Get Fit: Week 2.5 (Day 18)

Hello internet and future self. It's been about three weeks since I started this journey. I've now begun to have a clearer picture of the tools I have to keep me focused on my goal.

1. Fitbit: Fitbit has been great in helping quantify my movement and tracking my progress. As of this writing, I am using a Charge 2 to track my everyday movement and an Aria 2 scale (which I use daily) to check my progress on weight. After about three weeks worth of progress, I am seeing amazing statistics. I went from 255 pounds to 247 pounds. I'm consistently getting my steps in for the entire day, reaching my new goal of 10,500 steps.
2. MyFitnessPal: This is by far the best/easiest way to track calorie intake and my dieting needs. Fitbit has a similar feature, but it is not as detailed as the free version of MyFitnessPal. Logging food is easy as finding the barcode label on the packaging of the food. I've also been able to find restaurant food logging by using the location feature in the app to find the exact or similar amount of calories from my meal. If I become more serious about my dieting needs, I may sign up for the subscription and see how it can benefit me.
3. Anytime Fitness Workouts: My gym (Anytime Fitness) has a great resource app for creating and tracking current workout routines in the gym. My first day composed of a full body plyometric workout which uses your body weight to do simple exercises (no real gym needed). After I did the routine on my first day, I recorded each type of workout with this app so that I can repeat the exercises (with video demonstrations within the app) in the gym. When I need to change my workout, I can create a new routine and track my progress all within this app. Pretty amazing for a free app.
4. Anytime Fitness (General): My gym provides a free app that provides a social media aspect of recording your workouts. This app isn't as full-featured as I would like it to be. However, it does track the number of times my keyfob has been scanned at the gym facility. This helps me quantify and encourage me to keep the number high. It also shows any updates my home gym has provided via social media.

I've been very good and disciplined about eating out. I even had to stop myself from visiting my parents over the Memorial Day weekend because I knew it would be composed of eating and lying around with the parents. I'm more active with my grocery shopping at Trader Joe's. Many of their food products have lots of sodium per serving which is not particularly healthy. I've been buying the usual from their selection: broccoli, grilled chicken, organic bananas, mixed nuts (one with chocolate [for pleasure] and one lightly salted), and their whole grain bread. When I need something different, I've been focusing on Poki Bowls, Sushi, and Acai Bowls, and any chicken based meals. I'm still motivated. Although, there have been times where my laziness will creep in and try to tell me that you don't need to go to the gym today. I've been fighting it, by giving myself reasons for heading to the gym that day. Usually it would be based off the food I ate that same day or the day before. For example, I was eating leftovers from my aunt which composed of pizza and chicken. I took a nap right after eating and woke up feeling lazy. I told myself that the pizza was a no-no and is the reason that I needed to go to the gym today, to burn off those terrible calories from your body. It worked, and hopefully will continue to be a strategy I can keep using on my body. As I'm writing this at 7:50PM at night, I already feel hungry even after eating some cashews and a vanilla almond drink from Pressed Juicery. I'll probably have a banana and loads of water to down the hunger. On top of that, I can brush my teeth, tricking my mind that I can no longer have food since we are getting "ready for bed". These little life hacks are the things I need to keep doing on a daily basis so that I don't overeat and encourages myself to head to the gym. I'm happy with where I've got to so far, but I know there is still a continuous journey ahead. I'm hoping to hit my first goal of 230 pounds as soon as the end of next two months (although I should be more realistic). I can't wait to see what other milestones I'll hit in my journey. I'm most excited for pant size loses. I'm currently a 46 inch waist line and most pants stop at 42 inches. If I can get under 40 inches, I'll be extremely happy. Maybe even to a point where I throw away my old clothes and go for a shopping spree on new ones. It's time to bring out the best out of myself. Be encouraged, stay focused, and trust the process. I can do this!