Starting a Work Out Plan

Hey y'all how's your Sunday treating you? Watching football??? Vegging on the couch while your team scores that amazing play (or gets the stuffing kicked out of them)? Either way I hope you are having a great day. So I was talking with a friend last night and she has decided she wants to get into shape, she's put on about 40 pounds since having her children and realizes it is only gonna get worse if she doesn't decide to do something about it now and she wanted some advice on starting. Should she get a trainer? What diet should she follow? How much should she work out? Stuff like that, stuff I wondered about before I started exercising.
Something I think I need to make very clear, is I am a broke college student. I work several jobs, pay for school and books and car payments and insurance all on my own, so I don't have funds available for bad ass trainers and expensive pre-planed meals and I for sure do not have tens of thousands of dollars for a radical weight loss surgery. So I taught myself all on my own.
Now before you start any weight loss program you should see your doctor, find out if you are healthy enough to actively loss weight, if you have any limitations the doctor will tell you and you can work around them.
So you want to loss weight, you've decided enough is enough I am gonna get active and get healthy! Awesome! Where do you start? I started slowly, I was lucky I had access to a gym on campus and I started going three times a week for about 30 min to an hour each time. I would do 30 - 45 minuets of cardio and then do so resistance work to start conditioning my muscles. But lets say you do not have access to a gym and you can't afford one. Well here are some easy tips to get you moving toward you work out goal.

1. Do not start a diet yet! Now I know I will take a lot of flack for this, but I think it's true. I was exercising for about two months before I changed my diet. I believe in "a the little bit at a time" approach and I also believe that getting physically active is more important than a diet. So lets change one thing at a time, lets get you moving first.

2. Start small, do not start going for an all out run five days a week. Firstly you run the chance of hurting yourself if you go from bam non-active to trying to train like an Olympic runner and also you will frustrate yourself when you can't complete something. Try walking, go to the high school in your area and walk around the track for 30 minuets. I recommend exercising in the morning, now if this means getting up at 5am to go for a walk before your kids get up do it. Working out in the morning puts your body in a burning mode all day long. So REALLY try to exercise in the morning, eat some oatmeal and go for a walk. IF you absolutely can't then do it in the evening, just do it and stick with it.

3. Give your self mini-goals. So my overall goal is to lose 210 pounds by July 2012 (when I turn 30!) but through out my journey i have had lots of mini goals. For example in the beginning I could only run 3 miles in an hour on the elliptical, i would give my self two weeks and in two weeks i would push my self to run 3.15, then 3.3. Stuff like that, very realistic, obtainable goals. And then i would reward myself in some small way, my reward to myself when I reached 4 miles in an hour was new work out clothes. Yours could be going to see that silly movie you're dying to see, don't go see it UNTIL you reach your goal however.

4. Once you've been working out for awhile (one or two months) start to work on your diet. Again START SLOW, I started by eliminating fast food restaurants one by one. Then I started eliminating excess fat from my diet (switched to 2% milk and low fat cheese) then tackled kicking out high fat proteins from my diet and figuring out recipes that included vegetarian proteins.

5. Now you're set, you're motivated, you're eating right, weight is dropping off like bees on a hive? Right? Well maybe it was and now it's slowed down a little? Now you have to work on keeping your workouts fresh, play with muscle confusion. Working out is not a place where you can be a creature of habit. Don't just run, run and do push ups, go swimming, go walking one day instead of running, keep adding weight to your resistance work out, do some yoga (this is all examples of stuff I do by the way). You have to keep your body guessing and working in different ways to burn existing fat.

If you can do those five things (and you can, because I did and there is absolutely nothing special or different about me and you) then I promise you will be on your way to a healthy life style.

Do you need a trainer? Nope do some research, get started on your own, get motivated ON YOUR OWN, you can do it. Do you need a dietitian? Nope do some research, the Internet is a great place to learn and if you learn how to do it on your own then it is much easier to follow. Now I'm not saying that trainers and dietitians aren't great resources, they are, and if you can afford it DO IT! I would have loved to have someone there in the gym telling me exactly how to work out, I may have lost even more weight in the beginning, but I could not afford one. If you can't afford one don't think you can't do it on your own, YOU CAN, it may be a little harder and a little slower, but really losing weight and get healthy all starts and ends with you. So go strong no matter what!

