A second post this week! Shocking! 😉 And some changes, too…
You may have noticed that I updated my blog theme this week. I love seasonal pictures, and it just doesn’t feel right to have a summer picture up in October. 😉 I really loved that fall foliage/train picture I took earlier this week, and I thought it was a good representation of the season to use for my blog. Not that trains have anything to do with me or my blog presence but, still, they’re cool. (Unless you’re caught by one when already running late for hockey practice… :p )
Next change: I’m determined to be more active on my blog, and that includes being more accountable. I was really shocked and rather embarrassed when I realized earlier this week that I had gone over 6 weeks without posting my weight. 😮 It’s not that I’m ashamed to post it…sure, I’m up from my goal, but by golly, I’m still way below where I was 16 years ago, or even 5 years ago. But being accountable is one of the keys to success, in my opinion, so that’s what I’m going to do. Another change: I’m going to do some housecleaning and consolidating. Earlier this week, I was looking for a specific post, and in going through the site looking for it, I pretty much “fell down the rabbit hole.” Holy crap—I just didn’t realize how much stuff I have here! It wasn’t until I started poking around that I realized I’ve had this blog for 5 years! Although it was (mostly) fun to review past posts, one thing I discovered is that a lot has changed in my life in that time, and a lot has changed with respect to my blogging:
- When I first started getting healthy, I was a faithful Weight Watcher, and in fact, I got to my goal weight using their program. Now, although I still respect the program, I have switched to calorie counting as my method of weight management. That’s not to say I’ll never go back—who knows what their next “revamp” will bring in November, which might make me want to give it a try. Plus, I still faithfully weigh-in at a meeting each month. That “Lifetime” designation will always be important to me, because I worked so hard for so many years to achieve it.
- There was a time when I had delusions of grandeur in thinking I was going to be food blogger. :p I still long for that designation, but both time and (more realistically) my lack of cooking prowess necessitate that I leave that job to the professionals. 😉
- I used to have a page called “Six Secrets” that had a list of six “sure fire” things that helped me lose weight and maintain the loss. However, in the years since I reached goal, I have become much wiser, and I’ve come to realize that weight loss really can’t be boiled down to a few simple “tricks.” Dude, it is just hard f’ng work, and what I’ve come to find is that what worked last year may not work this year, or next year. I decided to remove that page because many of the “tips” weren’t applicable to me anymore.
One of the biggest differences I came to discover was the concept of “weight maintenance.” I have a category for it on my site, but I haven’t used it since the spring, and the truth is, I haven’t been in “weight maintenance” mode very much in the last 5 years.
That’s a chart of my weights on a weekly basis since I got serious about health and fitness in November 2011. I almost laugh at my naiveté when thinking of weight maintenance back when I first hit goal (April 2012). At that point, I was doing daily exercise (walking), and losing the weight was so, so easy. Well, of course it was—I had shocked my previously lazy, unhealthy body by suddenly becoming this constant exercising machine! The weight truly melted off, and then I started running—again, shocking my body. Then, the following year, I was training for my first half marathon, and my body was overwhelmed with all the running. So many calories burned!!
Eventually, my body got used to the exercise, and now, despite the fact that I typically log between 20 and 30 miles in a week, the weight just doesn’t come off (or stay off) as it used to. I’ve already had to reevaluate my original goal weight. Back in 2013, I was down to 113, and that was pretty awesome. I stayed in that range up until my first marathon in April 2014, which does make sense, since I was running running running all the livelong day, and that was more exercise than I’d ever done before in my life! Since then, I’ve been unable to get back that weight, but 120 has not been unachievable. As noted in the chart, though, I tend to gain weight in the summer. I’ve heard people talk about “summer weight gain” but it wasn’t something I really thought applied to me. I mean, I don’t feel like I eat any differently in the summer. Heck I’ve spent the last 3 summers training for a half marathon!
But at any rate, it’s right there in black and white (er, blue and red), so I guess it’s time to accept it as fact. But what I refuse to accept is that I can’t get back to 120. Although I feel like I’m trying to lose the “last five pounds” for about 80% of the year, the numbers show that I can do it, so there’s no reason to think I can’t!
Back to the point of this post—you will probably see things changing on my blog over the course of the next few weeks. I’m going to remove some things, consolidate others, refresh my “about” posts, and try to clean up some of the old posts that were formatted for prior WordPress themes. But most importantly, I’m going to get back to basics, which means more regular posting and being accountable! So, if reading about my running and all the food I eat doesn’t excite you, well…I hear there are some pretty good new shows on TV this fall. (MacGyver is my current guilty pleasure.)
I need a picture for the “feature” aspect of the post (the pic that shows up in your blog feed if you are so kind as to subscribe to/follow me), so here you go:
I love me some Michigan fall foliage! 🙂 I’ll have more photos soon…when the sun comes back out. 😛
Hope you’re having a great week—thanks for reading!
