Skinny Jeans

Well friends.  I have been absent.  And my laziness has not been limited to writing.  I have been job hunting. Successfully.  I start my new job as a web designer at a local Web Design company on September first.  I’m really excited to be working again and feel like I’m contributing to society.  That is my one accomplishment of the last 3 months since graduation.
Since I graduated I have abandoned the excellent workout schedule I had at school, put on ten pounds and found myself lazing around in front of the computer watching re-runs on hulu way too much for my own good. 
Of course I have good excuses.  I’m in a new town. I had a house to unpack.  I don’t have workout classes available to me close to home.  My birth control screwed my thyroid and now I put on weight like crazy.  blah blah blah. 
The truth is, I can control this.  I just haven’t.  It may be harder to do in this town and with my conditions but I still can.  And I can’t believe I’ve allowed myself to gain this much weight. 
I’ve said this before, but I mean it as much as I can.  Today is the beginning of a new me. 
I’ve stopped taking my birth control.  My husband isn’t crazy about having to use condoms again, but the pill caused heart problems and a thyroid hormone imbalance so he understands why I had to stop.  I’m going to hold off taking it for as long as I can to try and allow my body to recover.  I would like to never have to take it again but that’s not realistic so I’m hoping for 2 or 3 months.  Hopefully my thyroid will recover and I can regain a normal metabolism.  My heart condition is likely permanent but I’m hoping that daily cardio will help strengthen my heart and help it some.
I went running today and I plan to continue running every day.  That may be tricky with starting my new job because it means getting up extra early but I cant allow that to get in my way.  If I can get up at 5:30 I can get in a run and still have time to get ready and get to work without having to rush.  I hope that after 2 weeks or so of running daily I’ll get better at it and start to enjoy it again.  Today was pretty sad, I had to walk about 50 percent of the time and I was panting like crazy.
The biggest thing is though, I have to get my eating under control.  My husband is a carnivore and has a super fast metabolism so having his meat and junk food around has been more of a temptation than I thought it would be.  I feel terrible eating meat and dairy but I have been.  And it’s not even a little bit here and there.  It’s whenever it’s around.  So I have to start over on becoming a vegetarian again.  I’m going to start with no meat and work up to eliminating dairy and eggs.  I have to quit eating junk too.  If I start my day with a workout and a healthy smoothie I hope It will help curb my appetite for junk.
I think I will start taking pictures every day as a motivation.  At first it will be embarrassing but I think it will help me to see progress.  Right now I am on a terrible track.  And this runs in my family.  They’re all thin until they get to their 20’s and then they pack it on until they reach morbid obesity.  I won’t follow that pattern. I am going to practice good habits and end the cycle.  As it stands I am at 154 pounds. 
I am 30 pounds overweight and 41 pounds over my goal weight. (I’m on the short side for my weight group so 113 is not an unreasonably small weight for me.  My sister is 3 inches taller than I am and at 105.  I have bigger breasts and hips than her though so I expect I’ll weigh a little more at my goal body size.)  I want to see progress.  I’m not expecting to reach my goal in a month or anything.  I hope to see 8 or 10 pounds drop off by the end of September and start to feel comfortable enough to start dancing again.  Also I will be looking for a good yoga class to start taking in a few weeks. 
I’m sure this is all super boring to those of you who read, but I’m motivated.  I’ll try to keep up writing about my accomplishments and maybe even post some pictures.  I’ll be using sparkpeople.com to track my calories and exercise.  If you want to check me out there my username is CrystalUTD. 

One question:  I have a bad wrist that prevents me from doing any sort of push ups.  Does anyone know of a good arm and shoulder workout that I can do at home that isn’t push ups?

Crystal