Stereotypical New Year's

I'm not very creative when it comes to resolving to make changes for the new year.  I am almost never happy with my weight, and so my resolution is always to live a healthier lifestyle and lose weight.

This year is no exception.  After my big announcement two months ago that I was going to lose weight, I lost 3 pounds, stopped exercising and then immediately gained it all back.  It was a big fat fail. 

So, I'm starting again. Because failing and starting again is always better than just failing, right?

I'm still at 163 pounds, but I'm making progress in the right direction.  We've started exercising in the evenings again.  I joined My Food Diary again - one of the biggest influences on my weight loss 5 years ago prior to my wedding.  And, perhaps the biggest change of all, we cut out 90% of our drinking.

DH and I like drinking.  We like having a beer with dinner, and have a couple of drinks with friends is always a good time.  When we're bored or when we want to "relax," having a drink or two was always a good way to do that.  But we were bad at stopping at a "drink or two" and after two or more drinks you can bet your bottom dollar that I wasn't going to suit up and get on the treadmill.  Alcohol was a bad influence on us - both of us, but perhaps DH even more so - so resolving to cut back and having him on board with that plan was crucial.

So far so good.  After a full week of not drinking we don't actually miss it that much.  Like I said, it was just something that we did because we thought it was relaxing.  But really, you can relax with a cup of a coffee in much the same way, and DH has adopted caffeine as his new drug of choice.

For me, calorie counting and feeling accountable for entering in every single thing that I put in my mouth is a great way to stop drinking.  Do you know how many calories are in alcohol? Way too many.  When you consider that I am only eating 1500 calories a day (and then exercising to burn at least 300 for a net of 1200) there is no room for empty liquid calories. (Actually that's a lie, there's a little room. I need creamer in my coffee so I allow for 100 calories worth of Bailey's French Vanilla creamer each day - an astronomical amount of calories already allotted towards liquid calories when you consider how few calories I'm consuming. But a large cup of coffee with 100 calories of creamer fills me up for at least 2 hours, so it's a wonderful morning "snack.")

We're also committing to eating better and making more of an effort to cook healthy meals at home.  This is a challenge with a toddler and two full-time working parents, because as I've mentioned many times before, the last thing I want to do when I get home from work is spend more time working on making dinner, especially since I get home at 5:30 and EH goes to bed at 7:30.  But we're planning ahead and using a Food Planner app so that we know exactly what we're having for dinner.  Then I'm going to spend some time on the weekends prepping food for the meals that week.  For example, tomorrow we're planning on having meatloaf - something I would NEVER normally make on a week night because it takes so long - but I'm going to make it tonight and put it in the fridge and DH can pop it in the oven tomorrow evening when I'm making the evening commute home from work.  I'm optimistic that this sort of planning is going to work out well for us, and DH has committed to helping more with the evening meals, which is something that I desperately need if this is going to work.

So, all of this is to say that the diet starts again.  As I mentioned, I weight 163. My current goal is to lose 20 pounds with a weight goal of 143.  A random number, I know, but 20 seems like a nice round amount of pounds to lose. And since I weighed 137 before my wedding, I know that 143 is achievable.  Hopefully this time I will be slightly more successful than I was last time.