Headed Down

A few days ago I was really thinking about the last six months and thinking of how I have been eating and exercising.  I realized that I have been floating between 148-152 this entire time.  That is a five pound range.... That is maintenance mode!  Which would be a good thing if I were trying to maintain but I'm still trying to lose.  I realized that I have become pretty lax on my nutrition.  Content if you will.  I realized that although I have been counting calories, I have also been snitching food a lot lately, or tasting while I am cooking.  And that is a lot of uncounted calories.  Also, I will do really good for 4-5 days and then completely fall off the bandwagon for a few days.  So as of last Saturday I decided no more sweets until my birthday coming up in July, with the possible exception of July 4th.  I also decided that I need to tighten up my nutrition by not sampling everything I am making.  I love to lick the bowl and the spoon when I make my husband PB and Honey sandwiches.

I have really noticed over the past few days how many times throughout the day I am always reaching to 'finish off' something that the kids were eating or I am putting just a little extra of whatever in my food instead of sticking to level measurements.  Really it is no wonder I haven't been losing weight.  I have been pleased to see that every day since I started really keeping track and monitoring my food intake, I have gone down every day!  Not that I have set any new records, because I had a few really bad days right before I started.  I started at 153 last Friday.  Sunday I was down to 151, 150 on Monday, 149.4 on Tuesday and 148.8 today.  My lowest weigh in was 147 in the middle of Chalean Extreme and I am trying to reach that by Friday (which is the new weigh in day for Turbo Fire).

I have also realized I need to set some different goals.  The numbers on the scale are only one way of measuring progress, so I want to set some other goals just in case I never reach 121 because of weight lifting.  I think a better assessment of my progress is body fat percentage and pants size.  So my goals for body fat percentage is 20%.  Which is considered to be normal.  And my goal for pants size is 4.  I think that I would be very happy at those ranges.  Right now I am at 28% body fat and size 8.

So here is a fun story for you today.  I was at Zumba class today and my instructor for class today is 30 weeks pregnant and you know what that means, obviously she isn't going crazy with the Zumba moves and I found myself thinking 'I'm not getting a very good workout'. THEN I thought 'What am I doing? I am not a beginner! I know how to take it to the next level. This is MY workout!' and so I took it up several notches and started moving and jumping more and had a blast! After the workout two different people who were behind me came up and asked me if I was an instructor, when I said "no" they said "you should be an instructor! You are amazing! You have so much energy, and you pick up the moves really fast and are easy to follow! I was watching you the whole time!" That made me fee AWESOME!!! Being a Zumba instructor is one of my big dreams, but I have never felt confident enough to do it. Maybe when I finish up with Turbo Fire it will be time to make one of my dreams come true :-)