The Beginning of New Beginnings

First off, please let me say thank you for all of the support that I have received thus far. I am incredibly touched by all of the well wishes and ideas that I have already received after only one post. I can’t wait to see what becomes of this. You are all amazing!

Secondly, I have to say thank you to my amazing husband Josh. I was worried that he wouldn’t be into the idea of eating healthy and working out with me but he has totally embraced this. I love him more and more every day, but this has brought my love for him to an entirely new level. He is going to be my biggest support system and I am SO glad that he will be joining me on this journey. We WILL do this!

Saturday is my grocery store day so I went shopping and I bought enough healthy food for 6 breakfasts, 6 lunches, and 6 dinners, and a few snacks. Shopping was a lot easier than I thought it would be because I found this amazing thing called meal planner on Allrecipes .com. You basically go through their website and find recipes that sound good and put them in your meal planner. The meal planner then calculates calories and makes you a grocery list. It’s seriously cool and I really think you should check it out, dieting or not. I was really happy with myself at the grocery store until I got into the checkout line and this super thin, model type woman pulled up behind me with a cart full of pop, chips, cookies, sugary cereal, and like 4 boxes of fish sticks. It was totally a “that is not fair” moment, but I held my head high and tried not to let it get to me.  I still feel great about how I shopped.

Sunday was the official start of our journey. We made a healthy oatmeal smoothie for breakfast 

and I invited my parents over in order to sort of celebrate and enjoy some super healthy food with us. I marinated some chicken with a recipe from allreipes.com called Key West Chicken; it was made with some low sodium soy sauce, limejuice, garlic, and a bit of vegetable oil. With the chicken we had grilled zucchini, rice, and roasted brussel sprouts. I didn’t use anything but seasonings to flavor the vegetables and rice; no butter and I use very little salt but everyone still cleaned their plate, including Josh. Both of my parents thought the chicken was awesome and that the veggies were fantastic. I'm so glad that my first healthy meal was such a success! I'm also glad that I made enough extra food for a few lunches this week because now I don’t have to worry about packing unhealthy lunches for Josh and I. Here is a picture of our yummy lunch:

 

chicken, rice, brussel sprouts, and squash

After we ate, I got started on Monday’s dinner; another awesome find from allrecipes.com Monday night Josh and I will be dining on slow cooker vegetable chili. We wanted to cook it early because chili always tastes better the next day, but we sampled a bit and it was really delicious. Again I used low sodium products and only flavored with dried seasonings. It is going to go really well with a big salad and neither of us can wait for dinner! I made extra for lunch too, because I figured it would be a nice filling and quick lunch for both of us to take to work on Tuesday.

Monday morning’s workout consisted of me using the treadmill for 30minutes and while it wore me out, it felt great to accomplish something. 

Getting up at 5am was seriously hard but I did it and I am better off for it. I know a lot of people do their workouts after work but by the time Josh and I are done at work, we are both totally burned out. I know working out in the morning is going to be incredibly hard, but I really think that as long as Josh supports me, I will be able to keep doing this.

All in all our journey has gotten off to a fabulous start. We are still alive and plan to keep up the hard work. Being consistent is going to be difficult, but I know we can do it. Together we can do anything!!