All the Diet and Exercise in the World

It's frighteningly easy to overlook very important factors when trying to find the diet and exercise plan that works for you. Those notorious sites push concepts like macros, calorie counting and time spent working out and, followed strictly, people often fail time and again or give up altogether.

Because we're not all the same. Women and men often have rather specific nutritional needs. When you factor in disease, genetics, and what our bodies are actually using or storing, then the real square one should be this.

Get your blood tested.

Your insurance, or lack thereof, may not be friendly enough to cover a nutritional or personal trainer, but you absolutely need to know if there are certain food or deficiencies standing in the way of finding a balanced diet.

The food pyramids of the 80s were garbage. Low fat diets were proved to train our bodies to store MORE fat. Some of us need less carbs or to ditch simple carbs for complex carbs. Some of us don't process wheat or digest grains well at all. Digestive issues can make raw veggies a painful choice while red meat churns too long in our gut. Some people benefit from organ meat, eggs, dairy, or white meats and seafood. Intolerances for soy or lactose can be roadblocks, not just to our wellness, but for our social life (you do not want to be in the same room as me if I eat anything with soy in it).

I'm not up to speed on what men process, but women tend to naturally be deficient in iron and calcium, which is why it's higher dose in our multivitamins. This is largely due to the way we develop--menstruating women lose blood and iron monthly and we develop shorter yet wider bones. Menopause only makes calcium more scarce, bones more brittle.

There are factors such as race and origin that factor in too. Sickle Cell Anemia is only carried in certain African genes and Ashkenazi Jews can pass on the horrifying Tay Sachs to their child. This is why it's also important to understand what you've inherited from your ancestors, to give up the fantasy of having a love child because testing exists that can prevent new life from misery before it's ever conceived. I'm not going to break into a lecture about marriage or morals because I'm neutral when it comes to choices, but it should be said that genetics are no longer a blind roulette.

In any case, I discovered that I, like an alarming percentage of Americans (we're talking over 40%, people), have a Vitamin D insufficiency that could very well be the not-so-mysterious factor in my declining health over the past decade. It shouldn't be a surprise to me since my skin is photosensitive so I avoid direct sunlight due to the blistery itchy rashes it can cause. I didn't think much of vitamins because I blindly believed that taking multivitamins (a daily ritual since childhood) would pick up any slack in nutrition. I'm not a super active person so eating loads of nutrient-packed food never crossed my mind. Keep in mind, I said insufficient, and the one thing saving my butt from deficiency is the fact that I love seafood and take a multivitamin with D in it.

It just wasn't enough apparently.

So here's a few facts. If you are deficient, they may put you on a booster pill of about 15,000 IU of Vitamin D. For insufficiency, they just recommend an added D3 supplement that you can get over the counter. 1000-4000 IU is recommended daily. Since my MV has 1000, I currently take an additional 2000, knowing I'll still get some from my diet and trips outdoors. You can get vitamin D from sunlight but it takes exposing large areas of skin to UVB rays, at least 30 minutes a day for several days a week. I don't need to tell you that you risk skin irritation, sunburn and skin cancer from sun exposure but you may not absorb enough or any of the vitamin wearing sunscreen either. People of color are actually at higher risk of the deficiency rather than those with paler skin types. The only way to get it in your natural diet is through animal products like cod liver oil, salmon, and tuna, although egg yolks also have a small amount as well.

For some Americans, sunlight isn't all that healthy and a seafood diet is not cheap (especially true of inland states where the freshest fish is frozen). 

Another common deficiency is magnesium. While I didn't look up as many facts, I did decide to add a low dose supplement to my daily intake since I don't often eat any of the foods that occurs in naturally either. What I did find is that it can attribute to quality of sleep, mood issues like depression and anxiety and it does help you absorb D vitamins better. 

Another energy boosting vitamin worth looking at is B-Complex. This actually involves a number of B vitamins and is not as difficult to obtain from a regular diet and MV. 

However, this is why I emphasized getting a blood test. Before you risk frustration and plateaus, understand that healthy eating and exercise is sometimes not enough. Sometimes, you need to start balancing your body's levels, to naturally boost which chemicals your body should be working with to function. Already, two weeks into supplements, I deal with less anxiety and less injury. It may take a few more weeks or longer to really restore some function, but I am eager to continue getting regular check ups and keeping it an important part of my health journey.

