There’s something you don’t hear every day – from me. I joined the YMCA a couple of days ago. I’m incredibly excited about it. I’ve never joined any sort of gym before and now I get to be one of “those” people 🙂

I’ve been trying to lose weight. And I’m trying to do it right. No fad diets – juice fasts, Hollywood diets – no none of that useless stuff. I’m simply eating better and watching the calorie intake. I started doing this in March, around Easter. There were two things that had to stop: quick stops at McDonald’s and soda. I’m very proud to say that I haven’t had any soda since Easter, and I haven’t had any McDonald’s, BK, KFC, Wendy’s or Amigos – fast food in general – since then either. I even resisted the best root beer ever when I spent five hours at the Chicken Coop (local sports bar) hanging out with cousins. Drank tea the whole time 🙂

And I’ve lost a good amount of weight. I don’t have numbers because I decided not to be a slave to the scale. Instead, I’m going by how my clothes fit. Currently, I’m needing belts with my jeans and slacks, and I’m fitting into clothes I haven’t been able to wear for a long time.

And I feel awesome.

But the one thing I haven’t really been doing is exercising. Now that I’ve got the routine down with the healthy eating, it’s time to move to phase two, which is, of course, the exercise. (Yeah, I know I should have been doing this all along, but TBH, the healthy eating thing was just easier to do. My dream exercise is swimming, and I just don’t have easy access to a pool that isn’t crawling with annoying kids.) I’m taking this whole lifestyle change slowly, at my own pace. I’m not trying to slim down to get into that little black dress or anything. I’m trying to slim down for my own health, and I want to make sure that what I’m doing is something I will stick to. I’ve proven to myself that I can stay away from fast food and soda, and eat healthier at home every day. Now I need to prove to myself that I can get into routine exercise. I believe it’s this second phase that’s going to kick the weight loss into high gear now.

So I’m very excited to be a member of the Y. Last night was our first visit as members (Shannon joined to, yay single parent rates! – oh and awesome story – when we signed in, the lady at the desk thought I was trying to rip off the Y by getting a single parent rate. She said, “There’s no freaking way you’re old enough to have a kid her age. You look 18!” I could have kissed her. And liked it.) and we swam for about 45 minutes. It was fantastic. It was a cool, rainy evening and so to get into an indoor, heated pool was bliss. Afterwards, we wandered around checking out the various equipment (treadmills, ellipticals, weight room, indoor track etc.) and now I can’t wait to get back down there today and do some time on the treadmill. I’m going to be one of those people who’s always at the gym 🙂

Wish me luck!