Sunday, December 22, 2013

Changing my goals

I'm having a very hard time losing these last 20-25 pounds and I've finally decided to stop putting so much pressure on myself about it. It's not very realistic to continue losing at the rate I was when I first started this process 65 pounds ago. My metabolism is significantly slower and the winter season is not conducive to me losing weight quickly.

So instead of striving to lose 1.5 pounds a week, which was a struggle even when I was bigger, I'm going to aim for 1.0 pound of weight loss per week. It'll take longer to get to my goal weight (I should reach it July 9th instead of May 21st) but the difference is only about six weeks and during that time I'll be more sane about everything.

In the meantime, I can focus on getting an adequate amount of exercise in 5 times a week instead of beating myself up for not working out enough to get to 2300 calories burned each day. The previous method is no longer sustainable and sustainability is what I'm going for in the long run.

For now, then, my goal is to eat 1,500 calories each day and burn at least 2,000 calories, which gives me a 500 calorie deficit daily and keeps me on track to lose 1 pound each week. If I burn more, then awesome, but I'm tired of getting down on myself because I should be so happy with my progress thus far.

My other goal is to minimize muscle loss since I'm not riding my bike nearly as much as I used to. I've lost about 1.5 pounds of lean muscle in the last six weeks so I've added leg workouts to my gym routine (I've started going to the gym regularly!) in order to minimize that loss. I really like the way my legs look right now and I don't want that to go away simply because the seasons have changed.

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