Woo-hoo for another great weigh-in

Well, I’m pleased to report another great weigh-in this morning. Nearly 1.5% this week for a total of over 6% in 4 weeks!!! All this with the girls weekend that included the Cheesecake Factory!

As far as today, not a whole lot to report. I did a little bit of working out, but not a lot because I was extra-tired. But I’m not stressing about it too much. I really wish I could go to a  spinning class tomorrow night, but I’m helping a friend pack who is moving this weekend. I really don’t know if I’ll get in a workout at all. Although, I guess if we’re just packing it would be okay to go to my friends house still sweaty and in my workout clothes. So I will workout for however much time I can.

Oh, I did try something new – Fage Greek yogurt. I tell you, that stuff is amazing. The nutritional stats nearly make you fall out of your chair. This yogurt has 120 calories in a one cup (8.6 oz) serving. So that’s a very large serving – a normal yogurt serving is 6 oz.  But here’s the real kicker: it has 20 grams of protein! I got the 0% fat kind and I couldn’t even tell. It’s still very thick and creamy (not watered down like some low-cal yogurts) and rich tasting. I ended up getting the plain kind – I wouldn’t recommend eating it by itself. I sugared some strawberries and put that and the yogurt in the blender. Then I put it in the freezer to kind of have frozen yogurt. It made a full to the top cereal bowl that’s quite filling for under 200 calories! But the other kicker on the yogurt is the price – you pay for the protein. It’s $2-$2.50 per serving.

I won’t post my graph yet because I’m not sure if I’m done eating for the day.

Tuesday

Not a lot new to say today. I posted about the weekend earlier today. Another very on-track day, and I can’t wait for a great official weigh-in tomorrow!

Here’s today’s graph:

So much to say

Wow, so much to say, so little time!

I haven’t posted since Tuesday. Fortunately, that’s not a bad sign – I’ve just been pretty busy and blogging is the thing that keeps getting pushed off the list. Here’s a few of the things I really wanted to mention:

• Wednesday is official weigh-in day for my biggest loser competition and  I did lose about 0.7% which isn’t bad although I know it doesn’t sound like very much. I lost so much the previous week, plus even 1% a week is a very aggressive goal. My calorie deficit for the week ended up being in the 5 thousands, so the amount I lost was just about right. I’m still in the lead in the competition (after the 2nd week) but who knows how long that will last.
• Workouts are so weird and frustrating. I have been working out regularly and burning a decent amount of calories there, but for some reason I’ve been having more off days lately. Where I go out there to workout, absolutely force myself to get through the first 10-15 minutes, and then just can’t finish cause it’s so miserable. And then the next day I will go to do the same thing and it will feel great and I’ll do so well. I don’t know what it is. It’s a little frustrating.
• Thursday/Friday/Saturday I had times where I was feeling pretty sick. As in I could hardly do anything. I never actually get sick, and I don’t know what it was/is. I had thought maybe I wasn’t eating enough before my workouts or that I wasn’t eating enough or that I was working out too much. Those things didn’t seem very likely. I just felt extremely tired (even though I’ve been getting plenty of sleep), dizzy, almost like I was going to throw up, and the smell/sight of food was icky so I pretty much forced myself to eat (assuming that’s what I needed). Today I feel wonderful, though – I don’t think I really realized how bad I was feeling until I woke up feeling wonderful this morning. I have no idea what was going on – I had thought it really had something to do with eating/exercise but now I’m thinking I just actually had a mild case of the flu or something. Regardless, I’m going to focus on eating enough through the day before my workouts.
• GUESS WHAT!? On Saturday, I did something new and brave – I went to a spinning class (for the first time ever) by myself. I was nervous because I’ve never actually been to any sort of exercise class (I always stick to the boring cardio machines) and I’m totally uncoordinated. But I figured, I do know how to ride a bike, so how much coordination could it take? Thankfully, I was right, it really didn’t take much in the way of coordination, and I stuck it out fairly well endurance wise as well. There were about 10 people in the class and they had all been there before and were experienced. It was nice to do something different for a change and it was a very good workout – burned pretty much the same amount of calories (possibly slightly more) than I would on the elliptical. So I may do some of those classes again – because the elliptical does get old after a while.
• This topic probably deserves a post of its own, but I’m considering joining the gym at work and working out in the mornings before work. You can stop laughing now. I’ll explain my whole line of reasoning later, and why it just might possibly have a teeny chance of actually working for me. But I’m not doing anything rash and my first step is simply to go to bed a 9pm tonight and get up at 5am tomorrow. If I get get up in when I don’t plan on working out in the morning, I’d be a fool to think that a plan to workout would make me any more likely to get up. I’ll let you know tomorrow how that first step went.

Tuesday

Today went well. I got in a 74 minute workout including my jogging of 2 minutes of jogging followed by a minute of walking eight times. I love going to they Y at lunchtime and having the workout completed before I get done working.

I made some chocolate chip meringue cookies today – no fat. They’re pretty good.

