Food Costs Are Killer

If you didn't know, I am a broke college student. Not only that, but I drive about 3 hours (round trip) four days a week to get to class. So basically, the little money I do make goes straight into my gas tank. What does that leave for food? Not much.

That is my problem. I desperately want to eat healthy, I do, but my current budget won't allow it. The first few weeks I really was trying to loose weight, I had some extra money in my pockets. Working at a toy store around Christmas means working a lot of hours. Add not driving to class on top of that and I had more money for food then I knew what to do with. So for about two weeks I bought organic foods and fresh produce. It was glorious, but now reality has set in.

Point blank it is just easier to eat unhealthy foods. It is cheaper. I am still trying to avoid foods like fast food and ramen. I have not completely given up all hope, but some packaged foods have found their way back into my cabinets.

Not everything I have is unhealthy though. I have started buying dried beans. By cooking them in the crock pot and then freezing them, I am saving myself from tons of sodium intake. Can't say I don't try. I also make sure I am shopping the sales and using coupons. Greek yogurt was on a sale a few weeks ago and I stocked up.

Even more than the price of fresh foods, I don't have the time to prepare them. A few days a week I leave my house at 8 am and don't make it back until 11 pm. There is just no time to spend hours cooking. When school was out for winter break I would use my day off from work to prepare meals for the entire week; even that is not an option now. There is no such thing as a day off in my life right now. I am either at school, work, or both every day of the week.

For now, I will do what I can with the time and resources I have. I will just have to step up my exercising if I want to keep seeing progress. Come May though, things will change for me. Either I will graduate and not be driving quite as far to work, I will have a "adult" job, or if I am lucky both. No matter what, healthy eating will be a priority as soon as I can truly make it one.

Failing But Not Quiting

I won't lie, I haven't been blogging recently because I haven't been doing well. My journey into weight loss has all but ceased. There was so much motivation as the year began that just quickly left me. Shame came over me every time I tried to blog about my failures in my journey, so I just let it get even worse. But that wasn't the point of blogging, the point was to keep myself accountable. So here I am again, being accountable.

Like I have said before, structure and scheduling is what will get me through. So I have further structured my life. It starts with this blog. Every Thursday I will post something new, maybe an update on how I am doing, a discussion on weight loss, or something else. By posting on the same day every week, I should be able to stay on track better than before.

When I started I was focusing mostly on food, and very little on exercise. That just isn't going to cut it in the long run, so I also made a workout schedule. Keep in mind this is just what I plan to do through the month of February, after that I will reevaluate my plan.

Here it is:
Sunday - walk/run or elliptical
Monday - OFF
Tuesday - 30 Day Shred
Wednesday - OFF
Thursday - 30 Day Shred
Friday- walk/run or elliptical
Saturday - 30 Day Shred

Hopefully these changes will help me through because I am not ready to give up yet.

Not Everyday

No one is perfect, and in weight loss this equates to having a bad day every once and awhile. Today was a horrible food day for me. Having family in town today meant an entire day of unhealthy food. On the bright side, I did make a handful of good choices: I ate smaller proportions and I made the choice to drink water at every meal. That might not sound like much, but those two small choices mean I didn't completely lose control.

Despite having a set back, tomorrow is a new day. I will treat it as such. One bad day will not ruin me nor my diet.

Exercise

Exercise has yet to come up on this blog yet. That's really a shame, but there is a reason. Honestly, I hate working out. I would rather do anything else. ANYTHING. Let's face it though, there is no way to a healthier future without a little exercise. Probably in the future I'll need a lot of exercise,but one step at a time.

Yesterday I used the elliptical for 45 minutes. Proud does not even begin to describe how I felt after. But I wouldn't have made it through more than 10 minutes had it not been for Netflix. Oh yeah, and Freaks and Geeks. Being able to watch something made it just a little easier to stick it out. Plus I promised myself that I would only watch Freaks and Geeks if I was on the elliptical. Ending an episode in the middle is like torture, so I stayed all 45 minutes on that elliptical.

So working out is what I'll be doing every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday.

Eating Out

Today I successfully ate at a restaurant for the first time. Since it was my mom's birthday I couldn't really get out of going to lunch. There was nothing else to do but to make the best of it. For me that just meant having some willpower.

I ate off of the low calorie menu and passed on desert. That's a success in my book.

Weigh In

When I first noticed I had hit rock bottom I weighed myself. That day I weighed 190 lbs. Being only 10 lbs away from being 200 lbs, I freaked out. That's a lot of weight for my 5'2" frame. I made a promise to myself that day that I would never see that number again. Thus far I've kept that promise and I intend to keep it that way.

That was a long way of saying my highest weight was 190 lbs.

Last time I weighed myself (back in October) I weighed 170 lbs.

Today I weighed in at 166 lbs. That's progress!

Cucumber Lemon Water

This is the last of my cucumber lemon water for the day... Honestly, I wasn't a huge fan.

There was just too much cucumber and not enough lemon. Maybe I will have better luck with it tomorrow.