The Weekend Baby!!!!

Hey my friends!!! So how was every one's Friday night? I had an amusingly fun night that included dinner out with some really great friends and some adult (not good for me calorie wise) beverages. Oh who am I kidding the pasta I ate at the restaurant wasn't good for me either, but it's totally fine. I'm going to the gym today to run off those tasty adult beverages!


Last night i went out for some margaritas and dinner with my friends that because of our busy schedules we hadn't been able to see each other a lot lately. It's special nights like this that I love being in my new body. I have always been a confident, happy girl, but at over 400 pounds one is going to have some insecurities. One of those for me was eating in public. Now I didn't let my insecurity rule my life and no one should, I still went out to eat with my friends and enjoyed myself, but in the back of my head I always thought oh someone is watching me eating this and that didn't matter what it was and is saying mean things about me somewhere. "Oh look at that fat lazy girl stuffing her face at a reasturant". I don't think like this anymore, someone may still be talking about me for whatever reason ( because not everyone is going to like you and oh well their loss) at a table down the way from me, but I've done something amazing and no one can take that from me.


A lot of people tell me they don't want to use a gym because they are afraid people (the buff dudes or the tiny girls) are gonna stare at them or just be plain mean to them. I am here to tell you this will not happen. It never happened to me and if it for some reason it does happen to you tell the gym staff they will handle it. The people who work for and own gyms are not there because they want to look hot, I think that is a major misconception, they want to share their knowledge of health and fitness with others and they are there to help you more importantly they WANT to help you. That being said I think 90% of people who use the gym are there because they want to be healthy, not pick up people or make fun of people. I've noticed that gym people rarely talk to each other, we all just kind of do our own thing and focus on our workouts. So don't let what other people might say to you keep you from using a gym if you want to use a gym. Gyms are great ways to get motivated, if it hadn't have been for the gym on the campus of my school opening I may not have started this journey. In the beginning I was not a workout oust side type person. If you do pay for a gym or fitness classes DO NOT WASTE THEM, go use them, even if you don't feel like it, it's your money don't throw it away. Like I say all the time, if I can do it anyone can. So get over being worried about what other people think and make a healthy change for YOU! You are the only thing standing in your own way! Have a great Saturday guys!!! :)

Lies We Tell Ourselves

My friends! Long time no blog, it has been an ultra busy, emotional week for me. I still made it to the gym even when I didn't feel like it or did not have a lot of time. It may not have been my best week gym wise, but i still pushed and pushed as hard I was physically and emotionally able this week.
So I want to talk about liars, to quote the really cool Dr. House "everyone lies", and it is totally true. Everyone lies and we mainly lie to ourselves. Yesterday I was watching the Dr. Oz show (I love this show, he has awesome health and diet tips, and I actually follow one of his diets from his show) and there was a woman on there who weighs over 700 pounds and is TRYING to get to 1,800 pounds. She earns money from being a super -sized big beautiful woman (ssbbw) model, and men actually pay to watch her eat. All the sexual fetishisms aside, she claims that she is the picture of health, AT 700 POUNDS! It's not possible and in fact Dr. Oz proved just how unhealthy she was, but it did not matter to her she has convinced her self that she is healthy and what she is doing to her body is perfectly okay. What is sad is that at 410 pounds I did the same exact thing.
I was never diabetic, not even pre-diabetic, I got tested every year because my mom is a diabetic (what is funny is when she first became diabetic when i was 8 years old she was not overweight at all) and has been for 21 years. So diabetes has always been something that scared me, but other than that I come from good genes, no heart disease, strokes anything like that and my family lives a very long time (my maternal great grandmother and her twin lived to be 102 and 103) so other than being fat I have good healthy genes on my side. However at 410 pounds, I did not exercise, I did not eat as well as I should have and I was in fact very unhealthy. That is not what I told myself however, I always said "well I'm not diabetic so it's all good". That was a lie, flat out. I could not walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded, walking around the mall would make my ankles swell and my feet hurt and forget running. These things do not happen to a healthy person.
The best day of my life was when I decided to quit lying to myself and get healthy, I'm now 268 pounds (yay I've lost more this week) and I am the healthiest I have ever been in my life. I can go up three flights of stairs in my university's library with out getting winded and it feels amazing. So if you are reading this and you are overweight and not doing anything about it stop being a liar, get off the couch and walk around the block. You will feel amazing I promise and it does not take much, you do not need to be like me and be balls to the wall all the time. Stop lying and do fifteen minuets of cardio three times a week ( anyone can find fifteen minuets in a day)and your body will love you for it. The world will be a much better place when we all stop lying, I know my world got better when I stop telling my self lies. Have a great friday my friends!

