This is how we do it.

A BIG OLE DISCLAIMER: I'm still trying to figure out a lifestyle that works for me. Please, please don't think I'm an expert. I'm just sharing my story with you, internet, and it's chock-full of fails.

I knew I wanted to lose weight, but I had no idea how. A couple of my friends use MyFitnessPal so I signed up, set myself a calorie limit of 1270 per day (which, btw, flew out the window every weekend), and started going to the gym. My only "running shoes" are a pair of really shitty beat-up Skechers that aren't actually running shoes at all, so I started using the elliptical instead of the treadmill (plus, I am so uncoordinated that when I'm on the treadmill I'm constantly stressing that I'm going to fall off!). I find that I actually prefer the elliptical because it's easier to target other muscle groups like your arms, and it doesn't make my joints hurt so much. I usually burn around 300 calories doing about 40 minutes at a time.

I love to cook and so I started following a lot of low-calorie recipes, and replacing my ingredients with healthier versions. Olive oil instead of butter, egg whites instead of the whole egg, baked instead of fried.

At the beginning of March, I quit drinking beer. Love ya and miss ya 4evs, beautiful brews. I've made a couple of exceptions, like when I was at a party and the only mixers were dollar store sodas that had 10 times the calories of the keg beer, or when I'd been attempting to snowboard all day and I needed something amber-colored and bubbly to (literally) cry into after hours of being laughed at by 5 year olds whizzing down the slopes past my broken and defeated body lying in the snow, or like just last night because it was the Game of Thrones premiere (!!!!!) and my friend got the Ommegang Iron Throne Ale (actually not so impressive, and it just made me feel bloated).

Thanks to the above, I lost around 5-8 pounds in about 3 months. I can see it a little in my face, which I think tends to reflect subtle weight changes really well, and in my arms. I don't feel like I've lost much in my belly, but jeans and t-shirts look ever so slightly better on me now than they did before, so I guess I have a bit.

TODAY, this very day, the first of April (but this ain't no April fools!) I am starting a gluten-free diet and hopefully shifting into a mostly grain-free lifestyle. I don't think I have a gluten intolerance/Celiac's disease, but I do feel bloated pretty much all the time and my belly fat is quite stubborn. I don't know if this will work! But I think it's worth a try. My mom (who is on the primal/paleo diet and loves it) suggested I look into the Wheat Belly diet, which sounds disgusting and seems more and more like a crock of shit fad diet the more I look into it, but it also seems like something I can pull off and a lot of people do swear by it. I love to cook and I'm a little excited about the challenge of finding new ways to keep myself fed without relying on my go-to carbs, and really as long as I can eat all the cheese I want, I'm a happy gal. I'll probably be writing a lot about wheat belly/grain-free/gluten-free on here. I've decided to give the diet a solid month to see how I feel, and then go from there.