A Jester starts on her NF adventure

[JesterShay]

Hello all.  My name is Shay, and I'm an aspiring Jester.  Seriously.  I know how to juggle and everything.  I discovered NF just before the new year started, and I decided to join before the next challenge.  I've read other fitness websites, but so many seem to be devoted to people who enjoy nothing more than hours in the gym and/or have never been overweight and don't know how hard it is to just motivate yourself to get out the door.

 

Some info about where I'm starting from:  I'm 5 feet 2 inches tall and have been since I was 16 (I'm just a few weeks shy of 28 now).  I've slowly gained weight since about then, and have been sitting at about 175 pounds for the past few years.  I had a lot of external stress until a couple years ago, and I credit most of the weight gain to emotional eating in response to that stress.  I also have become more and more sedentary over that time, as I went to college, and then grad school.  That, and I love food and cooking.  Definitely a hobbit over here.

 

Previously, I've tried various fitness programs/diets.  The most successful was when I was doing some modified Crossfit in a friend's garage.  When that friend moved away, it became harder to do and my schedule was making it so that I couldn't devote over an hour to working out every morning (drive out + warm-up + workout + recovery + go home to shower).  I'm still interested in weight-lifting, but feel so out of shape that I'm not willing to risk more than body-weight exercises right now.

 

This past year, I removed the source of my extreme stress, and started a new job that has great incentives for being healthy, and an on-site gym.  I started going to the gym with a buddy, taking yoga and dance classes.  My husband and I started walking/running on the weekends.  I've only worked up to about twice to thrice per week, but that was more than I was doing even 6 months ago.

 

For 2013, I finally want to start changing from pudgy hobbit to acrobatic Jester.  My plan so far is the following:

• Clean up my diet a little more.  I'm into Weston A. Price Foundation "real food" kind of eating, but I think I'm still consuming too many starches/refined carbs and not enough veggies.  (Tried paleo a few years ago and had a very bad time, so I'm not giving up all my grain and dairy just yet.)
• Focus on portion sizes.  I was raised to clean my plate, and my husband is 6 feet tall.  This has caused my idea of a serving to be very skewed. 
• Ramp up the amount of exercise I'm doing to hopefully 30 minutes x 5 days a week by the end of 2013.  
• I'd like to eventually lose 50 pounds over the course of the next two years.  My job has an incentive for me to lose 10% (about 17.5 lbs) by mid-year, which I think is very do-able with the above changes.

So glad I found this community. Now I'm going to go sign up for my first six week challenge!