Fit Friday: Make a plan

Too often people say they are going to start a diet or start working out and then fail to make a plan on how to accomplish their goal. By failing to plan they in essence plan to fail. I myself have been victim to that and the one time I was most successful at exercising and losing weight I made a plan, typed it up and put it on the fridge where I would see it everyday, and after following that plan I lost 30 lbs and was in the best shape of my life.

The first thing I do when making a plan is to set an overall goal and then small mini goals within that plan. Right now my current goal is to lose 20 lbs to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight. I also force myself to be honest with myself. Before I became pregnant I could run for a solid 20 minutes and was pretty fast, I could do an hour zumba workout and not be sore, I could do a 20 minute hardcore ab routine like it was nothing. So I know it is possible for me to be able to do those things again - however, I need to rebuild that strength. There is no way I can get on the treadmill right now and run 20 minutes straight, it hurts just to walk! My abdominal wall is completely shot right now - I just carried a 9 lb 11 oz baby so rightly so - and there is no way I can bust out 20 minutes of hardcore abs. I need to take baby steps and that is where my mini goals come in.

I have been debating how I want to go about losing this weight - the main thing will be my diet, I do weight watchers so I will be following the weight watchers plan. What I love most about the weight watchers plan is that you track EVERYTHING you eat. So if I take a bite out of a snickers bar I write that down. It really makes you look at what you are eating and helps you pinpoint where you need to improve and why you are failing. It also helps to gauge how much you need to eat during the day and if you are over or under eating. WW gives you a tracker each week that you weigh in, however, for me I like to make a tracker on my computer, print it out, laminate it and then place it on my fridge and write everything on that. This way every time I go to open the fridge I can see how many points I can eat and I tend to make better choices in my snack or meal choices. When I lost 30 lbs before I did it completely on diet alone. I didn't want to workout because I didn't want to worry about the whole muscle weighs more than fat mentality people get when it comes to dieting and working out. I wanted to make sure I was successful by my food choices alone and then once I hit my weight goal I then started working out. This time around I am going to do cardio along with eating right because cardio is the most effective way to lose fat!

After I set up my goals I create a way for me to be accountable, in order to ensure my success. This is so important to successfully losing weight! If I just said I am going to exercise everyday and then never made a way to be accountable it would be too easy for me to not exercise because no one but me would know. So just like I place my tracker on the fridge for myself and everyone else to see, I also make up a workout schedule with mini goals for each week and place that on the fridge as well with a place for me to mark off for every goal I accomplish. I then tell my husband that he needs to be my cheerleader and my "boss" when it comes to working out. He knows better than to comment on how much I weigh and whether or not I should be eating something, instead he knows to ask me if I have worked out yet and if I haven't when I was planning on doing that. He also never gets bothered if I need him to watch the kids while I hop on the treadmill or watch sports in our room instead of the living room if I am working out to a dvd.

So here is my plan: I am going to walk for 30 minutes straight 6 days a week for 2 wks. Then run for 5 mins and walk the rest for 6 days, then each consecutive wk increase my run time by 2 minutes each week until I am running 20 minutes straight. As for strength training my main focus is increasing my core for now so I will do my ab routine which normally requires doing each exercise for 1 minute each but instead I will do each exercise for 30 seconds, until that no longer hurts, then increase it to 45 secs, then 1 min. I am not going to start my ab exercises until N is 6 weeks so I know my body has fully healed from child birth and pregnancy and my dr. has cleared me. As for diet like I said my plan is to continue doing weight watchers so I will go to a meeting every week until I hit my lifetime goal once again. I need to be at my goal weight by August 15 to remain lifetime so that is my goal.

To me trying to lose weight without a plan is about as smart as opening up a business or writing a book without a plan - you can't succeed unless you make a plan!