Slimmer This Summer - June 6th - August 28th

If you have been reading my blog or know me from MyFitnessPal.com , you already know that when it comes to motivation, encouragement and support, I'm all about it. While blog hopping today I came across another Blogger Support Group doing a 12 week challenge called Slimmer This Summer.

I am so in!

Here are my goals for these next 84 Days:

• In the next 12 weeks I would like to lose a total of 18 lbs. That would bring my weight down to 173 and averages out to 1.5 lb.s per week.
• In the next 12 weeks I will continue to drink at least 80 oz. of water per day.
  
• In the next 12 weeks I will continue on with working out for a minimum of 30 minutes per day, Monday through Saturday. Sunday will continue to be my Rest Day.
• My beginning measurements are: Waist: 35", Hips: 42.25", Chest: 35", Thigh: 27", Upper Arm: 13.5". My beginning weight is 191 lbs.
  
• During the next 12 weeks I will continue to track my caloric intake, exercise and water consumption at www.MyFitnessPal.com and post it here regularly for those who are not members of My Fitness Pal.
  
• During the next 12 weeks and beyond I will continue to support and encourage others in the Slimmer This Summer Challenge!

Week One Completed

It has officially been one week since I started to make the changes in my life to become a healthier and happier person. I have logged all my food, as well as my water intake and daily movement with SparkPeople and MyFitnessPal. Though at times I had very stressful situations happen, I neither turned to or away from food as a comfort or a punishment.

I have tried to keep my calorie intake to around 1200 daily, but had some trouble on a few days. Not going over, but going under. I've also been paying closer attention to my sodium intake and am shocked at how easy it is to reach or exceed my daily goal.

I've been very surprised to see how much salt is in the foods you wouldn't normally consider salty. Unfortunately, this has limited the foods I would normally think were ok to eat. This week I will spend some time researching more healthy food choices in order to have a bigger selection.

Today is my official weigh-in day and though I have burned over 2.000 calories through exercise and eliminated 3.500 calories through calorie restriction, I am afraid that I have not lost even one pound. While I am tempted to be discouraged, I am taking into consideration that my size 12 jeans that were very tight, especially first coming out of the dryer, were actually very comfortable when I wore them yesterday.

Also, I never did take my measurements before I started this journey, so this morning I picked up a measuring tape in order to compare this week to next week just in case the scale doesn't move.

All in all, I feel pretty good about the past week. I did 30-45 minutes of exercise, 6 out of 7 days. Thursday I had to take a day off because I hurt so badly all over, especially my shoulder due to an old rotator cuff injury.

My energy level has been good, except for the fact that my sleep is in one 4-5 hour stretch at night and maybe a nap during the day, if I'm lucky. I would much rather a complete 8 hours at once. In order to do that and get up at 5 a.m., I need to go to bed at 9 p.m. instead of staying up until 1-2 a.m. every night. Not so easy.

Drinking over 8 glasses of water a day has been no problem. I started doing that back in January. I really have no desire to drink anything else, except for my coffee in the mornings.

In conclusion, my goals for this week are:

1. Take my measurements
2. Research for more healthy food choices
3. Get adequate rest
4. Cardio at least 5 out of 7 days
5. Add circuit / strength training to my workouts
6. Meet my calorie requirements
7. Get new measuring cups and spoons to more adequately measure portions (I did this this morning!)

Some small victories this week:

• I did not eat any of the freshly baked chocolate chip cookies that DD14 baked
• Even though I REALLY wanted a bacon cheeseburger, I opted for a portabella mushroom veggie burger instead.
• When The Man insisted on going to Ryan's for the Mega Breakfast Buffet, I thought hard about how hard I worked this week and then settled for only a glass of ice water, a 3 eggs scrambled and 3 links of pork sausage. ( I admit, though.. it was pretty torturous)

My reward for getting through the week without 'messing up':

Dying my hair today! Really needs it... been putting it off.

Almost To The End Of Week One

Last Friday, (the 7th of May, 2011), I began my journey to fitness. I joined two different websites: SparkPeople and MyFitnessPal. I have been logging my food consumption and water intake as well as documenting my daily exercise.

It has been a long week and basically, I feel like I have been run over by a truck. I overdid it a wee bit on the exercising (Turbo Jam kicked my ass) and have irritated my old rotator cuff injury. Therefore, today I splurged on something that I thought would give my shoulder a break. Meet my newest piece of equipment:

The Gold's Gym Circuit Trainer Mini Trampoline

Nice, huh? Now, the box said it was supposed to come with an activation code to get to the free workouts on IFit.com, however there was no activation code anywhere in the package. I am currently awaiting a response from customer service about this. I really want the extra free workout videos!!!

While it won't burn as much calories as kick-boxing, it will still add a little bit of variety to my workouts.