Exercise Endorphins Rock!

So I had another awesome workout today. I didn’t have a lot of time. It was one of those situations where on the surface it looked like I just didn’t have a way to fit it into my schedule for today, but I made it work. Because of time shortage, I did workout DVDs. Started with Cathe Friedrich’s Rhythmic Step and then did her STS Shock Cardio 40/20 HIIT (high intensity interval training). It was seriously high intensity. I thought I wasn’t going to make it, but it felt great after I was done! I’m still feeling those endorphins.

Food wise, I did okay, but not great. Ended the day around 1900 calories, and I estimate that I burned at least 500 through exercise, for a net of 1400. My mistake came in eating a total of four Kashi cookies (130 cals each – so over 500 cals worth). I had two for lunch and two on the way home from work. I was so mad at myself for gobbling the two on the way home from work. One of those, “If only I could turn back time and not eat them” moments. I wasn’t even too upset about the two for lunch but the two in the car on the way home from work were totally unnecessary and I wasn’t even hungry. It was just five minutes of weakness. However, I did stop after two, so that’s something. The worst part about the incident is not that I consumed 260 extra calories – that’s really no big deal. It’s the guilt I felt about it that led me to start down the destructive path of “Oh I blew it, may as well give up.” Why bother exercising – you already blew it. Why not just eat whatever you want for dinner – you’ve already had too many calories. However, I recognized that thinking, and I was able to reason my way out of it. However, I still had the negative emotions hanging around – can’t really reason my way out of that. But the exercise really helped put those emotions back on a positive track. I think that’s real progress – in the past I may have turned the day into an exercise free calorie fest just because I made one little mistake.

That cherry almond cookie from the vending machine that’s been haunting me – it’s gone! They replaced with something else that I don’t even like. Yeah, I beat the cookie!!!

Do you bloggers ever feel really inspired to write throughout the day, but by the time you sit down post late in the evening you forgot what you were inspired to post about or you’re just not in a writing mood?

Take that, you Chocolate Iced Cherry Almond Cookie!

I have to say, it’s unbelievable how quickly the evening goes by. I had totally planned to workout today, but, before I know it, it’s 9pm and I’m exhausted (get up around 5:30), which reiterates the fact that I need to workout first thing when I get home from work or this type of thing is likely to happen. However, instead of worrying about it, I opted not to eat anything else for the evening and go to bed a little early. I did log my foods for the day and ended up at 1591 calories – not stellar, but still low enough to stay on the losing path. I am redoubling my commitment to exercise the rest of the week, because exercise is SOOO critical for my weight loss. My goal is five times a week, and I can still make that this week. Part of the reason the evening went by so fast is that I tried a new healthy recipe, which turned out well, but took a while to make and clean up after.
A couple moral victories to report: first, those Hershey’s miniatures that I ate too many on Monday. Well, they were still in my desk drawer today. I ate 3 this morning, and I threw the rest in the trash. I just didn’t want to fight the temptation any more, and there were only a few left.
Next, I don’t know about you, but if there is a dessert or food that I’ve never had but looks good to me, I feel like I HAVE to have it. Like it’s some sort of once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and if I don’t get to taste it, I might miss out on some life-changing experience. How crazy is that? Monday as I was leaving work, I noticed a new item in the vending machine: a Chocolate Iced Cherry Almond Cookie – my favorite flavors all in a soft cookie in a unique way! I really, really, really love cherry, chocolate, and almond. Well, this morning, guess what? I didn’t even walk by the vending machine, but I had not forgotten about that new flavor of cookie!! It was on my mind. I really wanted it. A few times I came pretty close to giving in, but I didn’t. Whew! Made it all the way through the day without giving in! My life will be perfectly fine if I never get to taste that stupid cherry almond cookie with the chocolate drizzled on top. Part of me just wanted to give in and get it over with because I figured I eventually would anyway. Luckily tomorrow is pretty busy with meetings, but I have no meetings scheduled on Friday. I’ll just be at my desk by myself, which is when time seems to drag and I really get the munchies, and that stupid cookie will be calling my name again. If it were in my house I’d throw it away. I really don’t want to fight it all the time. But I’m bigger than the cookie. He won’t beat me!

