Here we go again

New year, old resolutions. I want to lose weight. I want to run again. I want to use all the nice clothes I can't use. This time I have a new strategy. Forget about my ideal weight, or losing 10 pounds or the next month. I think I will take this the same way it happened: one day at the time. So, let's talk about today and about this week.

I have a goal for this week: To workout from monday to friday. So far I've done monday and tuesday. After today I'll have just two more days to go.

I will start my diet... tomorrow.

Sooo...it's been a long, glorious week. We just came back home from Vegas! You have to love Las Vegas... all the lights and the music, the food and the booze, the pools and the casinos. We drank, we ate, we danced and we walked. Oh my god, we walked so much.

When we were packing I was über-optimistic thinking I would get up early, exercise, maybe go for a swim. Of course I just did all that on the first day. Whatever... . I enjoyed my beautiful hedonistic vacations. I haven't had a weigh in yet, but I know I surely gained a pound or two.

Now, let me tell you what's the plan: For this blog to work (because God knows that, so far, it's been a little erratic) I will be posting every Monday and every Friday (unless I'm on vacations). My strategy for the following weeks will be:

1. Eat between 1,200-1,500 calories a day from Monday to Friday.
2. Exercise (at least 20 min cardio, 30 min weight training) a minimum of 3 days a week.
3. Be vigilant of how many calories I consume on Saturday and Sunday. Right now I don't intend to cut them back. I just want to be aware of how much I eat. 

Tomorrow will be the first day. I will post a photograph (I confess I'm scared of that part) and I will tell you what number did the scale show. That's it for today...lets see what the future holds.

My run in with a little kid

Short post: Today I was walking down the street when I saw a mother and her kid approaching. He was not older than six. I couldn't help noticing how fat he was. Finally, after they went pass me the boy, loudly said: Mom, that woman is SO fat! . So...he noticed too. #FML

I hate wearing nice clothes...which don't fit.

It's been a couple of very busy weekends. There were the wedding, a barbecue and couple of evenings out with my in-laws. I must confess that, every time we receive an invite I panic: What am I going to wear? Sure, my closet is full of clothes, the problem is that most don't fit.

Why do I keep clothes that I can't wear? Because when you're a woman whose weight is always fluctuating, it is hard to know what will fit until you try it on. This means that many times you will go into a store, find a perfect dress and, a couple of months later, when you try it on again it is either too big or too small. In my case, most of the times it is too small.

The dress I wore to the wedding barely fits. That means I spent the whole time being uncomfortable. This weekend we have a christening. I have this beautiful white dress that I been dying to wear. Yesterday I tried it on and surprise: It barely fits. I can move comfortably, it has an adequate length but, when my husband saw it his words were:

"Well, we are surely being congratulated. For when are you due?"

If I'm not pregnant I don't want to look pregnant. Now I have to find something that works and I have to find it soon. If only I could just wear a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt.

I hate weekends! (well, not really)

Has it ever happened to you? There you go, hitting the gym everyday, taking care of what you eat, losing some weight and then: it's Friday again. Oh God, don't you love weekends? Except that it's really hard to not overeat, and over-drink and under-train during weekends. Things only get worse when you have a destination wedding. Staying away from home, eating out for every meal...I just know Monday morning, when I meet up with the scale, there will be no good news.

You can't outrun your diet! (Or can you?)

      I don't know why, but this week I have listened the same thing over and over: You just can't outrun your diet! And seriously, I don't know. I've outruned my diet three times. But then again, when I stopped running my weight eventually caught up. Maybe that's what they mean. Not that you can't lose weight or even that you can't reach your ideal weight mainly by exercising, but that it's unsustainable. Either you change your diet or eventually you'll go up again. 

Anyway, for me it has always been easier to loose weight by exercising than by dieting. I think that it has to do with my anxiety issues. Working out makes me feel better, empowered, freer. Losing weight this way is easy, it comes as a consequence. I don't even have to watch too closely what I eat. "If losing weight by exercising is so easy, then why stop? Why are you stuck at 251 pounds (114kg)?", you may ask. Well, let me tell you:

1st time:

 The first time that I lost weight by exercising was when I was about sixteen years old. I became part of a running team and would spend all of my weekday afternoons running. Rain or shine, hot or cold I would run; even on Fridays. I was pretty good at it. I could run 5k (3 miles) in less than 25 minutes. My weight was about 130 pounds (60 kg) So, what happened? College. When I got into college I was positive that I would be able to keep up with my training. The truth is that it turned to be harder than I expected and I completely stopped running. By the time I began my last year of college I had gained more than 66 pounds (30 kg). That's when:

