  • 30 minutes “free step” on Wii Fit at fastest pace

Total minutes: 95 per day

    Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday

  • 25 minutes yoga with Wii Fit to warm up
  • 15 minutes cardio workout with My Fitness Coach
  • 30 minutes “Sculpt I/II” from Power90 In-Home Boot Camp
  • 15 minutes “free step” on Wii Fit at fastest pace
  • 5 minutes balance games on Wii Fit to cool down

Total minutes: 90 per day

Yes, it’s a lot of exercise. Yes, I’m sore in the mornings. Yes, I get tempted every single day to skip my workout. But I won’t, because giving into that temptation is exactly what helped me get fat in the first place. (Okay, that and a hell of a lot of pizza.)

And what’s really strange about it is that I AM LOVING EXERCISE these days. So, okay, seeing the scale dip lower each morning might be part of it. But the majority of it comes from simply knowing that I’m doing what I know, deep down, is the right thing to do if I want to lose weight.

Which reminds me: it’s time for me to get offline. See, I have some shopping to do now that I need yet another pair of smaller-sized jeans.

Posted by Chubby Mommy in Exercise and tagged with , , , , , ,
27Feb
1

ME First!

I’ve had the same excuse to get out of workouts for years: I’m too busy! Initially, I was too busy being a new mommy. Then I was too busy raising a toddler. After that, I was too busy homeschooling my son, and when he began attending public school in 3rd grade, well, I was too busy cleaning house.

Every night, I’d go to bed thinking that tomorrow I’d find time to exercise. And every morning I’d get up intending to work out… just as soon as I cleaned house, did the laundry, blogged a little, and worked on my freelance writing job. But once those things were out of the way it was time to pick my son up from school. Then it was time to help with homework. Then I had to start dinner. Then there were dishes. And then… Wow, bedtime again already? Okay, tomorrow I’ll start working out.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

You may have noticed since I started exercising earlier this month that I haven’t been blogging as much. If you could see through your monitor and mine, you’d also notice that the house — although “clean” in the general sense — isn’t as spotless as it used to be. There’s even a load of laundry piling up near the washer. And, while I’m still doing my freelance work (hey, a girl’s got to pay bills!), I’m pretty much leaving it for the evenings and weekends.

Picking my son up from school? Helping with homework? Making dinner? Dishes? Yes, I still do them — and will probably have to continue doing so until I win the lottery and can afford a nanny, a cook and a maid. (Dream big, I always say.)

In the meantime I’ve made a commitment that everything else has to take a backseat to my morning workout (even on days I don’t feel like it). That felt selfish to me at first — how dare I spend the entire morning not working AND doing something just for myself? — but after a while it began making sense. A lot of sense.

Being overweight is bad for me as well as my family. I’m sick most of the time with conditions that are related to being overweight. My feet and joints hurt from carrying around excess poundage, so I’m not nearly as productive as I could be. I don’t have much energy to play with my son. I hate taking him to the playground because my clothing options are limited to miserably tight jeans or baggy, ugly sweats.

I don’t like meeting new people — even longtime blogging friends — because I am embarrassed about my weight. (There’s nothing worse than being told “you have such a pretty face” and knowing that, because of your weight, that’s the kindest compliment they can think up.)

And don’t even get me started on how it’s affected my sex life.

Then there’s the fact — and it’s indisputable, really — that being overweight increases the risk of diabetes, coronary problems, dementia and arthritis. In short, being fat is life-threatening even when it doesn’t seem life-threatening: not only does it diminish my quality of life, but every day I carry around excess weight means a shorter lifespan, too.

There’s NO bag of chips, slice of pizza, bowl of ice cream, burger or fried what-have-you that’s worth giving up even one day of my life. And, honestly, looking back I can’t say that I’ve eaten anything worth that trade, either.

That’s how I’m looking at things these days: is that pile of laundry more urgent than my improving my health? No. How about the dust on the living room table? Nope, not that either. Do email, reading the news and keeping my blogs contribute more to my health and quality of life than increasing my flexibility, stamina and cardiovascular health? To quote Whitney Houston: Oh hell to the no.

