Fitness challenge day 2....don't eat like a sumo wrestler!

My struggle this morning was the scary realization that I put this out there and have friends telling me that they are following my blog now, watching and waiting. What happens if I can't follow through? What if I cheat? How embarrassing would that be? Did I really say I would do this for 100 days? That nagging self-doubt was creeping in and I wondered if I put myself out there just a little too soon and before I was really ready. The truth of the matter is, that is more than likely going to be my fear each morning as I wake up. But, this is a fear that I will have to overcome and put to rest as I start to make this new routine a daily habit.

So, after getting up and doing my 30 minute morning cardio intervals that I talked about yesterday, I started to see how much better I was feeling about myself. Its going on three weeks that I've been doing cardio in the morning. At first I had to give myself a pep talk to get in there and do it. Now it's almost become a habit....I said ALMOST.  Its a lot easier now and I can see where this can become second nature to just get up and do it without even thinking about it. The problem comes in when you take a few days or a couple weeks off for vacation or illness and when you finally get back into your normal routine, it's extremely difficult to get motivated. This is where most people, including myself, quit. Fitness quitters, all of us, lol. Here's where the excuses come in. "I did it for (insert number of weeks here) and that's really good for me, I should be proud". " I'm looking pretty good right now because I've been faithfully working out for the past (insert) weeks, maybe I can take a break for a little while and get back to it later when I start to feel my pants getting tight again". And my all time favorite, "it's getting colder now and with winter clothes nobody is gonna see it anyhow". Uh huh, we've all used some sort of excuse to stop right when we were starting to see results. But I bet every time you do that, you regretted it later and thought, "what if I had just kept going, where would I be now?" uh huh.....

Ok, off the the soapbox on quitting. And just so you know, that's as much for me as it is for you. If I say it and I quit, I look like a punk ass. Lol

So I said yesterday that I would talk about eating. Here is my problem with eating and what I've found works for me. I am one of those people that will not eat until I'm hungry. And when I'm hungry, I'm HUNGRY. So, I will go all day on a cup of coffee and then for dinner devour a pizza. So as many times as Jason has said, "would you please eat throughout the day?" I would say, "um no, I'm not hungry and I'm not going to force myself to eat and then get fat!". So he would say, "alright go ahead and do the sumo wrestler diet and see how that worked for you". Sumo wrested diet? What the French is that? It's eating once a day but it's a large meal. This slows down their metabolism and that one meal is turned into fat. I always thought that by eating less I was doing the right thing. I have never been an over-eater, more of an under-eater if anything. So it made absolutely no sense to me how I was doing the wrong thing. He always says to clients, "move more, eat less". Well! That's what I'm doing right? Uh, no. It doesn't mean don't eat at all, it means what it mean, eat less. If your issue is eating too much, eat less. My issue, like many other women, is eating too little. When you do this, your body goes into starvation mode and stores the fat and burns the sugars. Even that little bit you eat turns against you when your metabolism is out of whack. So, what do we do? We eat. Well, I'm not going to force myself now am I? Nope...so I schedule it. Here is what I've done and what has happened. I have set an alarm on my iPhone to go off every two hours after 9am telling me "eat something". I go to Walmart every week and buy several packs of the little applesauce cups, peach cups, and pear cups. They also have green bean, corn, and carrot cups....sweet huh?! I also get a big bag of cashews, my favorite nut. So, I pack a cup or little baggie of nuts for every time my alarm goes off. When it does, it takes me no more than two minutes to finish the cup and move on with my day. See what happens now is that my body is being fed and not feeling starved anymore. It's not too much to make me feel full and uncomfortable at all. AND, the biggest thing I've noticed, which I didn't even think would happen, is that I actually get hungry, so I eat one of the snacks and sure enough, a few minutes later the alarm goes off. Sweet baby Jesus! My body is adjusting to the alarm. I'm getting hungry every two hours now. What does that mean? It means that my body is burning fat properly.....finally. My metabolism is up and it's telling me it needs fuel. This is why we see people like, oh I don't know.....JASON, who can eat all day long and portions that are out of this world and they stay in amazing shape. They're bodies are fat burning machines! "gotta feed the machine", he always says, lol. Now I understand what that means.

If you have no time to eat or eat all the wrong things during the day, try the alarm idea. Get a little thermal lunchbox from Walmart and fill it up with these types of snacks. Don't rely on yourself to tell you when to eat at first. Let the alarm remind you. And then you will start to see that your body will tell you. It has been working for me and for the first time I have no more excuses to not eat right. Of course, we have the main meals to deal with and we can get into that, but we all know what that should be and how to eat healthy there. It's the little ones that were always a struggle for me. Eating five times a day doesn't seem so crazy anymore!

So, there you have it, day two.

FYI, I'm writing this as I am getting more ink on my back. I think we are at 8 sessions now and Brandon, the artist, thinks I'm nuts to be able to blog and have a phone conference during my session, lol. It's all about multitasking I say!


See you tomorrow!