“If you want marriage advice, ask the little old couple holding hands. If you want to be rich, do what rich people do. If you want to be skinny, don't do what your overweight friends are doing!” ~David Ramsey
David Ramsey sure said it well. Learning from the best is a great way to make steps toward your goal. So if you are wanting to tone your arms, ask the girl with awesome arms. Want to shed baby fat, ask the mom with 3 kids and 6-pack abs. I'm not saying its going to be easy, what I am saying is that they will be able to tell you what worked and didn't work for them. You may have to play a little trial and error with everything you learn.
Here's what has worked for me. In college, I began working at the gym on campus and that is where I fell in love with fitness. I had gained a little bit of weight my sophomore year, but the worst part, lost a lot of muscle mass. My exercising was irregular, my eating habits were not the greatest, my sleep was little, and my stress was way too high. ALL of which makes for an easy weight gain.
So when I started at the gym the following year, I began to attend more fitness classes, got back in the pool (I started competitive swimming when I was 7), started rock climbing, and above all eased back into making exercise part of my everyday life.
The days I worked out, I was much more likely to pick better meal options too. I ate more salads, lean meats, and veggies, and a heck of a lot less grilled cheese, nachos, and fast food.
Since I was at the gym at 5:30am to work, getting to bed at an earlier time was easier too and my sleep became much more regular and adequate. Once I got back into the hang of daily exercise, I started focusing on losing the weight. Yep, the old fashioned way of counting calories. You can see my method on finding the numbers and writing it out. But there are also online tools and apps that can do this for you. Supergym as seen on my sidebar to the right, apps like MyFitnessPal, DailyBurn, CalorieCounter, etc. All of these have both a free version and a pro version so just go with what works best for you.
I was able to loose about 7 lbs this way and did a good job of keeping it off. Do NOT try to loose more than 2 lbs a week, it will come back. The slower you go, the easier it is to keep it off.
Now, three years later, I am still in great shape. I am at my lightest weight since I started this, but most exciting... I am almost into another size smaller of jeans. My body is shaping up because of the muscle I have gained which is such a great feeling. I still eat better on the days I work out hard but really try to pick more veggies and lean meats on my rest days and the weekends, the occasional treat is allowed too.
Tomorrow, I will post my weekly workout schedule and a typical day of my eating habits.
Think about what you want, write down a reasonable date to achieve it, and DO IT!
Have a great day!
~K
