While the fat, lazy and grumpy look totally works for her, it doesn't do so much for me.

So, when I got back to school-home after being at home-home for a month and a  half, I felt pretty awful. I mean, yes, part of that was loneliness and being sad to leave my family and home-friends, but what I physically I felt gross.

I initially thought I’d have a gym membership, but that didn’t work out. So I basically went from working out 4-5 times a week, mostly running and Body Pump, to doing… nothing. I think that’s probably the longest exercise vacation I’ve taken since I started exercising (aside from the time I was at Jubilee). I love exercise, and so getting into the gym has never been a problem for me. A few nights I was able to go walk/run, but for the most part I just wasn’t willing to kill myself in 100*/70% humidity weather to get a “Work out” in.

Combine that with birthday celebrations, a trip to the beach, parties and hang outs involving lots of drank, and my bad habit of late night snacking… ugh. At school-home, I never really buy snack foods that I like because I’m too prone to mindlessly overeating them, so even though I still eat too much at night, my selections are limited (Mmm… frozen broccoli).

At home-home, people live there who are NOT snack crazy Cookie Monsters, like me, and so they have stuff like… potato chips and Oreos around. Basically, snack foods are my Kryptonite, and I’m pretty sure I went to bed every night feeling like I had “ruined” a good day of eating with a lot of late night junk food.

I knew that I had gained weight because even my fat jeans were feeling like regular jeans, but I didn’t get on  the scale until after I’d had a week back on schedule to try and do better. Last week, I was 5lbs up. Which is no surprise. I mean, really if someone asked me how to gain weight I would tell them to eat a lot of junk food at night, drink alcohol often and stop working out. 

And no, five pounds is not the end of the world by any stretch of the imagination. But when you are trying to lose weight, five pounds is a solid step in the wrong direction. And it is a solid step towards a number, which shall not be spoken, that terrifies me. I’m sure everyone has a weight that they believe “other people” weigh, but that they would never let themselves weigh. Well, for me, that five pounds is just creeping closer to that “Only Other People Weigh This” number, and it really kind of freaked me out.

Feeling better from working out and eating right is always my primary motivator when it comes to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. After a week of working out (5 days at the gym!), eating normally, not drinking … and (3! days) of cutting out the nighttime snacking, I’m feeling so much better, and the scale has gone down.  I  want these actions to become habits that can make weight loss easier, and get me further away from those “Holy Shit”-numbers on the scale.

So, I’m looking for inspiration… have you ever made a lifestyle change into a habit? How? It doesn’t have to be weight/food/whatever related, I just want to know that it is possible!!