Don't guess or suppose. The internet overlooks a lot of what you need to know for your situation. Some people may make it look easy, but being fit doesn't mean their success is healthy. Olympic athletes often end up crippled with issues after their short careers are spent, so the lengths they go to set records is anything but healthy, even though we can't help but be awed by that sort of discipline.

I can't tell everyone to change their bodies for the right reasons. For some people, it's all about the bikini body and that's their choice. However, real health is not simple for everyone and we have to consider our environment, our budgets and our needs with the decisions to be made.

It's just my hope that this encourages people to do the research if health is their priority.

The Struggle

I've had thousands of Day Ones. I'm not ashamed of how many of those fizzled out, but at the same time, the handful of ones that became Day Twos and Day Four-Hundred Fifty Threes and so on, have been something that keep me motivated to start over again and again, as many times as I need to keep trying, rather than racking up as a reason I can expect failure.

Today was a layered Day One, which means it has more potential for failures. Diet, exercise and I'm not buying cigarettes either, so something might collapse, only to need a push back up on the wagon. However, I'm going to force each day to be another Day One if that happens. I gave myself too much room to cheat or stray when I made Mondays the magic Day One. 

Starting out slow but ambition. No P90s to start, if I ever go back to that. It was doing some damage I couldn't ignore but it's not completely off the table. I did love how Kenpo and MMX made me feel and yoga is always a good one. However, there were some strength and high impact prompts that too often I pushed irresponsibly and, while the low impact ones were great, the videos tend to get me overconfident to 'try' the higher impact.

So, I'm using the Leslie Sansone walk videos to start. The lower level ones are a bit too easy for me--I clean a fish tanks several times a week so I'm quite used to hauling heavy loads and stretching to prevent injury for that. The five mile video takes about an hour, a little over that, to do, but I liked the three-mile as well. Have yet to try the four-mile, though I may do that tomorrow if the exertion from today doesn't leave me with a less ambitious need. I tend to be one of those people who are energized on the day of a workout but find out I overdid it when I wake up half-crippled with pain the next day. 

Diet? Back to the simple. Egg on toast and yogurt in the morning. Lentils, maybe in soup, maybe with raw veggies. Dinner is whatever calories I want to take on, maybe leaving room for a light snack if I know my appetite is a bit ravenous that day. It's... not exciting, but I know how to vary it if need be. Tuna salad at lunch is a good alternative. I like breakfast to stay the same. I love eggs and yogurt and there are a lot of ways to vary the flavor there, but a tablespoon of salsa in the eggs and the honey vanilla greek yogurt is pretty consistently yummy.

I may slip up and bum a cigarette here and there. Anxiety sometimes creeps in and urges me to binge eat. I'd rather grab a cigarette than eat three days worth of calories. I know you get told that smoking is worse than overeating, but doctors just don't get how bad an anxiety binge can be either. It's an either-or I've worked out through experience. It's easier to manage habits if you understand the weight of the sacrifices.

It's a New Day

I ended up tapering off of a rigorous fitness schedule. The harsh reality is that this is where most 'lifestyles' go. After keeping it up for 18 months, I finally burnt out, ended up gaining 20 lbs...

But that's the good part!

Most fitness experts warn that a yo-yo will often put you well above your former heaviest weight. I'm sure it does if you go back to the unhealthy choices. In my case, I just balanced healthy and unhealthy, but I wasn't circuit training and I wasn't counting calories.

I've been easing back into figuring out what I want out of a lifestyle change. Fuck fitspo. Sorry if you're into it, but I can't keep up with the brainwashing it takes to pretend I'll ever enjoy exercise or sweating. I DO enjoy the results-- increased energy levels, overall healthier well-being including more balanced moods, better sleep and so on. Because of that, I can concede that fitness is a benefit whether I like it or not and worth challenging my aversion to it. That's about all you'll get out of me though.

I'm starting a new self-experiment for lifestyle changes, namely intermittent fasting. What makes this attractive is that, as an author, it's very common for me to skip meals and since black coffee is my friend, this is not a huge sacrifice to keep it up as a practice. I might be going a little hard at the start by doing 20/4 (20 hours fasting, 4 hours eating). Today, I'm going to eat a fat, protein, veggie packed lunch at 2 PM (avocado and crab meat smeared on cucumbers, flavored with garlic and salt) and pack on the remaining calories for dinner around 6 PM. I've been warned that most women end up hanging around 15-16 hours fasting, 8-9 hours feasting-- if thinking about food becomes obsessive or intrusive on my writing, I will definitely adjust on those days. The point being, I do intend to go for skipping breakfast and concentrating on getting the bulk of my healthier calories in a lunch to dinner timeframe.

