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[nanaren]

Hey there! My name is Janneth (pronounced as Janet), and this is where I begin my story:

A couple of weeks ago I was extremely depressed and at my lowest point due to a really nasty breakup between me and my ex/best friend. We were really struggling over things, and he was trying to push me away. Long story short, for a week I was barely eating bc my body simply wasn't registering hunger. I'd try to eat, but everything just tasted like dirt. For two or three days I wasn't eating anything at all. We eventually resolved things and lo and behold, I was able to eat again since my stress was gone (I don't take stress very well. :/).

As a result of my not eating for 3 days, I noticed that my body was getting slimmer (I know, not in a healthy way). I spent a whole year feeling down on my muffin top and fat thighs and calves, but then realized that getting back to that body I had in hs (which was about 3 years ago for me) was completely attainable. I felt inspired to start my fitness journey again after so many false-starts.

About 5 months ago, I started P90x. I was weighing myself, but not really caring too much about the weight itself. I was looking out more for progress. I would measure myself every day, again to check for progress, and only record a measurement at the end of the week. I was doing pretty well on P90x actually. Then, work got in the way. I know, not an excuse. My schedule was all over the place. And I just felt exhausted. I'd close one day and open the next. Not to mention, I was so efficient at work that they'd give me a lot more tasks than others. This alone should have kept me pretty fit, and I think it would've if I had bothered to eat healthy as well.

When I read that diet is 80% of weight loss/fitness, a possible 10% is genetics, and the last 10% is exercise, I opened my eyes. Why was I so healthy in hs? I mean, yeah, I did have that lower belly flab but it wasn't so pronounced. I was very soft everywhere but had a flat stomach, I guess what you might call skinny-fat. My calves actually started to be able to fit in boots. And then I started college. What was different? For one, I had to walk home from school every day which was about an hr walk that I condensed into 45 min. bc I speedwalked pretty much the whole way. Not only that, I vowed to only drink soda at special events and to opt for water or juice instead. I didn't drink nearly as much water as I needed to, but I was trying to up it when I remembered to. I snacked every hr. Literally every hr. And I slept about 8-9 hrs a day. I forced myself to eat veggies. I was aware of my portion sizes. I tried not to eat too much red meat due to conventional wisdom. Maybe that's why I was skinny-fat.

The point is, I'd like to get back to where I was (which was about a size ago), but better. Instead of being skinny-fat, I'd like to be skinny-toned.

I apologize for the long story. Now onto my goals!:

Diet: I've eliminated soda and juice for the most part. I drink 2 liters of water a day. The only grains I eat are plain oatmeal. I've been doing this for about a week now. On the weekends, when I'm spending time with my friends, I do tend to eat fast food for about 2 of the 3 meals a day. But I've been working on convincing my friends to reduce that to one meal a day. Saturday and Sunday are the only days I'll eat rice and pasta. Honestly, I feel I need that bc going completely grainless is hard to do full on in the beginning. My goal is to keep this up and work in more veggies and fruit. I would say I'm about 70% paleo about 80% of the time. I aim to keep that up for a month. Long enough to see how this will work for me.

Fitness: Strength train a different muscle group every day. That's not as long as you think. It's about 30-40 min. per workout. I use P90x as a guide for my workouts. Admittedly I only do about half of the workout. My plan is work my way up to doing the full amount of time. It's going slow right now bc I'm allowing for complete recovery until I workout a muscle group again. The last thing I want is to injure myself. I've aimed to walk 1-2 hrs a day.

Weight-loss: I want to go down a whole size by the end of the year. So Dec. 31st.

Life: Learn enough Japanese to be able to communicate fluently enough with my Japanese grandmother and Japanese-speaking friends. I have some knowledge of the language, but not enough to really communicate very well. I can pick words out and piece things together. It takes time and more effort than it should to decipher simple sentences. I'd like to decrease that time and hope to make considerable progress in a year by using an immersion technique. All Japanese all the time.

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Those are great goals! You should pick a class and get in on the current challenge, you've already got the goals ready to go.