Tiny Glow

Tracking my food intake consistently has been one of the keys to my weight-loss success so far, and the tool I consistently use to keep an eye on my consumption is the nutrition tracker on the free website SparkPeople. In addition to providing food and fitness tracking tools, the site is a community that is home to millions of like-minded individuals you can interact with and team up together with.

Although it isn’t a New Year’s resolution, strength training (or my lack thereof) has been on my mind for awhile. A new SparkPeople “bootcamp” has come around at the perfect time for me. The Spark Your Body challenge is not the sort of extreme bootcamp I have tried (and failed at) in the past; rather, there are seven different online workout videos to do, one for each day of the week. The workout videos are all very brief—the longest clocks in at 15 minutes—and six of them focus on strength training, so an additional five sessions of cardio (30 minute blocks) are also assigned throughout the week. My goal is to complete the bootcamp and start getting comfortable with doing some strength training on my own.

My mind often gravitates toward extreme solutions to problems, but this very sane-sounding (and free!) online program resonates in my gut as being right for me. I gave some thought to more expensive alternatives for introducing strength training into my life, such as a personal trainer, CrossFit classes, or a 12-week fitness program offered here in town. None of these options are bad at all, but they didn’t feel 100% right for me, where I’m at, right now.

Part of what I have been doing for the past three and a half months is proving to myself and maybe to others as well that you don’t need to do lots of fancy stuff to lose weight. What I have been doing, most people can do. I track my food on a free website, and for exercise I mainly use my work gym and a bare-bones, no-frills gym near my apartment that you can join for $10/month. Some of my exercise—like riding my bicycle to work when it’s not too cold or too hot outside, or taking my dog for long walks—is totally free. I buy most of my groceries at Walmart, aside from a fun trip to the farmer’s market a couple of times a year.

I think part of me doesn’t want to rely too heavily on things that I might not necessarily be able to consistently afford or have access to all the time, because I know that my weight management journey will be lifelong. There will be times with less money and times with more money; either way I want to feel confident that I can do what it takes to stay in shape once I get to my goal weight. I don’t want not having a trainer or not buying all my groceries at Whole Foods to ever be some kind of excuse for me to give up on my body.

I do treat myself to mini-rewards for every 5 lbs I lose, and sometimes I have to keep a watchful eye on my budget to make those little luxuries happen, but they are totally worth it. I get excited about them. I can’t wait to get my new necklace in the mail! It will always remind me that I succeeded at losing over 30 lbs. And I am starting to save for that new wardrobe I will buy when I hit my goal weight, even though that means cutting back most of my discretionary spending.

Despite the weight-loss ennui I experienced in late November and December, I am now feeling relatively serene and happy about where I’m at and where I’m headed with my efforts.