Things I Need For My Journey

The first thing I know I need is a weight scale. I think not having one has been one of the major contributing factors of my continuous weight gain without checking myself or weight. For the longest I was thinking that I only had a little stomach fat and extra weight in my breast. But when I finally took a long hard look in the mirror I finally realized that the fat is all over and I even have rolls in my back like I'm starting a bakery. My bras are bruising my back and sides now because I have gained so much wight. It is definitely time for a change.

For my journey I am going to invest in a heart rate monitor. Which to me will be good for several reasons. I have a family history of heart problems and diabetes which are factors that also push me to lose this weight fast and get healthy. The heart rate monitor will help me during my walks to stay at the right intensity where I will burn most fat calories and not over or under exert myself. I found this information on both thewalkingsite.com and polarusa.com.

Also to keep me motivated I am in search of the sexiest freakum dress that only my ideal body will look good in. I also have a pair of jeans that I would love to fit into again. I got this and the next idea for my journey from the easywayshow.com.

The next thing I will need is a slideshow for my workout or just needed inspiration. My slideshow will include several body inspirations, as well as poem by my favorite poets. ( I really like this idea thanks Impatient Dieter)

That's all I need. The ideal is for the journey to be easy, so I'm gonna keep it simple. Just as I do my hair regimen. That's also how I wish to plan my maintenance which I will start planning when I hit day 30 of my weight loss journey.

Readings

The first book I am reading is "The Power of Your Subconcious Mind". With this book I am changing my way of thinking, but I'll talk more about that on another day. Once I finish this book I will move on to another old, but good book titled, "Live Your Dreams" by Les Brown. My next book will be, "The Type Z Guide To Success" by Marc Allen, and then "What's your red rubber ball?" by Kevin Carroll. Now I'm excited to read the books because I know that not only are they going to motivate me in my weight loss, but also in my life journey. Of course there will be more motivational books, but they may be audio books instead of actual literature. This is the choice because as a senior in college I already have a lot of literature to read on a daily basis.

Preparation and Planning for Weightloss Journey

For several days now I've been researching a specific weight loss plan. I've decided that this weight loss plan will work and that I should be able to attain my goal body in just 60 days and that it will be easy. I'm very excited about starting this journey. I plan to officially start in January of 2010 which is only one short month away. During the month of December I will prepare for my adventure.

As of right now what I am deciding to do to get to my goal body in 60 days is changing my diet and exercising twice daily. As long as I plan to succeed there will be no room for failure. So these are the specs so far. Honestly my specs are almost the exact same as the Impatient Dieter, to get info on the original diet that I'm getting my info from please go to www.easywayshow.com. She has a lot of research on her page as well as a lot of info about dieting, staying motivated, and many other things.:

Diet

Meal Replacement Shakes

Women's One a Day Vitamin

Kelp Vitamin

Two Regular Meals

1 Gallon of Water

Exercise

First 30 days

2 times a day:

Leslie Sansone's 4 or 5 mile walk or 1 hour brisk walk by treadmill or outside

Crunches: 25 basic, 25 reversal, 25 obliques for each side

Arm Callanetics

Inner Thigh Exercise 25 or until fatigue

Next 15 days

2 times a day:

Leslie Sansone's 4 or 5 mile walk for 1.5 hours or 1.5 hour brisk walk by treadmill or outside

Crunches: 35 basic, 35 reversal, 35 obliques for each side

Arm Callanetics

Inner Thigh Exercise 35 or until fatigue

Last 15 days

2 times a day:

Leslie Sansone's 4 or 5 mile walk for 2 hours or 2 hour brisk walk by treadmill or outside

Crunches: 50 basic, 50 reversal, 50 obliques for each side

Arm Callanetics

Inner Thigh Exercise 50 or until fatigue

As you can see I do want to increase my exercise activity during my last days to ensure that I meet my goal. In this journey my main focus is not really to worry about the lbs, but more so about the inches. During my journey I do not plan to weigh in daily, but weekly. However, I may decide to take pictures and measurements daily. All pictures and journal entries will be posted on my blog to share my story.

To get and keep myself motivated during my journey I will be reading several books daily or listening to audio books. Three authors I personally will be looking into reading are Marc Allen, Les Brown, and Kevin Carroll. These authors will keep me motivated and pushing towards my goals.

