Exercise Would Be Nice

I've got my walking shoes packed up and in the car. I've carved time out of my schedule and plan to hit the trails again as regularly as I'm able. It's time to get my butt back into a routine of regular exercise. I've slacked for too long. My weight is steady within my normal weight range, except it seems to be hanging out at the top end of my comfort level -- with a sometimes bump over the top by a pound or two, then right back into the normal range again. But I don't like hanging out in that area and I know that exercise will likely bring me back down to the bottom of that comfort level. Plus, I've been feeling sluggish lately and it makes me wonder if I need to pump up my activity level to counteract that.

As you know, I'm a big supporter of BodyMedia Fit -- (formerly known as GoWear Fit) the armband you wear 24/7 to track your movement, calorie burn, sleep patterns, etc. My armband is several years old and is on its last legs. The writing is all worn off the face of the device and the sound doesn't work anymore. I work my old one for about a year straight and then periodically for another several months -- so I got plenty of use out of it. It still logs all the data, but it's definitely seen better days. So I've just ordered a new one!

This time around I upgraded to the BodyMedia Fit LINK - which has Bluetooth capabilities that will automatically sync with my smartphone and no need to connect the device to my computer to download the data collected as I wear it. The BodyMedia website offers this one for $149, but I bought mine on Amazon for $116 and it comes with 3 free months of membership too.

So if I'm going to be wearing the armband and logging exercise .... logically I need to be logging my food intake too, huh? So I will. I've always preached about FitDay as my food log of choice. But unfortunately, they haven't kept up with the times so I've had to ditch them. I now use MyFitnessPal because it syncs with my desktop computer and my phone. Plus it sync with BodyMedia's logging system and lets me see my daily deficit.

GOALS:

What do I hope to accomplish with all this?  Well, I'm glad you asked. Here are my goals:

• Generate more "energy" and pep-in-my-step from the increased activity and hopefully not feel so sluggish. They say exercising makes you feel more energetic, so let's test that theory. 
• Drop a few pounds. I know my body will likely rebel against this notion, so I'm not shooting for anything crazy like 40 pounds or anything (although that would be nice, I know it's not realistic for my stubborn body). But if I can drop about 10 pounds, that'd make me happy.
• Make sure I'm on track. I talk about what it means to be on track with my eating, vitamins and exercise and it's been a while since I've really logged everything to check myself. So this will give me the opportunity to make sure I'm doing what I should be doing and that my calories/activity are in line.
• Keep me out of trouble -- now that my school schedule has been greatly reduced (only doing 1 class per term going forward, but I took this term off), I find myself with more free time than normal. So rather than use up all that free time in front of the TV, it's better to be productive, right?

I'll keep you posted on how things go...

~Pam