Weigh-in Results and Lots of Updates

I didn’t realize it has been almost a week since I last updated, which was because I was out of town. I have so many updates that I’ll go bullet style:

• First off, a report on my weekend eating and exercise. I left immediately after work on Thursday to visit a friend for the weekend. Therefore, I knew I wouldn’t be able to exercise and we had some exciting, yet not so low calorie food plans – including the Cheesecake Factory – doesn’t even belong in the same sentence with “healthy.” Therefore my plan for the week was to maintain my weight, and basically have a maintenance level of calories for the week. That meant I would have calories deficits during the week and some excess on the week. My plan went pretty well, except for Thursday – for some reason I kinda gave in to Mr. All-or-Nothing and started snacking at work throughout the afternoon, and didn’t make drastic improvements for dinner either – got a huge 360 calorie cookie at Quizno’s. Oops. That wasn’t necessary because it wasn’t planned and I knew I would have a few treats over the weekend. That said, I did well the rest of the weekend with keeping things in check and not eating something just because I was on “maintenance mode” for the week.
• I had their special Red Velvet Cheesecake at the The Cheesecake Factory. I had been craving it for weeks. MMMMmm! Good! Don’t regret it one little bit. Split lunch size entree with my friend, wisely. Their portions are huge.
• I’m right back on track in super weight loss mode today, which was the major key to not allowing the extra treats this weekend ruin my weight loss efforts!!! About a  year ago, I went on a weekend trip to visit another friend, and I had been so, so well up to that point. That friend loves chocolate almost as much as I do, so the weekend involved a ton of excess calories (none of which I regret) – but where I went wrong is that I let that one weekend derail me for weeks. I didn’t get right back on track on Monday. This time I didn’t make that same mistake. Maybe I am learning something.
• Remember the FitBloggin’ Conference I talked about wanting to go to? Well, I really did want to go, but something else has come up that same weekend. I was actually a little sad to find out I wouldn’t be able to go. Maybe next year, although I doubt it will be driving distance
• And my weigh-in results for this week: Down 1.4 pounds!!!! Thrilled considering I just wanted to maintain. Brings overall weight loss for the past three weeks to 6.4 pounds. I’ll take that too!
• I had great stats for today:
• I have a new plan for tackling my snacking problem that I talked about in my last post. I’ll share tomorrow. Also, hope to get caught on blog reading and commenting tomorrow. I hate to see how many unread items are in my Google Reader.

True Progress

Here’s what I’ve been struggling with in my mind lately.

Since I started this journey a year and a half ago, I knew I had two major problems that I needed to overcome (among a lot of other things). Diagnosing those problems was not the issue. One of my major obstacles is the “all-or-nothing” mentality that is somehow so deeply ingrained in my thinking. I still have a LOOONG way to go in really overcoming that, however, I can see that I have made some solid progress in the last year and a half. And I plan to make even more progress in the next year.

However, my next huge desire to snack all the time, especially on sweets. It’s kinda the opposite of a binging problem, but just a severe and destructive. I want to munch on something small every 15 minutes or so at my worst. All those calories really add up. My whole life that’s what I’ve done. Snack. Snack. Snack. Just a little bite. Just a little taste. Just a little bit! Ah! Before I know it, I’ve eaten the equivalent of two or three pieces of 600 calories per slice cake by just shaving off one little sliverine at a time. Definitely not good. Here’s the thing. I feel like, despite all my efforts, I haven’t really made progress is resolving the true root of the problem. I feel like I’ve just managed to band-aid it at times. And there have been many band-aid efforts. About 4 years ago, I completely fasted for three weeks (water only). Once, I completely gave up chocolate for 8 weeks. I had junk-free January in 2008 where I had absolutely NO sweets -none at all- for the entire month. At some point a little over a year ago, I completely gave up snacking altogether for a couple months. And I really did. But I was having to force myself through it the whole time. I really wanted it to be a lifestyle change and I at least thought I was approaching it with that mindset. And of course I’ve tried the moderation approach countless times. I feel like no matter what mindset and approach I’ve tried, I keep coming back and fighting the exact same battles hundreds of times – sometimes wining, sometimes losing, and sometimes doing more of one than the other.

