South Beach, Valentine's Day, and Winter Workouts.

     So its the start of a new year and yesterday was Valentine’s day. As most of you know I don’t particularly like Valentine’s day but Ron does. Its hard being married to a hopeless romantic, sometimes the cheesiest things happen. I do like that he enjoys doing silly things for me though and the nice thing is he does them on other days besides Valentine’s day. I am not going to make this blog about my rant on a day dedicated to “love” let’s just say that I am of the opinion that if you feel obligated to do something on this day of “love” then you’re doing it wrong. There should NEVER be an obligation to express love in some format whether it be on a day like Valentine’s day or any other day you should WANT to express your love for one another and if you don’t want to then you’re with the wrong person.

     Ron and I started the South Beach diet last year right before Thanksgiving, I know the worst time to start a diet right? Well its worked so far because we’ve each lost almost 20 pounds since then. I am almost at the weight I was for the wedding! Ron did some research because we just didn’t like Weight Watchers, don’t get me wrong we got results but we always felt hungry. They have great recipes and we still use many of them; however, I don’t think that you should stay hungry all the time just to lose weight. Its more than just dropping the pounds we want to be healthy. I want children and Ron wants to get rid of the type 2 diabetes and dropping some weight will really help both of those. Ron ended up doing some research and found that South Beach is one of the better diets for diabetics because you cut out refined sugars, starch, and eat more proteins and vegetables. So basically we were already eating that way we were just having more breads and refined sugars than we should have. The first phase, which is two weeks, is the toughest because its essentially a cleanse and you’re really limited on what you can eat. Let me tell ya it was hard for me but I got through those two weeks and it got better. Throughout phase two you can add one piece of whole wheat bread and other things but you still have to limit yourself on certain foods. Its actually not as bad as it sounds because honestly those foods that I really love eating were the ones holding me back. Yes I still miss french fries but instead I just eat sweet potato fries, they’re actually really tasty. They also help with my sweet craving because I have a big sweet tooth. Its been a tough diet but totally worth it and I honestly feel better eating this way because we’re trying to be healthy. We still have pizza on our diet!! In small amounts of course, and we make it ourselves because we can control what goes in it and the dough is what we can eat. I feel more energetic, I feel lighter, and more importantly I feel full.

     Its not for everyone, sometimes you have to figure out what works best with your body, certain foods just hold people back. For me its potatoes and sweets. For Ron its breads like biscuits and cornbread but now we know what foods are our kryptonite and we’re able to avoid them. Another thing to think about is how food interacts with your body, some foods act differently than others in each person’s body and the only way to figure that out is to clean out your system and introduce certain foods in and see if it helps or hinders you. I know it sounds crazy but that’s how we did it, it may not be the “right way” but it works for us. Maybe you should try cutting out certain foods and seeing how you feel once you do. 

     We rejoined the planet fitness life. Yeah we were all excited about having a gym at our apartment complex but every time we went down there most of the machines were broken so what’s the point of having a fitness center when nothing works? Its a waste of my rent in my opinion. Its too cold to go running on the trail so the last time we attempted the complex fitness center and stuff was broken Ron said ok we’re going to Planet Fitness. There’s one about 2 miles down the road and we got the Black Card membership. Totally worth it, no sign up fee and its 20$ a month and you have unlimited guest passes meaning we both get to go. We just have to go together which is no big deal because having a work out partner helps anyway. Oh man this PF is huge! They even have free personal training sessions if you want. Its pretty sweet and totally worth the money. Sorry, I was just super excited about that and wanted to tell ya. We have been hitting the gym hard lately because we joined The Bert Show’s DietBet game. Its an app that you can start up a game and throw in a pot of however much money and either lose 4% in 4 weeks or 10% in 6 months and at the end of the time if you hit your mark you at least make the money back that you paid in. I mean its pretty cool, we’re thinking of starting our own DietBet and if so I invite and encourage you all to join it! I’ll let you know the information when we start it up. Anyway, tomorrow is weigh in day so hopefully we will have lost the weight we needed to lose, I’m so close I only have 1.2 lbs and I’ll have hit the goal weight for the game! 

     Anyway, I hope you all have a wonderful rest of the winter and don’t get snowed in, I know the North East has been hit hard this winter. Let me know in the comments below how you workout during the cold wintery days!