Still Chugging

It's been a tough week for exercise - even the short sessions that PACE requires are tough to get in when the baby is teething, and the big boy caught the cold, and you spend several days traveling. But the cool thing is that it's still working. I'm down another pound and a half. When I get rid of that pesky half pound I will have lost everything I gained on our trip to North Carolina. Not too shabby: it's been about two weeks since we got back. I'm noticing other stuff too: I can breathe better. Lots better. Enough to make a difference when I sing. I'm getting stronger. Moving is more fun. I like the way I feel. I sleep better. That could also be related to the baby suddenly sleeping longer in his own bed before he wakes up for his night-time snack. Night-weaning is a bear, and it's not going to be fun. I'm waiting for those teeth to settle down before we tackle that. The Hubs is also noticing some nice improvements. So far, this new PACE style workout is a smashing success.

PACE

Well, we went out east, attended a wedding, visited friends and then came back by way of the Kirtland temple. Brought back lots of pictures, a few souvenirs, and 5 extra pounds. But 3 are gone already. I'm crediting the new workouts Andy and I are doing. We're using a system called PACE, and I think that my favorite thing is that I'm seeing results, and my next most favorite thing is that the workouts, at no more than 12 minutes, are easy to slip into a busy day without feeling like I need to choose between sleep and exercise or choose between my kids and my health. And it seems to be working!

Checking in

10 days in and still feeling pretty motivated (though, there's still room for improvement with my eating habits).

That app on my phone has a cycle of 5 or 7 days, depending on the food plan I pick. Basically, it gives suggestions for meals and gives allotted times for eating (which is SUPER good for me now that I'm working from home). I picked a 5 day one. I think I did quite well sticking with it the whole time.. but I've only done it the first 5 days, I completely fell off the wagon with the second cycle.

I'm only going to weigh and measure myself once a month (that worked really well for me when I was losing weight for my wedding), so I haven't gotten back on the scale since Sept 20th, but already I feel small changes in my body (my clothes fit better so I know good things are happening).

I've gone back to using that workout plan that I used when I was losing weight for my wedding. It's only a 6 month plan, but my hope is that by that point I will have a routine that I'm in and that I'll have made good habits and be more likely to stick with it better this time 'round. With my wedding the goal was to get in shape for my wedding.. now, it's to be more healthy and to reach a healthy weight, increments at a time. So, by Dec 20th I hope to weigh 15lbs less than I did on Sept 20th.

To help me quantify how active I am, I got a pedometer. I read that a "healthy" person walks at least 10,000 steps a day. I wore it for a week to see what my normal number of steps were. Turns out, it was nowhere near that many. Even when I went for my walk/jog in the morning, the most I was walking was just over 7,000 steps. (though, this site says that a spectrum, but above 5,000 is ok)

However, my Hubby and I have been talking and he's feeling like he wants to step up his workout program too. He's super busy at work, but is really good at fitting in a visit to the gym 2-3 times a week. The downside is that, since he has to cram it into his lunch hour, he's only doing the aerobic workingout for 15-20mins at a time and he's feeling like it's not enough to fight the battle of the bulge. So we're going to work together to adjust our lifestyle.

Mon-Fri, after he comes home from work, we're going to go for a walk in the park up the street (twice around the walking path, just over 2 miles). Also, we're going to do the food plan together to motivate each other, and he's thinking that measurements on top of weighing-in, would be the way to go.

We started the walking today (I hit my 10,000 steps at 2pm.. woo!) and we'll start the food part tomorrow, after I go to the grocery store today. Wish us luck!