I let myself get fat by putting other things ahead of my fitness. The only way to reverse that? Well, that’s just it: to reverse that by putting ME first.

Posted by Chubby Mommy in Diet Motivation and tagged with , , , , , , ,
16Sep
5

My A-Ha! Moment About Exercise

Yes, I know exercise is essential to feeling good, becoming fit and hopefully losing weight. That doesn’t mean I have to like it and, truth be told, I don’t. Well, at least I didn’t. Last week, though, something clicked in my mind that helped me to see exercise isn’t the drudgery I’ve always made it out to be. Ever since, I’ve been exercising daily… although I try not to admit that to myself.

A little explanation first.

Shortly after giving birth to my second son I was a whopping 65 pounds overweight. I was still in my mid-30s at the time and how I looked affected many things in my life: my then-career as a trial lawyer, my confidence as a new wife and mother, and my feelings of social relevancy. So when it came to working off the weight I worked hard, going for daily 45-minute grueling aerobic sessions followed by a half-hour of weight-lifting on alternate days. Within six months I was down to the size 6 I’d worn pre-baby boy. Then I stopped.

Those hard core workouts, you see, were both exhausting and boring. I’d set a goal — reaching my old weight — and once I reached it my attention turned to other pursuits: gardening, learning to cook, decorating our first home and becoming a stay-at-home Mom. With a surprisingly busy schedule, and a very active baby turning into an even more active toddler, I just didn’t have time to do the work-out/stop sweating/shower-and-reapply makeup routine.

Flash forward, oh, eight years. (No, I’m not going to tell you how overweight I am now.) Having traded my legal career for freelance writing, looks no longer really affect my income. After ten years being wed to a man who thinks I’m beautiful even when I’m sick in bed with a cold and have snot running down my nose, I’ve come to realize that marital love is bigger than my dress size. (Which, admittedly, is bigger than I ever thought it would be.) My life is even more active than ever before, and so I’ve been telling myself for years that I’m just too busy to really make a regular habit of exercising.

Also, I hate it.

Then last week while stretching in front of the TV to work out a kink in my back I found myself actually enjoying the feel of my body moving. Touching my toes (which, yes, I can still do) brought a wonderful, electric tingle to my underused back muscles. Yoga’s downward dog position tugged on my hamstrings like someone pulling taffy. I sank to the floor, arched the back of my head toward my toes in the cobra position, and felt my spine working out knots I hadn’t even realized were there. A few more moves — most of which used my own weight as, well, weight — and I was wondering why I’d stopped exercising regularly.

Ten minutes into it, the phone rang.

After a brief conversation I “forgot” all about exercising (okay, I decided to do something productive work-wise), but the physical effects stayed with me for hours. I felt relaxed. Mellow. My muscles felt like loose rubber bands instead of tight little balls of constant dull ache. It felt, well, good.

But, I told myself, it wasn’t really exercise. I’d only stretched, after all, and I only did it for ten minutes or so. Why, I didn’t even break a sweat, so obviously it didn’t count.

The next morning, after dropping my son off from school, I came home and decided to stretch again before launching into my workday. Ten minutes into it I was feeling pretty good, and that’s when my gaze fell on a dusty exercise video I’d bought last summer.

At the time, I’d been attracted to the video’s concept: a DVD that lets you choose your target area, exercise intensity and workout length (anywhere from 4 to 40 minutes. (The video is 1-Minute Workout with Minna Lessig, by the way.) I’d used it a few times, found it both easy and enjoyable, and then… “forgot”. But there it was, waiting for me right as I was thinking that perhaps a few more minutes of exercise wouldn’t suck too bad. So I popped it in, did more crunches and lunges in four minutes than I’ve done in four months, and… the phone rang again.

Since then, I’ve come home on other mornings from taking my son to school and worked out with the video a few times. I’ve walked on my treadmill while blogging for 10 minutes here and there, too, although that definitely does bring on the sweat. I’ve even spent a few minutes doing floor calisthenics with and without my exercise ball (which, I’ve found, I’m more likely to use if I don’t put it away in the closet).

