My Fitness Journey: Week One

Hello and Happy Monday! I’ve always been a fan of Mondays for a lot of reasons. It’s the perfect day to start something new, and it’s almost always the most productive day of my week. I’m not at a point in my life where I dread Mondays, and I really hope I never get there.

As I’m typing this, I’m about 8 weeks in my “Fitness Journey”. It’s really hard to believe that it’s already been 8 weeks! But I want to bring you all back to week 1 where the struggle was real. It was just a couple weeks after Kyle proposed, and the holidays were winding down (thank God). I was feeling very sluggish and not myself. I was still doing my yoga 3 days a week, and following my New Year’s resolution of stretching more, but I needed a serious change. So we made a plan.

WEEK 1

Goal: Lose 20lbs in 16 weeks

MONDAY

The Workout

This was our first day back at the gym in a few weeks, and I was amped up and ready to go. Walking through the doors was a bit daunting because I didn’t know how I would do once I was on a machine. As anyone who works out regularly knows, there are good days and bad days. And you really don’t know what type of day it’s going to be until you’re trying to work out. But I found an Arc Trainer and fell back into the familiar motions. Here’s how the first session went:

Arc Trainer: 60 Minutes

Walking: 20 Minutes

Push Ups: 1 set of 10

Squats w/ 10lb ball: 3 sets of 10

Ballerina Squats: 3 sets of 10

Russian Twist: 25 on each side

Standard Sit-Ups: 30

Stretching: 25 Minutes

We went all out on the first day, and covered all of the basics. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday I did my cardio for 60 minutes again, but with 5lb ankle weights instead. I definitely started to feel it in my legs, so I pulled back on the squats and just stuck with the cardio. The cardio and stretching remained consistent throughout the week, with some variation in the core and arm exercises. We finished up the week on Friday with just some cardio intervals on the Elliptical, ending with a 1 mile sprint on the treadmill.

The Diet: We really haven’t been on a “diet” per say, but we do watch what we eat carefully. When you’re working out consistently, it’s so important to give yourself enough fuel to complete those workouts, but it’s also important to avoid over eating. Here are some things that we did limit:

– Fruit Juice

– Ice Cream

– Artificial Sweeteners

– Alcohol: No more than 1-2 drinks per person on the weekend, depending on what it is.

– Less grain intake: bread, rice, granola, etc.

– No red meat

– Limited “heavy” dairy: Cheese, cream/coffee creamers, etc.

We didn’t want to make ourselves feel extremely limited, because in my experience, that’s often where things take a turn for the worst. I’m still a firm believer that fitness is 95% conscientious nutrition, meaning you remain aware of what you’re giving your body, without being obsessive. Getting back into the routine is difficult, but we were so proud of ourselves for being disciplined and working hard. And despite the typical results of week 1, we kept going.

Pounds Lost: +1

That’s right. I actually gained a pound, which is extremely common when you don’t work out for a long period of time. My muscles were taking on water weight and struggling to recover from these difficult workouts. In weeks 2-4 I decided to reevaluate some things, which I’ll go over in next week’s post. Leading a healthy lifestyle involves constant reevaluation, because let’s be real, the same thing can’t possibly work forever. Stay tuned for next week’s results!

Are you currently on your own fitness journey? What advice would you have for someone at the week 1-2 stage?