Make that the THIRD day in a row!

Yes, there was one narrow miss with chocolate, but I had a good day yet again. Finally! Unfortunately just when I get in the groove I head out of town for the long weekend and get out of the groove. But we won’t worry about that now. Tomorrow should be stellar yet again.

I really think these perfect weather days are wonderful! They really do lift your spirits! You know, those custom-made-to-order days where the sun is shining every so brightly with just a few puffy clouds here and there. And it’s just the perfect temperature – so much so that you really can’t decide whether you’d prefer it to be one degree warmer or one degree cooler. So nice!

Oh, the narrow miss. Really, there were two narrow misses today. The first, I was at the grocery store buying my healthy lunch and some healthy snacks, when I just had to walk past the chocolate aisle. There I simply had to linger and look at the chocolate selection. I seriously was in that aisle looking at different types of chocolate, picking them up, reading nutrition labels (as if I were expecting to find a low calorie chocolate – trust me, if there were such a thing, I would have discovered it by now – and that disgusting excuse of a “food” Walden Farms stuff doesn’t count), etc. My problem with chocolate is this: I just love it. Yep, that’s the problem. I like it too much. And I like it every which way, the more variety the better. So I’m always dying to try a new combination, a new brand, a new something. The more different wierd flavors and ingredients you can pack in there, the better. Like the dark chocolate, white choclate, lemon, cherry, and waffle cone candy bar by Choxie at Target. So I found this one candy bar (I’d eyed this one several times previously in this store, by the way) that who even knows what it was because it was from some foreign country and all the words except the nutrition info and ingredients (and those were placed on with a sticker over the original pkg) were in some other language (for some reason I thought it was Swiss, but I have no idea why I thought that). But it was so unique, I was pretty sure I’d never had any chocolate from wherever-that-was before. I just had to try it. Nevermind that it was just one bar contained 2.5 servings and it cost $5.69! And nevermind the fact that I would actually consume only a square or two before being forced to throw the rest in the garbage because it was so good I was afraid I would eat it if I didn’t throw it away. Two little bites for $5.69! But I picked it up anyway. I came to my senses just before I was ready to check out and returned it back to the shelf. Whew! Why do I even torture myself by meandearing down those silly candy aisles!? What good can come of it? The only benefit I can possibly see is that if I were on some trivia show with lots of money at stake and they asked a question about chocolate, I’d know the answer.

Here’s today’s graph:

Second day in a row!

Finally, two good days in a row! Today was another good day. Ate well, exercised for 35 minutes, not as long or as intensely as I wanted, but still okay. I’m really having trouble getting enough protein in. Part of my problem is that I eat the exact same foods so much that I absolutely get sick of them and don’t want to eat them. So tonight, I was ready for dinner, but had very few options since I tend to eat teh same things all the time and don’t bring snacky food into the house, so I had three apples with some dip. No protein there, obviously. I really do need to work getting some more variety to what I eat. Here’s today’s graph:

Finally!!!

