It's been a while...

since I've taken the time to sit down and write anything for my blog.

Why has it been so long?

Well, I've been busy.

Busy doing what?

Well, I've been busy EXERCISING!!!!

How's that for awesome?

It's true...since I gave up on the whole running thing and decided to focus on what I could do without hurting myself or my massively fried joints and ligaments, I've been feeling fantastic.

I'm doing strength training with Danielle (my personal trainer) on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings. On Tuesday and Thursday mornings, I go to yoga. In the afternoon on Mondays, I take a class at my gym called "BodyFlow." It's sort of a combination of yoga, pilates and tai-chi. On Wednesday and Friday afternoons, I take a mat pilates class. My pilates instructor is fantastic. I'm getting ready to start taking a private pilates reformer class with her sometime on Mondays too. In between my morning and afternoon workouts, I do at least an hour of cardio...usually intervals on a bike or an elliptical depending on how my knees feel. I still walk on the treadmill, but I'm not going to try running again...at least not anytime soon.

According to my BodyBugg, my burn has been averaging around 3000 calories a day during the week and about 2500 on the weekends. I don't go to the gym on the weekends, but I've been trying to get my family involved in more physical activities...like bowling and whatnot. I'm going to be taking one of my nephews on his first horseback ride soon. I also seem to have a never ending supply of chores. Did you know that you can burn upwards of 3 calories a minute folding clothes? I can. Pretty cool, eh?

Come on ass, we've got laundry to do.

A little less than...

one down (0.8 to be precise)...many more to go. I didn't quite hit the two pounds my bugg and I were shooting for this week, but I'm going to call it a success regardless. I still lost and thankfully didn't GAIN!

Success points:

* I managed to keep track of what I was eating...EVERY SINGLE DAY!
* I managed to get to the gym (only once but I was doing PLANKS - real ones!)
* I did my physical therapy on the bike on 4 other days besides the gym day.
* I had LOTS of opportunities to make some really bad food choices and passed them up.
* I had calorie deficits on days when I thought I was going to have
surpluses...just because of extra activity.

For the sake of not psyching myself out, I'm not going to call them "failure" points:

* On one day, I ate and ate and ate...and didn't exercise...and ended up with a
calorie SURPLUS of over 1800 calories!
* I used food, once again, to comfort myself during a stressful situation. I could actually feel the anxiety melting away as I scarfed down my massive plate of Chili's french fries. Some people have their alcohol, or their drugs, or whatever. It seems I have food. There, I admitted it. Hi, my name is Naomi and I'm a food addict. (Y'all are supposed to say, "Hi Naomi!" and welcome me to the meeting or something now.)

I miss being able to get up in the morning and drive to the beach for a swim in the ocean. That was a better stress reliever than a plate of french fries. Much better.