Starting Over...again

A new year, a new start and I am feeling better about staying on track right now. Or at least being able to get back on after falling off. In October I joined a gym here and I absolutely love it. The facilities are awesome (yay for pools, hot tubs, and saunas!), and best of all the staff and the other patrons are super friendly. I love walking into a gym where everyone greets you with a smile. Too often as an overweight woman I have gotten dirty looks, heard snide comments, and a general sense of intimidation. It is nice to walk into a gym and not worry about those silly things. I just wish I have had more time (and made more time) over the past couple months to fully use it!

When I signed my membership one of the perks is 2 free one-hour training sessions with a personal trainer. Today I had my first session with Sandy and she was awesome! She was very enthusiastic, encouraging, and has such a bright personality you can't help but smile when you are with her. She seemed surprised at times about some of my fitness interests, but was impressed I think. The one that seemed to surprise her the most is that I love swimming. She thought I was meaning water aerobics, but was genuinely surprised when I said I love doing laps. Anyways, she got me started riding a bike for a warm up while we went over health history, physical issues, and my goals.

Here are my personal goals:

• Lose 35-40 pounds (a good goal to start as that will put me where I was 3 years ago)
• Learn the butterfly stroke (the one stroke I can't seem to master....my body doesn't like trying to swim like a mermaid. Who knew?)
• Working on strength training - pretty much my entire body, but especially my core
• Make it to the gym 3 times per week for 30 minutes of cardio, and if I get strength training in it is a bonus. This was one of Sandy's goals for me.

After I got home I got on SparkPeople for the first time in a while and restarted everything. While it is nice resetting goals and timelines, I forgot what a pain it is too. It resets the workout program I had had setup in there which I had liked, and it just takes a while to redo it. Oh well, at least it is easy enough to do, just time consuming. I also set some mini goals through SparkPeople to help get me started. It is to see how many days in a row I can do these. Lets hope I can keep it up this time. Here they are:

• Track calories eaten each day
• Go to the gym at least 3 times per week
• Read an inspirational quote each day

Right now I am just looking at starting small. I want to get into the habit of recording my food intake regularly before I start to panic over what I am eating. One step and one day at a time. I can do this!

Thanks Sandy for the awesome kick start today!

Thanks Marshall for your love and support.

Motivational quote of the day: "Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom" George S. Patton