Making a Change

I am not one to advocate for "skinny" but I do believe in the importance of being healthy.  With this being said I should let it be known that I have not been very kind to my body in the last 2 years or so.  When I was in high school I was very active, between sports and working out I probably spent upwards of 3 hours of a day engaged in some sort of physical activity.  Then came college.  Although I was not nearly as active as I was in high school I still spent a good amount of time walking around campus and being "outdoorsy" with friends.  This moderate to high level of activity enabled me to eat whatever I liked (hello "Fried Fridays" at the Kappa house) and not have to pay the repercussions.  Fast forward to grad school, things ain't looking so hot.  This is not to say that I let myself go, but between take out dinners and zip, zero, zilch activity my McDonald's runs really started to add up.... and so did my weight.  All in all I gained around 7 pounds, but on a 5'4 frame it shows, trust me.  I decided that I would train for a half marathon, but about a month into it I hurt my I.T. band and was told to take it easy until it healed.  I decided then and there that if I couldn't work out to take the weight off that I would have to eat better, and eat better I did.  Now, I know some people who decide they want to lose weight cut out yummy stuff (cookies, brownies, ice cream, mmmmm) all together, but this doesn't work in the long run.  Yes you lose weight now, but do you really think you have the will power to go brownie-less for the rest of your life? No, you don't, face it.  So, what I decided to do is eat what I like (within reason) and just be careful of portions.  No, really, that's it.  It is not as fast of a process as I would have liked it to be, but it has been virtually pain-free and entirely effective. All together I lost about 8 pounds, which is not a ton, but it was enough to achieve the change I desired.  My end goal was never to be "skinny" but to be healthy and get my body back to the size that it has been for the last 8 years and I did just that!  Noticing the change, I decided to spend a little bit of the afternoon going through clothes I was going to donate because they were too tight only to find that they fit, hell, most of them are even a little loose!    Point of the story is this, small changes really add up and if you have the determination to make a change you are going to see results.  

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