2nd time

I went to Spain and lived there for 5 months. Living away from home, in another continent for the matter changed all of my habits. I had no car, so I walked a lot. I had to buy and cook my own food, so I tried to keep it healthy, and I had little money to spend. I preferred travelling than eating so it was six months with little to no fast food for me. Then I began swimming. When I came back to Mexico I had lost about 40 pounds (20 kg). What happened that time? I came back and lost my way. I realized that everything kept changing and everyone had continued with their life. I tried, unsuccessfully, to get a job and to write my thesis so I could finally get my degree. Things kept adding up and each day I found harder to get out of bed. After a couple of years I had some sort of breakdown ( I had a panic attack) and searched for psychiatric help. I began taking antidepressants. My weight up to that point was similar to my weight now. Several months later I began working out again. Then something great happened:

3rd time

My boyfriend of seven years asked me to marry him! I felt great, had a great motivation and I found a sport I loved. A friend of mine took me to an Ultimate Frisbee training session and I absolutely loved it. I was never good at the actual game, never completely understood it, but I loved training. So, Monday to Friday mornings I would go to the gym for some cardio and weight training and, twice a week, during the afternoons, I would visit the Ultimate Frisbee trainings. During that time I ran my first, and so far the only, 10K (6.2 miles). For my wedding day I had once more lost about 50 pounds (22 kg). 

After getting married lots of things changed. I think I have let the happy married life to be too hedonistic. I've eaten lots of sugary things that I shouldn't (like froot loops, krispy kreme, ice cream). Ordering fast food or eating out became usual for the weekends. I've let myself drink more alcohol and more frequently than before and I've been sleeping in for a year and a half. 

4th time? maybe?

In october I enrolled to a new gym. I began working out after work. The first two months were hard. I could mostly walk on the treadmill. I began with interval training. I would jog for1 minute and walk for another minute. Five intervals, seven, ten until I was able to complete half and hour. Then my walking intervals began getting shorter. About a month ago I finally could jog for 30 whole minutes. I began training harder and set an objective: To run a 5k before the fall ends. 

About two weeks ago I began to incorporate weight training into my workouts. I have begun losing weight. Let's see how it goes this time. Maybe, just maybe, I will be able to outrun my diet. Maybe not. Either way, stay tunned because it will be an interesting journey.

The 7 minute workout (first experience)

Last night I went to bed really late, consequently, today I was not able to get out of bed early enough to go to the gym. I usually go at night, but tonight we have other plans. I still wanted to exercise, even if it was for a couple of minutes. I had heard great things about HIT and "7 minute workouts". Of course I could spare 7 minutes working out; right? RIGHT?

So, I took my iPad, logged into the App Store and found tons of apps promising amazing results in minutes. I was confused. Which one should I download? So I recurred to google to look for "top ten 7 minutes workout apps". I was absolutely overwhelmed just with the top results. Then, I realized that spending time finding out which was the best app was against my objective: to do something with the little time I had. That how I decided to go back to the App Store and download the very first free app I saw.

I downloaded "Seven" made by Perigee. The first thing that struck me was that there was no level settings, no first time configuration nor instructions. While I wanted the app to know that I needed a workout for begginers who begin to begin, all I got was a big button inviting, nay, commanding,  to just begin with it.

Of course I struggled through the exercises. I discovered that continuous jumping jacks are pretty difficult when you're an overweight-undertrained adult. But, all in all, things were going fine until the app showed that, for your next trick, you needed a chair. Wait a minute, nobody told me I had to have a chair available! Much less a chair suitable for standing on or making tricep dips.

As expected, seven minutes go by really fast. At the end of my workout I did break a sweat and felt fairly agitated, but I also felt dissapointed. I'm sorry, but I feel that just a "7 minute workout" is not enough. You should probably make the same circuit a couple of times (and then you would spend 21 or 28 minutes working out).

I tried this app because I had little time to work out. As a first time user, it took me about 5 minutes to choose and download an app. It took me another seven minutes go through the workout. I would have had better results if I had taken another 7 minutes to watch the whole workout animation before doing it. Adding it all, I'm concluding  that a proper first time experience takes between 16 to 20 minutes. Next time I'm in a hurry, I guess I'll just go out and jog for 20 minutes and leave the 7 minute workout for when I have time.