What Is Working for Me Right Now...

Like I said before, life is good. I'm feeling successful in several aspects of my life right now. I have come to realize that when I'm just starting to feel good about something, another part of my life likes to rock the boat. So I am fully prepared for some kind of crazy upheaval. But in the meantime, I'm enjoying the smoothness of things.

I've managed to take control of my weight better than I ever have in my life. Losing weight is something that has NEVER come easy to me. I can't complain too much, because I've never struggled with large amounts of weight, but like 90% of women out there, I've wished for a weight loss of some kind, at some time in my life.

I am the type of person who doesn't lose any weight when they tell you you're going to. Breastfeeding? Not a chance. My body held onto that baby weight like it was gold. Training for various endurance races? Nope. I think I gained weight during my first half marathon training plan. Eating vegetarian for an entire year and a half? Absolutely not. I was never the waify hippy vegetarian that I imagined I was going to be. And then there was the few months of my life where I did all of these things at once. Post-Macy, I trained for a half marathon, breast fed an 8 month old, and gave up meat products. My fat cells laughed at me.

Fast forward to now. I've discovered a couple of things that are seriously and consistently working for me. The biggest one? Myfitnesspal.com. I'm pretty sure most dieting people have discovered this site by now. I've tried weight watchers before, and the premise behind MFP is similar, but free. You track your calories in and calories out, simple enough. The benefit is all the little extras. You can link up with your friends, similar to facebook, for some extra accountability. My favorite part is when you complete a day, the program prompts you with a message of "if every day were like today, in five weeks you would weigh..." This seems so simple, but to me, is highly motivating.

Second thing that is helping? Shakeology shakes. My good friend Hillary introduced me to them. I've researched a lot of shakes and their ingredients, on a quest to find a shake with the most real components. Well, shakeology is that shake, my friends. I do not look at it as a weight loss shake, but as an easy, healthy meal replacement. It has HELPED with my weight loss tremendously because it gives me a consistent energy boost in the morning for a minimum amount of calories. I often get a good hour to hour and a half workout done off of one of these shakes for breakfast. The downside of these shakes? Their cost. It apparently costs a lot to turn real nutrients into a fine powder and then give them a chocolate flavor. It is definitely worth the cost, now that I've seen the results. But the 120 bucks a month was a hard thing to get over in the beginning.

So come find me on myfitnesspal (josieO1979) and we can motivate each other. We'll all be feeling sexy in our swimming suits in no time.