Avoiding The Marriage 15

There seem to be key moments in my life when weight gain was inevitable. The first was "Freshman 15," gained during the first year in college or university when the dorm food's cafeteria buffet style options were hard to resist and ice cream was an everyday option. The second was my first year out of college, which was coined as "Audit 20" but later renamed to be "Busy Season 20" (as the weight gain was consistent during the busy season days we worked 11 hours at a minimum and ordered in for lunch and dinner).

There also seemed to be pivotal moments in my life when weight loss was unavoidable. Usually, this stemmed from increased loss of appetite following a heartbreak and most recently, as a bride to be. The former is self explanatory while the latter was one I had heard happened, but always imagined it would be because I was actively trying to. Instead, my routine work out sessions became less regular as time seemed of the essence and over the course of 4 months, I wittled down approximately 13 pounds and everybody but me seemed to notice it. Eventually, I realized the pants were starting to get loose and the epiphany of my weight loss hit me. Looking back, I am quite confident the smarter eating slowly progressed over the course of the four months between getting engaged and getting married and I attribute the weight loss fully to that as the "stress" of wedding planning was definite but minimal as I had the help and support of so many wonderful people.

Now that I've been married for about two months, I can already feel the pants getting a bit tighter than before. I know this is due to the anticipated "Marriage 15" which I refuse to add to my list of tag line weight gain moments.

Instead, I will make an effort to track how I change my healthier eating habits and how I make time for interesting work outs (on top of a full work day, cooking, cleaning and don't forget the post wedding tasks, organizing the house, etc.). Lastly, once that is all in order, I will use this blog as a testing ground to post my exercise experiments. The first will be.... dun dun DUNNNNN... Skechers Shape-Ups or Reebok Easy Tones - do they really work?

I'm excited about where this blog will take me and look forward to sharing with everyone the joy and woes of making healthy a part of my lifestyle and not just a fad. Join me in celebrating a healthier me .... let's see where I land in another four months.

To give you an idea of why we're heading for the Marriage 15, here's what I ate last week for dinner:

Mon - Costco slice of supreme pizza and frozen yogurt
Tues - quesadillas on white tortillas with red, orange and yellow peppers, grape tomatoes, chicken, and shredded pepper jack cheese
Wed - Ding Tai Fong dumplings, broccoli, chicken soup
Thurs - hamburger patties on hotdog buns with lettuce, tomatoes, ketchup
Fri - Saladang family style dishes: pak kee mow, satay chicken, pineapple fried rice, green curry with brown rice