I was working out last night and thought about my blog. I haven't thought about it in months. Obviously because I haven't written anything in about 2 months. Sadly I forgot my headphones while I was pumping iron (haha lame) and running so I had nothing to drown out my thoughts.
I would say that at the end of April I was in a really really bad place mentally, right around Easter actually. Some personal stuff happened and school was its normal hard self and I kinda just lost it and didn't want to do jack shit. But I pulled myself together, starting by eating better and working out regularly. One of my friends Cat, asked me if I wanted to start lifting weights and while I would rather do cardio I thought it would be great to have an someone who knew what she was doing with weights and was willing to go to the gym with me. So I said yes. I was already running and doing Zumba when I could fit it in.
When I decided to workout with Cat I committed to doing 4 days in the gym. We go on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday and I run/zumba on either Monday or Friday. I did Zumba this week! It was great! I also run on the weight days too, but my goal has been to consistently run a mile at a time without stopping rather than running in 2-5 min batches and slowing down. I put it on a speed I can handle running slowly and just run for 15 minutes which usually gets me to a mile. Then I do it again!
I also started doing the Paleo thing. If you don't know what that is, its basically the caveman diet where you eat more meat, you don't eat gluten/grains/breads, dairy or processed sugar (only natural). I always scoffed at people who ate this way. Why would anyone want to do this?! Who wants to give up that much stuff out of your diet... I know all my favorite things are in those three categories! But I decided to do it for a month. Hell, I can do anything for a month and if it goes well I'll stay with it longer.
I'm not saying I have been perfect, because I haven't. My birthday was during my second week, and my students brought me cupcakes, so I ate two of them (they were mini cupcakes... geeze... don't judge!) And one night I went and had some much needed mexican food with margaritas with my friends. But for the most part I've been a good Paelo girl. AND I LOVE IT!!!
How weird is that? Of all the things that I have done to lose weigh this is something I can see myself doing forever. I eat lots of stuff, I'm never hungry. I don't know that I eat more meat now than I did before. Mostly I try to eat 4-6 oz of meat with each meal and I eat a ton of veggies and fruit. I can still have my fave smoothies with almond butter, I can still eat watermelon, and there are surprisingly a lot of recipes out there for goodies and treats that are Paleo. Last week I made banana bread muffins and this week I made three batches of blueberry bread. Don't even ask me if I ate all that damn blueberry bread. The first batch got eaten over a whole weekend... again don't judge me! The other two I eat with breakfast and as an afternoon snack. They have a ton of fat from being made with nuts. But that's cool cuz Paleo lets you eat more fat.
I'm moving toward the end of my third week and I've lost 13 pounds... yup 13. I feel like I haven't lost any weight. But I'm less concerned about the weight and more concerned with how I feel physically and mentally.
Some plus sides to Paleo:
I fart less.... haha yeah I went there
I don't have heart burn anymore
I sleep better
I get to try out crazy recipes that probably won't work but then do
Bacon....
Anyway back to what I was thinking when I was working out. The down sides to this are that I have a new job (thats not a downside! thats a perk!) so I have even less time for my friends (and my puppy), and when they want to hang out I need to go to the gym to workout. I keep asking them to come with me, but there are only so many times that you can get stood up before you stop asking. Some of them are cool with this, we see eachother sometimes at school and they love me (and I love them) no matter what. With others they are mad, maybe because I'm working out an they aren't? that I'm not spending time with them. So maybe I need to make gym friends? I don't know. I just know that this is what is making this harder. I work all day (or school all day) then workout, come home eat dinner and work on school work or relax and I go to bed by 10:30!! Yeah you read that right! I'm often super tired by 9! I get up for work at 5.
Sorry for the SUPER long post today. Its just been a crazy few months and I'm just now getting into a good workout schedule so I thought I would post about it!
Yay Paleo, Yay new job, Yay better body! I'm super excited to see what this summer is going to be like!
