The Plan

So I should probably share my reasons for starting a blog and what I hope to gain from the experience. As I said in my first post, I lost about 30 pounds my senior year of college (my lowest weight was 168). I was still a few pounds from my goal of 165 which would have put me in the healthy range for BMI, barely. I moved to Washington D.C. in November 2005 with all intentions to lose the remaining few pounds. Well, when I was in college I was constantly moving, going from class to class or up and down at work. Now at my job I literally sit all day in front of a computer. Unless I make an effort to exercise, the only exercise I get is walking from the Metro station to my office and back to the Metro station (a total of about 16 blocks). Add that to the fact that I eat at work out of boredom and I'm back up to about 180. To be honest, I had only gained a couple of pounds back and then I met my boyfriend last November and my weight has steadily climbed in the last year.

So as I mentioned before, I lost the 30 pounds in college by counting calories and working out 5 or 6 days a week. Since I've had success with this method before, that's what I'm choosing this time. Over the last few months, I keep recommitting myself to this plan but within a few days I fall back into my old ways. I've thought about it a lot and determined the reason I continue to do this is because I don't want to change my life. I'm too comfortable with eating what I want and not considering the ramifications of my choices. But I'm tired of my clothes feeling tight and feeling lazy and unfit. I want to be a strong, healthy woman.

I've been reading weight loss blogs for a while, lurking around. It seems a lot of people have success with blogging, it keeps you accountable. So I'm looking at my blog as a way to keep me accountable and also as a way to share my experiences. My plan is to write down my food and exercise for the day, every weekday and possibly some sort of weekend wrap-up. As far as keeping track of my calories, I've used a small notebook in the past (and this seems to work well because I can take it with me anywhere) but I also tried SparkPeople for a couple of days. I like that SparkPeople gives you all kinds of information about the food you're eating but it's a little hard to use in the beginning b/c of inputting all the information about foods they don't have in their database. So I haven't decided...

Monday's the day!! I'm ready...my body is tired of this overprocessed food and no activity.