I do have BCAAs that I take prior to my floor routine (and combination of crunches and pushups) and the long walk (3.5 mph, between 45-70 minutes depending on the route) and I take a multivitamin and a Neuro Health dose after lunch (while I can't say for certain the Neuro Health actually does anything, there's nothing in it to create negative side effects either so why not?). Because the fasting may cause some energy slumps at first, I try to do all heavier activities within the first few hours of waking up.

Also, I only plan to aim for the stricter side of fasting for 3 months. If I can lose 20-30 lbs in that time (not unheard of), I will be continuing on with the 16:8 model for maintenance and possibly switching to more vigorous exercise if my joints are up for it.

Using MyFitnessPal to record food and exercise, but I'm also going to keep a separate record involving additional heavy activities like housework and cleaning the fish tank that are kind of indeterminate in their caloric value. My overall goal is still to get back down to 135, my weight when I was in my early 20s, therefore full grown, healthy, realistic. I'm hoping to be in the 150-160 range in a few months time. If I feel okay to continue fasting and I'm doing so responsibly, I will, but by that time, I may be ready to take on a few hundred extra calories and change up exercise. I have to admit that, while I don't enjoy exercise, I have a more positive attitude towards kenpo and sometimes yoga. I would like to incorporate more martial arts into my routine but it's very necessary to get off some of this super stubborn weight that gets in the way.

Of course, this is largely due to the way my genes decided to deposit my weight. I have tiny wrists, large muscular ankles and calves, broad shoulders and hips and the bulk of my excess weight camps out at my upper thighs and upper arms (after losing 50 lbs, I didn't lose any pants size or inches around my upper legs, to give you some insight. I only lost an inch around the upper arm. While there is flab there, I won't deny it, you might be surprised by how much solid muscle is the cause of its mass).

I know Chyna got shit for her obvious steroid use, but she said something many, many years ago that gave genetically muscular girls like me serious hope. She said, and it's safer to say I'm paraphrasing, that she had two choices: to be fat or fit because there was never 'skinny' in her future. She might not have chosen the healthiest path, but I admired that she was at peace with her body type. When I was very young, my body made me proud. My gymnastics teacher tried to scout me to be a power gymnast (but holy shit, they make it expensive to train as a gymnast!). When the rest of the girls were wearing shoulder pads in the 80s, my family cut mine out because I had the look that was coveted then. It's hard to be proud of my body now because of the misconceptions of both curviness and that I do live a much healthier lifestyle than most people I know that frustratingly doesn't show. It is literally more trendy to be heroin addict skinny than a thick girl who works out and eats right.

I would never condone addiction and I have no sympathy for it, especially not coddled like it's a fucking disease. In fact, it was a heroin addict that validated that sentiment for me: I picked up the drug willingly, I do the drug willingly, we all know that the risk is addiction. It's always for a selfish reason-- that we would rather hide a mental illness, want to drop a few pounds, or haven't got it in us to just end it or deal with what is fucking us up.

That is pretty damn aware of their selfish choices to me and the kind of accountability you need to either admit you want to change or are secure in the consequences. In her case, she also has no kids or living family members, so I can't hate her for damaging the people that love her or depend on her either. And yes, I do have a history with addiction. I deserved no sympathy for it and it was a shit alternative for seeking valid treatment. Don't fucking self-medicate your grief or inadequacies with illegal hard drugs. Stick to pot-- which I hope will eventually become completely legal one day. It has too much potential in human and global healing to be stonewalled forever.

The point here is that it's often more fashionable to make bad choices so that people can congratulate you for overcoming them. We almost ignore people who are making the right choices, encouraging self-sabotage so that they can be visible for the triumphant return to acceptability. I'd like to make it clear that I am *mostly* doing this for me. Sexual abuse might have encouraged me to let myself go a bit, but the main culprit was the medication I was using to mistreat a mental illness. I'm sure I've told that story in multiple places, but I haven't snapped back from that yet. While emotionally, I have been able to heal a lot, part of the reason I have been stable is because my circumstances have allowed me to avoid working in the general public (away from people) while I raise my nephews. It's very likely that my gentler holistic methods would flop when thrust into a high-stress environments again, but I do like to avoid chemical bandaids so that society can deem me acceptable. I'd just prefer to avoid 99% of people anyway.

