Trying to find the right balance is not an easy thing, especially the older you get and the more responsibilities that come. I'm trying to find the right balance in a lot of different parts of my life right now: weight loss, being a parent, and being a wife.
Weight Loss:
I am now starting Month 14 in my weight loss journey. I have done very well in the weight loss department, as well in losing inches. When I look at myself in the mirror at the gym as I lift weights I can really tell that my legs are looking better and smaller. Why center on my legs?? Over all that is the one place that I have lost the least amount of inches. And as I told Tyler, I will never have small slender legs....they will always be curvy and since accepting that I want to make sure they are toned and muscular.
But I'm going off course of the topic.
This last week to week and half I have been working on finding the right balance of exercise and calorie consumption. When I first got home from my mini vacation we went out to eat a lot and I mean A LOT and I was still in the position of having to bring Dakota with me to the gym. But last Wednesday Tyler started back on swing shift which opened me back up to going to the gym alone. This was GREAT. I could get back into lifting weights. So now I sit at the cross roads of coming up with new workouts. The last time I was lifting weights I was doing full body about every other day with abs in between. This time I decided to do legs/lower body one day, arms/upper body the next and then abs so I have two days of recovery in between. So last Wednesday I head to the gym with the new weight lifting workout in mind. Man, I felt like I was starting all over again from the beginning....I'm no where near the weight I was lifting before my 6 week/2 month break. And after the first 3 days I was so sore, but it felt great too, lol. I feel so much better now that I'm back to my weight training. I'm looking forward to see what this does to helping lose more body fat when I go for my next test at the beginning of September.
Since I have weight training figured out it was time to look at my cardio. For a while now I have been running every other day, running anywhere from 3, 5, 7 miles at a time. Then I would throw the stair stepper, elliptical and bike on the other days. But after reading some more on running I have seen that it might not be the best thing for me to help continue to drop the weight. So I'm cutting back on the running, instead of doing it 3-4 times a week I'm going to do it 2-3 times a week running anywhere from 3-5 miles at time with a couple of 7 milers in there. I have a 10k race that I'm doing at the end of March so I want to make sure that I can continue to run the 6 miles. So far I'm enjoying doing this new cardio routine (plus its helping my knees that I'm trying to strengthen with the weight training).
But here comes the balancing....how many calories do I need to be eating with the amount of calories I'm burning and not throw myself into starvation mode. According to my weight loss site I need to be eating 1330-1680. I'm thinking that for me I need to stay around 1400-1450 with a day or two at the high end. I normally burn anywhere from 750-900 calories a day at the gym. I'm going to see what kind of progress I make over the next couple of months with the new routine and calorie consumption.
I know these last 31 lbs are going to be tough to get off, but I will not give up. It's just one of the many frustrations that you go through when making this kind of change to your life. I just need to go back and look at how far I have came in the last year and know that the finish line is in sight. So here's to finding the right balance of exercising and eating!!
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