I also made a couple updates to the blog:

My progress page

My Goals Page

Tomorrow is official weigh-in day, so it’ll be interesting to see. However, I’m not going to be at all surprised if nothing changed.

Here’s my graph for today, which is pretty nice because of burning 650 calories working out.

Still going strong

Sorry, I haven’t blogged since Friday. However, that is not a bad sign. I was just taking Saturday off to do other things. I had planned to spend some time on the blog on Sunday evening, but I ended up with other plans. Oh well.

Anyway, like I say – doing well – had a decent calorie deficit each day. Kept up with the exercise and the attempting to jog. Had a great, relaxing weekend and was able to get some organizing projects around the house done.

I plan on updating a few pages on the blog later in the day and I will let you know what I updated.

I weigh everyday and my weight has been exactly the same since last Thursday. It has not budged at all, and I’m okay with that. I know that because of my calories I am losing fat, but I also know that it often takes  a while for it to show up on the scale. This certainly isn’t the first time I’ve lost weight by counting calories, and I know from experience, that often I will be the EXACT same weight (I don’t know how it’s even possible to be that consistent) for several days in a row (like a week or two) and then the scale will drop 3-4, even 5 pounds overnight and will never go back up. It’s strange. I have theories as to why this happens, but I won’t bore you with them. Tomorrow is my official weigh-in for the biggest loser competition and I’ll be surprised if it’s any different than it was this morning. That means this week I will lose 0.39%. That doesn’t bother me too much because I can’t really control the actual numbers on the scale and because I know it will come off next week. And the end is what really counts anyway.

Oh, and the Biggest Loser competition that I’m doing. I never really described it. We have a group of 9 people, and we each pay ten dollars at the beginning and weigh-in each Wednesday. It last for twelve weeks. And we also have to pay a dollar for each pound we gain, if we do gain anything. We post our percentage lost each week. At the end, whoever lost the highest percentage of body weight gets the money! It’s pretty fun and motivating. It really does help to have some extra accountability. Tomorrow will be the end of the second week.

One more  thing I did that’s pretty helpful. I hung up a whiteboard by my desk and I’m putting my calorie deficit for the day, total calorie deficit for the week, and calories deficit needed for the rest of the week if I am going to reach my goal of a 7000 calorie deficit for the week. (which would be two pounds) By the way, this week, I won’t achieve that – it’s a pretty aggressive goal. Here’s a picture of my “motivation board”:

Woohoo, it’s Friday!!!

Today went well enough, thankfully, although there were, as usual, a few challenges. First of all, I ended up not having time to really eat lunch at work because I got called into a meeting at the last minute. So I just ate some Wheat Thin veggie crisps from the vending machine. Then I stopped by Target on my way home from work and picked up a full size bag of M&Ms (meaning one with about 9 servings – not the individual serving bags). My plan is to divide it up into little ziploc baggies and make my own “100 calorie packs” of M&Ms. Most of you who know me well are probably already cringing by now. Of course I opened the bag so I could sample a few on my 45 minute ride home. Now before you imagine the worst – NO, I did NOT eat the entire bag. Not even close. Thank you very much. I munched on a few one at a time, and in all honesty, I estimated that I had eaten about one serving (210 calories). Of course, since I’m faithfully logging all my calories these days, I could handle a wild guesstimate. Therefore, when I got home, I weighed the remaineder of the bag and subtracted from the total weight of the full bag so I could find out exactly how much I had eaten. Let me tell you – it was very telling. I’d had 1.73 servings (so nearly 2) for a total of 360 calories! Can you believe it!? 360 calories right there. It’s truly amazing how fast they add up!

I got a lot of working out in today – 43 mins on the elliptical at the Y and 28 minutes of “wogging” outdoors – for a total of 680 calories burned!! That helps. I’m still gonna struggle to make my goal of a 7000 calorie deficit for the week, but it’s definitely within the realm of possibility.

Here’s the graph for today:

Great Weigh-in!

I have a lot to share tonight and so little time! I’ll save the best for last.