My goals are set for this new experiment so we'll see how it pans out. The idea is to drop as much of the weight as quickly as I can while still doing non-demanding exercise, then ease up on the demands once the goals are met. It is some form of the lifestyle I intend to keep but with the reward of being a lighter version of it. I think it has less potential to create a rubber band snap back into bad habits so I'm crossing my fingers. I need the sort of diet that works even when I face health issues that prevent physical exertion so this is what I'm trying. Good luck to me...

Where Have You Been?!

I know I went AWOL for a while there and with good reason.  Didn't give up on my health goals-- I've been maintaining my weight right around 170 and I walk everywhere.  The boys are in school, I get in 5 hours of walking every week just doing that.  I did stop doing challenges because it interfered with my ability to focus on writing and illustrating.  The routine of long exercise sessions paired with showering (which was a little excessive but who wants to feel sticky?) was still disruptive with my current ambitious goals so I've been happy to maintain.  I do still stretch and do a few push-ups, pay attention to my muscles and so on.  I've had no aches from working, as I do take necessary short breaks.

I was doing some pondering and I have wondered about certain biases in this area too.  We see the super fit in an unflattering light sometimes because of that interference in goals we are prioritizing.  It's not that they aren't able to do plenty that engages their brains and their brains DO benefit from their overall health.  Their tendency to dissect their entire workout and focus on their milestones isn't unfamiliar to me now, but my attention has needed a lot more focus that doesn't compete well with that.  So the bias against some people's conversations tends to make us think: is this all they care about?  Well, no.  Absolutely not.  Even the most focused people tend to have a wide range of hobbies but I can tell you for certain that some hobbies to do not translate well on a play by play unless you can immediately relate.  I can tell one friend all about the joys of crochet doll furniture but another will want to know what movies I've watched.  Explaining what you've learned to someone who has no clue, they might let you do it out of love for you, but their eyes are gonna glass over and for them to be a part of the conversation, their questions will be brief or they'll switch topic.

A lot of workouts ask you to take a chunk of time out of your day and not think.  Either you're focusing on breathing, not injuring yourself or it's just too vigorous to form a thought.  Hell, today I caught myself wondering if joggers thought normal thoughts, if at all, or if it bounced out like trying to talk while jogging.  It's not that I thought, they weren't emptying their brain for the rest of the day, I just wondering how it competed with their other priorities and what was their level of discipline.  Yeah, it's hard as hell to turn off, but the payoff is a huge turn-ON on many different levels.  My fitness friends and I can all agree that it works wonder on confidence, energy and sexual health.

Not doing vigorous workouts hasn't taken those things away.  In fact, I still bank that energy after a brisk walk, enjoy the throb of muscle and the whir of blood circulation.  I still use that energy to be efficient in my current goals, whereas there were always the keen aches and occasional losses of energy from the vigor too.  I can still take the stairs up and down the second story of my house when I'm absent minded enough to repeatedly forget to grab things I need.  My brain isn't exactly faltering, it's just distracted with one of many other things I'm itemizing as I go.

As a practice, I am always thinking about where perceptions might be skewed.  Just because I know fitness, I don't automatically assume all athletes face the same challenges or make their whole life revolve around it.  It's not always about that bikini body or how much creatine they're pounding.  There are those types TOO, sure, but they are the extreme example and there are also drawbacks to the super fit.  It absolutely does influence the production of hormones and stresses the body, but when people are aiming to be 'fit', their goals are not the same.  Be it vanity, health, seeing what they're capable of, etc., it's okay to ask something about their journey that they aren't disclosing that you are genuinely curious about.  You may want to know how it affects them, positively or negatively, or wonder if their bravado is masking a struggle that they are working to overcome.  Their focus might be on how many reps they did, but you can channel some things more interesting to you that they might be just as excited to talk about.

Ah, the art of conversation...

Where's my Damn Wagon...

Okay, so I KINDA fell off the wagon.  I did but I didn't.  I'll explain...

Thing is, I did P90X... up until the last 4 weeks and things started to crash.  Not life events of any kind this time around-- in fact, things were looking up there!  What did happen was the kids got back in school and that extra one hour of walking 5 days a week crept in and, for all the vigorous exercise, I was ill-prepared for the addition.

