Memoirs of a (Long Beach) Loser: Angel Garcia on BALANCE

So things are moving. Moving for the better. Since my first post, we now have a team of 5. We’ve taken the name “Gym Class Bullies.” Some of the members I know and some of the members I don’t know. I'll be meeting them this week in our first team workout.

I know it wasn’t the best way to start things but with the first weigh-in being on Labor Day weekend...I missed it. A few of the team members also missed the weigh-in. If I’m not mistaken, going into the first week, we placed about 73^rd. Not impressive at all.

I spent Labor Day weekend in Yosemite. I spent my days hiking, walking, biking, and rafting. I know it’s a vacation but this is part of the balance thing I mentioned in the previous post. I did have a few drinks while on vacation but with all of the activities that we did, they were well deserved drinks.

This is part of my plan. Part of my mission. Balancing a healthy lifestyle with work and life in general. As much as I would love for our team to win the competition I don’t want to do it by quitting everything I enjoy doing and eating cabbage soup for the next 10 weeks.  Why is that? Because if I do that, once the competition is over I’d most likely just go on this crazy binge of tacos, nachos, carbs, and pretty much anything I deprived myself of. I want to work smart.

I was pretty excited to go to this weeks weigh-in. Even though I had missed the first one, and spent time away from home, I wanted to make sure I was balancing my fun/healthy ratio while away. When I came back, I was excited and nervous to see if my mastering of balance was starting to pay off and boy did it ever. Between the initial weigh-in and today, I’ve lost nearly 10 pounds! Not bad for two weeks. Especially as I try and do it with hard work and a game plan, not just eating celery sticks all week. A few other teammates had missed the Labor Day weigh-in as well. As a team, we kicked butt and went from 73^rd place to 7^th place! Pretty exciting.

Our team is going to get together this week and meet for the first time. We are also going to have a group workout together to help focus us on our common goal.

I’m trying to incorporate one change a week to help get me to the next level. The first week was cleanse. Drinking lots of water and also iced green tea. The second week was incorporating running and weight training into the mix. The third week is going to be a little harder as I start to really focus on portion control.

I’ve battled with portion control my whole life. I had huge hands and they needed to be full when I took a bite. At least that’s what I told myself. This is one of the most important things to focus on as myself and millions of other Americans have fallen into the trap of over indulging. I was at a fast food drive-thru a few weeks back and realized that ” Regular” or “Small” size today is what “large” or “Jumbo” size was while I was growing up. This is a problem that so many of us have. We live in a country with food available everywhere you turn. Most of it bad food. So join me, share your challenges and triumphs with me and let’s continue to go on this ride together. You may not know where you're headed yet, but trust me, you’ll love it when you get there!