13 in 13 and I'm Just Getting Started!

Goals, yes I have a lot of them...some may say too many. One thing I'm guilty of when setting goals is to be to general and not set a goal that I can track or give myself too many excuses to get away with not achieving my goals. An example you ask....how about "I'm going to get healthy and lose weight in 2013!" Yea, I've set this goal for probably 5 years in a row but guess what...I haven't lost a whole lot of weight. I've lost a few pounds here and there but nothing that was noticeable to me. What does get healthy mean? Taking a vitamin, not drinking soda, no alcohol, it means so so so many things. What about lose weight? Is that 1lb, 2lbs, 10lbs, or 50lbs.

It all hit me when I saw our family Christmas picture from 2012 and I realized how big I looked. It totally bummed me out, I knew I looked better this year than I had the hear before but I wanted to keep it going. I knew I had to do things different than I had in the past and rather than setting a goal of losing weight or working out I set a goal to track my calories. Knowing myself I knew that just being aware of what I was eating and how many calories everything was would make me really THINK before I ate something but giving myself some freedom would keep me going. Last time I had lost weight I had done Weight Watchers and just kept track of everything I ate...self awareness sucks...I mean works! HAHA! You don't realize how much that Jr Cheeseburger will take you back or that extra helping of mashed potatoes? Yupp...don't need it! If you're interested in joining me in this adventure and need a motivation buddy be sure to download the MyFitnessPal app on your phone or get online and set one up. My username is SHusak.

Another thing that we have done this week and I hope to keep up with is to use e-Mealz. Since life is really busy I don't have time to plan a week full of healthy meals (and you can only eat so many frozen dinners before you're ready to throw in the towel) this is always an awesome option for us. You get a grocery list and a meal plan for 7 meals. We shop together and I send Brad on little missions to get me things but the list is even broken down into produce, dairy, meats, etc. I may not make the meals every evening but I make a few on some days and don't cook on other days. The meals take less than an hour (and usually less than a half an hour) to prepare and cook. Depending on which option you choose there are meal plans for 2 or meal plans for 6. We do the meal plans for 6 and have intentions to freeze some of the food to pull out if we have a few days between me cooking the next set of meals. Brad LOVES when I'm cooking like this and I agree that it's a nice change to have options for lunch and dinner that don't include meals from a box or a drive-thru. Plus I know that each meal makes 6 portions and they have side dishes to balance the meal so I pre-portion the meals so I'm not tempted to eat too much.

So far since I started tracking on January 6th I've only missed 2 days of logging my meals and I've lost 13lbs in 2013 so far! (So far being the important part.) I'm gonna keep working on it and make myself proud when I look at my 2013 Christmas picture compared to 2012! I know that once we have kids this will only get harder and I want to do this and look good for ME.

Stefanie Husak