So I learned pretty quickly that I needed more water and more food, so low calorie was out if I wanted to finish the program.  Or so I thought.  It seemed as if my body went into a really stubborn state of low energy and painful twinges.  So I gave it its way and struggled to motivate myself to pick up that week for 3 weeks.  I was only getting in the first half of the week before I was forced to go into recovery mode.

I know that part of the problem is that I was not feeding the muscle.  However, I also don't want any more gains.  I had the feeling that it was time to focus on Cardio.  Except my trial with Turbofire didn't hit the spot either.  Mostly I just felt like I was flailing around uncoordinated and if I was worried about injury before, that fear only intensified.

Here's the thing: I became a published author at the beginning of August.  I had spent all summer doing the illustrations and formatting to make it happen and it became the thing I needed the energy for.  I have 8 more books in the series to do, the next I plan to release by the end of September (I finished the writing and editing about half a year ago-- it's the formatting and illustrating that necessitates the wait.  In case you were wondering what kind of garbage only takes two months to write...  That part took the better part of ten years, so exhale!).

In truth, I am maintaining my weight easily with just the walking and reasonable eating.  I take a multivitamin daily and I continue to enjoy doing the things I love.  Yeah, I can still stand to lose 20-40 pounds (if I'm going for some serious overachieving), but I'm also at a healthy weight NOW, one that puts me out of risk for weight-related health issues.  I don't get winded running up stairs, I can bend effortlessly, I still haul about 40 gallons of water once every week or two.  My journey isn't over, but I have reprioritized from any loss/gain into a sort of maintenance, at least until I release the second book.  When I take that celebratory break, I'm going to reevaluate, see if there is a place for more cardio for the time being.

Don't be afraid to extend the timeframe of those goals when other priorities come up.  I still weigh weekly to make sure I'm keeping up maintenance, I still don't binge or forget to eat.  Health is still top priority.  In fact, I never would have been able to chase my dreams if I hadn't made the chance.  A bikini body is not.  It's September now...  I can pick up the torch again in a few months.  For now, I have a few dreams worth chasing that won't wait.

Some news is damn good news!

And great news it is!  After being two weeks into my diet (which I will ruin tomorrow, following by picking it back up after this party), I went from just over 180 to *drummmmmmrolllll* 174 pounds!  Yes, that's 6 lbs for an average of 3 lbs a week.  No, I don't expect the results to always be this excellent, but keeping to my 1200 calories (although there were a couple of days where I went to 1500-- this is mostly due to extra strenuous activities that necessitated some added protein and carbs) and the daily one-hour walks and 30-50 minute PiYo sessions is paying off.  I'm nowhere near as fit as Chalene Johnson, but I can effortlessly do strength and flexibility sets that people always try to say is easy until I get to be a LITTLE bit smug at their confusion when they fail.  Hey, people, I had to work on this for nearly 8 months daily to get this far, so let me pat myself on the back.  No, I'm not the arrogant sort, but because I'm not petite or a wall of muscle, I do believe people need a little demonstration to see how far I've come from the woman that could barely roll out of bed when my pain thresholds were at their worst.

So all these nights where I spread out that handful of bare minimum calories and had to sate my hunger with water and reminding myself of what I want more, they mean something.  I'm not gonna have that goal, that body, until fall (and this is assuming that I could plateau or sink down to only a pound or two of weight loss) even as I stay this disciplined, but I WILL do this.  My mom and grandma dying were hard blows but ultimately part of what drives me now.  My family is proud of what I am doing for myself, my nephews like to try to do the sets with me.

Yes, it is very much about the support too.  My best friend Joe and his wife Amy have really helped me pick the right workouts and diet ideas.  They're in beast mode, way ahead of me, so they help me understand the pitfalls and right motivators.  I am finding confidence in my strength, my clothes getting looser and the real possibility that those adorable clothes I couldn't fit into but bagged up will once again be worn.  I am overcoming chronic pain, a condition that inevitably hits harder with increased depression.  Yes, my moods are naturally improving.  I'm not dreading sinking into black holes of despair because even when the dark moods hit, I know how to ride it out.

