It's Friday Yall!

So I just got back from the gym and I feel great! Nothing like an early morning sweat to get the day off to an excellent start! So a few things - the weight is coming off nicely if I say so myself :) Since the weight and I have been in this tug-of-war relationship for quite some time, I really do feel as if I should be having some type of ceremony to say goodbye...a funeral, if you will.

I mean my weight and I have been together through the good and the bad, the ups and the downs of life. It's provided comfort, warmth and protection from the evil stares. And now that I'm giving it all up or the extra I should say - shouldn't I do something special to commemorate it's homegoing? I think I should...I'll put some more thought into it, but I really do think that I should do something to say goodbye. But for my Week 1 results, here they are:

Fat% H2O% Muscle%
12/2 190.4 47.5 39.5 35
12/9 186.8 46.6 40.1 35.3

I lost 3.6 lbs, nearly 1% body fat AND gained muscle! All in a week's time! That is so crazy - just by eating at home, drinking more water (as you can see by the increased hydration level) and kicking off the Couch 2 5k program? Wow ... I can only imagine what the results are going to look like as I spend more time at the gym. Speaking of - this week (on Tuesday) I got a gym membership at Planet Fitness so I wouldn't play myself far as C25K is concerned. It's getting nippy outside so I knew I wasn't going to be running outdoors anymore. And can you believe it - my membership is only $10 per month! Who can beat that? Not me! So I've been in the gym daily since I got it...a very fit friend of mine mentioned on facebook that he was hitting the gym 2x a day so I figured I'd try it too ... my energy levels are bananas right about now! Maybe it's the gym doing it, maybe it's all the good food I'm eating - I don't know. Either way, I don't care! I'm just excited to be accomplishing my currently number one goal on my list - to make physical fitness and healthy eating a natural, normal part of life. As I was preparing one of my monster smoothies, I started thinking about an analogy for exercise.

You know how we take our dogs for walks everyday? If they're young dogs, they like to run around and play. If they're older dogs, we just take them out to get their exercise.

Well shouldn't humans be like that too? I mean let's think about this for a minute...we're in the animal kingdom just like dogs. Dogs eat the same food day in and day out, have bowel movements regularly and have TONS of energy (cats too for that matter). And they eat what, once or twice a day if they're lucky? Yet, as humans, our diet is WAY more diverse and counting how much we nibble/snack all day or get the "can-i-have-somes" I know for a fact we eat waaay more than 2x per day. But do we have boundless energy that makes us jump off the walls? Heck are we even having regular bowel movements? Unless you're eating right at least 80% of the time, probably not. And come to think about it, the only thing dogs and cats drink are water compared to our juice/pop/liquor.

Why is it considered "normal" to be tired in the morning? To need an expensive cup of joe as a "pick me up"? To have meat be the mainstay of our diet, to cover our veggies in butter/cream/sauce? What do you think would happen if you started eating more veggies, drinking more water and thinking of food as "a source of energy and nutrition rather than a source of comfort"?

I'm pretty sure I know what would happen...we'd HAVE to get to the gym to burn off all the excess energy we'd have. We wouldn't need caffeine as a boost to get the morning started - our early morning workout would do that for us. And dagnabit we certainly wouldn't be trying to lose weight - our great eating habits and daily exercise would naturally give us the weight and body composition we're supposed to have.

Even though when I started this thing, I had a goal in mind of weighing my high school weight of 140 to 145 lbs, even more than weighing a set amount, I would love to have excellent muscle definition (think muscles that show without "making" a muscle), being able to complete a half marathon without stopping (April 30 - already signed up), running a 5k in 30 minutes or less (April 29 - signed up for that too lol) and having a healthy eating/healthy living habit. I don't know about you, but I'm well on my way to being there.

Till next time - peace.