What prompted this is reviewing my posts over the last couple weeks and seeing how many times I wrote something like, “Did really well today except for those snacks.” I mean, really, that should be the title of my blog. So I was considering what to do. Should I try a no snacking no matter what rule and force myself into that for a period of time? Should I give up eating meals so I can just plan a small snack every half hour or so? And then I read a post on Pudget’s blog (Guess What I Did Yesterday) about how she had made a lot of progress with here binge eating struggle.  And I’ve been reading her blog since she began it, and when I thought about it, I could really see just from reading her blog posts that she had made true progress. And I want to get that point with my snacking problem – to make some true progress!

So my question for all of you is: How do you make true progress (not just temporarily band aiding a problem)? Do you feel that you’ve truly overcome or made progress in any of your eating/weight issues?  Any advice?

Who needs the gym, when you have two feet of snow!?

It’s been a couple days since I updated, so I’ll just have to summarize the weekend.

We woke up on Saturday to two feet of snow!! It was unbelievable. Absolutely beautiful. Obviously, we couldn’t go anywhere. Roads weren’t plowed yet, a state of emergency had been called, and even if we could go anywhere nothing was open (nothing – groceries stores, drugstores, the Y, etc). All this would not have been so bad if only we had power! It went off sometime before 4am, and with such a big snowstorm, we had no idea when it was coming back on. It is really amazing how many things that I take for granted require electricity, including the foods we normally eat. No stove, oven, microwave, and I wanted to open fridge/freezer as little as possible. So all we had to eat were crackers, chips, salsa, candy, marshmallows, and high-calorie homemade sourdough bread. After eating a really early dinner on Friday, I woke up very hungry Saturday morning. Unfortunately I took this situation as license to eat basically whatever I wanted. That’s the not so good part. However, I did want to get some exercise, so I dug out one of cars – took a good 45 minutes of shoveling, worked lots of muscles, and burned some calories! Luckily our power was restored in the early afternoon!

Pic of snow near our house:

Sunday, I am happy that I worked out using exercise DVDs at home (Y isn’t open on Sun morning). Burned a lot of calories and had a decently intense workout. I did Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred for the first time. It really is a good 24 minute workout. And I was very sore from it today! I also did another video to get some extra cardio in. Unfortunately my resolve to make good food choices waned steadily throughout the day. By the time the superbowl party was ending, I dug into the cookies! Whoops! All told, my weekend was definitely high on the calorie side. And also very difficult to count since I ate at other people’s houses. I would guess 2500 or so calories Sat and Sun minus the exercise calories of course. So, bottom line, my calories for the week overall were probably a slight deficit, but not too much. Which brings me to the next topic:

This week’s weigh-in: -0.0, stayed exactly the same. Funny, worked out exactly as I thought it would. Unfortunately this week doesn’t look to be a stellar week calorie deficit wise. Leaving Thursday night to stay with a friend, so I won’t be able to work out Thurs, Fri, or Sat plus the food probably won’t be as healthy as if I were eating at home. However, I’m going to continue to do the best I can this week. I really would like just a slight lose, and then I can really pick up my intensity next week.

Which brings me to today. I did a killer bootcamp class at the Y. Once again, I made a fool of myself and couldn’t keep up, but I did burn some calories. And I’m liking trying all these new classes. I’m also getting a bit of weight-training which I never did on my own. I burned about 500 calories in 56 minutes. Most of the workout was cardio drills (Jump rope, jogging, sprinting, suicide drills, etc) followed by leg/arm combo moves with weights and a few stationary arm exercises. The last 10 minutes were ab work, and although my abs got a killer workout, ab work doesn’t really burn many calories. The heart rate is really low. Plus, with so much weight to lose, I won’t even be able to see muscle definition until I lose another 70-90 pounds.

Anyway, here’s todays stats:

News Flash!

News flash everyone: When you decide to stay home and eat instead of working out, your net calories for the day will be high! Yep, found that out today. However, I don’t consider it a huge mistake or anything. I had already considered skipping the workout for tonight, because tomorrow will make #5 for the week, and that’s my goal. Plus, there’s a big winter storm warning in effect. It was already snowing when I got home and the roads were a little slick. Wasn’t in the mood to brave it. It was nice to have night in, but the time just goes by so fast. There’s really not a lot else to report for today. Here is today’s stats and note the 6 month time period:

