posted by KWiz on Health and Wellness

Well, as I informed you in the last update, I had gained two pounds over the holiday season.  I am pleased to inform you that I lost one of those pounds!  Slow improvement, but improvement nonetheless.

I’ve got a long way to go, but I believe I will reach my goal.  My husband tries to help me and encourage me, and I appreciate that so very much.  Indeed, he tries to get me to take my vitamins everyday.  I take them sometimes – definitely not consistently.

I remember the last time I set out to lose weight and get in shape.  It was about 5 years ago.  I decided to lose 20 pounds in about 10 weeks back in the summer of 2002 (2 years before I gave birth to my daughter).  I remembered what worked:

• I eliminated orange juice from my diet
• I drank water first thing in the morning
• I walked 45 minutes about 5 times per week
• I cut down the amount of carbs I ate
• I eliminated fried fish (I was preparing alot of fried catfish at the time)
• I reduced the amount of sweet tea I consumed daily

I remember that this plan worked.  I lost 20 pounds, and I felt and looked great!  What happened?  

Well, one year later (fall 2003), I got pregnant.  I gained 37 pounds during my pregnancy and lost 25 of those pounds postpartum in about 8 weeks.  But I really didn’t work on losing the remaining weight.  It just so happened that I got to within 5 pounds of my goal weight of 155 right this past spring and remained there until this past fall.

At the moment, I’m struggling.  I know I need to include more aerobic activity into my day.  With so much crammed into a day, with a 2-1/2 year old, a 45-minute commute, and all the other responsibilities I have (and I know I’m not alone), it seems a daunting task to fit 45 minutes in somewhere.  But I believe I found an answer…

Eat4Today is a beautiful blog with the tagline, “A place to discuss food and eating and the state of the world.”  In the post 100 calories a day — The E4T Exercise Blog difference, katiebird said”

“If you can walk, you can walk for 5 minutes — you don’t even have to leave the house! You can walk around the living room or hallway during a commercial break. Or hop, or stretch (with some vigor.) Just get up and move for 5 minutes every hour. And at the end of the evening (after for exercise breaks) you’ll have burned just about 100 calories!”

“It’s hard to believe, but if you can walk a mile in 20 minutes you’ll burn just about that many calories with this evening’s Exercise Blog. Are you interested?”

I’m interested.  It’s easy, and I will take you up on it!

Thank you katiebird…