My 2009 Transformation

I am this: someone who has, for as long as I can remember, been ‘a little overweight’. I’m not comfortable in a bikini (nor would I subject you to that) and at times, not even comfortable in my own skin. I”m a little tired of it. I’ve decided to just do what healthy people do — to eat clean and work out like a monster and maybe, just maybe one day I will have the physique of those beautiful women I see in the Oxygen and fitness magazines.

The Caveat: I’ve had more than 20 years of bad habits to overcome: not only is it the excess lbs i want to shed, but i want to rid myself of a lifetime of quite simply…an unhealthy attitude. i’ve been an emotional eater, i’ve been an overeater. i’ve eaten when happy, when sad, when in celebration or looking for some kind of ‘reward’ (what am i, a dog? doggie’s got a treat!!)

The Sad Thing: is that I really kick ass when at the gym. I truly surprise people by my energy, my form, how friggin hard I work…so in the end, I think underneath this forty-some-odd pounds of flabby fatty flesh, is an athlete. I’m sad that my parents never nurtured that in me. I’m sad that it’s taken me this long to realize that YES i can run and YES i can go for a bike ride, on a spin bike or regular and YES i can maneuver myself around a weight room!

So In The End: this is my journal. my daily intake and output, sometimes how i’m feeling. I hope to see you again when I finish beating myself up. At 5?6? i’m aiming for 140 lbs, although ball parking it b/c i want to have some muscle. not some, much. much muscle. many muscles.

I go by Lexie these days. Lexie Lopez when I become a fabulously fit transformation story. I gripe on wordpress, I gripe on twitter (username: LexieLo). If you’re up for listening to my daily angst, (although I don’t know why you would…) read on. I’m writing it anyway, cuz in the end…it’s all for myself.

 I blog here: http://justlivehealthier.wordpress.com/ & http://twitter.com/lexielo

been eating clean since monday - i think.

i cant keep losing motivation.  i’m done with that.  my new goals are for holidays this year, to get my weight down to 140 (from present 175ish) is that enough time?  35 lbs in 4 months?  that DOES sound reasonable…

 good grief.  this had better be my last try.  i should JUST GET HEALTHY ALREADY!

see my intake at: http://justlivehealthier.wordpress.com/

I’ve been sick off and on for at least 5 weeks.  I’ve been feeling blue that I’d never get back on track – but at the least my weight has stayed the same during this whole thing.  So far my best pre-sick was 168.8 & today I’m at 168.4.  now granted I’ve been inconsistent at the gym and while my eating hasn’t been perfect it wasn’t terrible, this is, after all not a diet, but a lifestyle change.  At least I can handle maintaining my current weight…however I’d still like to lose some more lbs of fattyness.

 
I am reading this book (yes, I finally started reading) and I realized I’m a huge fan of giant sets – doing like 4 exercises for 4 different body parts in a row with no rest between each set, just some rest after all 4 exercises are done.  And plus I’m have that mentality that the more ya sweat the more ya burn – so I was probably not giving my body a chance to recover between each workout.  The book says (well if it’s called “the body sculpting bible” – then shouldn’t I regard it as such?) that doing giant sets too many days in a row may not be a swell idea…since it wont give you much time to recover, especially a newbie like me. 

 
So basically I have to just keep reading…I have, with this perpetual sickness, come to a screeching halt with regards to training– but I have to seriously just train smarter.  I don’t think I could mentally stand these gym hiatuses much longer, and I doubt its good for my body either. 

 
But the trick is, I just have to not forget.  My entire life I’ve been a one-piece swimsuit kinda gal and I just cannot forget how I want to look in a two.  Obviously 168.4 is better than the 180+ that I started out as –but its not as good as the 150, or the 135 I aspire to be. 

 
I guess that’s kinda it.  it’s a learning process.  It’s trying to undo the years of bad habits.. it wont come overnight, but it’s gonna come.

 
I just have to keep on trudging forward.

i am feeling like the sick is coming on…YET AGAIN. WTF– i just kicked this thing! i was feeling better; took the training slow at first cuz i didnt want to relapse — started going hard with cardio last week and had a couple really strong days both working out wise and eating healthy wise… i even started up with a new supplement/ vitamin regimen…and now i feel f’ing sick again.  this f’ing blows.  i hate sick to no end.  its stalling my progress and i cant stand it.  bite me, sickness!

Every day I wake up & I have a great gameplan in my head about when I’m going to work out & how I’m going to eat clean. For some reason, walking out the door is the biggest challenge. There’s always something else around the house to do, something on the computer that needs my attention for school… But when I finally do walk out the door and get to the gym it’s so rewarding. Today for example, I had a kick-ass workout and of course have been on such a high ever since…now imagine how I would have felt if I had let life get in the way of my gym routine & not worked out? I would have felt guilty, slothy, lazy, and further away from my fitness goals.

