Week 1

I managed to get in three 1 hr sessions at the gym last week. My trial with them is over so I need to figure out my next steps. I really enjoyed going and using all of the machines. I don’t ever see myself joining one of their classes and I have hand weights at home that I can use. But I don’t have the space or the money to set up an exercise bike, and elliptical machine and a treadmill. What I did realize this week is that I still have a few day passes for the Dartmouth Sportsplex that I haven’t used. They have all the same machines available, and since I’ve already paid for it, I’m going to use them up before I commit to a gym membership.

I had a great week of good food choices. One of the things that I like about choosing a healthy lifestyle versus being on a diet, is that I don’t limit myself from having good tasting, bad for me things as long as it’s in moderation (no more sitting down to eat a whole bag of chips). So I did enjoy 2 small Cinnabons this week and didn’t feel at all guilty about it. I tracked it in MFP, accepted that my calories were high that day and moved on.

So between the exercise and the good eating I thought I would show a loss on the scale when I weighed in Sunday morning. I was pleasantly surprised with a 2.5 lb loss! That puts me at 7 lbs lost so far this year.

My plan this week is to get to the gym at least 3 times, walk with my friend Nicole (who just signed up to run her first 5k this summer at the Ocean Breeze!) and to keep eating well. Hilary has some great sounding meals planned, which is helping us to not eat out nearly as much as we had been last year. I’m sure cutting down on fast food is playing a big role in my weight loss too.

I’ve also decided to set myself a running goal. I looked back at the results of all the 5ks I’ve run in the past 3 years. My fastest run was in April 2014 with a chip time of 41:59. The last 5k I ran was 47:08. So my goal for this year is to run a 5k in under 40 minutes. It’s a big stretch to try to improve my time by over 7 minutes from last year, but I’m feeling good about it.

And with any luck, the snow will eventually melt, the sidewalks will be clear and I can get outside again.