Body Image Stuff

Hola my friends!!! How is every one's weekend? Did everyone have a fun Friday night? I stayed home and cried my way through Beaches.. because I love that movie and we all need a good cry every once in awhile. Anyway enough about my total love for Bette Midler, lets talk about how we all see our bodies shall we? If i posed the question " what is your least favorite part of your body and why" to every woman (and some men) i know there is not a doubt in my mind I would get a detailed list from all of them of every body part they hated. How about if I asked you what part of your body you loved? How would you answer that one? Because, shouldn't we, no matter what our size love some portion of ourselves? I know at my biggest I still loved particular parts of my body, namely my hair and my eyes. They were something I was very proud about and something that I thought made me special.
Now here I am 145 lbs lighter (yup I've lost another 10 pound since starting this blog woo hoo!) and i find myself focusing on what I hate about my body. I am one of those unlucky apple shaped girls that carries a lot of her weight in her stomach. It sucks so much sometimes, even though logically i know my stomach is smaller (I can see it) I still get upset that it's not flat yet. Also the bigger I got the bigger my legs got, I got fat girl legs. Cankles, fat calves and SUPER thick thighs. While my legs are better (namely my ankles and calves) they still aren't normal looking in my opinion (I hate my inner thighs). So instead of looking down on myself for what i don't like I made a list of the body parts I LOVE since I've started losing weight.

My List:

• My ankles - I no longer have cankles, I can now put on a pair of heels with pride and not worry about them look fleshy and gross.



• My Calves - When I started this my calves were about 24 inches around, not even wide calf boots fit, it was so upsetting. Now my right calf is 18 inches and my left is 19 (why the discrepancy can't tell you, but i have what i lovingly call my fat and skinny leg). I love my calves so much that I bought two pairs of calf high boots for the fall and I'm soooo excited to wear them. Yes they are still wide width, but i don't care at all, they fit and I feel hot in them.



• My back - My back looks sooo good, it's getting thin and sexy and i love it.



• My Butt - To go along with my back, if i could walk backwards everywhere i would, that is how much I'm loving my back and butt.



• My arms, clavicle and shoulders - This was the first place i really started to see my weight loss, i love the muscle tone I'm getting in my arms and shoulders, and how jackets fit me sooo much better.

So I think you should make a list the next time you look in the mirror and go "i have the ugliest fill in the blank", stop yourself, look at what you do love. No matter what it is. Continue to work on your trouble areas at the gym, but don't obsess. Everyone of us is beautiful to someone and none of us are perfect and perfection is boring anyway. If you don't believe me ask your husband, boyfriend, best friend or your mom or your dad if your worst part is as bad as you think it is and I bet they will look at you like you came from another planet. So love yourself and only once you love yourself can you really improve yourself!

Diet and Exercise

Hey y'all so it's been a couple of days since my last post, and I'm sorry about that but I'm back! Tonight I want to talk about how important it is to eat when you exercise. Now losing weight is simple math, you need to eat less calories than you exert and you will lose weight. And we can all do that, we can all count calories but that's not all what nutrition is about. I exercise A LOT, I work out like an athlete, i run at least five miles a day, and recently i have taken on the StairMaster. Then I do weight work , my average work out is about 4 hours a day, and sometimes I head back to the gym in the evening. Recently I've figured out I am no getting enough protein in my diet to repair the muscles I damage when I exercise. This was making me slow and sluggish and really not able to push myself like I wanted.
Does this mean I'm gonna eat an 8 ounce sirloin a day, no but I wish! There are lots of super healthy lean proteins out there. I eat lots of quiona (which is an AWESOME vegetarian protein), chicken and egg whites. I also never miss a meal, and always have snacks with me. You should eat five (yes FIVE) times a day.
Even when everything in your system says no don't eat I'll burn more calories, it's not true. Eat, eat healthy and eat often. If you're exercising you WILL burn off what you eat and it's all about balance. You have to relearn how to be healthy if you want your weight loss to last your entire life! :)

