The good news, the bad news

I have made so little progress over the last four months to deem it as a wash.  I have continued working out, I have maintained all of the fitness gains that I tracked at the beginning, but I have not continued to lose   I am a good 10lbs and about 6-8 inches (if I were to add up all of the different measurements across my body) from where I would like to land, but, I am not seemingly making progress right now. 

I went to the Dr and the nurse told me that I had lost 19 lbs in the past year.  I had no idea that I had lost that much.  I felt better and all of my clothes fit me better, some are too big, but, for the most part, I am just fitting the clothes that I haven't worn for awhile.  I had gone to the Dr. initially a year ago when I was feeling bloated, hormonal etc.  A lot of the weight had to be from the bloated feeling that I had.  Going off of grains has really helped me move past that feeling.   The bad news was that, even though I asked her to just tell me how much I had lost, she also told me how much I weigh.  Even though I have lost a LOT of weight in one year, I am still more than 10 lbs above what I thought I was.  I am shocked to find out that I weighed this much, let alone that I used to weigh 19 lbs more than this!! 

I got rid of a scale about 3 years ago because I was letting my weight run my self- esteem.  I had to move away from that.  I had all sorts of hormonal issues that were resulting in retention of water, or I don't know what but I was just puffier.  I was still working out a lot and eating healthy, but, there was nothing that I could do that would impact my weight loss.   I worked out more, ate less, ate whole foods, tried and tried.  Nothing was making much difference.  I decided that I had to just be happy about me and be grateful for a basically healthy body.  I had to work on my self-esteem and break it away from my weight.  I have done that for the most part, and, I have just gauged my fitness level by my exercise and food choices and let it be...

The paleo thing and changing up my workout routines made a significant difference.  19 lbs of difference.  Now I am stuck again.  I have not progressed for 4 months.  I have also not gone backwards.  That's the good news.  I am feeling strong and my food choices are making a big difference in my energy level and in my moods.  I put dairy back in because dairy has been a good and major source of my protien for many years, and, if I can use dairy protein in my diet, I prefer to.  

I have a new concerted effort going over the past 3 weeks and, I am feeling stronger and more fit, but I have not weighed myself.  I am not seeing much change in my clothes though, so, I don't imagine that I have lost.  Not discouraged though-- I am going to keep going with my plan.

I have stayed off of gluten products, and have very few grains of any sort in my diet.  I have gone back on dairy, but mostly just the cottage cheese and greek yogurt.  I have been really careful about my sugar intake and reduced it again.  It's not perfect, but, I am, frankly pretty impressed with my control on this one:)

I started a new circuit training program with 10 exercises with weights at 30 reps per exercise.  Most of the exercises are upper body and then squats are added to them.  It comes from the book that is titles something like "Look 10 years younger" or something like that.  The diet that she advocates in it is really close to the paleo one but it has you gradually add back in dairy and some grains.  I was already following the diet part pretty successfully so have pretty much just added the weight routine.  I was seeing some progress with the weight routine and have a little bit of discernible muscle toning but didn't feel like i was getting enough out of it to see overall progress, so, I added jump rope.  At first, I was putting in about 5 minutes in between weight sets (one minute or 100 jumps each interval).  But, the last week, I decided to jump after each weight exercise, so, I am doing 1,000 jumps a day or 10 minutes during my workout.  I forgot how much I love the jump rope.  It is such a good overall workout.  It has really bumped up my workout and I feel good and strong after the workout.  I will keep on doing the other exercise videos and mix them in a few times a week to change up the routine, but I think that I will do Tae Bo addition to the jump rope and weights work out.  I need to add yoga just to make sure I am stretching out enough. 

I watch the BYU devotionals when I work out, so I feel like I can justify putting 40 minutes each morning to the workout and am getting a spiritual lift as well.  This double hit in the mornings  starts off my attitude and my day with strength both physically and spiritually.  Whenever I watch the devotionals, I always find that there is something during the day or within a few days that is directly related to what I learned or thought about as a result of the devotional.  It is blessing my life to have this as a beginning of my day.