So, last Monday I had this wonderful post about how I had been doing poorly, gained a few pounds, but I was ready to turn things around. And I promised a daily blog post. I delivered on Tuesday, but never again. Well, I failed, miserably. I did lose 0.2 pounds last week, but it was through no fault of my own. Here’s the thing, the longer I continue in my unhealthy ways (avoiding most exercise, eating lots of sweets, not blogging, not counting calories, etc) the harder it is to start back up again and really get going wholeheartedly. I kept on trying last week, but never really could get over the hump. Imagine trying to ride a bike up a huge hill, and once you get to the top of the hill the road levels out – you still have to keep pedaling to keep yourself going at the top, but it’s so much easier. But it takes so much effort to get to the top of that hill. And the longer I’ve been doing poorly, the higher that hill is. It’s like I’ve started to go up it several times, put forth temporary effort, gotten a little ways, only to roll back down to the bottom. Last week, I started out okay on Monday but messed up with several trips to the vending machine. Tues mornign started out okay, but I didn’t end up making time for exercise, which really got me down. Wednesdsay morning I had the best of intentions, but I felt like I’d already lost the battle before I had even begun. Didn’t even try much on Thursday. Friday morning got on the scale and literaly cried. Yes literaly cried. I quickly composed myself because I had to get to work. But, seriously, all morning I was on the edge fighting back tears. How ridiculous is that? And I’m not a particularly emotional, cry-y person. I’d gained another couple pounds (in retrospect that 2 pound gain was nothing, and was just a little fluctuation – it was gone by the next morning. Struggled through Friday. Didn’t help that I literaly didn’t have time for exercise, as in there was no possible way to even make time for it with what all I had going on Friday evening. Well, Saturday I got remotivated and started out with a bang. Got up, worked out, went and bought healthy food to take to brunch that was full of high carb, high fat, high sugar food. Ate the healthy food, avoided the junk. But then there was dinner with a big group at a friend’s house. I avoided the pizza and had soup instead. But the desserts! A Schawn’s ice cream cake and this toffee trifle chocolate dessert that is absolutely wonderful and packs close to 500 calories a bite! So what do I do? I have a real small portion of each. Well, unfortunately that was just enough to whet my apetite and so I had more. The majority of occasions when I’m doing well with my diet/exercise, I can avoid those temptations, but I just wasn’t strong enough Saturday night. If I had it to do over again, I don’t think I would not have even gone to the friend’s house for dinner. Like I say, there are times when I just can’t handle it. I need to recognize those times and not feel guilty about completely avoiding the temptation in the first place, if that’s what I need to do.

Anyway, all of that to say, I have FINALLY crested the top of the hill! I had a stellar day yesterday and today is going great. Also, my attitude is completely different. I feel much more like I’m really gonna make this time. And today has gone well so far. This weekend does promise to be a huge challenge, but hopefully with four stellar days under my belt, I’ll have the motivation and confidence to do okay. I said in my post last Monday that I was worried that I had not really changed or learned anything in the past year. Well, I have learned some things. I really know much more than I did before what it takes for me to get and stay on track. I know more than anything that it’s my personal attitude and confidence level that makes all the difference. I know that much better than I did a year ago. So I know that I have a long way to go, but I have learned something.

So I’ll leave you with yesterday’s graph. As you can see, I did a decent amount of exercise.

Do I have a tapeworm!?

As promised, here’s the daily post:

Today went fairly well overall. I’m not going to start journaling all my foods (and strictly counting calories) until next Monday, but I am really working on avoiding the sweets and snacks. And I still do some mental tallies. I probably had around a 500 calorie deficit today – nothing stellar, but certainly not as deplorable as it has been lately. I had an unbelievably hard time avoid the vending machine snacks. Wow, it was rough. I don’t even really like the junk they have in the vending machine (they don’t have that much good chocolate stuff), but I was so hungry. I mean I was truly feeling hungry. But I ate good meals. I really think it’s my mind that’s causing my body to feel hungry. I couldn’t possibly actually be hungry. But, I tell you, when  your stomach is growling and you have a hunger headache, it’s so difficult to resist the food temptations. But I really think I’ve been doing so poorly lately and eating so often that my body just needs to get used to not eating all the time.

I feel like I must confess that, although I did avoid the vending machine, part of it was fate – not my own willpower. In a moment of weakness I counted out my change and head for the vending machine to snag some Snackwell’s cookies (item #144 – isn’t it terrible that I know that?), but the guy was there restocking the machines. I took it as a sign, was very relieved that an obstacle was there to save me from my moment of weakness, and didn’t return.

Also exercised for half an hour today on the elliptical. Not as long as I usually did when I was losing a lot of weight, but it was something, and tomorrow I’m hoping for more.

Plan for tomorrow is to slice up a bunch of apples (soaked in diet sierra mist) and take them with me to work, so I can snack on something healthy. I will also leave my money in the car, so I can’t go to the vending machine.

I’m still here!

Yes, folks, I’m still here. It’s been so long since I’ve posted that I almost forgot how, and I nearly forgot my password! As you can imagine, there’s a lot to say, but I’ll try not to carry on for too long.