Support and Haters

Hola! Let's talk about having a support system, because I think like trying to quit drinking stopping bad food and exercise habits is just as hard if not harder. If you're an alcoholic you can not go to bars, not go down the beer aisle in a grocery store, it is completely possible to avoid drinking in your life until you get to a place where you can be around it and not want it. With food we HAVE to eat, you can avoid restaurants but you still have to go to the grocery store, you still have to cook dinner, you can't just put all food in a box and never see it again. This is why it is important to have people who support you, to talk you down from eating an entire big family bag of potato chips.
I don't do group exercise, an occasional kick boxing class cause I think it's cool, but no aerobics or anything like that. I'll go running with a friend, but for the most part I exercise alone. I have no problems with that, I've never really been shy nor cared about what people thought about how I looked, my attitude has been and always will be if you don't like how I look you are more than welcome to look in the other direction. For most people they don't like to workout alone, so get a buddy or do join that class, you WILL make friends with same goals you have and they will help you through the tough times. I still need support, I'm lucky most of my friends embrace and love the changes I have made. If I'm having a bad workout day I talk about it on my Facebook and my friends get me through it. The opposite is true also, I use my Facebook to post my milestones and most of my friends support it. Not everyone in your life is going to support your weight loss however and you need to be prepared for that.
It was a major shock to me when one of my friends was down right mean to me about my weight loss. She said something about always being thin and never having to work out, to which i replied "lucky you" and smiled. The truth of the matter is that lots of people don't handle change well. When you lose the kind of weight I have (and am still losing) it is a major change. I'm no longer the funny fat girl when we go to the bars who doesn't really get hit on, now I'm just like my friends, very normal sized, and men notice me. Is it because now I represent more competition? I don't know maybe, but I think more likely people just become used to the status quo and don't like it disrupted. You have to just get rid of the negativity. If they are people that aren't vital to your life boot 'em out, delete them from your Facebook and smile when you see them at the mall rockin' your size smaller jeans. If they are friends you love and don't want to delete from your life, avoid talking about your progress with them, just go on like everything is normal, because hearing the negativity will eventually bring you down and you do not want that when doing something like conquering a weight problem. Keep the ones that support you super close. I am lucky, my best friend in the entire world is my number one supporter (and I am hers, she's gone from a size 22 to a 12 in like the last two years) and last night when I was having a rough night she texted me and told me I was beautiful. Surround yourself with people like my best friend, because with people who love us for who we truly are and support us no matter what we can take whatever the world throws at us.

Getting Started

Hey guys! Sorry it's been a couple of days since my last post, I've had some family issues going on but I promise I will try my best to post daily, I know y'all miss my neurotic rantings when i don't post. So I mentioned in my previous blog I would explain why my weight loss in the beginning was super slow. It's an easy answer I started out gradually.
Starting out slow is I think the best way to do it. I remember when I decided to hit the gym I needed tennis shoes and work out clothes, cause I had none of neither, and I didn't run out and buy 50 dollar shoes and expensive workout clothes. I got my shoes for 9 bucks at walmart and one work out outfit at the dollar store cause it was on sale. The last thing I wanted to do was spend lots of money and not keep up with the gym. I also did not change my diet at all. I kept eating crap, like a huge quesidilla then going to the gym and trying to run, worst work out ever.
Starting of slow was important, at first the goal was 3 miles on the elliptical in an hour, then a month later it was 3 miles in an hour doing intervals, then four miles, now i run five in an hour and run for two hours a day. If I had started with unrealistic goals I would not be where I am today.
My whole philosophy in losing weight is change one thing, I don't care if you weigh 500 lbs and can't exercise, or have bad knees, or anything, just change one thing. Give up sodas, or don't eat bread at dinner, or give up candy five days out of the week. Walk to your mail box, walk your dog around the block anything. I promise you will see a change, not day one, or two maybe not till day 20, but you will see a change and those changes will become addicting. Like me it took me like four months to lose the first 20 pounds and go down a pants size, and I knew then I wanted more, so changed my diet, pretty radically and I was okay with it. Am I perfect when it comes to my diet, no because it's not a diet, I re-taught myself how to eat and if you are morbidly obese and want to get it off and keep it off you will also have to re-teach your self somethings.
So start off slow, but don't ever stop. Keep going to the gym or the park with your dogs. If I can do it anyone can, because trust me I'm a very average person just trying to accomplish a goal like you are! Thanks guys! :)