So I didn’t blog yesterday becuase I got home really late, but, never fear, I still logged all my food! Well, as best as I could – I ate at someone’s house so you never really know the calorie counts. Let’s suffice to say, it wasn’t such a great food and exercise day. It’s so hard to recover when you start off poorly. First, I was in a hurry, so I ate 340 calories worth of pure carbs for breakfast – not so filling. So when I arrive at work, of course I’m still hungry. So what do I do? I mindlessly run to the vending machine and get POP-TARTS! What on earth could I possibly have been thinking!!!??? Seriously! POP-TARTS. I think I wrote an entire post a few months ago about how bad I think pop-tarts are. Two pop-tarts have 400 calories, and when you’re done eating them (which takes about 60 seconds if you stretch it out and attempt to savor each bite), you can’t even tell you ate anything. So here I am, sitting at my desk, it’s 7:30am, and I have already consumed SEVEN-HUNDRED-FORTY (740) calories of pure nothing and so I’m still not full, and the whole day is ahead of me. To top it off I have dinner planned at someone’s house and it’s chicken paremesean with garlic bread and green beans on the side. And, as if the situation couldn’t get any worse, I absolutely, physically, literaly did not have time to exercise – as in it would be humanly impossible to do so and make it to said friend’s house for dinner. (Normally I can kinda sorta squeeze it in before evening plans if I dash like a madwoman, don’t dry my hair after my shower, and arrive fashionably late – although I really hate being late for anything – but trying to fit my workouts in has turned me into someone who is late fairly often, and it’s definitely given me some valuable insight into those that are always late. Anyway, couldn’t squeeze it in yesterday because I had to pick up my car from the mechanic shop 20 mins away.) So what did I do? The best I could given the situation. In the end I think I ate just enough to simply maintain my weight. That’s okay for one day, but it’s going to make my goal of a 7000 calorie deficit for the week even more challenging! But I can do it. Here’s the graph for yesterday:

So, moving on to today. I’ll keep it short. I did well eating wise. I discovered a wonderful new food – Smart Ones Chicken Marinara Flatbread. Like what you get out of the frozen dinner section. So, so, so good. Lots of chicken and veggies on top of the flatbread. (I ate it like pizza, though, because the crust is crispy and it feels like more that way). Only 290 calories. I’m sold – unfortunately that particular dinner is not actually on sale like all the other ones. Oh well. I’m still sold. I jogged outside today. I really, really, really wanted to get a good long workout in instead of just 30 minutes of walking/jogging, but there wasn’t time. I got home from work really late and had plans, so I just jogged for 30 minutes. A lot better than nothing, but I haven’t gotten a “full” workout (full meaning 50-60 minutes of decent cardio) since probably last Friday. I need more time! Anway, here’s the graph for today:

Now for the good news. I lost 3.19% of my body weight this week! I’m giving percentages instead of actual pounds lost because I’m participating in a biggest loser contest where my percentage is posted, and I don’t exactly want to just broadcast my weight on my blog – I have people I know “in real life” who read this. Anyway, suffice it to say, 3.19% is a lot of weight, I believe the most I’ve ever lost in a single week, and I’m thrilled! I think my “gazelle intensity” is definitely the way to go. I’ll explain the Biggest Loser thing that I’m doing a little more in a later post. Right now I have to get to bed, so I have the energy to work out tomorrow!

Tuesday

Sorry, I don’t have much time tonight. My calorie situation for today does not look so good. I  basically maintained. But that’s okay for one day.

I’m also setting an official calorie goal for next week. I want to create a caloric deficit of 7000 total for the week (that be an average of 1000 per day and would result in 2 pounds of fat loss). Pretty aggressive, but attainable with a lot of exercise. I feel like I’ll do better if I have a specific goal to work towards. Who knows, maybe it will even help me pass up those daily M&M’s – nah, I doubt it, but it’s worth a shot.

Here’s today’s somewhat embarrassing chart:

The scale must be broken…

…in a good way!!!

I’m a daily weigher, and I have to say, I’m shocked at out how quickly the number is going down. I think I overreacted a bit when I saw how high it was a few days ago – I think it may have been artifically high because I’d been eating a lot of sodium and eating pretty late at night. My official “weigh-in” day is Wednesday so I can’t wait to see how it goes then.

Today went fairly well. Calories were a little high. I went to the park again and jogged. I was so worried that I it would go horribly because yesterday’s workout was sooo incredibly painful. Well, it was actually the easiset jog yet! I couldn’t believe it. I even stretched several of the 90 second jogging segment to two minutes. And ran for 3 minutes on the last one. Burned three hundred calories! And the weather was absolutely perfect! I love being able to exercise outside.

Report for Saturday

Another original title. Not too much to say today. I went “wogging” in the park again today. This was the first time I started without having gone to the Y and done the elliptical first. And let me tell you, it was painful. Seriously. Like I had to force myself to take every single step. I think not being already warmed up somewhat by having done the elliptical affected me. I’m doing a modified version of the Couch to 5k program, so I was doing 8 repitions of 90 seconds of jogging followed by 90 seconds of walking. It was all I could do to accomplish it. It didn’t help that there were a lot of hills. I got it done. Burned 300 calories. And I honestly have to admit that if I did not have someone jogging with me I don’t think I would have completed the workout. It really does help to have someone with you who can help keep you accountable.

I did have dessert tonight – I tried to exercise self control. I had a brownie and one serving of ice cream. But then I did graze some on the pan of brownies through the evening. However, when my guests left, I wisely threw away the remainder of the brownies. There were only about two left, and they really weren’t that good – I recently bought Aldi cocoa, and nothing I have made with it turns out well. It even looks pretty different than “normal” cocoa. I don’t think it’s worth the few cents I save to buy that. I’ll stick to the national brands next time.

I’m posting a new little graph of my calories/net calories for the day: