Finding Moto...

I think that I have totally lost all the motivation that I had to lose weight and get healthy!!

I am trying to get it back, but it is not easy! I think about the 8 pounds that I have gained back. I think about wanting to get healthy before I get pregnant. I think about the gift certificates that I got for Christmas that I want to spend on smaller clothes. Then I find myself eating spoonful's of peanut butter topped with chocolate chips. I feel like I am bored with everything. I am bored with the classes at the gym, the treadmill is boring, the weight machines are the same old thing. I don't want to do any of it! I am bored with eating too. I am not even enjoying the peanut butter and chocolate, I am just eating because I don't care anymore.

Then I logged into SparkPeople, which bored me.... Then I went into the message boards and saw how all these other people were struggling too. I posted about some of my issues and got wonderful, supportive answers back within seconds! I was able to offer some of my insight to others who were having issues and I started to feel my motivation come back to me!! Here is what I have come up with this time. Something new and different!!

Food: I get bored because I end up eating the same recipes over and over. When I make up menus I end up using the same 2 or 3 dishes. I came up with 10 new and different healthy dinner menus. I will rotate using that list making 2 -3 per week for both lunches and dinners. This can give me variety without breaking the food budget. These are also all dinners that I have made before and I know are easy to make, store well and re-heat well. In about 3 months I will come up with another 10 items.

Workout: I applied the same principle to working out. I decided that I want to workout Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday each week. I created 4 different workouts for each of those days, so I can rotate them and never do the same thing two workouts in a row. I think this is something like 64 different combinations! I can do circuits on the treadmill and upper body weights on Tuesday and Swim laps on Thursday and take a spinning class on Saturday! No time to get bored!

Now, the only hiccup in this plan is going to be school, they keep moving the night of class around. Right now, it is on Monday, but in two weeks it will be on Tuesday, and then 3 weeks later it goes to Wednesday for a week and then back to Tuesday. This could possibly give me a reason to skip a workout or eat out instead of cooking. I hope that by acknowledging this up front, I will be less likely to fall into the trap.