February Fitness Update

February has been busy and full of it's own challenges (new medicine that makes me sleepy, back pain, sore ankle, crazy work days), but I've kept on track with working out and ALMOST hit my target of 20 workouts for the month! Due to the changes and obstacles that life is throwing my way, I've decided to take a new approach to March's workout calendar and goals. Instead of saying, I'm going to work out THIS MANY TIMES, I will instead set a goal of minutes or hours for the month and try to hit that. That way, when I work out in a 90 minute yoga class or 60 minute cardio class, I'm getting the same bang for my buck for my goals as I am in terms of calories and health benefits. My goal for next month will be 150 minutes a week and we'll see how that goes!

My eating habits have been about the same. I've been eating whole and nutritious food for the most part, and investing in produce, healthy snacks (like dried fruit and almonds) and even healthier indulgences (like banana chips, toasted coconut and dark chocolate). I've still been cooking myself curries and stir fries to bring for lunch and eating salads and veggie rich meals for dinner. I want to start cooking myself breakfast some days during the week as an alternative to my daily yogurt and granola habit, but the afore-mentioned new meds have kind of been jamming up my mornings. But they have been making my anxiety/depression almost non-existent, so I am giving myself a pass on that and if yogurt and granola is it, that yogurt and granola it is!

The habit I've realized may have been sabotaging my weight loss goals is that I've been focusing so much on healthy snacking that that's what I've been doing: SNACKING. Even during February when I ate for almost the whole month gluten-free, I was still eating fruit, dried fruit, nuts, lara bars, corn chips, popcorn, yogurt, coconut, chocolate, anything you can think of. So, my diet focus for March will be to eat only when I'm hungry NOT when I'm bored or just feel like eating.

Lastly, I am going to try very hard during March to eliminate talking about my weight, size or shape as much as possible. I found myself more and more complaining about those things over and over again to people who just don't need to hear about it, and I'm ready for that to stop. So those are my goals:

1. Workout 150 minutes per week, or 30 minutes per week day.
2. Eat only when hungry, not when bored.
3. Do not talk about weight or size for the month.
4. Lose 5 pounds: weigh 192 or less by March 31