The Bust my gut Bust!

So back in November I started the bust my gut project with a goal of 170 lbs by March first. What a disaster. I lost a pound.

What happened: (not excuses, but observations).

--I ate too much.
--I didn't exercise enough. I let the poor weather be an excuse.
--I drank too much booze.

I feel like a gave myself a big slug in the (big) gut. I committed to doing this, and posting the progress here with hope it would motivate me and help others see what devotion can do. But I failed and actually made this look like a really difficult task. Well it is a hard task, and the older we get the harder it is, it seems.

However, I'm certainly not giving up. I think what I will do is change my goals.

First, I won't make losing a 25 lb goal over three months. I will make smaller ones. Since it's the first week of March, my goal will be more short term. 5 lbs by April 1st. That is just over a pound a week, much less aggressive than the 2 lbs per week I had before.

The good news is the time is changing and the weather should be improving, making the probability of me riding my bike to work much higher.

Renee told me about this article she read in Men's Journal about why people exercise and don't lose weight. It was very interesting and included:

• Overexercising can cause one to eat too much after and put those calories right back in the body.
• When we overexercise, we tend to feel tired, then sit on the couch rather than move around, thus we offset the gains in exercise with sedentary activity.
  

I went to Utah and Arizona on a 10 day bike trip hoping I would get some good exercise in. Well I did! But I ate out and partied with people and put a lot of empty calories back in too. Thus it was a good thing I was riding or I might have gained a few pounds instead of maintaining what I have.

**pushes the reset button***

Here we go...............