Healthy Living

It has been about a week and I have been back on My Fitness Pal now. Great timing, right? Just before a baby shower on Saturday, an impromptu pre-Memorial Day dinner party at a friend's place and then Memorial Day, complete with picnic! Needless to say, I have been over my calorie budget each day since Friday. I do not regret it, I am not punishing myself for my choices, I am not feeling gross or completely out of line in my numbers or my decisions. I have maintained (as a matter of fact, I stepped on the scale this morning and was down 1 pound) and I am still waking up with relatively high energy levels - likely because I have been getting more sleep with the evening routine hubby and I have agreed to. How do I plan to move forward? I am working on adjusting our evening order of events, so that hubby and I are prioritizing our evening workout instead of skipping it once we sit down. I am taking a baby step in pre-tracking my food, without putting too much pressure on the eve...

Babies at the park, whom I am capable of keeping up with For the past 6 months, I have been eating at a caloric deficit and tracking my calories on My Fitness Pal. It is a handy little app in which I can keep a recipe box, my meals are tracked and it remembers my frequently used items. I am also able to keep a close eye on my macros, and this has kept my simple carbohydrate intake in check, as I have drastically limited these and the majority of my carbs have been fruits, vegetables, and multigrain/whole grain light breads. Keeping an eye on these things has helped me to increase my protein intake and keep me better filled throughout the day. By default, this is limiting binges, grazing, and general overeating because the satiation from the protein combined with the satisfaction of my exercise have kept my success rate high! Cue last Thursday. A refreshing morning ritual that keeps me sane throughout the day Early in the week, I had decided that Friday I would not be trac...

Today I started the coursework for "How to Lose Weight the Maintainer's Way" on the Half Size Me Community portal. I cannot express how grateful I am for Heather and her hard work to help others understand what maintenance truly is and how to break free from the cycle of yo-yo dieting. As she began the section, I was considering how when one reaches maintenance, there is no party or big celebration for the number on the scale or a new milestone in going down a clothing size. Everyday is just a day. It made me think about how the journey to get the scale down may closely be paralleled to raising children. Bear with me, I'm a toddler mom with 2 under 2, so this is where my focus is all day. Every time the scale goes down a little, I've dropped another 10lbs, I go down in a shirt size, my pants are too big, etc, I have a mini dance party. I get tons of compliments on how well I'm doing, how my hard work is paying off (which has not felt like hard work for the...

As of this morning, I weigh 191.2lbs. This has been a great week of workouts, tracking and enjoying my food. I even elevated my calorie limit yesterday and it really made more sense, anyway, because I was going over if I didn't count my "exercise" calories. I am likely still eating more than this current limit, but it is still a deficit. Hubby and I are still trekking through Country Heat, I will be doing round 2 on my own, including the 2 bonus workouts and Dirty 30 from 21 Day Fix. I am also back at it with my yoga over this last week or so. I need to find some yoga videos that I can do on more of a schedule, currently it has been Useful Yoga for Stress, Weight Loss and Detox from Tonic on YouTube. I will also be looking into some strength training videos to do from home. I need to start building muscle and bone density, but one thing at a time (one habit at a time). It has been so freeing to remember that I am building a lifestyle that I will continue even after ...