Quick Update

Just have time for a quick update. Today was better than yesterday – not quite so many calories. Although I STILL have the munchies. They’re incurable! I wish they would go away!!!
Also, I worked out for an hour, wish was good. However, I felt like I just couldn’t really get into it as much as I wanted to. My heart rate stayed fairly low. Tomorrow’s workout should be better because I’m going to a step class. Hard to slack off there.

Exercise is Good, Too Many Cookies, Not So Much

Good news: I started the day with 55 minutes of fairly intense cardio on the elliptical. Bad news, I had the munchies all day long, which is very similar to the bad case of munchies I had last Tuesday. I don’t know what it is about Tuesdays. This time, however, unlike last Tuesday, I gave in to the munchies a bit too much. There were delicious, soft, chewy, oatmeal cookies. Had a couple of those. A few chips, a few crackers. It all adds up so fast. I really, really need to get this nibbling here and there under control! I didn’t track calories for today because I really have no idea, but I would guesstimate around 2500. With my 600 burned through exercise, probably came out about even. I really wanted some huge calorie deficits this week, because I know that won’t be possible this weekend, but tomorrow is a new day and I’ll do the best I can then. I will try not to carry around the weight of today’s mistake and start with a fresh slate.

Lost Another Battle to the Evil Mr. All-or-Nothing

Gotta love my original title! There’s not too much to report today. No workout 😦 Haven’t gotten my thank you notes for gifts at my wedding nearly two months ago, so I wanted to get that done. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen either! Also, I must confess I had a little run-in with cookies today. Ooops! The ridiculous all-or-nothing mentality is getting in my way again. I think, “Well, I know I will be traveling this weekend, so I’ll have no change to exercise and I won’t be in direct control of my food options, so I may as well go ahead and eat a cookie.” How ridiculous is that? When, I put in writing, it’s sounds utterly and completely ludicrous, but at the time, in my head, with a cookie in front of me, it makes some strange sense.

Well, Mr. All-or-Nothing, you may have one this little battle but YOU ARE NOT going to win the war!!! Take that!

That, said, I will be traveling, so I won’t be posting again until Sunday. And my goal for the weekend is not to let Mr. All-or-Nothing when any more battles. If I don’t want the food or need the food, then I WILL NOT eat just because I’m not able to perfectly on plan.

Finally, some positive momentum!

I’m happy to report that I finally had a good eating and exercise day!! And when you have so much negative momentum going (as I most certainly didn’t after so long of barely even trying), it’s amazing that often all it takes is one good day that you just have to push through to get things going again. I need to take note and learn this lesson. I will post the food journal below – close to 1200 calories – right on target! And I went to the Y today after work. I came home, threw on my workout clothes IMMEDIATELY (that step is key), threw a frozen dinner in the microwave (was super hungry since I actually didn’t snack at work), and was out the door. I got there around 5:30 and it wasn’t too crowded yet, even though it’s January. Crowd really starts picking up around 6-6:30. The snow and the cold didn’t kill me – I was only outside for a few seconds, and my car was still pretty warm since I hadn’t been  home long. Worked out for 50 minutes on the elliptical. All that, and I was home by 6:45, got a shower, and I still have time to get a few things done!

I really needed a day like this.

Here’s the food journal:

And my summary for the day:

A Birthday treat

After ending my last post on a negative note, I promised to share my much more positive plans for the future in the next post. Well, those plans include a 30 minutes daily on busy weekdays for blogging/reading other blogs. Well, I’ve spent about 20 minutes reading blogs, so I don’t have enough time left. But tomorrow I think I will definitely have some extra time for that.
Anyway, how did my first day back go? Well, I definitely consumed plenty of calories and did not exercise. That’s because my husband took me out to Olive Garden for my Birthday! (My birthday was yesterday.) Of course, I wasn’t counting calories for that. So there’s not too many details to report. However, I did meet my two goals for today which were:
*No snacking at work
*Write a blog post
Goals for tomorrow are:
*Write a blog post
*Workout for at least 30 minutes

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”: