I’m Moving!!!

Guess what!?

Yep, I’m moving.

No, not to another state. Not even to another apartment. My blog has a new home now! This will probably be my last post here, so come visit me at my new home:

www.ConfessionsOfARecoveringChocoholic.com

If you’re reading this post via e-mail subscription, you’ll need to click on over to the new blog and resubscribe. The e-mail subscription box is on the top of the sidebar. You will then be sent a confirmation e-mail that you’ll need to click on in order to confirm your subscription.

Can’t wait to see you over at Confessions Of A Recovering Chocoholic!

Whew! That was a CLOSE one!

So my day started out in a pretty typical fashion – my alarm ringing and me just wishing it wasn’t time to get up. Oh how I wish I were one of those people who could just leap out of bed energetically in the mornings instead of feeling miserable! But, really, those are a rare breed.

Of course, after hitting the snooze button a couple times, there was absolutely no time to prepare breakfast. So it was the Chick-fil-A drive thru and a piece of string cheese (433 calories):

Lunch was a Fit&Active frozen dinner lasagna from Aldi (forgot to take a picture before I ate it) and a Vitatop (380 calories):

The afternoon was really, really dragging so I had a couple snacks. A delicious Milano melt cookie that I couldn’t pass up at Target on my lunch break (70 calories), a light gatorade (40 calories), and a cheese stick (60 cals, not pictured):

This is where things started to go downhill a bit. First the last hour of work drug on like it would NEVER end! Then I get in the car to discover that my $35 car charger for my phone (which is not even 6 months old) won’t work! Plus I’m hungry. So I ate another Vitatop. Only a 100 calories and it has some fiber and protein. Got home and decided to make a big batch of protein pancakes. I’d eat some for dinner with delicious no sugar added apple better (only 20 calories a tablespoon and SOOO good), and then I’d save the rest for my breakfast the rest of the week so I could stop hitting the drive through. I also wanted to go to spin class tonight so I was on a tight schedule. Well, newsflash folks. 45 minutes is NOT long enough to make up a big batch of pancakes and change into your workout clothes. So I had to put the batter in the fridge and finish it after the workout. This was super frustrating because I had something I really, really wanted to get done tonight and wanted to devote the rest of my evening to it. So dinner was 318 calories and 31 grams of protein! Not bad for delicious pancakes!!! (Seriously no one would ever know.)

The spinning workout I did was okay, but not as good as I had remembered. I had not done spinning in several months, so I was nervous, but I really wanted to get back into it. Well, turns out, my leg muscles are SUPER weak so they couldn’t keep up with my heart. Therefore I wasn’t able to push myself as much as I used to. But I still burned 419 calories in 47 minutes and went 15 miles on the spinning bake. Plus just going to the class was a huge step for me!

When I got home things just kept going downhill: internet troubles, another huge technology issue that I wasted 30 minutes trying to fix, and more things that I won’t bother to mention. By the time I finished all that, it was less than an hour from bedtime, I still hadn’t showered, and I had not even started the ONE THING that I had cleared my schedule to accomplish tonight! So frustrating. Besides that, I’m working so hard and the scale is hardly moving!! How can I be expected keep doing all this healthy living stuff?? (Oh yeah, remember my post from yesterday about excuses?? Looks like I’m the one who needs to read that one today.) So, what does a frustrated person do? Um, chocolate, of course!I I quickly grabbed and ate a Milano cookie (70 calories):

Since nothing was going right anyway, I told myself I’d just sit down after my shower with a big bowl of ice cream and some of those crushed up Milano cookies on top. (That would really be delicious, wouldn’t it???) Well, guess what???

I talked some sense into myself!! How is 500 calories worth of ice cream and chocolate going to fix any of the problems that I’m having? Is it going to fix my internet? Is it going to fix my car phone charger? Or my other technical problems? Is it going to magically give me more time to accomplish the thing I wanted to today? Um, I think not. And the last thing I need to do is add one MORE thing to feel guilty about and further slow my weight loss.

Whew, that was a close one!!!! And a HUGE moral victory. I didn’t give in! Although it took so much energy that I’m now worn out and off to bed.

Oh, by the way, I might snack on a few green beans bringing my total calories eaten today to 1491, plus 419 calories burned through exercise! Not bad!

Excuses, anyone?

