What I DO Know....

I'm certainly no exercise and diet guru. If I were, I wouldn't need to lose in the ballpark of 40 lbs. But, I've been on plenty of exercise and diet programs in the past and here's what I know about myself. Note: these are the things I think about on the elliptical machine.....

--Speaking of the elliptical, I prefer it far more than the treadmill. I don't love it, but it's my cardio machine of choice.

--"Experts" always say you need to burn more calories than you consume. I tend to burn about 100 calories/10 min of cardio. That means that if I'm eating about 1200 calories a day, I need to do more than 120 minutes (2 hours!!) of cardio. This poses two problems....1) No way in heck am I doing more than 2 hours of cardio (in one day) and 2) I'm pretty sure I'm eating more than 1200 calories/day.

--Which brings me to my next point....something is better than nothing. I've taken a new approach with exercise *this* time. In my old work-out life, I tried to map out for the week what I would do at the gym. Usually, I would break the plan by Wednesday or Thursday, get down on myself, and forget doing anything for the rest of the week. My approach now is to do what I want. If I want to do cardio/upper body one day, fine. If I want to just do lower body one day, fine. If I just want to do 20 minutes of lunges, fine. My new philosophy is "something is better than nothing". {I can almost see personal trainers across America rolling their eyes}

--I cannot drink cokes (cokes in Texas is Coke, Diet Coke, Dr Pepper, Pepsi--anything carbonated) and lose weight. Something about carbonation *bloats* me and inhibits me from losing weight. Plus, I'd rather eat my calories than drink them.

--I'm changing my WI day to Wednesday. Monday is a stupid WI day. Who's going to lose weight after the weekend? Plus, Tessa's day is Wednesday and maybe if I change my day to her day, I'll lose as much weight as she has. ;)

--Speaking of WI, I did lose ONE pound from last Monday to this past Monday. Considering how hard I didn't work, I'll take it. Plus, if I keep this up, I'll be at my goal weight in 40 weeks.....sigh!