Wedding Blog

In 17 days, my little sister and I will be switching roles from the ones we had last October. I’ll be the MOH and she’ll be the bride! LDS girls tend to have short engagements (mine was quite long at 7 months), and she’s pulling this thing together in just over two months.

I’m so happy for her, and I’m very excited to be wearing the black dress and new nude heels seen below (please try to pretend I’m wearing makeup and did my hair), but I’ve been feeling a little soft around the edges lately after gaining a total of 15 LBS since my wedding day in October.

I worked hard to look and feel confident on my wedding day, and I swore that I wouldn’t let myself slide back into bad habits once the honeymoon was over. Unfortunately, the call of our new KitchenAid mixer and the row of pretty new cookbooks were too much for me to handle and I started baking and cooking with a focus on taste, not on health. I made my first chocolate cake, used Phyllo dough for the first time, and went through multiple sticks of butter. And, worst of all, I started dishing out equal portions for both of us. He would eat half the pizza, and I would eat the other half.

Mr. Avocado has been supportive and wonderful, both telling me he loves the way I look, and encouraging me in my efforts to lose weight when I ask him for help. I lost about 50 lbs a few years ago by tracking my calories using Fitday (I use the desktop version) and decided to start weighing and measuring my meals once again, but Suavacado suggested adding a second element to my routine to help with the fitness and activity side of things. I would start tracking both my calories in, and my calories out in a very controlled manner.

You may have seen this black armband on The Biggest Loser contestants before. It’s called the Bodybugg, and it tracks calorie output. It measures how fast your body is moving, the amount of heat your body is giving off, the electrical conductivity of your skin, and skin temperature. Yeah, I have no idea what that means, but it’s supposed to be really accurate!

It’s not the most fashionable thing I’ve ever worn, so I try to convince myself I look really tough and cool whenever I wear it.

I also bought a digital display, which gives me the chance to see how I’m doing in real time. 2291 calories burned is still not quite what I need to lose weight as fast as I would like, but that’s actually a really good number for me. Yesterday I burned a pitiful 1747, and only walked 1901 steps. I don’t have to wonder why I’m gaining weight anymore, I’m realizing that I’m very, very inactive!

I’m grateful that my Mr. Avo was willing to splurge on this for me, because it has made a huge difference in my motivation to be active. I’m getting a lot more workouts in than I normally do because I want to see my number of calories burned be as high as possible.

That being said, in the end it’s just a fancy “toy” that tells me I need to get up and start moving around a lot more. Something I actually already knew! This was definitely a pricey investment for us, and knowing how much money we put into it makes me want to use it as much as possible (similar to the way entering into a contract with a personal trainer makes you workout more often). If you can budget the money for it, I think it’s a great investment (as long as you don’t mind wearing the big black band on your arm all the time!).

But if you can’t afford it, I think that’s okay, too. The overall message for me was to get outside and get moving, and I’ve started doing that, even in this unbearable Dallas heat. If you’re trying to lose like I am, I believe you can do it!

What kind of activities do you participate in to get yourself moving during the heat of the summer?