Yes, I suck, but I don’t mean to!

Okay, so this is the deal. I never intended for there to be a near month-long gap in posting. The very day of my last entry, I was basically marooned at work. This derailed not only my posting plans, but my meal and exercise plans, and the remainder of the month has been full of unexpected changes on my plans.

The lesson for me has been to better plan my time, so that when hiccups occur, I can get back on track, because I’ll know exactly what I need to be getting back to. When I was able to return home, I didn’t want to do anything but bathe, put on my own clothes, and sleep in my bed, and of course when I did all that and woke up, I wanted to EAT! (Un)lucky for me, my closest pizza joint dared to deliver. Aside from the grub I was forced to eat at work, this put me way off what I should have eaten.

I never even made it into the gym until the next week, and I haven’t gone according to my proposed schedule because I’ve finally begun physical therapy, and my appointments are conflicting with it. My plan had initially been to go on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and to yoga on Sundays. My PT sessions are on Wednesdays and Fridays. Let me tell you: I’ve gone for a week and my legs are SCREAMING at me. Because of this, I feel like I can skip the gym on Wednesday and Friday. When I woke up on Thursday and Saturday, it felt like I got beat down in an MMA cage match, so I think stretching and resting is cool, right? LOL.

Despite my faltering, I’ve only missed my weight loss goal of 2 pounds per week by one pound. Yes, I’ve lost 7 pounds since my first entry of the year! Later on this week, I’ll share with you the tool that should rightfully be credited with helping me.

That’s it for now; I just wanted to let you know that I haven’t quit, and show you that making mistakes doesn’t give you a pass to just give up. I PROMISE an update in a few days.

So you wanna get in shape, huh?

Well, so do I.

No matter where you are in your journey, you have to start somewhere.
Due to last year’s parade of fail in my fitness journey, I have several tip that will help you to successfully get on your way.

1. Consult with your physician, and comply with their advice. I simply cannot stress this enough. Aside from your practitioner being able to assess your general health, you should also inform them of current or old nagging injuries that could be a hindrance to your progress. They will then be able to recommend which activities and practices that you can safely take part in.

Last year, when I’d originally embarked on my quest, I knew right off the bat that I had problems with my knees. The day before I’d begun going to the gym, I had a row with someone, and while slamming him (!!!) I hit my knee on the way down. Instead of consulting with my doctor immediately, I threw on a brace and hit the gym with vigor, only to have it never fully recover . Now here I am a year later, back to my starting weight, and my orthopaedist waving the dreaded “S” word in front of me. You don’t want that, do ya?

2. Start slow. Yeah, I know you wanna go in and go hard, but pace yourself. Build yourself up to that. Burnout is real and can derail you something serious.

3. Be realistic. This goes hand in and with going slow. If you’re trying to look like Serena Williams and your starting point is the character Precious, know that you’re not gonna make that leap within six months. Be optimistic and set goals, but don’t set yourself up to be overly anxious about results. As a sidenote, 2 pounds a week is on the high-end of a safe weight loss goal.

4. Get the right shoes. I know, I know. You’re saying to yourself; “Oh I’m just starting out slow, I’m just walking! I don’t need fancy shoes for that!” While that’s true, please know that old, rundown or simply the wrong kind of athletic shoes can throw off your posture and form, which can lead to injuries and stress on your joints. The right shoes don’t have to cost a fortune, either. Get fitted at a running store or other by an otherwise trained professional. This is probably a good opportunity to ask about orthotics/inserts, as well. From there, you can bargain shop for the items you need. Every two to three months, this is a practice that needs to be revisited as your shoes wear down and your body changes.

5. Have fun. There are a wealth of fitness activities and foods out there for you to explore. Find the right combination of things that appeal to you, because if you’re bored, you won’t be motivated to do anything.

That’s all for now. Next up, I’ll share some things that have been helpful to me that you might want to use. Until then!

#fail

You guys (that is, those of you who knew this blog exists),

I sincerely apologize for doing pretty much nothing with this blog. Aside from my intro from my launch last year, I’ve deleted everything and decided to start anew.

I could fire off any number of reasons about why I didn’t follow through, but what it boiled down to is that a) I didn’t have a clearly defined view of what I wanted the blog to look and interact, b) I had many failures throughout the year and I was embarrassed, c) I had done a terrible job of managing my time and when I could carve out time for blogging, I really just wanted to sleep.

So here I am, again, with a soft launch. I still have not yet decided about what the frequency of my entries will be, but for the time being, I’m shooting for once a week until I establish a groove that I’m satisfied with. Hopefully you’ll take the ride with me!

