One of the unfortunate consequences of being stressed and having major upheavals in my life, is weight gain. I’m not one of those women who stops eating when stressed – oh no, I start eating and don’t stop until it’s all over. If the stress doesn’t stop, the weight keeps piling on. I spent the last 5 years in a job I really hated, but was determined to like (I went to school for 8 years to be able to do this so I was going to like it goddammit – but that’s a topic for another post). As you can imagine, the levels of stress generated by this exercise were pretty damn high. And so here I am 40lbs heavier than I would like to be. The good news is that 2 months ago I was 50 lbs heavier. Now I just need to get rid of the other 40lbs and get fit.

About 5 years ago I was quite fit and had a regular workout schedule. That got derailed and every time I have tried to get back into a routine I have managed to injure myself. This time I am determined to ease into working out and to do things in a way that make it easier for me to stick with it. I am only going to go to the gym 3 times a week. Every time I start going to the gym, I go into overdrive and want to go 6 days a week and end up miserable and hurt within 3 weeks. I’m going to have to be watch myself and make sure I don’t do that again.

I am also planning to do yoga every day. This is not as ambitious as it sounds. First, If I do nothing but sit on the yoga mat and do pranayama, it counts. It does not have to be a full fledged hour long session every time. I got this from Martha Beck’s new book – she advises you to keep halving your goals until you get to a point where you say ‘Of course I can do that’. I’ve always wanted to do yoga regularly but didn’t feel like it counted unless I did a long session every time. Which made it hard for me to even start. Second, I’m only committing to doing this for 30 days. This I’m borrowing from Steve Pavlina – I don’t know if I like doing yoga everyday and so I’m going to try it and see what happens.

I still haven’t decided what I’m doing about nutrition – I know that it’s important and very necessary for weightloss, but I just haven’t decided yet what I can realistically do… more on that later.