My plans for now are to document my Preparation Daily for my journey so that I can get into the habit of writing in my journal daily/every morning and transferring it to this blog. This is my project. Maybe I'll start a maintenance Journey Journal.

Today's journal entries will be long I have a lot of plans to share. Feel free to skip this days entries

2010 Plans

Happy Holidays!!! Being MIA I have constantly thought of losing weight and trying small things every once in a blue moon to try to lose weight. I refuse to quit going after my goals. I have the motivation I need to get started and I refuse to quit until I attain my ideal and goal body. So just to give a quick preview of what I'm looking into doing starting January 2010. I'm not done with my research, but I believe that this will work. I'm gonna take a que from ImpatientDieter from youtube.com (click her name to check her out, she also has a show here). She is very inspirational. I'm going to do a liquid diet in the beginning of the year, but first I'm gonna visit with my doctor next month to make sure that the way in which I wish to change the liquid diet for me will be safe and aid in my weight loss journey. My plan for now is to do the liquid diet for approximately 90 days or less while working out with Power 90. After accomplishing this goal I will reward myself with something really really nice, maybe a new tool or product for my hair. Then I plan to slowly pull myself off of the liquid diet and on to several solid meals during the day while I work out with P90X. The big reward for successfully completing this weight loss journey, because I do believe that I will be at my goal body by June 2010 by doing this starting January 2010, will be a shopping spree. I haven't had a shopping spree in several years and lets face it I will need new clothes. That is the plan. I am so excited I know its gonna work and its gonna be soooooooooooooooooooo easy!!!!!

Body Inspirations

I know these ladies are selling sex, but to aspire to have a body similar to theirs in my opinion is not a bad thing. I think every female has a sexy vixen inside them including my self. Well anyways I just wanted to post some body inspirations for myself of females that are fit with my similar body type. I'm still searching for more inspirations, but to start me off are the ladies Esther Baxter, Meagan Good, Vida Guerra, and Melyssa Ford.

Melyssa Ford

Vida Guerra

Esther Baxter

Meagan Good-> click here (pic was too big to upload into blog)

ZZZzzzzz

Okay so I've been slacking on my posts, but I have been watching what I eat and how much of it. One of the things I haven't incorporated into my eating habit is exercise. Each time I go into this journey I always have no problem with changing my eating habits, but its the exercise to me thats most essential. However, yesterday I got in enough exercise for today as well. I'm sure I walked well over three miles. Which is a lot for someone who doesn't exercise on a regular basis. It made me feel good about myself. An additional plus was that I didn't wake up in the middle of the night like I always do. For the past few months I've been waking up in the middle of the night so it was quite refreshing to wake up feeling well rested.

I had often read that exercise will help you sleep better, but I guess I just didn't know how true that was until last night. My schedule has been crazy with school and work and my SO. Trying to schedule me time around all that is hard, but it has to be done. I still haven't figured everything out and how I want to schedule my exercising, but i have to figure it out soon so that I can get more of the kind of sleep I had last night.

Sugar Feign/ Day Two

So its the second day and I woke up extremely late. Which meant there was no time for exercise which I will most certainly have to do when I get home. So here we go with the daily roll call.

Food Journal
Yesterday's meals:
Lunch - salad - 1 cup romaine lettuce
5 blueberries
6 large croutons
2 tbs feta cheese
2 tbs italian dressing
1 extremely delicious :)

Snack - m&m's - 1/2 a regular size pack

Dinner - shake - 48 grams of gnc chocolate lean shake (delicious)
3 grams of chlorella (it made my shake nasty so i wont do that again)
1 kelp vitamin

yogurt- 1 serving of activia strawberry yogurt

(and this is where I got greedy because I wasn't feeling full and ended up feeling stuffed later)

fish - 1 filet of fried fish
1 tbs of hot sauce

tacos - 2 white corn tortillas
4 oz ground pork
1 packet of taco bell taco sauce
2 tbs sour cream

(Ok I was super stuffed after this and was finished for the rest of the night. I may have had two or three additional cups of water afterwards)

Today's meals thus far:
Breakfast - Orange Juice - 16 oz. (delicious :P)

Snack - Juice - 8 oz. Odwalla Superfood Original ( so far delicious :P)
Chewy protein and fiber bar - 1 whole Kashi Go Lean cookies 'n cream bar

Lunch - Juice - 8 oz. Odwalla Superfood Original (Drinking this juice lets me see why most people mix their Chlorella with apple sauce or some type of juice. I'll get some applesauce today and try eating it that way )
Indian Vegetarian Food - Vegetable Medley, Soup, Rice



Exercise
Yesterday I did get in an additional mile of walking so that was good. I just need to make sure I exercise today.

