Thanks Living the Katie Way for this great blog post!

You guys, I really just couldn’t be happier with the way things are going so far on this weight loss journey I started earlier this summer. I’m so close to my initial goals and I haven’t felt deprived of food. One of the big factors in this effort has been making my workouts my first priority every morning.

Here’s how I made morning workouts part of my routine without losing my sanity and while still getting out the door each morning!

1. Put my clothes out before I go to bed – Face it, our brains aren’t their best before 5 AM. If I had to figure out how to dress myself at that hour, I would probably just give up on the whole thing.
2. Make sure everything I need for work the day is ready to go – During the summer when I was working from home more, this wasn’t as big of a deal, but now I’m back out in schools several days each week, so I have to be sure my lunch is ready to go and my papers and materials I need for my schools are ready to go.
3. Do it every day! – This one is really important to me. Getting up before 5 AM isn’t easy, so if I miss a morning, it’s going to be even more difficult to get up the next morning. After I took a whole week off, I was worried I would have trouble, but fortunately, I was able to get back into the swing of things pretty easily.
4. Go to bed early – I’m not always great about this one, but I still go to bed earlier than a lot of my friends. I could probably still drag myself out of bed, but my workouts wouldn’t go as well, and I wouldn’t be getting the sleep I need to keep my system functioning well. My metabolism would likely tank and I would stop making progress with my weight loss.
5. Cold showers – I may be able to ease off on these once temperatures go down, but cold showers have been one of my saving graces this summer. I start out with the shower just lukewarm and gradually decrease the hot water and increase the cold water of the course of the shower. Taking cold showers helps me cool down and stop sweating just a smidge faster. Necessary.

Here is how my workouts went this week:

• Monday – 3 mile run, 5.3 mile Labor Day hike with the family to Moore’s Knob at Hanging Rock State Park (post coming next week with a full write up on that experience!)
• Tuesday – 20 minutes strength, 1.2 mile walk
• Wednesday – 3.8 mile run – I overestimated the distance on this one! It was supposed to be 3.5
• Thursday – 20 minutes strength, 3 walks all about 0.7 miles
• Friday – 30 minute run
• Saturday – 2.25 mile walk and lawn-mowing
• Sunday – 5.5 mile run – This went much better than last week’s run! The last mile was still a little rough, but I’m ready to hit 6 miles next week!

For weight loss, my weigh-in this morning had me fluctuating up again. After seeing the pattern the last couple of months, I was fully expecting the upward tick at this time in my cycle, but it was smaller than some of them have been. I’ve taking that as a win! I’m traveling for work a few days this week, so if I can maintain this week, I’m happy!

Have a great week!