Today I took the first physical step to losing weight. My mom left today and I came home ready to make a real commitment to this.

I had been doing a short daily walk with Den, but when he went back to work he started exercising at work. And I really hate walking alone, it’s so damn boring. I read about people who feel really good during and after exercising…. well, that’s not me. I hate exercise. I hate feeling sweaty. The entire time I’m exercising it’s with the point of exericising, and I’m trying to string myself along just a few minutes further before I can quit. Not surprizingly I am really bad about exercising on a regular basis.

I’ve been thinking about it and wished that I could be that person who actually gets something from exercise, who “feels good” and looks forward to it. It sure would make losing weight a lot easier. Then I thought about dance. I used to love to dance, I took some dance classes (hip hop, jazz) when I was around 12 years old. Loved it. But I didn’t continue, and I’ve always kind of wished I could get back into it. (But, you know, money and stuff.)

So today I had that itch. I pulled up the OnDemand exercise shows and tried out a couple of different dance shows, one of which was a Carmen Electra sexy dancing one. That was fun. Problem was I felt like I spent a lot of time learning the steps, and not a whole lot of time actually dancing. My heartrate was only up a little bit, and I just wanted to all-out dance. So… that’s what I did. I flipped to one of the music channels, the one with club dance music, cranked up the volume on our new stereo system (I do love the subwoofer), and danced. All over the living room I bounced and twirled and kicked. It was fantastic. I closed my eyes and just moved with the beat like I do late at night at DCon when the DJs are running the ballroom. Love it.

When I stopped I thought, THIS is it! This is my thing, this is how I’m going to lose this weight! It feels good – it doesn’t feel like work. I wanted to keep going, but my body was struggling and I figured it was probably a good idea to take it easy and not hurt myself. My body was flushed (and by “flushed” I mean “my face was as red as that time I got sunburnt in Tennessee”), my heart was thumping, my tendons were warm and loose. I felt like I was really doing something.

I did have to jump in the shower immediately, because eewwww sweat. But I was rosy and chipper the rest of the evening.

That was the first step.

Then there is drinking more water, which was greatly facilitated by the exercise. I need to get in the habit of drinking water instead of milk or it’s going to be a lot harder to lose weight. (And I know damnwell I don’t drink enough water.)

Next is food. I opened up my fridge and tossed all the old things past their expiration date and took inventory of what good stuff I have in there (yogurt, cottage cheese, some veggies…). For lunch I ate a turkey sandwich; for dinner we had spinnach and cheese ravioli; for evening snack I had a little bit of cottage cheese and a piece of toast with peanut butter. I feel good about that. I have been extremely bad lately with just popping chocolate in my mouth all the time. I think I have an attitude of, “I feel bad. So who cares. I need chocolate, it tastes good.” Immediate gratification. And I let myself do it while mom was here, but that was my limit; this is my time to change. I think for the most part I’m going to stick with the same aims as when I was pregnant, I’m just going to have to be more careful about serving sizes and fat content. I’m not really sure about protein intake… I’m not certain that high protein is good for weight loss, but I’ve heard it’s good for egg quality.

Hopefully I can stay dedicated to this. Every time I feel like not getting up and dancing I’m just going to have to look down at my midsection and pinch a fold of skin from my side. That should do the trick.

(Weight this evening – 148.4. I apparently stalled out completely at 148.)