Just a thought. That I don’t know why I battle with myself, when I know the outcome will always be positive when I just put on my clothes and go. That should be my new mantra. Just put on my clothes and go. But it’s not…today’s mantra is: It doesn’t matter where I am right now. I just know it’s better than I have been, and it’s getting me to where I want to be.

i do not want to suck. i do not want to be a poseur.
i want to be lean and strong and healthy.
i want to run like the wind.
i want to lift like a guy.

i want to wear a bikini and have ab muscles visible.
i want to say goodbye to fat and flab.

i want to be tight and wear tight clothes
and finally, finally be able to post pics of myself in a bathing suit and be proud like hell.

i want nice quad mucles, shoulders, tris
i want hamstrings and calves
i want abs. i most definately want visible abs and arm muscles.

i want to…know many clean recipes and eat clean like i breathe.
i want to spend 2 hrs in the gym - 2 quality hours - and be addicted and make its like my drug.
i want to be a group fitness instructor, personal trainer, clean eating conneseur
i want to be a fitness model…maybe. or just look like one.

i want to be that person.
i want to stop being a poseur and stop saying yes to cheats.

i want to be proud of everything about me.
and if i — WHEN I become a gym rat and a dedicated clean eating chef; i want to be able to talk about it with people.
i want to feel comfortable enough to say
"the reason i do this is so that i can get the results i got"…which i will have a great physique and gotton results, because i’d have learned how to all these things on a consistent level.

i want i want i want.

now, off to work…

it was seriously hard yesterday to get back on the clean eating cycle after 2 weeks of sickness where i was definately more lenient with myself. but sticking with it certainly paid off!

i was at 168.8 before i got sick,

at 172.4 during sick spell

at 171.4 when i started feeling un-sick

and today 170.6 after some serious mental games w/ myself to eat only clean yesterday. (down almost 1 full lb in a day after clean eats! maybe i was just bloated after sickness?? whatev- i’ll take it!)

i’m happy that my weight didn’t go up that much - i did try to "add the good" but no offense, when i’m sick i dont care about anything than getting un-sick, much less if i’m eating white bread or not. so i look at staying in a 3 lb range as a plus. but of course, i’d like the scale to continue to go down from here on out!! BACK TO WORK!

so i’m not completely healed from my ridiculously tiring 2 week plus long sickness…but i started feeling better at the end of last week & made it to the gym today… the session totally tired me out; took a 2 hr nap after!

at least i’m back; i thought it was the end of the road for me & my transformation; i literally thought i would never get better. i know it sounds ridiculous but i really thought my drive was totally zapped. luckily tho, it was just bc i was sick & that drained all the energy and motivation from me. but now becoming un-sick, i can feel it coming back.

so i’m still taking it easy: my workout was with paul, so he was selective with what we did; we didn’t go too hard but man, its been a while so i worked up quite a sweat. i could tell i was still weak; even he said so; bc certain things i know i could have done more on a normal day, but the 1st day back plus still sick = not 100%. regarding food intake; i am still "adding the good" but i’m eating way more carbs than i should/would. truth be told, i had a 6" sub for dinner + sunchips. i’ll get back to 97-100% clean eats; but i hafta get better first methinks.

i’m just happy to be back mentally. physically will catch up. i’m just glad to be back.
a healthy body makes my mind stronger. it’s amazing the correlation.

Dependent on how i look/bodyfat ratio at the time; these are my tentative weight loss goals:  

currently=aprox 169 lbs

=weekend of march 22= 160(ish)
= weekend of april 18= 155(ish)
memorial day weekend - may 22nd = weigh < 150
1st weekend of july - weigh approx 135-140

 can i do it?  will i finally get over the sometimes-fit, sometimes-not hurdle?  will this bodyblog and fitness transformation be the last; will they be the ones that stick?!?

i certainly hope so! i guess only time can tell…!

See this is the thing. My entire life I’ve battled with fat deamons, and my entire life i’ve been the product of my family and culture. Without getting into detail, this is what I mean:

1. I have a hard time just throwing food away. With all the hungry people in the world I feel like it is a complete waste to throw away food. I can throw away rotton or old food, yes…i think because the logic is even the hungry wouldn’t eat it. But perfectly good (and often unhealthy) foods, I just have a hard time bringing myself to do it. This is why living on my own is great; because i only bring good foods that i would actually eat into my own home, but obviously this trait can lead to my not eating healthy.

2. I cannot say no/be assertive to my parents. Not just about food, but about anything. Like if my dad wants to give me like…a cool new alarm clock he found…I feel guilty saying no because i think like "oh, how cute, my dad tought of me" and then I feel bad trying to tell the old man I don’t really need an extra alarm clock b/c I’ve been waking up fine with the one I have. But I take it anyway, so as not to crush his excitement of finding me a new gadget. So this does translate into food. Like when I visit my parents and they are so excited to have their kid come home & the cook their kid’s favorite childhood dish, which happens to be incredibly fattening and so NOT clean, I feel bad telling them that the effort they put forth will be wasted. Because then it because an act of me being unappreciative. And then of us wasting food. Which brings us back to #1.

I have to just let go of certain things in my past. But obviously it’s hard; it’s been a lifetime in the making, but I have to let go. I have to do this; it’s the only way I can progress. When i’m on my own little island it’s ok, and i’m fine, and i get the results i want. but when i go back to my childhood roots– i have to find the solution to not falling back to my childhood/adolescent ways. it’s those ways that enable myself to be the same out of shape, 30+ lbs to lose person i have been. see, when i visit the fam i still call it ‘home’. my mind has to get over that. it’s hard, it’s a battle.

i have to forget.