Summa time

I have debated over and over again if I want to keep writing this blog. I feel like every time I sit down to write it, I start, look at what I wrote and stop, erase and keep going with my day.

Me and Corey

This summer has been nice. I have visited my family, gotten to spend time with friends, spent a week alone with my husband and I have been doing my best to work out and eat healthy. I would say every day is a struggle, and some days are, but for the most part, I'm taking this time off (only two weeks or so now before I start summer school) to try to get into as many healthy habits as I possibly can before I have to start school back, that way its not so much a struggle as a necessity.

He LOVES my time off from school!

Generally I try to work out at least two hours a day. I figured because I have so much free time, that it would be silly to not spend as much time as I can in the gym. I have found that the best thing I can do for myself as far as exercise goes is that I have to find things I can enjoy. I've started (slowly) running. I'm at maybe a 17 minute mile, if that. I do Zumba every day of the week, and I even started doing an aqua Zumba class two times a week in the morning. I've decided that I dont get much of a work out, but it helps to work out the kinks I get during everything else I do and I always leave feeling refreshed and ready for the day. I wont be able to do this when my summer class starts, but that's alright.

There is also a cool stationary bike at the gym that I like to use that is like an elliptical where you can move your arms too, so on some days I use that. I've found that I have a really short attention span and unless I am talking to someone while I do a bike or elliptical, I have a hard time staying motivated to keep on the machine.

I have also been really working with how I eat. I flat out dont buy things that I know I will eat in one sitting. I dont know about you, but its a lot easier to eat a bag of chips than a whole bunch of bananas. So I dont binge on fruit and veggies, so they stay in the house all of the time. I always have strawberries, blueberries, watermelon and I go through a lot of bananas. Thank goodness for summer time! I am also enjoying learning to cook one person small meals. The casseroles and stuff are good for the winter, but I find myself getting really bored with them after a few days. So I have been loving the chance to cook fresh vegetables like squash, zucchini, asparagus and broccoli, just to name a few.

Weekends are still really hard for me, there arent any Zumba classes on the weekends, so usually I try to go to the gym to swim laps, because those are my days off. It really helps to mix things up, and doing the laps for an hour in the pool is a huge workout for me.

Lastly, I started Weight Watchers. I did this for a couple of reasons. The first was that with programs like My Fitness Pal, or Lose it I never know how many calories I should be eating. And it just flat out confuses me. I go to a calculator that it supposed to tell me how many calories I should be eating a day to lose 2 pounds a week, and it gives me a vastly different number than MFP or LI. So I just decided to try WW out for three months (thats what I paid for because it was cheaper) and see how it goes. If It doesnt look like I'm going to benefit from this, I'll stop the subscription and work with something else.

So far though, it seems to be going well. I've done it for three weeks now and I've lost 8 pounds. If nothing else I feel healthier, especially when I am eating really well all week. I really enjoy trying to find healthy things at restaurants and especially enjoy cooking now that I have the time.

That's the update for now. I'm just going to keep chugging along and we'll see in a couple of weeks how well I'm able to cope with a new schedule and school and working out.

At the beginning of this a couple of my friends had started eating healthy with me, and working out, but so far I'm the only one that is really into keeping it going. You sure cant make people do something they dont want to do, especially exercise!