While on the subject, let me quickly say that I've had very real reasons to be depressed, but sometimes it was purely chemical; not triggered by actual threats or a dreaded situation.  I still have to cope with invisible enemies and exercise is not a panacea.  I can do all the right things and still see no results.  This is temporary.  I have talents, I'm not a bad looking person, I'm not irredeemable or broken beyond repair.  Those aren't always things I can say and magically wave away the funk.  I resent it just as much as the next person when I hear someone who never struggled with weight go on a diatribe about getting your fat ass to a gym.  I have an elliptical, a recumbent, weights, my own little gym at home and I can hit those bastards twice as long as some people and still be overweight.  I can eat lower than maintenance calories and still not lose a pound.  It isn't so simple for all of us. Some people have medical or genetic conditions that don't exactly keep them big, but make it harder to even rev up their metabolism.  I'll make a muscle for you; they're there under the padding, but they aren't burning on overtime.  I am the healthiest I have been in a very, very long time.  And let me tell you, some of those gym rats; they aren't exactly healthy.  I've seen people going on crash and fad diets, using drugs, juicing, sometimes that hour they spend so they can be smug about it later?  Yeah, sometimes that's the only damn exercise they get.

It's just really important to know yourself.  For every time you feel good enough to meekly say you've lost 6 pounds working your ass off will be some snide chick telling you they lost 8 'doing nothing.'  There's math involved-- they are doing something, whether it's heroin or not eating.  Smile and tell them that's great.  Be the hard-working one that gets the great skin, muscle tone, and discipline to enjoy the time you have on this earth.  Make it last, savor it... reach those goals and sometimes eat greasy, unhealthy food that you'll have to work off later.  This isn't about bragging how many vegetables you can eat either.  You are working for what makes you happy-- make that the best news and let the rest roll off your shoulders.

Live by cliche mantras.  Make the only person you are trying to be better than the person that you were yesterday.

Honesty Counts

One thing I knew I wouldn't be able to do is write a blog without bias.  I will always be biased by my own experiences, my own obstacles and my own progress.  There's a lot of bullshit as you wade through the world of fitness and well-being, both encouraging and discouraging.  One thing I intended to be throughout my journey is honest.

Honestly, I kind of suck at discipline sometimes.

It's not just cravings, or life events, or many other valid excuses for why I have to break budget or skip a workout; like anyone else, sometimes I just don't wanna.

I've actually consistently averaged at 1200 calories daily since I was able to get back to a low calorie diet.  Except for that one day I really wanted that slice of cold pizza that put me at 1500.  Which, let's face it, is still weight loss calories, but I want to push harder.  It's not even unrealistic, just tough.  I've done better with my diet than I have all year, but to be honest, it can be miserable.  I eat the same breakfast and lunch every day.  Every. Day.  They're super low calorie, but full of the carbs and proteins I need for these vigorous workouts.  It's healthy fats, full of fiber, low in sugar and salt.  Doing the right thing feels good.  For everything but my stomach.  My stomach hates it, my taste buds hate it.  When you have strong feelings, you would think it would make you give up.  Still, despite my inner foodie hating it, my muscles love it.  My overactive nerves love it.  My heart rate and my breathing love it.  Desires can be strong, but they are ultimately temporary.  Guilt is long lasting.  Bad health is long lasting.  Chronic pain...  well, it's got the key word right there.

But hey, I have the last half of my day (and the last 1/2-2/3 of my calorie budget) to ease up a bit.  I can have yogurt and a couple of those low calorie cafe steamers.  Sometimes I can upgrade my black coffee to have light cream and sugar or go ahead and have a glass of soda.  I can even spread it all out until a couple hours before bedtime.  It's not a total drag as long as I understand the consequences of choice.  Sometimes it's worth it to go a little over on calories.  Sometimes I'll feel better just hoarding my calories so I can have a big calorie dinner.  Things like hunger and cravings are not going to be the same every damn day and I have to constantly be conscious of the choices I make.

Food diaries are a great way to do that, but honestly there are a few tracking apps that can make tracking food and exercise a snap.  Some people like to hand write everything.  My daily to-do lists satisfy that.  I like to keep food tracking short and sweet and find out which days really worked and why certain days might have bombed.  And I still fuck it all up sometimes in a moment of weakness.

I don't weigh-in again until Friday and I plan to post the results.  I have been bouncing between 175-180 for months with all the very real factors of trauma.  I hope to at least be on the lower end again.  I plan to cheat this Saturday at an annual 'Cinco de Mayo' party my friends have every year, which clearly isn't always on that day or even that weekend.  I also plan to take inventory of all that I eat and drink as discreetly as I can because I intend to be accountable and still enjoy myself.

