Day 1 (well, technically day 2)

Some of you reading may know that I started a weight loss program some time last year. Nothing too complicated, just diet and exercise. I was doing GREAT for a while, and dropped 22 pounds in about 5 months. I had some amazing support from some amazing people, and I'm truly grateful for that.

Well, back in November, I had a little thing called "finals" start to hit me. Not only that, but it was my last semester at college. I stopped monitoring what I was eating, and I stopped exercising. It became more important to me to make sure I finished school and passed all my classes, and I felt at the time that it was taking up too much time to use the weight loss methods I'd been using. I figured if I took a break from it for a while and got back to it later, I wouldn't fall too far behind.

After finishing school in December, the reality of post-grad life hit. Combine that with the reality of a crap California economy, and you get me sitting at home day in and day out with no car frantically applying for jobs and sending out my resume on a daily basis. There are surprisingly not a lot of people who are looking to hire someone with 3 years of salad-making experience. I won't go into a lot of detail here, because it was a very sensitive time that I don't really wish to relive, but basically I was very down and very hard on myself. That wasn't exactly the best motivation for eating well and exercising regularly. I had a few attempts to jump back into it, but they never lasted longer than a few days.

As they say, it's always darkest before the dawn. And with some serious help from my Mom, who is AWESOME by the way, I was able to get some temp work. From there, I was able to get some full time work. Life has been a lot more positive lately. I enjoy my job, I like the people I work with, and I've been feeling significantly better about myself and where my life is headed. Now that I have my positive attitude back, and a fancy shmancy new scale, I've started back on my weight loss program.

Now, the scale is a tricky thing, because unless you have a faulty scale or some issue with your floor, it's going to be completely honest with you. I wasn't monitoring what I ate, and I wasn't being physically active, so naturally, I gained a lot of the weight back that I'd lost. Not all of it, but a significant amount. So when I got my spiffy new scale and I finally weighed myself for the first time in 5 months, at first I wasn't particularly happy with what I saw. However, I wasn't surprised. After the initial reaction, I decided to designate a weigh-in day, (Sundays from now on,) and get back to my food program.

For those of you that do not know, I'd been using Livestrong.com. Its main purpose is counting calories, but it does more than that. It helps you balance out everything you're eating. So when I type in the food I eat, it not only shows me how many calories, it shows me how much fat, sugar, cholesterol, etc. as well. 9 of the 22 pounds that I lost initially were without exercise, so I know that it works well for me. Now, I live about 2 and a half miles away from the nearest subway, and for the last couple of weeks I've been walking home from the subway. It's also worth mentioning, I live in the hills, and it's primarily an uphill hike. So, that's been my exercise lately. I started back on livestrong.com yesterday, making this my second official day back on my program.

I thought it might be a good idea to blog about this process, because I feel that my chances of sticking with it might be higher now that I'm sharing it with anyone who is willing to read this. One of my best friends has been doing it too, and it just seemed like a good idea. It's really important to me to not only lose weight, but get my body physically fit, something I don't know that I've ever been. So, with this insanely long introduction to myself, I welcome you to my blog, and I thank you for taking the time to read. Or skim. Whichever you're doing. My goal is to do this blog once a week after every weigh-in so you all can read about my progress. Again, thanks for stopping by.

-Jaymers