P.S. Oh yeah, I’m back where I started

Hello, part 2

Like I said in my previous post,  I want to let you guys know a few things about me without giving you too much in one post, so here goes part 2.

A few of the reasons that I’ve tried and failed so miserably at getting healthy is that I had nobody who knew how to encourage me to do it, and especially not in the right way.  If you’re a shapely girl, and especially if you’re Black, you’ve likely heard the choruses of  ” Girl you just big boned!”,” I like a woman with meat on her bones”, ” If you lose x amount of pounds, you just won’t look right!”, ” Girl, all that being skinny is for those White girls”, ” I sure hope you don’t lose that booty when you lose the weight”

(for the record, I won’t… this booty has always been and forever will be there).

Hearing things like that make it easy to eat that too big portion of whatever your favorite “bad” food is, and easier to just go to bed afterward, instead of walking, running, or dancing it off.

Most of the people around me are overweight, so I can’t rely on them for the proper encouragement in sticking to healthy habits, so I certainly can’t expect them to hold me accountable. With this blog, I am holding myself accountable for doing what I need to do to reach my goals, while sharing things that might be helpful to you as well. For the record, my blog is not just for Black women, or just for women period. I hope that anyone who comes across this page will find something useful to them, or via the comments section can offer something useful

I also want other people to come along with me for this journey so that not only will I be encouraged, but you can see week by week what my progress has been and also feel encouraged to keep at whatever your individual goals are. I’d REALLY REALLY REALLY like my mother to be the person who gets the most out of this blog, so she can get on board and join me in becoming more healthy.

If you’re serious about losing weight and getting fit, you must realize that your goals won’t occur overnight.  If you’re expecting some intense plan with overnight results, please realize that that is unhealthy and unrealistic. While I don’t expect that everybody does exactly what I do,  I will have no part in encouraging someone to anything extreme and unhealthy. What you will see here is suitable for me at my health and fitness level, only.  As my disclaimer states, I’ll be held responsible for no negative outcomes. Anything that you undertake needs to be discussed with and approved by YOUR PERSONAL HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONAL.

See ya round for the next entry!

Hello World!

Yes, I decided to keep WordPress’s default first post title because hey, that’s what I basically wanna say. There’s a general about me section that you can read, but I wanted to give you a few more things to chew on, so to speak. When this blog picks up speed, I suppose that I’ll combine this info into an FAQ page once you guys begin asking questions ( which you can do in the comment section).

This blog was borne in part from the suggestion that I start a beauty blog; it came from a friend who is a fellow beauty junkie and entrepreneur, and I’m thinking hell, she’s  starting a blog, and there are all these other beauty blogs out there… it’s not necessarily an area that I’d like to throw may hat in, especially when I have two other failed unupdated dormant blogs that were basically about nothing (which is probably why they’re dormant). I felt flattered that she thought I had enough to offer, but I pushed the idea aside.

Then, as I was on the treadmill during my first week of my half thought out get fit plan, I thought of all the reasons that scared, yes scared me into the gym:

*Last year around this time I lost two family members who succumbed to preventable heath problems, and I swore to myself that I’d do what I could to not leave my daughter by some dumb health issue that I COULD control.

*Both sides of my family are laden with (again) preventable health issues that can can be prevented or reversed with proper food and exercise.

*I’m tired of my primary care physician and one of my specialists nagging me about my weight.

*It’s frustrating to me that I can’t run like I used to.

*My bum knee is getting worse.

*I’m tired of dreaming up these fly ensembles and not being able to walk into a store and find something close to  it.

* I freaking hate shopping at plus sized chains because  a) they seem think that fat is a universal shape, so even when something is big enough, it is still ill-fitting  b)they must think that because a woman is fat, she wants either boring, frowsy, or dowdy silhouettes, or ridiculous prints on her clothes c) this mess is cheaply made, and is overpriced  d) they don’t make enough classic, well made pieces to build a wardrobe around.

*There could be any number of reasons to stare at me, but I’m sure my size is one. I’d like the stares to be in awe of how fit I am, not how un-fit.

*I just wanna live  as long as I can naturally do so in a healthy body.

So yeah.  All those things made me think that if I have a theme, blogging would be easier for me. I don’t want to make any promises as to how often I’ll be posting, but I want to give you guys something at least once a week (one of my other resolutions was to be me resourceful with my time).  So we’ll see how it goes. Part 2 of this introduction coming up… I just didn’t wanna make this one entry too wordy and heavy