This will be news to those of you who are my “blog friends” – it’s old news to those of you who I know “in real life.” Anyway, I’m engaged! It happened three weeks ago today, actually. We are planning the wedding for November 28 of this year. The plans are going great – we’re keeping things relatively simple and I’ve been fairly decisive so the planning has been a lot of fun, and, really, there’s not that much left to do at this point. You would probably think that a wedding would provide some super duper weight loss motivation. I thought so too. But since the engagement I have not lost so much as a pound (and I may have gained a couple, I can’t really remember what I weighed at the time). I really don’t think having a big event to “motivate” me is the weight loss key. The key is finding a way to stay “motivated” day in and day out, meal after meal, workout after workout.

For a quick summary of the last month, in short, it hasn’t been pretty. I got super motivated and lost quite a bit of weight in a short time at the beginning of our twelve week biggest loser competition. I even got through some very challenging food situations without gaining. Then, somehow, I gave up, I guess. Not at all intentionally. It just happened, gradually. Old habits started creeping back in until they had taken over. I started doing all the horrible things that have made all my best efforts fail in the past: picked up the snacking, got the all-or-nothing mentality in a bad way, and I kept saying “i’ll start next monday” and “one piece of cake won’t make a difference.” I did, however, end up losing 13 pounds in total for the biggest loser competition, and I did win! I’m getting about $90! The funny thing is that my first reaction was to go celebrate with the money by going to none other than THE CHEESECAKE FACTORY!!! I think I’m crazy. It’s really such a bittersweet victory. I lost those 13 pounds in the first 4 weeks. After that I continued losing slowly, and in the last couple weeks, I gained about 6 pounds. I really should have lost more. There’s this part of me that keeps saying, “You could have done so much better.” I’m so mad at myself for gaining – especially when I was doing SO well. I really thought I had it down this time. And  yet, here I am, once again, restarting. I started this blog and my serious weight loss effort nearly a year ago (in September 2008), and, in total, I’m down 20 pounds. Now that’s better than nothing, I know, but c’mon 20 pounds in a year? And it was a roller coaster ride, up and down, on plan and off plan. And it has required an immense amount effort just to lose 20 pounds and I still have 50-80 to go. Attempting to look at the positive side, I have kept at it to some degree for an entire year. That something. But I tell you. These past 4-5 weeks that I’ve been completely off and have been gaining, I think I’ve been just about as bad as I ever was. Sometimes I just feel like my new habits haven’t really sunk in. Have I really learned anything? Have I really changed myself?

I want to examine what went wrong these past few weeks, so that I can change it and hopefully avoid it again in the future. I really think my the downhill slide started when I started skipping quite a few workouts and I stopped blogging so regularly. In essence, I wasn’t focusing very much on my weight loss efforts and I wasn’t investing much time into it. I wanted it to just happen. Maybe I even got overconfident. But when I’m not investing very much of myself (time and energy) in the process, then I don’t have much strength to avoid the food temptations. In theory, I should be able to not exercise, not blog, and still at least maintain my weight by controlling my eating. That’s a nice theory, but it has not worked for me. I have to focus if I want to succeed. Really, so many other things started to crowd out my weight loss goals – I mean, c’mon, who cares about the elliptical when you have a diamond ring on your finger!!?? Kinda pales in comparison. Who wants to go spinning class when you could be browsing the internet looking at beautiful bridal gowns?

Well, it stops now. There will ALWAYS be many other things I could be doing in the time I’m spending working out and blogging and food journaling. Always. But this is what I need to do, what I’ve chosen to do, and there is absolutely no reason to feel guilty about it. Yes, it might be nice to be one of those people who never has to worry about their weight. One of those people who can just employ a little moderation – who doesn’t need to invest so much in the process. But there is so much that we learn about ourselves in this process and so much to gain (besides a smaller waistline) that those who don’t struggle with their weight will never get to experience.

There’s so much more I could say, but I’ll stop there. I’ll be blogging each day with a report on how I did, and I’ll need you all to keep me accountable. By the way, today was not so good. My major goals for tomorrow are to journal my food and go to the Y to workout.