One huge component of successful weight loss is to stop making excuses. Just stop! Here’s the funny thing. In the moment we make an excuse we never call it that, do we? We usually call it a “reason.” But, really, it’s an excuse.

I cannot tell you how many “reasons” I’ve had in the past to delay weight loss, to give in to eating a sweet treat, or to skip a workout, including:

• It’s not the right time.
• Statistics say I’m going to fail anyway.
• It’s in my genes.
• I can’t help my slow metabolism. It’s just not fair.
• I don’t want to deny my husband all the junk food that he loves for me to bake for him.
• All my friends can eat all that food and they’re not overweight.
• It’s just too hard.
• It’s not fair. Everybody else loses weight faster than I do.
• I have sooo far to go. I’ll never get there.
• I have company coming. I can’t force my healthy foods on them.
• I just need a break from all this worrying about exercising and food.
• I’ll start tomorrow.
• I already messed up majorly today. Why don’t I just start over with a clean slate tomorrow or next week.
• I can’t be expected to do well on vacation.
• My lifestyle includes so many social events and eating at other people’s houses. How can eat well in the midst of all that?
• I need to clean the house.
• I have a huge event coming up. I’ll start after that.
• I can’t find the right plan. How do I sort out all this conflicting information?
• I need to prioritize x,y, or z above exercise.
• Eating well is just too expensive.
• Just this once can’t hurt.

Those reasons all still exist, trust me, but I’m just ignoring them. When it comes to excuses, I think the easiest area to make excuses for is exercise – oh so busy, and oh so little time! I have already acknowledged that there may be a thousand reasons why I shouldn’t, can’t, or just don’t want to do a workout, but I’m just ignoring them. For every good thing we choose to do, there’s thousands of other great things that we are choosing NOT to do, and that’s just the way it is.

The excuses just NEVER end! And I can almost always rationalize my decisions to take the less healthy road. Trying to come with a good answer to each excuse would just be waste of my mental energy and time. There will almost always be some reason NOT to exercise. Today’s excuses may seem urgent, but tomorrow’s excuses would be a little different but no less numerous or compelling. Waiting for the right time is like saying never.

I’m glad I made the decision to work out today. How about you? 

Week 3 Results!

Sorry I haven’t posted as much this past week. I’ve been super busy! Most days my computer has even been turned on. Things aren’t really slowing down yet, either. I’ve written so many posts in my head. I just wish I had the time to sit down and share them.

I feel like I did fairly well with my eating and workouts this past week. Monday and Tuesday were probably the worst days eating wise, because I ate 2 servings each day of some rich, homemade chocolate pudding. I certainly didn’t need two servings and they were fairly high in calories. I did have a moral victory on Tuesday, though, when I passed up brownies at a friends house. Friday and Saturday I was out of town enjoying a quick weekend getaway with my sister-in-law and mom. It was so much fun! We stayed in a hotel and enjoyed spending time together talking, eating out, and, of course, shopping! I am thrilled to report that I actually got up early to workout at 6am on Friday morning since I was leaving right after work and that would be only chance. Then, drumroll please: I worked out at the hotel (to an exercise video I brought) on Saturday morning. It felt so good and helped to offset the splurge I had on Friday night with two rolls and a cup of potato soup at O’Charley’s. We ate a Cracker Barrel on Saturday and I had a grilled chicken salad with no dressing. I worked out 6 times last week for a total of four hours and 49 minutes! Not bad, especially considering how busy my week was.

Alright, so what you’ve all been waiting for: how did all this effort show up on the scale this week? I lost 0.4 pounds, so essentially no change from last week. However, I lost 2.6 pounds last week, so I was expecting a lower number this week, and that’s still 4.2 pounds in just 3 weeks. Anything over a pound a week is great in my book. I’m really hoping for a bigger number next week, though.

Sharing a Quick Moral Victory!

As usual, I don’t have much time, but I just wanted to share a quick non scale victory.
I had the usual Tuesday night dinner at a friends house tonight. I was super hungry after my workout and had a big plate of dinner and was completely satisfied. Then out come the brownies. I passed! Didn’t even have one nibble! Yes, I passed up chocolate, and, no, I’m not sick. I really don’t even feel liked I missed them. I told myself before I went that if the dessert wasn’t something I absolutely loved then I wasn’t going to eat it. Well, of course, I like brownies, but those are something so common that I can have them any time, so why do I need them when I’m already full and satisfied? Plus, it also helped that I’d did my workout and showered just before going to dinner, so all the huffing, puffing, and sweating I did during the workout were fresh on my mind. I certainly didn’t want to undo all that hard work!

