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.