Tuesday

Well, I honestly don’t remember the last time I posted. I’ve just been so busy. I’ve still be doing well on the diet/exercise front, but I just haven’t had time to write about it! My biggest mistake was the dessert I ate on Sunday – it was a lot of calories and not even that tasty at all. I shouldn’t have eaten it. But I just moved on. Here’s the stats for today:

Back from “vacation” and already battling diet enemy #1

Well, I’m back from “vacation.” I got back late Friday night. And, as you can see, I have been too busy to blog. I have so much I want to say and I had this wonderful post written in my head, but, as I sit down to write this, I realize I have less than six minutes before I must be in bed, so I can defy diet enemy #1 tomorrow. Don’t you hate how time seems to run away from you? There was so much I wanted to do tonight, and I was excited, energetic, and motivated, but I still couldn’t get even half of it done. By the time I worked out and ate dinner, I only had an hour left.

Anyway, “vacation” (a.k.a directing a week long camp with 80+ girls ages 12-18) was absolutely wonderful. This was the third year for the camp, and I think it was the best yet, and although I came home completely exhausted, it was such a spiritually uplifting and encouraging week. Anyway, as far as the “diet” front goes, I guess I did okay. Not great. Not terrible. Just okay. I gave in to some things. I stood up to some things. I was proud of myself for bringing some of my own food to camp and eating that instead of the food that was prepared for us at camp. (By the way, you may thinking, what’s the big deal about camp food? I know some people have memories of camp food not being all that good. Well, we got to bring our own kitchen staff to the facility, so the food was wonderful! Delicious, home-cooked type meals three meals a day – we’re talking mashed potatoes from scratch (swimming in butter of course), chocolate eclair cake, homemade chocolate chip cookies, parmesan chicken, homemade lasagna, homemade breadsticks, and the list goes on! The week before camp I did not do so well, if you recall, and the week before that was starting to get a little shaky. Well, all told, I gained 1-2 pounds, and I’m honsetly thrilled with that. Last year at camp, I gained nearly 5 pounds. My weight has been fluctuating a lot, so it’s hard to say exactly, but it won’t take me long to undo that damage. And I’m feeling remotivated to really kick things into gear and give it all I’ve got for the final four weeks of the biggest loser contest. I’m absolutely determined to get to my goal of 10% for this contest (I’m at 7% right now).

Okay, so for today’s battle fo diet enemy #1 which is tiredness. We really had it out today. I would say it ended in a draw but we both definitely lost some ground. I still haven’t gotten my sleeping schedule back to being at all normal after camp, so this afternoon at work while sitting and staring at a computer screen I got extremely tired to the point that I was literaly falling asleep at my desk. (I know that being an engineer designing nuclear power plants might sound a little bit exciting, but, trust me, it’s really not – it involves a lot of staring at a computer screen doing completely non-technical things.) Anyway, to keep my awake I hit the vending machine. First, it was a bag of skittles for 250 calories. Then I went back for a think of creme filled cookies for 210 calories. Then I went back for a thing of mini choc chip cookies for 280 calories – but wait, I opened that bag, had one of the tiny cookies, and finally stopped myself. This was ridiculous. I couldn’t let Mr. Tiredness win. Being exhausted is no excuse for consuming thousands of empty calories.

Anyway stats for today. Obviously the vending machine fiasco didn’t help things:

What a note to start a vacation off on

Well, my weigh-in yesterday was not so good – up half a pound.

Then yesterday and today weren’t so good eating and exercising wise. I have a few excuses, but none of them are all the good. I mean, they are valid excuses, but if I were super motivated, I would find a way anyway. I think the not-s0-great weigh-in combined with colossal fear of how many pounds I will gain on this vacation have just taken the wind out of my sails.

I’m trying. I really am. I WILL NOT gain back this weight that I worked SO HARD to lose just because I’m gone to camp for a week. That would be ridiculous. Ridiculous. Not gonna happen. I WILL NOT do it. I know I can’t exercise and I can’t count calories, but I WILL NOT eat junk food. I WILL avoid the temptations that will abound. And I WILL NOT be afraid eat well.

Anyway, due to the upcoming vacation, I won’t be posting until Saturday, July 25th.

Crossing my fingers

Well, I’m just crossing my fingers for a good weigh-in tomorrow. I really don’t know what to expect. I’ve been hovering around the same weigh , up-and-down about half a pound, since the last weigh-in a week ago.

