Weddingbee Blog

Last time I wrote about how to best hide our size differences, I mentioned the inclusion of some personal fitness goals. Where did these goals come from? Well, simply enough, they came from my Wii Fit.

After roughly five months, I reached my goal, and lost a little over 20 pounds! Sounds easy, huh? Well not really, but here’s how it happened:

The first weekend after becoming engaged, I stepped on the board/scale, and it spit out my weight and asked me to set a goal for a middle-of-the-road, normal BMI. Now we could talk about how BMI isn’t necessarily a good measure of fitness, since it’s height and weight ratio doesn’t take into account muscle mass - but for all intents and purposes, it works okay for people like myself who have no muscles to impede the calculation.

Turns out I was on the very edge, floating between the “overweight” and “normal” cut-off line. 21 pounds would get me to the middle of the “normal” range. I balked at the number a little, threw in a bit of whining, but eventually got myself over to the library.

There I did some research, and came up with my plan. Like many wellness plans, it consists of two parts - diet and exercise.

Diet

I love to eat, so I was very perturbed by the idea of restricting my foodage. Unless I went on a sashimi diet. I could tooootally handle that.

Mmmmmm (source) mmmm…

But I’d be broke as a joke. So instead I ended up going a fairly simple route.

I stopped eating rice.

Well, I stopped eating some rice. In place of a cup of rice a day, I eat only 1/4 a cup. And sometimes, if I’m feeling particularly healthy, I’ll even add some brown rice in with the white.

The only other part of my “diet” was the inclusion of a new rule - before Mr. Sew or I are allowed to buy anything from the store, we must first look at the nutrition facts. Sometimes, just the shock of how much saturated fat or sugar is in something is enough to help us avoid bad food.

And that’s it for the diet. Less rice, look at what you’re buying. Simple, no?

Exercise

This is the real meat-and-potatoes of my weight loss journey. As I mentioned, I went to the library for some research. Well, the Bay Area, in all its glory, has an amazing library system. They have an entire section devoted to workout DVDs. Over the course of the 5 months, I think I checked out two dozen or so, in just about every genre imaginable.

These two were my “fun” favorites:

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In secret, I think dance workouts are totally fun, but I can’t comment on the effectiveness of these programs since I didn’t use them too much. Mr. Sew kept laughing at me. Nothing shelves a DVD faster than making a girl feel self-conscious!

So what did I use most of the time?

A mixture of cardio and weight training. And after a while, I settled into a few DVDs that really seemed to fit me best. This one became my favorite, and strangely enough, it is marketed towards brides:

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They have week plans set up, based on the shape of your gown (gimmicky sounding, I know). The basic idea is, if you have a strapless dress, you’ll want to work out your arms more, whereas a form-fitting mermaid would accentuate the legs, etc. You can also customize, if you don’t like the way the set-plans are arranged. With one, 30 minute session each night after dinner, I saw results. And results are a good thing, because there is nothing more frustrating than trying your hardest without seeing changes.

But with all things, you eventually reach a plateau. When the workouts started getting easier, and I was no longer seeing results, I stepped up the game and put myself on the waiting list for the infamous 30-Day Shred.

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If Jillian can’t help me, no one can, right?

She did help, and I jumped off the plateau with ease. (Though finding motivation to do her grueling workouts was TOUGH.)

And all was well in the world… until Winter came. Suddenly, it was too cold to exercise. All I wanted to do is snuggle in bed or on the couch with a cup of hot something.

And I didn’t resume exercising. In fact, I haven’t used a DVD or lifted a weight since October. But I did try something else. I work in a high-rise, and instead of riding the elevator up to the double digits to where my cubicle resides, I’ve taken on the chore (it IS a chore), of walking up and down the stairs once a day.

And 22 pounds later, that’s where I am today. Taking the stairs and watching the rice.

Yay!

I’m content at this point, so I’d like to at least maintain it. I’m going to continue my methodology, so if I continue to lose a little more, I’ll be happy. But I think I’m done pushing the envelope.

Anyone else have a wellness regiment? What works out best for you?