Healthy Lifestyle - Intro

Hey Y'all!

So first off - disclaimer. I am no professional. I am not certified in regards to any type of nutrition. I do read a lot about it and I form my own opinions based off of what I read and apply them to my lifestyle. I did work at a gym for a year. Which is basically nothing but still enough to learn about form and the importance of consistency. So with that, I don't have any credentials and I am just like you trying to find the balance between peanut butter cookies and reaching my nutrition goals. 

OK, now that this is over with, lets get into my health history. I realized around the age of 21 that I couldn't eat everything I wanted to eat anymore. I noticed my normal size clothing wasn't really fitting the way that it should and I had to change something. I've always been afraid of injury and I know weight lifting injuries are no joke. Plus, I had no idea where to start and social media fitness wasn't so big so I didn't know where to find the information without paying for a personal trainer and at 21, that wasn't an option so I went to what I could control - my diet. I downloaded My Fitness Pal, started tracking my calories and I lost the weight I wanted to lose. I was doing it the wrong way - still eating pizza, eating soup as a low cal alternative and was just lacking nutrition all around. 

I then pulled out my treadmill and started using that. Running was my thing and that was the workout I stuck with for most of the beginning part of my fitness. I then started doing body weight workouts that Alexa Jean Fitness (@alexajeanfitness). I never signed up for her program but I did do the workouts and I liked them. Instagram fitness videos were growing and I started adding those to my runs. Then I signed up for the Spartan Race and started adding small weights to my regimen. I finished the the Spartan race in the top third of my age/gender so I felt pretty accomplished. 

When I finished the Spartan Race, I was at a point of "well now what?". I was hiking up a storm but there was only so much of that I could do since I liked trails that would take me a minimum of 2 hours to finish I figured it was time for a new hobby. We're now at  age 27 and I could afford a real gym membership. So I picked HIIT Boxing. Hour long workout, intense and so fun! Fasts workout and to this day, I hold a special spot in my hard for HIIT boxing/kickboxing. This is great! I was working out consistently and was hungry all of the time. So I cut the calories, like I've always done and I still wasn't losing weight. Thank goodness for a trainer there that taught me about counting your macros. 

Macro counting changed everything. I was eating 1200 calories and burning anywhere from 400-800 calories from boxing/hiking/running. I'm amazed I had energy to do those. People - right now. Stop - DO NOT EAT 1200 calories. Ever. Eat more. Your body needs it. We'll get to types of calories in another post. I was bumped up to 1600-1700 calories / day, 120-130G of protein, 160G of carbs and 60G of fat. I was vegetarian at the time and I looked and felt amazing. I was more curious about nutrition again and kept those numbers close by as I started going to lift weights. 

The boxing gym is where I worked for a year and then went back to just my full time job. Between boxing and now, I ran a half marathon (read about that here) and that was an amazing experience but living in Arizona, that was hard training for on a treadmill. Very mundane.

Cue in COVID. Back to home workouts, I work from home so I'm around snacks all the time. So now I was eating 1700 calories and burning a very small fraction of what I was used to. Quarantine 15 had a strong hold of me and I was lacking motivation. 

I was trying the diet but just couldn't stick to it. I like to snack and had no self control. Or I would for 2 days and then for a whole day, I would binge. And then the next day I would be "meh". So here we are. Trying to get out of meh.

I started following Jess @jesshutchensfit and she mentioned a book call "How Not to Die" by Michael Greger MD with Gene Stone. She called out fiber and I'm like I've NEVER paid attention to fiber. And I didn't know anything on it. I knew about carbs, proteins and fats and how to calculate that and maneuver through the good and bad but never fiber. I took vitamins a few times (when I was a kid). So what do I do? Figure out where my fiber was (8G/ day) and tried to figure out how to get it to the MINIMUM 25G/ day. And that's what I'm working on now. I'm going to post out my meal plan and workout plan for the next week and do recaps for you and tell you about all of my eating secrets (the good and the bad).

So that was long winded but wanted to kind of share a summarized (trust me there could be more) of my journey and where I'm heading.

Saturdays (todays) bad secrets - I made peanut butter cookies - ate more dough than I should have and tested a few of the cookies to make sure my dad would like them and I'm currently snacking on cheese its as I write this. Balance people. This weekend, because of Father's Day, I'm not trying to push myself to be crazy restrictive. Just to be better. Be intentional. Do something today that my future self will thank me for. I did workout this morning and I'm happy I ate peanut butter cookie :)

Happy Weekend Y'All!

-Paige

PS

Diet is where is all starts and where it all lives. I agree with this 10000000%. We'll get into that with this weeks meal plan :)