Weekly Posts...

So after quite the long hiatus, I am back.  My lovely friend wrote a post last week about doing a blog challenge for herself (writing every day for 33 days!), and I thought I would join her.  Check our Ginny's blog here!  Since I am quite busy fitting in everything, I have decided to be realistic and shoot for one post a week.  I am going to try to make sure that each post has something to do with my blog title: Health, Parenthood, Hippie (the simple life), or Art.  Looking forward to this challenge!  It gets me doing something for myself that isn't watching TV!

WEEK ONE!

For years I have watched countless commercials and infomercials on different diet regimes, pills and exercise equipment claiming results in as little as a few days...I'll admit, that starting at the young age of 13 I became a chronic dieter.  Being a competitive dancer, I always felt bigger than I should be, because I had a womanly figure (thighs, bum, hips and boobs).  Most of the other girls I danced with were tiny.  Long and lanky...flat chested and flat bottomed.  It was a constant struggle.  I am so grateful that I did not end up with some horrible eating disorder, but wish it wouldn't have taken me 15+ years to get a handle on a healthy lifestyle!  I tried almost everything:  the egg and grapefruit diet, slimfast, Atkins, Michael Therman and different cleanses just to name a few.  

After having my son Kai last September, and weighing myself after 3 or 4 months, I discovered that I had actually GAINED weight!  Suddenly some light switch went off in my head and I knew that my lifestyle needed to change.  To start, I began counting calories.  I know that some of you may feel that this is no different from dieting, but the difference is that I made this a life habit that I will continue to do even as I maintain.  Now I will say that while breastfeeding weight comes off quite easily as long as you aren't eating everything in sight, so this was a great time for me to start.  I knew I had about 40lbs to lose to get to a healthy weight, so instead of lowering my calories to 1200 a day (quite drastic), I figured out how many calories I would need to eat in a day to maintain my GOAL weight.  Eating this amount would allow me to lose the weight more gradually until I arrived at my goal.  Counting everything I ate was quite eye opening.  It really teaches you to be aware of the types and amount of food that you are putting into your body.  

In February, after talking to some friends and reading some background and history of wheat, I decided that it would be beneficial for me to take wheat out of my diet.  For more information check out Wheat Belly!  Once I took wheat out, my weight loss seemed to speed up a bit as well.

When spring hit I started walking and hiking a lot, because let's face it...it's not just about the food you do or do not put into your mouth.  You have to keep an active lifestyle to ensure the optimum health.  By the end of May (about 6 or 7 months since I began my journey), I had reached my goal weight!  So exciting!  The one thing I did notice though is that although I was at a wonderful weight, and I didn't want to lose any more, I still had lots of "jiggly bits".  I had done quite a bit of cardio, but didn't concentrate enough on muscle building.  Now I am at the beginning of a new journey, which is developing muscle.  I didn't know where to start and had a much harder time getting motivated to start anything.  My dear friend who I have mentioned to you before sent me a link one day to the recent phenomenon of BodyRock!  Free workouts that you can do with either no equipment or with things found around the house!  12 minutes!  Yes please! She has even started posting her own modified beginner workouts for friends to follow along!  Find them here...

Sometimes I get annoyed with people saying "I hope you aren't going to lose anymore weight", or things of that nature, because I still count calories and work out.  I don't think people realize that it is a lifestyle change.  In order to maintain a healthy lifestyle, one needs to continue doing what they are doing.  Otherwise it would be a diet!  

 

Anyhoo...I hope this encourages you to start living a healthier lifestyle.  It feels great!