This is the reality.  It might take me a full two years since when I started to reach my goals.  This isn't one of those rapid weight loss fairy-tales.  This is a lifestyle change.  It's gonna be gritty and a pain in the ass, but it's also a temporary restriction.  Maintenance calories are awesome.  I've sustained it for months happily.  It's the weight loss section that I have to buckle down on.

What else can I say?  Let's take it for what it is, excuses and all, and make it happen.

This should probably be a new blog post, but fuck it.  I did Hardcore on the Floor on PiYo today.  I wasn't exactly thrilled with how much this one hung out in beast, plank or down dog splits, which was the majority of the workout but I love doing v-sits and the Roman twist is a new favorite.  I also don't mind being told that it will get easier, but not in that 'not before I've had my coffee' disgustingly perky tone.  Let's face it.  I miss Tony.  Tony scared me at first, but damn it, I really just love P90X3.  It's the reason I'm challenging myself to do the original P90X and maybe P90X2.  He just has the right personality and push for me.

In case anyone is curious, I'll lay out my current meal plan.  It will be easier to find here for me too if I decided to switch it up later.

Breakfast: egg (with olive) on a slice of whole grain bread with tomato
                 1/2 cup lite yogurt/ 1/4 cup cottage cheese (I pick one of those two)

Lunch: Healthy Request low-sodium Campbell's Soup (1 serving or half of the can)
             1/2 cup of lentils (mixed in the soup)
             1/2 cup each of carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower, raw

Depending on the exact choices, it lands me between 400 and 600 calories here.  That's a full 600-800 to play with later.  I tend to try to boost my protein as much as possible with canned tuna, chicken, greek yogurt.  I've been getting my daily protein between 70-110g (50g is the ideal average).  I don't mind my carbs, but do steer clear of simple carbs where possible.  I get 5 hours of walking cardio in weekly and also clean a fish tank in a second floor room weekly, where I drain about 15-22 gallons of water into buckets and carry just as much back up to refill it.  I absolutely need carbs and protein.  People often gripe about how high in sodium the frozen diet dinners are, but I have been consistently taking in only 1500-2400 mg daily.  The high end is actually the recommended average unless you have special requirements like high blood pressure or hypertension that demand a super-low sodium requirement.  It's actually cheat day pizza that gets my sodium levels higher than the lower end.  Yes, the lower sodium soups definitely help.

Technically, I can eat anything I want.  Fitness gurus will encourage you with that, but it's important to understand the consequences.  Yes, you could lose weight eating sour cream glazed donuts.  If you only eat 3-4 a day and don't consume any more calories.  You can lose weight eating low calorie any-kind-of-bullshit.  But you're gonna be ravenous, I guarantee it. You'll probably take up eating your fingernails, hair, or giving up.  Don't know about you, but I end up going a bit mad when I'm hungry so my biggest focus is often getting to eat as much as possible and still staying in budget.  I don't just love food, I love feeling full.  So if I fail to feel full, I end up eating those guilty junk foods and blowing my budget because it takes high calories and large portions to get there.  This is part of the reason I go so low calorie early in the day.  I do my workouts then, I get most of my errands done then.  I need power foods and efficiency.  Later in the day, when I want to replenish and heal myself, it's more about comforting and restoring, not thinking "damn, I'm so hungry I can't sleep.  Maybe I should stay up until midnight and use some of tomorrow's budget."  Yeah, I've been there too.

I know, I'm pretty long-winded, but that's the point of this blog.  There are a lot of frustrations with those victories and I want people to take all that information out there and really look at it, play with it, and take it with a grain of salt.  Have a low-sodium tolerance of bullshit and find what works.  You don't have to make it a wheat grass and low-fat nightmare and you can't realistically expect to not change your eating habits and just exercise for hours every day to burn it off instead.  Use the numbers and use your instincts.  Find a balance rather than a quick fix.  Long term healthy habits don't have to be torture, but sometimes you have to work hard to get to where it should be maintained. It's possible.  But, as I have learned, be a little kinder to your goals when life throws a real explosion at you.  Don't be too strict when dealing with illness or extreme emotional distress.  You usually need every bit of your energy to get better.  You can always renew your discipline when you can cope.