Healthy, Wealthy and Wise?

Well, I don't know about wise, and wealthy is a definite no go, but as far as healthy goes, I am feeling pretty darn good. As my long time readers know I have been slowly working on being healthy. Yes, I want to lose some weight but my main goal is to be healthy and hopefully not dependent on medications as I age.

For the past 18 months I have been going to the gym regularly, working out with weights and doing a half-assed job at Weight Watchers.

My weight is very, very slowly going down. VERY slowly! Part of that is the weight training. Since I started working with weights I have lost a total of 12 pounds but I have lost 15% of my body fat. Technically I am still overweight but I am feeling pretty good. I love to work with the weights and even though I am currently recovering from "tennis elbow" I have been able to continue to use weights in my fitness routine with just a few adjustments.

I have successfully incorporated exercise into my life and I am now beginning to look more closely at my diet. Because I lead a fairly social life and eat away from home at least twice a week I have been slow to look too closely at my diet. I am not willing to give up my social life so I am starting to look at ways to eat in a healthier fashion while still enjoying the meals out. I'll keep you posted as I find tips and tricks that help in this area.

A couple of months ago I stopped drinking Diet Coke. That was a painful thing for me. I love the stuff but I felt that I needed to remove those chemicals from my diet. So far so good. Since I last wrote about it I have not had a single caffeine laden soft drink. Not even while on vacation. I am really pleased with that! My main beverage is water to which I add lemon, mint or melon, to add a bit of flavor. I have reduced the amount of artificial sweeteners in my diet by a huge amount. Artificial sweeteners are the exception instead of the rule now and I have increased the amount of fruits and veggies in my diet. All changes which have made me feel great.

Now I need to work on my weekday meals at home and those pesky meals out. Breakfast and lunch are easy, dinner is a bitch! I work 10 hour days and when I get home I don't want to cook. My wonderful man cooks and he is really making sure to find healthy meals but I need to step it up and start cooking more.

Skinnytaste.com is an amazing site that I have mentioned before. I have been getting fabulous meal ideas from this site as well as Slenderkitchen.com. Both of these sites have flavorful meals that also include nutritional information as well as Weight Watcher point values, which makes it easy to incorporate the meals into my Weight Watchers lifestyle.

I have less that 20 pounds to go to reach my goal weight(I am shooting for the high end of my weight range). Hopefully I'll be doing a happy dance here soon. In the meantime I will keep on plugging away and will continue to incorporate  healthy habits into my life. I plan to share my progress and any tips, tricks and recipes that help me as I continue along my way.