November ~ My FAVORITE Month

Since I’m long overdue for an update I’ll spend 10 minutes on this breezy November morning to post my progress!

• Exercise = A+
• Diet = C+
• Motivation = A-

In September I started focusing on posting about my diet rather than exercise, thus I haven’t been recording my exercise on line. But I HAVE BEEN EXERCISING.  It’s really just a part of my lifestyle now.  I walk/run 4-5 days a week for a minimum of 2 miles and usually not more than 3.5 miles.  I practice Yoga 1-2 days a week and hit the gym about 3 days a week.  \So in total I’m getting in a minimum of 7 exercise sessions a week.The weeks I really push and exercise at the max end of my range, I have 1 day that I am almost immobilized with exhaustion (still get my 13,000 steps but really slowly)

My Diet remains my most difficult aspect.  Although I use S Health to track my calories, I still tend to track for about 2 weeks then take 4-5 days off.  I cured my old habits: binging, treating hunger as an emergency, giving up, etc. So whether tracking or not I tend to stick in the 1650 – 2300 range, possibly exceeding that 1 day out of 90.  However I need to stay closer to the 1650 number more of the time for consistent weight loss and therein lies my challenge! 

It’s hard to believe that after a solid year of my healthy lifestyle I’m still learning new things about myself.  But each revelation results in an increased awareness of how to overcome a challenge.  I realized last month that when all my kids are home (I have 2 away at college) I quickly give up the exercise and start making family favorite comfort foods.  My oldest daughter requested stuffed peppers and my oldest son requested tuna-noodle-casserole (“not the healthy one you make, Mom, the one with cream of mushroom soup!”)   On the verge of Thanksgiving I am committed to planning out my exercise and meals so this doesn’t happen. My motivation is solid – not absolutely consistent day to day (ya know those 2300 calorie days aren’t the result of super high motivation) but overall I’m focused on lowing my blood pressure and getting my heart as healthy as it can be.  The weight loss is so slow that it gets frustrating at times, but my real goal is being healthy and I know that as a healthy person the weight decreases (but just so slowly).

NSV’s (Non-Scale Victories)

• -          All my pants are getting baggy (again!). Last Spring I happily removed all of my size 20 pants from my wardrobe and now all of my size 18 pants are getting super long and roomy.  Yippee!  I actually only own 1 pair of size 16 so I’ll be doing some shopping soon. Even my stretchy exercise pants are getting loose, but they’re not falling off yet.
• -          After months of “nothing to eat” (from my kids) I acquiesced and agreed to make chocolate chip cookies this week – but I used chopped Snickers (from the Halloween collection) which prevents me from eating them! (I’m not allergic to nuts, I just don’t like nuts paired with sweets at all).

Scale Victory: a slow and steady ½ lb a week which looks more like 4 lbs. down one week then 7 weeks of a little up, a little down.

May everyone reading this enjoy the nice cold weather November brings and remember to make soup instead of your other cold weather go-to dishes.  Today I’m making a lovely Squash Soup with this beautiful Kabocha squash.