Have you had any non scale victories lately that you’d like share? I just love hearing those nsv stories.

Is My Scale Broken!!?? (Week 2 Results)

Hi everybody! I have a lot to say and wish I had time to say it all, but, unfortunately, I procrastinated doing my workout (don’t do that, folks!), so it’s almost bedtime and I only have a few  minutes.

A quick recap of last week is like this. Monday ant Tuesday I ate fairly well except for a terrible, terrible case of the munchies. I did really well fighting them on Monday only eating a handful or two of Chex Mix as a result of the munchies. I also combated it with an intense workout as soon as I could. Tuesday the munchies came back with a vengeance, and I gave in a little more. Still wasn’t a disaster, though, because I didn’t have super high calorie sweets in the house. Wednesday and Thursday were good eating wise. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I navigated FOUR eating events that were not at my house (3 times eating a meal at someone else’s house and once at restaurant not of my choosing). I did fairly well, but none of the events served overly low calorie foods, so I definitely consumed more calories than usual. We also hosted guests all weekend, so I wasn’t able to work out really on Saturday or Sunday. However, I did workout for over four hours total last week burning over 2400 calories, so I did super well on the workout front despite being unable to exercise Saturday or Sunday. After losing 1.2 pounds last week, the scale did not budge all week. Needless to say, I was quite worried that the scale still would not budge overnight last night, and would result in no change for week 2 weigh-in. (Or worse, what if the weekend eating caught up with me and I showed a gain!?)

I was SHOCKED at what I saw on the scale this morning!? Are you sure my scales aren’t broken? I actually weighed myself 3 times on different places on the bathroom floor to ensure the reading was accurate and not a fluke. I lost 2.6 pounds this week, for a total of 3.8 pounds over the last two weeks! If I continue at this rate, I will be elated!!! Now, I must say, I’m a  little nervous that somehow today’s low reading was some sort of fluke and my weight will be right back up tomorrow, but I’ll take what I can get for now.

Week 1 Results

Hi everyone! Sorry I haven’t posted since Monday, but I’m happy to report that it’s not a bad sign. I’m still doing well, but I’ve been quite busy and sleep has been winning out over blogging the past few days.

First of all, I can’t believe I forgot to tell you this on Monday, but I officially weigh-in on Mondays, and last Monday I lost 1.2 pounds! I’m happy with it as long as I keep up at that rate. It’s always hard at the beginning because you don’t if it’s a true loss or just some fluctuation, but I’m definitely happy.

I had a lot more I wanted to talk about, but we have company, so I’ll have to get back with you later. I probably won’t have a chance to write more until Sunday evening.

How to Cure the Munchies!

Guess what? I’m going to tell you how to cure the munchies. This is something I suffer from often, and I’m happy to have found a (partial, temporary) cure. I’ll share it with you shortly.

First, a quick recap of my day.

My morning eating went well. I started my day with my high protein pancakes that I prepared last night. All I had to do was grab the container from the fridge and I could easily eat them in the car. That works out quite well.

 

 

I was in a meeting until 10:30, at which point I was hungry. (Protein power lasted 3.5 hours). So a quick snack:

Shortly after that, I had lunch:

And then, bad things started happening. First I started feeling tired (definitely a contributing factor in causing munchies), and then the afternoon started d-r-a-g-g-i-n-g. I look at the clock. It’s 12;59pm. Bummer, I have to make it 3 more hours, and my lunch to seem to be staying with me. I look at the clock again. It’s 1:01pm. Uh oh. It’s okay, I’ll try to focus on my work and forget about the vending machine that is now calling my name. I look at the clock again. It’s 1:09pm. This isn’t going to work! I eat an apple to try to stave off the munchies:

Didn’t work!!! I look at the clock a few more times. Around 3pm, I went to the cafeteria and bought a 50 calorie yogurt to eat.

 

 

 

I made all the way without giving in to the munchies!!! It wasn’t easy. They still weren’t gone when I got home and so before dinner I had 4 crackers (only two are pictured).

