The Battle Plan!

I have finally followed through with my idea to make myself a schedule to try to healthy myself up. No schedule can really be complete without goals to guage progress, so I have implemented the following complete strategy.

Goal: To gain ten pounds. I know... this is probably going to be the toughest thing I've ever done. But hey, if you set your sights low, you can achieve them anytime. I want to be able to be proud of a tough accomplishment.

Three part Battle Plan!
1. Exercise! Most people use exercise as a method of losing weight. Why? Because it burns off fat. But - it also builds muscle, and muscle is heavier than fat. You've got to lose the fat before you can start putting on muscle, though, which is why many people lose weight when they exercise. For someone like me with no fat in the first place, I'll go right to building muscle. I've decided to start slow and work my way up. I'm going for a twenty-minute workout every other day, and a twenty-minute run on those off-days. Every day but Sunday, because a day of rest is healthy. Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I'll do a workout and Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays I'll run. I've already had my run today, and it reminded me how seriously out of shape I am. Plus, I'll be taking Tovie on my runs. He was just as tired as I was, today... :P

2. Eat! All that exercise takes energy, and as I am known to have a fast metabolism, it will take more than the normal to give my body the energy it needs and have extra to put on that extra weight. Therefore, I've decided to set myself a goal of 3000 calories daily - not junk food. Good food. Plus a fruit, a vegetable, a vitamin, and plenty of water. Running days I should have no problem with the water. Man, I'm thirsty right now! Anyway. I'm also going to attempt to kick the Mountain Dew habit. I've attempted it before, and it wasn't really successful. Perhaps by making it part of the larger plan I can help myself avoid it.

3. Rest! A lot of the reason that I haven't been getting up and doing things is that I have been tired a lot lately. I figure that this is partly due to caffeine consumption late at night, and partly that perhaps I've been getting too much sleep. Which also makes people tired, so the cycle continues. I've decided to carefully measure off the sleep I get every night and confine it to eight hours. Then when I get up and start doing things, I'll feel more awake and can properly tire myself out, which will lead to a better night's sleep the next night.

The next thing I'm going to do is monitor my progress by weighing myself every day. My starting weight this morning was 121. I'll record my weight every day and see how I'm doing. The last thing, which is very important, is a reward of some kind. When I reach my goal of gaining 10 lbs, I need to reward myself with something. I'm not sure with what yet... but something cool.

Anyway, the entire plan is drawn out large, and in plain sight on my chalkboard wall so that I don't forget it or try to talk myself out of it. The next safeguard I've put in place was posting this on my blog, on the internet. Hopefully, by doing so, I've just made myself accountable to anyone that cares. Those people can then encourage me not to back down or give up, and perhaps ask me how the progress goes once in a while (hint hint...). Anyway. That's my sneaky plan. :)

As for now, I'm going to go take a shower because I'm all gross and sweaty. Then I'm going to go clean my room and get my truck safety inspected. Lovely stuff, hm?

Auf wiedersehen!
--Anna Grace