Stress and The Scale

Something y'all may not know about me is I am a biologist. So when I hear something that pertains to the body I typically understand it. This makes losing weight a little easier for me, not much mind you, but a little bit. So stress, stress is a bad, bad thing, but no one can ever be stress free. For sure not me, a college student with several jobs and a sick mom, so stress is a part of my life. Unfortunately stress does raise cortisol levels and cortisol is a steroid hormone that is released in response to low blood sugar (skipping meals) and stress. All cortisol does is try to increase blood sugar, and it tells your body "hey we are starving when we do get food store it as fat" because fat is a quick easy energy storage device in the body. This is a great hormone if your a nomadic person with weeks between meals, however most of us are fairly seditory whose next meal is a drive-thru away. All that being said our stress in our lives is very real and when you are trying to lose weight it is something we have to deal with.
Here is a plus, exercising produces serotonin this is an amazing stress reliever and this will help lower your cortisol levels, but what happens when the exercising is causing the stress. For me it is the scale, now in the beginning of my journey I weighed myself before I started working out and then did it once every three months. In the beginning my weight loss was suuuuuuupppppeeerrrr sloooooow, I will explain why in a later post. So when i saw that first 20 pounds i was so happy. However this summer I started going hard to the gym, and I started weighing my self more, like once a week more and this is bad. Your body weight fluctuates sooooo much. Weighing once a week is insanity don't do it, learn from my mistakes. Weigh in once every two weeks or even better once a month. Or don't weigh in at all, let your doctor do your weighing at your regular check up, just workout and enjoy the shrinking inches and dropping pants sizes. Don't let the scale stress you out, there is so much real stress in your life there is no need to add to it. You will be happier for it I promise!

Holidays and Guilt

Yesterday was Labor Day! Yay! Everyone enjoy the last holiday of summer? I know I did, but for me a holiday meant the gym wasn't open (I utilize my campus gym so it's closed when the university is closed) so this meant light work out day. I work out 6 -7 days a week, missing one day for Labor day is not going to set back my goals at all. It's actually probably good for my body to have a rest day but it doesn't stop me from freaking out.
I have LOTS of personality flaws and probably the main one is I am a neurotic worry-wort. I over analyze, and i am just generally too cerebral for my own good. So for me missing a work out starts this chain reaction of thoughts, "oh my god, what did i eat today? I'm gonna put on a pound I know it and if i put on a pound I'm gonna put on ten." So I have had to learn how to deal with those thoughts.
First, I am not on The Biggest Loser, this is not a competition, i will not die if i only lose 2 pounds one week instead of 3.6 (my average weekly loss during the summer). Second, this is the real world, life gets in the way sometimes and I can't make it to the gym everyday, some days i NEED to sleep past 5:00am and I don't have time for my full four hour work out. Third, some days my body just won't do it, it will not run all the miles i want it too, or lift all the weight i want it too. I have to listen to my body, or i might end up with an injury that will put me out of the gym for a long time.
So this is kind of my guidelines for not freaking out. If I miss a day at the gym it's okay, even two as long as I'm there five days I will lose weight, and if I have a bad week where i feel i didn't work out enough i go hard the next week, but i don't punish myself, i push myself. If I'm missing 3 0r 4 days then I'm making excuses, because unless my appendix ruptures there is no reason in the world to miss four days at the gym, and i need to get back on my routine.
Not everyone can spend 6-7days a week in the gym for four hours a day. I'm lucky, i took the summer off of school and this fall semester also (family reasons, but it does allow me more gym time) so I feel like i don't want to waste this opportunity, and i want to try and get as fit as possible, but even when i go back to my full time schedule and my three jobs (only have two right now) I can still find 2 hours a day to be in the gym. I'm a girl whose body likes to be fat, I have to work harder to maintain a healthy weight, that's life and that's okay. I just need to not worry about it so much! I hope everyone had a great holiday and bring on the fall!!!