 

 

 

I finally ate taco “salad” for dinner (made with lean ground turkey):

Still had the munchies even though I was no longer hungry. I ate one handful of Corn Chex without bothering to take a picture.I love plain Corn Chex. I really need to get into individual baggies, because eating anything out of the box is dangerous! I finally got myself out the door and did an intense workout on the elliptical!

Finally, I found the cure!!! (Which I already knew.) One intense workout and the munchies are gone. If only I could have done that sooner! From experience, I know it’s only a temporary and partial cure, but I’ll take it! I had no chocolate today. I don’t even think I’ll bother with my allotted one chocolate piece. If I’m hungry before bed I’ll have a small fruit smoothie.

One little side note. Don’t you hate it when people talk about their weight loss experience or give weight loss advice and say something like, “I stopped eating chocolate and my desire for it just went away.” Or “I realized chocolate wasn’t good for me, so my desire for it just went away.” Or “Once I started fueling my body with healthy foods my body started craving them, so my desire for chocolate naturally went away.” SERIOUSLY!!?? I’m here to inform you, (and trust me, I would know having tried all of the above for long periods of time) that is most DEFINITELY NOT the case for normal people. They must not have eaten the chocolate I eat!

Weekend Update

Here’s a quick weekend update. Overall, everything went well on the healthy eating front. I still feel like I’m on track and ready to face and conquer the challenges the new week will bring! And I’m excited to report my week one weigh-in results tomorrow! If you’re new here, here’s the post where I talked about my healthy living plan.

Saturday was a dreary and rainy day. I got up, ate a quick and very small breakfast hoping to head right out to the Y for a workout. Well, for some reason, I was feeling completely unmotivated and really enjoying having a day with nothing urgent on the agenda, so I “lolligagged” (as my grandma would say) and accomplished next to nothing for a couple hours, before I finally pushed myself out the door around 11 am. By that time, having had only one egg and it being almost lunchtime, I was quite hungry. This meant that I was a bit lightheaded so I couldn’t work out very intensely, but I still walked for 45 minutes which is definitely something. In retrospect I should have immediately gone to the Y after eating breakfast, and if I didn’t do that, I should have taken the time to eat a real lunch before going. Lesson learned for next time.

The rest of Saturday was spent accomplishing a monstrous to-do list, and I’m thrilled to report that my husband actually accomplished well over half the items on the list!

 

 

 

 

Saturday evening I made some sugar cookies at the husband’s request and managed to stay out of them and the dough. This morning I finished baking the cookies and am sad to say I did eat a bit of the dough and one cookie. I didn’t go crazy or anything, but, really, while the sugar cookie was good, it isn’t something I LOVE and wasn’t worth the calories.

This evening we 4 friends over for ice cream complete with brownies, several times of cookies, several types of candy, hot fudge, etc. This is what I what my kitchen table looked like a couple hours ago:

What’s a healthy girl supposed to do in this situation!!?? Well, I thought through it carefully and made a careful plan of attack. I figured I had three options:

1. Of course, I could simply not eat the delicious hot fudge sundaes (perhaps eating some sort of alternate healthy snack) while watching all my (perfectly skinny) friends consume them. Pros: I would save a few hundred calories. Cons: Um, how would you like to watch everyone else eat your favorite food? After years of off-and-on dieting (and therefore many similar situations in which I did NOT eat any of the sweets), I well knew that I would feel pretty miserable about this decision and would still be thinking about the sundaes in the morning. Not a good option!
2. I could say “Well, this healthy living thing is just too hard, so I’ll just give up and start eating whatever I want.” Wait, that’s in direct conflict with Goal #3! That’s certainly not an option.
3. I could enjoy one sundae of a moderate, but satisfying size tonight with my friends, then ask my husband to remove all the goodies (which he’s very good about accommodating me in that) from the house, so I would only consume one sundae. I think one or two treats per week is reasonable and certainly a drastic improvement over what I’ve been eating in the past. I also realized that I had been eating 4 little chocolate pieces almost daily . While that is a moderate amount, that’s 150 calories a day, or  1050 calories a week – more than the calories in my sundae! So I made a deal with myself: for the rest of the week I will only have ONE chocolate piece per day. Nice comprise, don’t you think? I feel great about my decision, and you guys will have to hold me to the one chocolate piece per day goal, okay???

