What a week.

I don't even know where to begin. The last few days have been insane and hard. The wedding was interesting. There was a lot of family drama involved and I was pretty upset for most of the night. I didn't actually calm down until I was home and my wonderful boyfriend cheered me up. Food-wise, the food wasn't great. I was disappointed but obviously still ate it because I needed to eat. I've been eating well since than to make up for the extra carbs I ate. Then some other stuff happened today and yesterday that has just got me so upset and stressed out. Thankfully, working out has helped relieve some of that stress and allowed me to release a lot of frustration.

I'm on day 5 of the 30 day shred. Today I did a lot of working out. Last night I saw pictures of myself from the wedding and I think it motivated me. I did not like the way I looked and it was very upsetting for me. Because I feel like I've been doing so well, but then I see pictures of myself and it's like you can't tell I've lost 12.5lbs. And even if you can, it doesn't matter because I'm still big and I won't be small for a long time. It's frustrating and upsetting. So I decided I was really going to go hard, both on the healthy eating and working out. Not too hard that I can't handle it but enough that I'm pushing myself. Yesterday I did the shred and 20 minutes on the elliptical. It was a lot but I felt like I could still do a lot more. So today, I did the shred twice and 40 minutes on the elliptical for a total of an hour and 40 minutes of exercise. I feel good. I won't do this much every day, but I think I have a new schedule in mind:

Sunday - DVD once + 20-40 minutes elliptical/treadmill
Monday - DVD once
Tuesday - DVD twice + 40 minutes elliptical/treadmill
Wednesday - Rest
Thursday - DVD twice + 40 minutes elliptical/treadmill
Friday - DVD once + 20-40 minutes elliptical/treadmill (every other week, most likely)
Saturday - DVD twice + 40 minutes elliptical/treadmill

I feel like that's a solid workout schedule and one that will push me but won't be too much. And the elliptical/treadmill will depends whether I'm here or at my parent's, because I'll be there a lot in July. I guess I've just finally realized that I can't just stroll along and eat healthy and workout casually. I need to push myself. If I ever feel it's too much, I'll back off, but right now I think I can handle it. I've also established snack days. They are Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. On these days I'll be allowed to have something like a slimfast bar, granola bar or crispy minis (so smart snacks that aren't overloaded with sugar or sodium). The other 4 days I'm going to have to snack on fruits and veggies. I feel like I snack most night on granola bars and such, and I want to cut that down. I think 3 days a week is a good compromise.

On day 10 of the shred, I'm going to advance to level 2. So on days when I do the shred twice, if level 2 is too hard, I'll do level 2 once and level 1 once. I've also measured myself, and I plan on measuring myself every subsequent 15 days of the shred - so one at the start, one halfway through at day 15, and one at the end at day 30, just to see how effective it is.

I feel good despite everything. I'm going to eat dinner in a bit - leftover baked chicken, a salad and likely some baked tomatoes or I'll make green beans. Depends. So in spite of feeling down about how I look and having a terrible week, I'm trying to turn it into something positive - working out as a distraction and to relieve stress and using it as an incentive to keep losing weight.

-Monica