I feel the need to talk about workouts and/or fitness right now. I haven’t really addressed it lately on the blog. [Don’t get me wrong, I am still SUPER active, I’m just SO active with work-workouts-life-and such that I haven’t really focused and sharing some of this stuff!]

 

I’m a terrible writer, so  bear with me here.

 

Around this time last year I lost a ton of weight. Not drastically. Unemployment allowed me to focus on any and every workout I wanted, plus I could exercise a lot more restraint in the eating department. If I was bored [and that was a LOT] it was usually something I’d remedy at my desk with a snack. The big ‘U’ [referring to unemployment, don’t get lost!] allowed me to just nap it off. Or take the dogs for a walk. Or head to the mall and window shop for however long I pleased.

 

Back to that weight loss thing. SO. I loved the way I looked. More importantly, I loved the way I felt<– most likely a result of how the way I looked. I wasn’t killing myself in the gym, yet I was buying smaller and smaller pants.

 

Then my trip back home in January happened. Once I got in mom’s kitchen, I just couldn’t stop eating. Eating and working out. More eating….more working out. Blah. My main focus then was making sure I fit into my wedding dress by July. HUGE STRESSOR THERE YOU GUYS.

 

The scale barely moved.

Then I discovered hot yoga. The scale didn’t go back down, but my body responded beautifully to the new practice, and I was in love with the way my muscles looked and felt.

Then I got into more heavy lifting. And I saw the muscles really pop.

Heavier weights=more muscle= weight gain because muscle weighs more than fat.

 

(The above paragraph was a 4 month time-lapse, FYI)

 

Now, I don’t dare get on that nasty little scale. I know the number is going to be higher than it was last year, but it’s because I enabled my body to gain more muscle and change through a variety of different and new fitness activities. And I LOVE how I feel because of it. I’m going to bold the next sentence because it’s a heck of a statement for *me* to make.

 

 

Besides, if I brought my scale to Jupiter, I would be crazy obssessing over a number that would be well over 300 lbs 😉 (check out the link here if you want to see what your weight would be on other planets!)

 

That statement has taken me just about 27 years to realize. And I am SOOO happy to come to terms with it.

 

Soon after starting my new job, I noticed some changes in my body that immediately triggered thoughts that I would gain it all back because I was back at a desk job. But then I reminded myself that my eating is a LOT better, I am getting in a 2 mile walk at lunch each day (something not done at previous job) AND I’m working out 5-6 days a week, remembering to change up my workouts so that I don’t fall into a routine [routine= SLUMP].

 

If I eat something crappy, I know it’s just one meal/snack and that I have a liftime of workout/healthy eating opportunities to reset from what is, in retrospect, a very minor teeny tiny setback. Plus chances are I ate said rappy thing because I WANTED it, and pleasing the brain is just as important! Craving met= crisis of binging later averted.

 

So that, my dear friends, is what has been happening with ME lately. Lots of physical, emotional, and mental changes.