Oh, and I’m not sure if this breaks “healthy blogging rules”, but here’s a picture of my sundae. Definitely worth the calories.

Fabulous Friday!

I’m actual writing this on Saturday morning, but oh well. I had another great day of healthy eating and lots of exercise! I also remembered to take pictures of all my food, so I’ll share my photojournal with you. But first, we’ll talk about my exercise.

Friday was an absolutely gorgeous day, 65 and sunny!!! It would be a crime not get outside and enjoy it. I was telecommuting (working from home) and my husband got done with his work early, so we ate lunch together and went on 20 minute walk on my lunch break.

Outdoor Walk

I wore my heart rate monitor for all my activities just out of curiosity. The walk was pretty brisk with some huge hills and I jogged a couple times for fun. (Which I was super excited to find my HRM without having to tear down the house!) To the left are the stats for that walk.

 

Kickboxing DVD

I wanted to make sure I got in some pretty intense cardio, so I did Cathe’s Kick, and Crunch (kickboxing) DVD. This is probably my 3rd time to do it, and I feel like it finally clicked for me! I’m so uncoordinated that it usually takes me several tries even for kickboxing to feel like I’m getting in. It definitely kept my heart rate up there.

 

Basketball at the Park

In the evening, my husband and I met another couple at the park to again take advantage of the beautiful day. We first flew a kite (after almost getting it stuck in a light), then we played several quick games of knockout (in which I was almost always the first one out), and then played some 2-on-2 to a score of only 7. My husband and I lost. (That may or may not have had something to do with my “shooting” the ball nowhere near the vicinity of the goal.

What’s the Moral of the Story?

I don’t always wear my HRM that much. I usually just wear it for intentional workouts. In part I was super excited to have found it! Also, I was just curious about how much my less intentional, fun exercise contributed to my overall calorie burn. Well, turns out, it contributes quite a bit. I had about the same calories per hour burned at basketball as I did during my kickboxing DVD. I never would have guessed that! It easily would have been a higher rate if I hadn’t gotten out so quickly each time in knockout and just had to stand there. My 20 minute walk didn’t do too badly either. Granted, if I were at the office working, I could not have walked so briskly and burned so many calories, because I wouldn’t want to return to the office all sweaty.

The Food

So here’s my food journal for the day, just for fun. I’m also going to estimate the calories here just to see where they’re at:

Since I was working at home all day, I didn’t really eat traditional meals. “Breakfast was a Stouffers French Bread veggie pizza (340 cals) plus a delicious WW 80 calorie popsicle:

Then it was midmorning snack of two delicious melt-in-your-mouth Hershey Bliss chocolates. (I also had two more throughout the day which aren’t pictured here.) That’s 150 calories. If there was anything I would cut out of my food it would be these. I’ve been eating about 2-4 per day, which isn’t bad since it’s not too many, but I realize they’ are completely empty calories:

The husband and I went to Arby’s for lunch and I had a junior roast beef sandwich (200 cals) plus one of the husband’s curly fries. I wasn’t too hungry because I ate breakfast late. An hour or so later I had a smoothie with pineapple, strawberries, spinach (that’s why the color looks ugly), and some Almond Breeze. I estimate it at about 120 calories:

For dinner, I had spaghetti with 93% lean ground turkey in marinara sauce (estimate this to be about 350 cals), green beans (estimate 70 cals), and cheesy garlic bread (estimate 150). Dessert was another popsicle (80 cals):

I didn’t have any nighttime snack. If I were hungry, I probably would have had some popcorn, but we went to bed pretty early, before I had a chance to get hungry. Total calories for the day come out to 1540, right in a healthy range for weight loss. Also, the total extra burned is 752 calories, for a net of about 750, definitely on track for some serious weight loss. (Although I should point out that most days I don’t do nearly that much exercise.)

Random Question

Random question, if you’re still reading, have you ever heard of square foot gardening and have you tried it? I’ll probably talk it about more later, but I’ve been looking into it. I think I could do it on my concrete patio outside my townhome. I’m not sure if it would be worth the trouble and expense, though. We would have to purchase and store every little thing (right down to a shovel or rake and tarp for mixing the soil, not to mention seeds, the 4×4 box, watering can, soil materials, etc.).