But I’m not exercising, at least not in the sense that I used to. I’m just moving around, loosening up my muscles and toning some of my flabbier parts, even if my scale seems to like it. A lot. (As in 4 pounds lost last week.) But I’m most assuredly not exercising. Honest. Because if I actually was exercising I’d feel obligated to think of it as, well, an obligation: something that I must do even when I don’t feel like it, and about which I must feel bad if I “forget”.

So, despite what it may look like, I am NOT exercising. I mean that.

I am, however, wearing a smaller size of pants today.

Whee!

Posted by Chubby Mommy in Exercise and tagged with , , , ,
18Mar
11

Good News From My Scale

I lost weight this week I’m really not sure what I did right over the past seven days, but I’ve managed to lose five — yes, five! — pounds. Oh, I know most of it’s probably water weight, but if I was carrying around that much excess water I can’t say I’ll shed a tear to see it go.

A couple of things I know I’ve been doing differently (and, apparently, right):

1. Eating breakfast every morning. Specifically, I’ve been eating All-Bran cereal. Yes it feels like chewing on bull bars and sticks until that split-second when the stuff turns to mush. But it’s most definitely filling and seems to keep things going smoothly, if you know what I mean.

2. Eating 5 servings of fruits/veggies daily without fail. Having a cup of sliced strawberries and banana on my All-Bran makes it go down easier and gets a fruit serving out of the way first-thing. I love celery sticks stuffed with Laughing Cow cheese, so my mid-morning snack knocks out a veggie serving. A salad at lunch, some chunks of cantaloupe around mid-afternoon, and whatever veg I’m serving at dinner takes care of the rest. Meanwhile, I’m too stuffed to think of snacking.

3. Safely satisfying my desire to chew. Sometimes I think I eat simply because I feel like chewing. I bought some Haribo gummy bears, which are fat free and high on the chewosity list. Ten of those suckers can keep my mouth busy for a good 20 minutes, after which my jaws are too worn out to think about eating again for a while.

4. Eating dinner earlier. I’ve lately wanted to get dinner and dishes out of the way so I can have some uninterrupted evening time to myself. As a result, we’re eating two hours earlier than we used to, which has cut out my pre-dinner snacks.

5. Early to bed, early to rise. I’m very bad about nighttime snacking, but going to bed earlier completely cuts out those snacks. It makes it easier to get up early in the morning, a time when I rarely feel hungry and find that All-Bran and fruit to be more than ample. Meanwhile, I’m getting my recommended hours of sleep, and since sleep may be more important to weight loss than diet, that’s got to be helping, too.

Who’d have thought that five simple steps would’ve made five pounds difference in such a short time?

Posted by Chubby Mommy in Weight Loss Matters and tagged with , ,
11Mar
6

Revving The Ol’ Metabolism

Dr. Sarah Heller reported on this morning’s Today Show that B-vitamins and magnesium are play a role in weight-loss, and that too little of either or both can dramatically slow metabolism. And, of course, she insisted that everyone interested in losing weight absolutely must eat breakfast.

Problem is, I’m not a breakfast person. Or, more accurately, I’m not a cereal person. I also don’t like cooking first-thing in the morning, but if someone else does the cooking I’m happy to scarf down Eggs Benedict or an old-fashioned British fry-up. Those, unfortunately, don’t help the battle of the bulge at all and, besides, hiring someone to whip them up for me is a bit cost-prohibitive.

So mostly I skip breakfast and try to drown out the nagging little voice (which sounds much like my mother’s) that tells me it’s “the most important meal of the day”. See, I already know that voice is lying: the most important is the one I’m eating next.

But I do get the point: breakfast is a good way to get the metabolism going, and making it high in whole grains may reduce belly fat, my biggest body bugaboo.

Still, is it asking too much for a study finding that martinis are good at reducing an ass that’s soon going to need led tail lights?

Posted by Chubby Mommy in Health News and tagged with , ,