Alex vs. Her Belly

Despite me wanting to lose weight for the wedding, I ended up gaining a few pounds before we even left for California. Being on vacation for a week before the wedding and eating and drinking with complete reckless abandon didn't help me lose any weight. In fact looking at some of the wedding photos, it looks like I'm 6 months pregnant from the booze bloat. Seeing me this way makes me cringe and feel really unhappy, especially since the wedding was probably one of the happiest days of my life so far and I hate it that I all see is fat when I look at any photos that show me from the boobs down :(

Anyway, after seeing some particularly horrific photos of my belly from the wedding that my godmother Ann sent yesterday, I have declared war on my belly and I'm out to defeat it for good!

The battle plan includes cutting back on my drinking and no longer drinking during the work week, cutting out crap food, and trying to exercise more. The drinking part of this battle plan will most likely be the hardest tactic to execute considering that I have been drinking and more importantly enjoying quite a bit of wine the last few months. The thought of no post-work glass (or two or three) of wine is quite depressing. I stopped drinking Diet Coke and all fake sugar drinks about 1.5 years ago, so my beverage intake is confined to tea, water, sparkling water, and booze. Take away the booze and my fluids get really boring pretty fast, which of course makes alcohol even more attractive.

I've been fighting the war for the last two days and aside from a chocolate chip cookie sneak attack yesterday from my opposition, I've been doing okay (minus the horrible cookie guilt, of course). In fact, it feels and looks like my stomach has shrunk. I'm not sure if this a real or imagined victory, but I will use it as motivation to keep on moving forward with this war.

Yesterday also marked my return to running after a 3 week hiatus due to the wedding, being sick, and having a crazy work schedule. We ended up only running/walking 2.6 miles but it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I was supposed to run this morning, but ended up sleeping in due to exhaustion from the belly war and waking up at 6 am on Monday morning. We will go running for sure tomorrow and increase our mileage because I'm supposed to run 10 miles over the weekend to get back on track with the marathon training.