Crazy Vending Machine Antics

I tell you, sometimes I think I must be crazy. First off, I was super tired today and had a rather boring day at work sitting at my desk staring at the same stuff on the computer screen all day. Never a good mix. Always ends poorly. So by 9 am I had eaten my breakfast and both little things of pudding I had brought for the day. Went out to lunch with some friends and was very good at Chick-fil-A by ordering a Grilled chicken salad – 300 calories! Good decision. The tiredness really started to set in during the afternoon and time was just dragging on by. It felt like 4pm would never arrive. So I grab some money and start to head for the vending machine. Well, I absolutely hate anyone actually seeing me go to the vending machine – especially if I’m getting something particularly unhealthy like a candy bar. It’s like I’m revealing my bad habits to whoever sees me. As if they otherwise would have thought that I got fat by eating celery and lettuce instead of chocolate and chips. Really – who am I kidding!? But I still have this enormous fear of a coworker seeing me. It’s like I feel like I’m doing something illegal. Anyway, when I started to head to the vending machine there was a big group congregated outside and they stood there talking for like 30 minutes! Finally, they left and I went to the vending machine. I did not want to eat a bagillion calories so I wisely selected a pack of chewing gum. The entire pack (6 pieces, but really 12 b/c I break them in half) was gone within about 30 minutes. I chewed one piece right after the other in my frantic effort to stave away the munchies. When I was still madly craving chocolate and about to fall asleep at my desk, I though of an excuse to get up and walk somewhere about every five minutes. After a half hour of that, I still couldn’t take it – “needed” chocolate – went back to the vending machine for a 220 calorie Kit-Kat bar. Ate it. It didn’t really wake me up and it didn’t make the afternoon go by much faster. When I really need a little nap, that’s what I really need – not little walks or food. But I really can’t nap at work. Something tells me they wouldn’t like that. And, would you believe this? It took every fiber in my being to avoid going back to that stupid machine for another candy bar! But I didn’t. Next time maybe I’ll try super glue on the chair.

Oh, and the little tiny cookies I have hear at home called my name a few times today – I forgot to put them in the husband’s car yetserday. Not good. However, I ate fewer than I would have if I hadn’t been really trying. It was that walk in the door, go straight to the kitchen thing.

I did get in a 55 minute, 500 calorie elliptical workout. That was good, but I feel like I need to workout harder. I just feel so much better when I work out to the point of feeling like I’m gonna die (exaggeration of course) for some reason. My heart rate got up to about 175, but often if I jog or do other types of workouts, it’ll get up to around 200 – that’s when I feel like I’ve really worked!

Okay, despite all the fiascos today, I really did track every single little calorie, and the overall result really isn’t too bad. I also was tempted to skip dinner to compensate for the extra cookies, but thought better of it. Here’s the stats for today:

I may have looked like a fool…

…but at least I blasted away the calories!!! Tried a new class at the Y tonight: Interval Step. It was intense, and I couldn’t keep up both coordination wise and endurance wise, but I got a great workout and burned a ton of calories! Worked out for 45 mins and burned 500 calories, so the burn rate was higher than a lot of other things I do. The class had three cardio step segments with weight segments after. I about died in the arm segment. I don’t lift weights in any form at all ever. I wisely selected the lightest weights they had: 3 lbs. Well, by the time we were done with the arm segment I thought my arms were about to fall off (and I couldn’t quite manage to even do every single rep) and I was CONVINCED that they were really 30 lb weights and the “0″  had just rubbed off! But overall I enjoyed the class, and will definitely do it again. Loved the workout that I got from it.

Not a ton of other news today, I think I talked about it all yesterday. Eating went fine, although I did the same stupid thing I’ve been doing for the last couple weeks. I snacked straight from the Wheat Thins. Then at the end of the day I really have no idea how many servings I’ve eaten. And I headed straight for the kitchen as soon as I got home from work, and grabbed 2 little cookies (170 calories total) before I could even stop myself. The cookies are getting out of the house and going into the husband’s car first thing in the morning. At least we know that won’t happen again.

Here’s today’s stats:

Things are looking up!

