Making Healthy Changes

Recently I have been having some minor health issues. It seems I am going through menopause. As a 34 year old woman that was a bit of a shock to the system. We have all heard about the hot flashes and night sweats but there are other side effects that we do not really hear about as much. Since beginning menopause I have started to develop not only the standard hot flashes and night sweats but also trouble with sleeping and depression. While going to the doctor to address these issues we found that I also had extremely high blood pressure and heart rate. I now have new prescriptions for anti-depressants, beta blockers, and estrogen replacements.

Now that these issues have been addressed and I am feeling much better mentally and physically it is time to work on my weight issues. While these medical issues were not caused by my weight  I do know that losing some weight will make my more comfortable and help ease some of the symptoms.

So here we go again. I am hoping that by blogging about this I can motivate myself to follow through on not only the weight loss but in maintaining the loss.

At this time I see a need to address three issues.

1. Sleep
    My issues in this area are two fold. Either I have insomnia or I just want to sleep all the time. There doesn't seem to be any middle ground. My goal in this area is to develop a more structured approach to my sleep habits. My plan is to "shut down" the house at 9pm and move to my bedroom where I will begin my bedtime routine and be in bed by 10pm. No electronics. No phone (!). I also plan to do some research on how to unwind with some simple yoga breathing and have a less stimulating environment before going to bed. I also would like to be up and ready for the day at 9am. I know this isn't a ground breaking time for anyone. I however am NOT a morning person in any way.

2. Weight
    I would ideally like to lose 40 pounds. My initial goal is to lose the first 20 pounds by October.  That is roughly 5 pounds per month. How? I plan to get back to tracking my calories with MyFitnessPal.com.   My goal is to start at 1,800 calories a day and start to monitor how my weight reacts.

3. Fitness
   I recently found a faith based aerobic exercise program that comes on every day. I have set the program to record and plan to alternate my workouts between the aerobic program and walking outside. I have found that I have to do some sort of workout every single day or I fall off the wagon. By alternating my difficult workout with an easier workout I hope to give my body a chance to recover as well as staying motivated.

Tomorrow morning is Monday. Seems like a wonderful time to get started on my goals. We are just going to ignore the fact that it is 10:30 at night and I just ate a personal chicken pot pie. Ugh.

So here we go. I think I will keep a running log of each day's progress and post my results once a week. Do you have something you are working on? Would you like to share? I would love to hear all about it!