But at least today was finally a good day. See:

Post Number 200

This is post number 200 for me. You’d think I’d be writing some really encouraging post about how I’ve been doing so well and what not. Well, in the way of reflection, I’ll just say this. I am 21.2 pounds lighter than I was when I wrote post number one. That’s an average of 0.106 pounds/post – sounds like I need to get posting!

Anyway, there is really no excuse for my (dieting/exercise) behavior lately. None. Last week was a little rocky although I was still hanging on. It was the first week in a long time that I only worked out 3 times and didn’t meet my 225 minutes of exercise goal, although I did come fairly close. I bought that whole one pound box of chocolates. I skipped several days of the food journal. Sometimes I feel like once I get to the end of the day, I’ve eaten what I’ve eaten, so what good is journalling it going to do? I read almost no blogs and only posted a couple times. Although I was still trying to exercise and still eating okay-ish. Well I did even worse Sat, Sun, and yesterday. I skipped the workouts on Saturday and Sunday for absolutely no good reason – I just couldn’t motivate myself to do it. Then, I made a batch of cookies Saturday night. I was just really in the baking mood. Luckily I gave most of the cookies away but of course I ate the rest (in both dough and baked form) throughout the course of Saturday evening, Sunday, and Monday (yesterday). They’re gone now. I didn’t journal at all. I don’t know how many I ate, but somewhere in the 10-20 neighberhood. My calorie counts wouldn’t have been too horrible if I were journalling because I didn’t eat all that much else besides the cookies. I did, however, make one good decision yesterday. Despite being just completely exhausted nearly to the point of tears -you know, where you’re so tired, you just feel like you’re actually going to cry for no reason? But I exercised anyway. I went to the Y and went to my spinning class – burned nearly 500 calories! It was good for me to do something like that even though I wasn’t feeling good and even though I wasn’t having a very “on track” day.

The natural question is why have I allowed myself to do poorly this past week when I have been doing SO well and losing SO much weight? Well, first of all, I think I am suffering a little bit of burnout. I’ve been at it really intensely for six weeks. It’s natural to get a little burnt out. Also, I haven’t been taking hardly any time to do things that motivate me and help me refill that motivational tank – like reading blogs, posting on my blog, creating graphs, having discussions about it, etc. The other reason for this episode is that I have been so busy with so many other things lately that I just don’t  have the time and energy left to focus on my weight loss. But the thing about weight loss is this – there’s always going to be some urgent thing to get done that’s going to compete with my weight loss effort. Always. No immediate consequence is going to come if I skip a workout, or don’t take the time to measure or log my foods, or if I don’t read motivation blogs, etc – but other things competing for my time do have those immediate consequences. I need to refocus and realize that, yes, many of those other things are extremely important and a lot of them really must be done, but my health is too important to put by the wayside. I might not be able to give it 100% of my focus every day or every week, but I can and will give it the focus it deserves. One more thing about why I’ve done poorly the past week: Camp is coming up next week, and I know I won’t be able to exercise or count calories and high carb, high sugar, high calorie temptations will abound, and so I’m so afraid I’m going to undo some of the hard work I’ve done to this point. And it’s already starting to effect me now. That’s ridiculous. Yes, that week may be difficult. I’m going to do the best I can, of course, but something of a gain might be unavoidable, but that is absolutely no reason to give up NOW! I can still exercise now. I can count calories today. I can lose as much weight as possible until I leave on Saturday. I can and I will.

Okay, so on to what I’m doing now. First, I got a good night’s sleep which always helps a lot. I got up to go do my spinning workout, was up for about 15 minutes and was still tired, so I went back to bed. Now I feel much better, much more energized, and much more motivated. I will instead workout on the elliptical or possibly with a Cathe step DVD after work today. I made myself a healthy breakfast and I’ve already started logging my foods for today. As you can see, I’m blogging, and I’ve read a couple other blogs already. This afternoon, I’m going to take 15-20 minutes to sit to and write out a prioritized to-do list so I feel more in control for the rest of the week and so I know what I really need to get done and what can be left undone. Trust me, the “undone” list will be long. But this way I can focus my energies on my weight loss goals without worrying that I’m neglecting other things that have to be done.