Report on Today

Today went well overall. I had a horrible case of the munchies all morning and on into the afternoon – really, all day long. It was bad. I just wanted to munch and munch and munch. Every time I walked through the kitchen I would grab just one or two Wheat Thins or Fat Free pringles. Tried to satisfy with a serving of Tostitos and salsa. No go. Just had to power through and force myself to stay out of the kitchen. Worked out for an hour on the elliptical at lunchtime – it went by really fast because I was watching What Not to Wear while listening to the Two Fit Chicks and Microphone podcast. Still had the munchies after that, though. And I’ve really been craving chocolate a lot lately, so this is what I did, and I know some of you might not agree with this approach. But I had a can of green beans for dinner (70 calories) and warm choc chip cookies with sugar free vanilla ice cream for dessert (by the way, I can’t tell the difference in the sugar free and the regular with Breyer’s Double Churned) for about 400 calories. So I ended the day right on track calorie wise. Sometimes I just need a nice dessert.

Who knew the secret to happy weight loss?

I have to say, this week feels so much better than last week. Last week I was really just struggling along. I managed last week. My overall stats (workouts and calories consumed) are similar in each week, but my ATTITUDE is completely different. I mean, I feel like a new person. So what’s the difference? I took the time this past Sunday night, completely cleared my schedule, the husband was gone. And I made this apartment really sparkle (cleaned, organized things), I took some time for reflection, and a little time to plan for the week. That has made all the difference. I feel in calm and in control. Last week I felt completely disorganized, frazzled, and overwhelmed really, and for no really good reason. And it really impacted my attitude toward my weight loss. I felt like I was just barely making it, you know? It is really amazing what being surrounded by order will do for my thoughts and attitude.

Should I go out on a limb and try something new?

About a week ago, I told you all I was considering going out a limb and doing something completely new for me in order to help my healthy lifestyle. I just think doing new things is so good for me. I actually noticed this “Fitbloggin” conference several months as soon as it was set up, since it’s hosted by my favorite blogger. And it sounded intriguing to me – getting together with a bunch of other who also blog about fitness and healthy living – sounds like a place to learn a lot and make some friends! People I interact with in everyday life aren’t always as interested as I am in blogging or healthy living and things like that, so it would be nice to interact with some people who are. And I’ve never met any of my blog friends in real life. The best part about the conference is that it’s in Baltimore – a four hour drive! Very doable. No cost of plane ticket. No need to take a whole day off work. Plus it would be kinda fun to go somewhere by myself to see a new place. And the thing is, most blogging conferences and things take place far enough away that I would have to buy a plane and take a lot of time off work. This seems like a unique opportunity. Now, I’m really not a person who is really comfortable in new situations – or comfortable at all for the matter. Not the type of person to be able to go up to someone and easily strike up a conversation. So that does worry me. However, it might be good for me to get out of my comfort zone. And the worst that can happen is I’m so uncomfortable I don’t enjoy it all, don’t learn anything (hard to imagine that), and don’t make any new friends – so I just wasted a day and a half and little bit of money. But best case, I like it, have a great time, and learn a lot. I’m also concerned that a lot of people there are pro-bloggers or have been at this a lot longer than I have and are a lot more knowledgeable – but who better to learn from? Oh, and here’s the link to the conference I’m talking about: Fitbloggin’

What do you all think? Would you do it?

Weigh-in Results!

So, as always, having “restarted” my weight loss efforts so many times, I never know how to number the weeks/weigh-ins. Do I start again with one? Do I pick up at the beginning? To make my life easier and so I don’t have to spend a bunch of time counting weeks, I’m calling last week the first week, and we’ll go from there. Hopefully, soon I’ll get a chance to update my progress page which is in dire need of some attention. Please note, however, that calling this “week 1″ does not mean that I’m viewing as the start of a “diet.” I view everything since September 08 as one big journey to health with a lot of ups and downs and bumps along the way. After all that, what did I lose for my first weigh-in? (By the way, I’m a daily weigher. I log my weight each day, but don’t pay too much attention to those numbers as they do fluctuate a lot. I count Monday morning weigh-in as my official weekly weigh-in.)

Stats for Week 1:

• Weight Lost: 5 pounds! (Some of that was definitely water weight b/c my weight definitely spiked last Monday, but I’ll take it!)
• Avg cals eaten: 1671 (including yesterday’s wild guess at a 2500 calorie day)
• Avg cals burned through exercise: -375
• Avg net cals: 1267
• Total deficit: 5131 cals (1.5 lbs)

And today went well. My goal for the week is to avoid snacking/munching/mindless, hard to count calories. I did fairly well on that today. I did grab a few wheat thins and a few fat free Pringles. Other than that, did great. Went to spinning class at the Y tonight, and got a great workout! Burned 500 calories.