MzSoup's personal weight loss challenge

I mentioned getting back into healthy habits briefly in this post, but wanted to go a little more into it.  I have slowly and steadily gained 50 pounds over the last 10 years.  A little bit at a time so that I didn't really notice it, until it was too late.  Well, I gained about 15 of those pounds during pregnancy and just never lost them.  But they are still there so they count.  Dang it.

I signed up for two 5K run/walks, one in April and one in May, and started Couch to 5k at the end of February to try to get myself ready to run.  Walking or running three times a week and keeping track of my calorie intake using My Fitness Pal, I ended up losing 10 pounds in a little over a month.  It was enough to keep me motivated and working... until April hit and it was crunch time for finishing everything for L.Soup's birthday party on the 13th.  I of course decided I had to make everything myself (or as much as possible) and I went slightly overboard with the decorations.  I was adamant that I would pick it back up as soon as I felt ready for the party.

But that was a lie.

As soon as the party was over, I was exhausted.  For about a week.  THEN I had to work on cleaning everything up (and lets be honest, there's STILL some decorations up around the house... and I'm not even embarrassed about it... okay maybe a little).  And then I was exhausted for another week.

I never had the energy or time to pick it back up.  So I walked both 5K's.  Which isn't a terrible thing, but I had really wanted to try running, since I had put so much work into it.  Oh well.

Well, here I am.  It's July.  I still haven't lost this baby weight, and my baby is 15 months old.  I think I've finally gotten it into my head that I need to DO this.  So I'm putting it out here.  Almost like I'm shaming myself into putting in the effort.  Because now that you all know, I have to at least try.  I've even been debating with myself if I should take before pictures and post them up here, but I don't know if I want to expose you all to that.  Maybe I will take some, and keep them around for motivation anyway.

So I've started back up with My Fitness Pal -- if anyone is there, mzsoup is my user name (of course), friend me!  I've also added a weight loss tracker here, from MFP... It's waaaayy down on the right hand side somewhere.  (That number includes from when I was working before.)

D.Soup and I have a plan to pick out all the meals we want for the week, and make a shopping trip.  Getting only the stuff we would need for that week.  That way we stick to our planned meals, and don't overspend.  The last 2 weeks it has worked really well for us.

We get a lot of our recipes from Skinnytaste, I've never been disappointed by a recipe that I've pulled off of there.  I really appreciate the people that take time to share the healthy meals they are making for their families, because sometimes I run out of ideas.

At the moment I don't have any huge plans for starting seriously back up with running.  We love to go on walks as a family, and we have a bike seat for L.Soup so we can go on bike rides together too.  In a few weeks we're going to have to start physical therapy with Calli, so I will be getting out more often.

I just have a lot of other things I would rather be doing that running, at the moment.  I'd like to see how the weight loss goes for a little while with just changing my eating habits. 

I'll keep you posted.