Abbreviated work out : So I should have gone to the track and ran with my best friend, she called, but my thighs were so sore (I've started the evil StairMaster at the gym and ugh talk about PAIN) so no running, i jumped rope for 20 min, did my ab workout and did some kettle bell work, kettle bell is amazing it's a mixture of cardio and resistance and i LOVE IT!. In the future I'll post some links to some YouTube videos i watch for kettle bell exercises.

Dating and New Challenges

So being thinner opens up all kinds of new doors (now that I can actually FIT through a door mind you). One of those is active dating. Now i dated when I was bigger, had men that loved me and that I loved, heck I almost got married, but dating when you're really big is different than when you date thinner. I think really big girls are sure of two things when we date, one lots of guys will sleep with us but not take us out in public and two if they do take us out in public this means he REALLY likes us.
Now I'm not skinny yet, don't get me wrong, but I am becoming what my mom lovingly calls more "normal sized" (the average pants size in the United States for a woman is a 14, i am currently a 16 go me!) and more men are attracted to me. Great! Right? Maybe? um hmmm.. I'm not so sure. Dating now is WAY more confusing than it has ever been in my life.
Now I go out on a really great first date (or dozens) and I think "wow we are totally hitting it off, we're out in public (400 pound girl train of thought) he must like me" and then I don't sleep with him and he never calls again, I'm left thinking "wait we had dinner, a walk on the beach, a great kiss, whats wrong here?" I'm learning the smaller I get the less up front men are about their motives in seeing me. When I was big, a guy would be like "hey I wanna have sex with you but no I can't take you around my friends" now they take me around their friends hoping, I guess, to impress me into bed, and when it doesn't work they don't call (or occasionally it works and then it doesn't last for whatever reason and rarely do they give a freaking reason).
Now I'm confused when I get dumped. Recently a guy I really cared about dumped me, we had been seeing each other awhile (like nine months) but i was convinced he didn't want to be seen in public with me. I never asked, because honestly what big girl wants rejection. Well I get to the size I am now and he leaves me for a girl bigger than me and I'm left confused. Because the only reason a man might not want me is my weight. Right? Wrong, and I'm slowly learning that. Everyone always said beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I gotta say i was kind of convinced that no one would ever REALLY love me at 400 pounds and once I dropped it magically everyone would love me. I was so wrong on both accounts.
So I've learned dating sucks, at any weight, being smaller is not making it any easier. Sure there are more men attracted to me, but not necessarily more good men. So now I guess I gotta kiss even more frogs to find my prince? But goodness frogs are slimy, and here's to hoping my prince is worth all the icky, gooey frogs.

I have never blogged before, or ever really felt the need to blog, but now i need an outlet. In April of 2010 I decided I was going to change my life, I was 28 years old and I weighed over 400 pounds. I know that right there sounds very sad, but I was never a sad person. I had great friends, boyfriends (not all at once), awesome jobs, in college, active in a sorority, all in all I had no real complaints about life. But then I saw my self in some pictures from a friend's wedding in January of 2010 and I thought "oh wow, when did I get soooo big?" I have been a big girl my entire life, at birth I weighed almost eleven pounds, then i was a chubby child, a chunky pre-pubescent kid, a fat teenager, and now a morbidly obese nearly thirty adult. So when my college opened up a new state of the art gym, and my friend wanted to start going I jumped at the chance, I started going to the gym and I just haven't stopped.

Now here I am a 16 months later, 135 pounds lighter (still need to lose 100 pounds) and I'm loving it. I never realized what i was missing out on weighing over 400 pounds, the simple things like going hiking or even just walking around the mall without my feet hurting. Or being able to fit in movie theatre seats or not needing extenders for airplane belts.

So this blog is going to be about the journey through the next 100 pounds, i know it's going to be a lot harder than the first 135 pounds, but I'm up for the challenge. I'm hoping this will become a forum of sorts, so i don't completely drive my loved ones crazy, a place where I can talk about and work through all the problems that come from making such a life altering change. So if your still reading buckle-up because I'm sure it's gonna be an interesting ride!