So, over the past year a LOT has changed in my life. I changed not only jobs but careers, I moved in with my boyfriend, I filed a domestic partnership with him, I started this blog, I tried ‘temping’ for the first time, I moved, I didn’t go ‘home’ (i.e. to the place where I grew up) for Christmas for the first time, and I’ve experimented with eating, training and crossfit. And those are just the milestones. Looking back on the year I can’t say I have any regrets- but I see what my mistakes were and how I learned from them. All this change brought a huge amount of stress on my body- and it showed.

In March of 2008 I started training for a fitness competition. I had budgeted out a huge amount of time each week for training, I collaborated with another trainer at my gym to choreograph and dance with, and I started eating a very clean diet. I really didn’t have enough time from where I started to where I needed to be by competition date. So I started to panic, overtrain- and naturally, got hurt. This was at the end of May. For the course of the next 6 months I made a lot of life decisions. My body rebelled from the stress I put it through from March-May by packing on the weight- well, I rebelled from the stress I put it through by feeding my disappointment with food and drink. This resulted in a 15lb weight gain, an overall lack of self-confidence, and the embarrassing fact that I could no longer fit into my jeans.

For the past few years, I’ve always been a ‘last 10 pounds’ type of person. Even during my training days, there was still about 10lbs I probably could’ve lost- to really feel good in my skin. Now that’s nearing 20… or 30. Going primal has gotten me down a few pounds, but I’m ready to finally take that plunge, and what better time than now? So I give myself till my birthday, May 30th, 2009 - to get there. I don’t want anything crazy, I have two goals- to fit into my favorite jeans again, and to feel good in a bathing suit. I don’t think either of these things is unreasonable. These, in addition to the millions of benefits of getting healthier and exercising more- is going to get me there.

I’m looking to kick-start this weight loss with something that I haven’t been very good at in the past - planning. I plan to track my progress here - on a new page, and I plan to follow these rules for the next 30 days, and then re-assess from there;

1. Eat, Be, Live primal! - This to me means that I should live with a better connection to the Earth and all that is around me. I need to try to get together with the sun once daily, and recognize all the great things that my neighborhood has to offer. This means eating locally and eating natural, whole foods.

2. Keep my carbs below 100g/day -This is the ’sweet spot’ of weight loss. This means reducing my fruit intake, and nuts!

3. Reduce my alcohol intake - right now this means no more than 1 glass on week nights and 2 glasses on weekends of wine. The problem isn’t actually the wine, it’s what I do after drinking it. I’m somewhat bad at alcohol intake because my tolerance is high, so I drink too much- and then I eat too much. Lack of wine will make sure I’m in check.

Mmmmmmm.

4. Two Intermittent Fasts per week - This means on Wednesday and ONE weekend day (probably Sunday) I’m going to lay off the food.

5. Cheat Meals - I’m first going to have a cheat meal, probably on Fridays but depending on when the bf has it off, might be Saturdays. I know this Saturday (Valentines Day) may be a bit of a cheat meal, but we’re going to a brazilian bbq, which is almost entirely primal. Yes please!

6. One hour of TV daily - I find that recently, since moving in with the bf (it’s been about 6-7 months since we co-habitated) I’ve been watching waaaay too much TV. Especially on weekends. I grew up in a small town in Alaska, so there were NO shows about my town, and since moving to New York I get a BIG kick out of watching “New York” shows- so when The City and The Real World Brooklyn came out- I immediately got hooked. This means I come home from work in a zombie-like stage and watch. And watch. And watch some more. Same on the weekends. Note - this excludes movies, as they are normally much longer than 1 hour. I mean 1 hour of lame-brain, laugh track-infused TV.

Yes, this says DAILY.

7. Bed before 11pm - This excludes weekends, but I would like to be in bed by 1am on weekends and up before 10am on weekends. I tend to grossly oversleep on Sat and Sun because of my lack of sleep during the week. This is going to be tough, as the bf gets home near midnight and I often want to wake up and see him, or stay awake to greet him, but really that doesn’t mean I’m going to bed at midnight, it means I’m going to bed at 1am. Not ok on a weeknight when I have to be up at 6:30am.

8. Step up my training - Swim, Bike, Run 2x/week. This isn’t crazy- as I’m training for two triathlons this summer (one in June and one in July) and since I’m not going to Crossfit right now, I’m going to do a crosstrain thing 3x a week.  Check out the schedule below. These run/bike/swim’s aren’t more than 30 minutes each, so with 30 minutes of crosstraining really I’m only looking at about 1 hour of activity a day, 5-6x a week.

9. Post my progress - Even though I have a blog, I’m somewhat private about my personal stuff, especially when it comes to weight issues. So I’m hoping this not only keeps me in check, but also forces me to follow through, as clearly I haven’t done in the past. It’s tough to press ’send’ on this post, because I’m posting some insecurities for everyone to see. Yikes!

10. Accept that I’m human - This is one thing that I don’t usually like to accept. I gave myself a lot of time, I want my progress to be slow and attainable, and I know there’s going to be setbacks. I need to accept them, and move on. I also need to inform my main man about whats going on, but I have no doubt that he will be his usual, very supportive self.

So here’s the schedule. I don’t think it’s unattainable, but I’ll tweak it where it needs tweaking, And on March 10th I’m going to revist, with my progress - and either continue (and love it) or ease up. The first few days is always the hardest, right?