If you’ve ever talked to me about the topic of weight loss, you’ll know that for a span of fifteen months, I walked around Madison SD for various things including employment and consumed a lot of water.

I had a very good routine going on during that time. I managed to walk 8 miles a week just to get to and from one job. I also moved around a lot at a second job where I was a housekeeper for a four seasons resort. In addition to moving around so much, I practically had a water bottle taped to my hand, including many more at home for easy switching. Although I don’t remember my eating diet that well, I imagine it was decent, though not the best. I can’t help but imagine what all these did for my budget. Given the fact that this was during the height of our high gas prices, I likely saved myself a lot of money.

What does this all mean you ask? During those fifteen months, I managed to shed 40-50lbs without a lot of extra effort. Surely if I did some sort of running or gymrat work, the process would have gone a lot faster, but I wanted to be lazy and most of the methods I used I “had” to do. I knew that I had to go to work so that made a lot of motivation to do the walking.

This all changed in August of 2007. It’s at that point where I decided to move away from Madison and back in with my parents for a “break”. This completely broke my beloved routine. I no longer had my motivators to push me along and I would need to make myself do it. Ask anyone who has tried and they’ll say that’s not always an easy task.

Move forward to January of 2008. It was at this point that I made the move over to Sioux Falls SD. While not my ideal situation, I did have an instant job at one of the local KFC’s and it helped me to stay afloat while I looked for other work along the lines of my studies from college. Naturally, being around that kind of food and being subject to it on a full time work schedule basis didn’t really help myself diet wise. However, it wasn’t devastating because I was still up on my feet consistently and moving around. I can confirm that some pounds slowly crept back on me, and I was there for a little bit over a year.

After my time ended at KFC, I moved onto my current position as a front desk security officer at Citibank SD. At the time, I thought the new environment would be a good thing for me and I’d enjoy it a lot better. The ways I was wrong with this is that I am proverbially tied to the front desk and can not roam freely around beyond a small radius, including restroom breaks whenever I want. That caused me to need to limit my water consumption rate. I am fully free to roam and walk around the lobby of the building I am in, but there isn’t much space for trying to get a heart rate going. The last negative thing with this job is that it has an early start time before the sun is risen, and I’m naturally a night owl. That said, I tend to consume things that will help prevent myself from nodding off, thus food/beverages with sugar or caffeine.

Although I’ve recently already taken some strides to help curb this issue, I weighed myself tonight and the scale returned the weight of 230lbs. I hate to admit that I’m back to the weight I was at when I first started to lose it back when still in Madison.

So, at this point I have to ask what exactly can I do to help reverse this gain, in my current environment. I am starting to go for quick walks when I get breaks at work. The big one would be my lunch break. I’m starting to do quick walking tours of the buildings at work and opting out of stopping by the cafeteria for something to eat. This gets me up on my feet and moving, as well as a fringe benefit of not spending some money on food. During this walk, I use staircases as much as I can and never rely on elevators. I am also looking to take shorter path walks during my afternoon break shortly after shift change or some of the other officers. On top of “at work” walks and with spring/summer coming up, I want to go for walks around my neighborhood during my off time. I already took one 2 mile walk this afternoon and will try my best to stay motivated to do that regularly.

Adding to my efforts to walk more, I hope to increase my water consumption away from work, as well as reduce extraneous consumption of sugars while at work. To counteract the risk of nodding off, I have recently started bringing in work-safe podcasts on my audio player. The benefits of this idea is that they require active listening, instead of passive listening that music can produce. The music can fade into the background of my mind and just be there. If I’m having to pay attention to people talking i order to comprehend, this keeps my mind more focused and awake. Finding a regular bedtime that allows me to get proper sleep could also go a long ways in helping at work. Hopefully I can start also altering my food diet away from work as well. Who couldn’t eat a bit better when at home?

Through these actions that I’m already enacting or planning to enact, as well as any suggestions that you readers can produce, I hope I can once again curb this weight issue and perhaps even start bringing it back down to what it used to be. I please urge any of you to submit your ideas to me either through a comment below. I’ll definitely consider any and all suggestions.