Sugar Feign
Today I have a super craving for sugar hence the m&m's from yesterday, but I plan to resist those things today. I will let u know how it turns out.

Good Morning/ Day One

I woke up this morning feeling good about myself because I knew that today would be the start of my new life style. And although its raining here in the Motor City I am still enjoying my day because no one and no thing will rain on my parade.

Food Journal entry Day 1, Week1 -
Breakfast - 1 6oz. glass of water
1 Onion Bagel ( I have to get my shake mix today)
1 tbs magarine on bagel
1 tbs cream cheese
2 maple sausage links

Writing it out makes it seem like its a lot, but it really wasn't especially considering that I forgot my snack and lunch for today. So now I'll be at work trying not to visit the vending machines. But I know I can go with out. Also there was no excuse for the Onion Bagel this morning I should have had eggs as a substitute for my shake, but hey if at first you don't succeed try try again. Also just because you mess up it doesn't mean that you have to give up. Remember you can always get back on the right track no matter how bad you mess up.

Exercise - This morning I did get a chance to walk a mile before it started to rain. Which is good, but I think when I get home I'll do a turbo jam video for good measure.

Well if I don't check in later today I will definitely check in tomorrow I hope you all have a wonderful day. :D

The Plan

Welcome to my blog and thanks for following my journey. For the past three years I have been slowly turning into a blob slob. I have went from a solid 170 to now a flabby 230 lbs. this does not make me feel good. Lately I've been feeling super sluggish with no energy. Honestly its really depressing. I often stay in my room with the lights off and search the internet all day.

Its really sad. I remember a time when I used to be very outgoing and I loved my body. I don't love my body now. Yes, I still think I'm beautiful, but I'm back to not looking at my body from the neck down. It doesn't please me. I'm finally to the point where I'm sick of saying tomorrow I'll do something about my weight. I see now that I'm not going to get the encouragement that I so desperately was seeking. I have to encourage myself. Everyone tells me what I need to do or laugh or make jokes when I say I'm going to lose weight, but it really doesn't matter what they say now.

I see for myself now after so long of procrastinating or feeling sorry for myself that its really up to me and my decisions and what I have to do. I have to work on me and celebrate the beautiful person that I am.

Okay so back to the plan. It really quite rigorous, but with out all these aspects I do not feel that I will be successful at achieving my goals. For this plan to work for me I will pledge to blog everyday and for days that I can not post I will right down what I did for the day and post the following day.

Daily Posts
In my daily posts I will record everything I ate from the previous days lunch to the breakfast of the day's post. This way I can keep a journal/log of what I eat.

Diet
Until I have lost the weight that I need to I will be following the Walker Diet. I plan to drink shakes in the morning which will include my supplements Chlorella and Kelp. And follow the walker diet with there suggestions of three meals and two snacks a day.

Exercise
The plan is to exercise at least 5 out of the seven days of the week with a variety of options of going to the gym, joggin two to three miles, or doing one or two turbo jam exercise videos. This way my body never gets use to the same repetitive work out.

Weekly Posts
Each weekly Sunday post will reflect on the pros and cons of the week. It will also have an update of my progress with measurements. I have opted to monitor my progress with measurements of my body rather than a scale because I don't want to be discouraged if my scale says I gained weight or I only lost 1 lb. during a week. I feel this won't be a positive reassurance in my journey. Also in this weekly post I will try to reflect on my emotions for the week and how I felt about certain things. Thats if I didn't talk about it during the week.

Monthly Posts
I will do pic updates of me in the same outfit. This will help me to see physical progress as I lose weight.

Starting tomorrow I will begin on my journey with the exercise, eating and posting. I'm tired of being ashamed of my body and not believing a compliment when I receive one. I'm ready to feel comfortable in my on skin again. Here's some inspirational video's I look to whenever I need a little pick me up. Thank you BeautifulBrwnBabyDol for being such an inspiration and your beautiful words of encouragement.