Getting Back on Track

I moved to Virginia from South Jersey in 1998. I was a Body Builder when I lived there. I competed in 1996 and did pretty well (I'll post pictures sometime...). It was a lifestyle and I loved it. When I moved to Virginia, I found myself in "the land before time". There were 2 gyms. The Nautilus (now Gold's) is the sole ownership of every college student that attends JMU. It's not really a gym, but a social club. There was also a little tiny gym at my end of the county. It's run by a Christian family, very nice people, who play only Contemporary Christian music in the gym. The music doesn't seem to enhance my work out in any way. One day while I was working out on the leg press, the owner came through with a potential new member on tour. The leg press was always my strongest exercise and naturally my favorite, so I had it completely loaded with 45 pound plates. As I was leaving the gym, the owner politely asked me to avoid the leg press whenever he was showing the gym, especially if it were police officers from the next town (his friends), he said it makes people nervous that I use that much weight. I realized that this was not going to be the gym for me either. Then recently that same town opened a community center with a work out area. How exciting I thought! Husband and I went and checked it out. No free weights (too dangerous) and a lot of elderly people. We joined anyway and decided to try it, we needed to do something. We were members for two months and we had to reorganize the workout schedule every week because of something being repaired... It wasn't working. So now we are back to the beginning.
My mind has never recognized me as a "fat girl", and that has always been a problem for me. I had a lot of self esteem issues as an young adult. I was in that "follow the crowd" mentality. I gained a lot of weight. In 1991, I decided to quit smoking. In order to keep myself from gaining even more weight, I also joined a gym the same day. There were three gyms between my home and my job, and I only worked in the next town. I started working out and I was hooked! I loved it! The endorphins were the best "high" I'd ever known! I met a lot of great people and found a trainer! I started training seriously for competition in 1993. I lost the equivalent weight of a 8 year old child!
So now here we are, I've gained the weight again. Not as much this time, though. But this time I have a real work out and diet partner, my wonderful husband. Husband quit smoking on December 3, 2009, and has gained a bit of weight. We found a great program online ~ caloriecount.com ~ that will even allow me to list my recipe ingredients and it will calculate the nutrient values for me. We've been using the program for a week now. Through my bodybuilding programs I learned the importance of a food diary, which is essential for me to stick to my eating plan. A food diary shows me everything I ate and the nutrients in those foods. It makes it easier to adjust the foods I'm eating, and it makes me accountable for everything I ingest. Everything I eat is written down, so if I don't want a particular food on my diary for that day I won't eat it. My biggest problem with an eating program is that I tend to eat too few calories just because I'm being so very careful.
So this is our diet plan:
1.Keep the calories and nutrients within the recommended range for our weight loss goals.
2.No dieting on Sunday. Everyone needs to have treats and "bad" foods from time to time and if it's not in the diet plan, you will cheat everyday, guaranteed!
3.Stay as active as possible.
4. We're working on figuring out a place to set up our own work out equipment. Once we do that, we'll set up a work out schedule.
5. Drink at least 2 quarts of pure water every day. Yes, I know coffee is a liquid too, but it's not a pure liquid. Pure liquids help to flush out some of the bad stuff that you accumulate through bad diets.
6. A multivitamin every day, insurance that we're getting our minimum...
OK, here we go, I can feel the fat melting off as I type these words!